Idiosyncratic RPG systems

So here’s a brief interlude for me to chunter about roleplaying systems and what feels like the constant (and unnecessary) drive for innovation.

So as well as running Fate of Cthulhu on Thursdays, I’m also playing in The Troubleshooters on Mondays. The Troubleshooters is a roleplaying game about action, adventure and mystery in a fictional European 1960s–1970s setting in the style of mainly Belgian and French comics, also known as bande dessinée or bédé.

We’re running around Europe trying to foil the sinister plans of the evil Octopus. It’s all very light-hearted fun.

The system is skill-based and seems ridiculously crunchy for such a light-hearted game. It also has some peculiar rules. Two examples follow.

Initiative

Initiative is based on your Alertness skill. So when you need to work out who goes first in combat, you roll Alertness. If you succeed, you add your tens and ones. (So if I roll 27, my initiative is 9.) Highest goes first. 

So at first blush, all well and good. Except that someone who rolls really well on their Alertness check (03 say) is unlikely to have the best initiative.

And if you fail your Alertness roll, you just take the ones. So if you roll 99, you have a better initiative score than someone rolling 01. Bizarre.

My simpler alternative to Initiative: Roll 1d100 and add your Alertness. Highest goes first. Job done—and those with high Alertness get the result they expect.

Skill check bonuses and penalties

Troubleshooters uses percentile dice for skills. However, bonuses and penalties (representing advantages or disadvantages, or particularly easy or difficult rolls) are awarded as positive or negative pips. Two pips for an easy/difficult task, five for a very easy/very difficult task.

A bonus of two pips means that any roll ending in 1 or 2 is an automatic access. Yay! That’s like plus 20%, right? Well, no. If your skill is 60%, it’s actually an 8% improvement—you now succeed on 01-60, 71, 72, 81, 82, 91, 92. So pips are worth less the more skilled you are.

It gets worse if the pips are negative. With negative two pips, any roll ending in 1 or 2 automatically fails. So, your 60% skill drops to 48% (as you are now failing on 01, 02, 11, 12, 21, 22 and so on).

So instead of just adding or subtracting 10% or 25%, we have these weird hard-to-grok pips.

(That’s actually an optional rule (known as task value)—just add 5% per pip. According to the rules, “The benefit of the task value is that it is more intuitive.” If it’s more intuitive, why isn’t it the core system?)

The play’s the thing

While I find myself amused at the system’s quirks, it’s not affecting play and we should wrap it all up in a couple of sessions. I don’t know what we’re playing then. Hopefully something with more straightforward rules.