Mechanics Mechanics Mechanics 2

In this entry I’m just going to explain a little bit about my ideas for the stats given to you by the Grade system and how they will work.

Imagination:

This will mainly allow you to learn the magic of the world. Once you’ve succeeded on an imagination roll for a specific task that is possible in the new world but not in the real one, you may then make a regular check to perform that task. This is only for specific tasks though, for instance you can’t roll one imagination check to use magic and then use magic in any way from then on without imagination. You can, however, make an imagination check to be able to make something levitate with magic and then have that ability available to you from that point onwards. You may only make an imagination check for something once, after which you will need a trainer (someone who can perform the task) to give you an additional try. Each trainer gives you one new attempt so if you fail again you will have to find someone new.

e.g.

A PC see’s a wizard enchant a broom to repeatedly hit a thief until the thief runs away. Later on the PC is cornered by a wolf and has dropped his sword a few feet away. The player says “I’d like to try and enchant the sword to attack the wolf.”. The player rolls against his characters imagination (10) and succeeds well (6) meaning he can now attempt to enchant inanimate objects to attack things whenever he wants. He then tries to enchant the sword rolling a 10 and succeeding with a drawback.

There could also be degrees of success in these rolls so a success with a drawback might mean that you don’t learn it permanently, a bad failure might mean you lose the ability to do something else that was enabled by your imagination etc.

Wonder:

Children are prone to getting scared of things so I wanted to include some aspect of fear in the game. It isn’t a horror game, it’s not meant to be all that scary for the players, but the characters will certainly be afraid.

When a conflict becomes scary for a character (as decided by the GM), the player must first succeed in a wonder check before they can contribute any other successes to the encounter. A successful wonder check does not count as a success for the encounter, but a failure counts as a failure as per usual.

This sounds like it might be a bit of an anti-fun mechanics so will be important to convey to the GM that a player who is frightened should still be doing things and things should still be happening to them, just not things that will contribute a success to an encounter.

e.g.

As they are walking through the scary woods, a giant monster jumps out at the two PC’s. PC #1, a first grader (wonder 15), rolls an 11 on his wonder check and can now contribute to the conflict. PC #2, a 7th grader (wonder 9), rolls a 10 and cannot contribute to the conflict. The monster starts running towards PC #2 as a result of the failure, PC #2 runs off the path in an attempt to lose the monster rolling a 5 to avoid tripping over.

Skepticism:

I had the idea of skepticism before I had fully fleshed out the conflict resolution in the game, and now I’m not entirely sure it fits. The original idea was that it was a defence against magic or fantastical things like being turned into a frog etc.

Now though, I’m thinking of maybe changing the name and having this stat relate to the healing of non-defining negative traits. I’ll have to think about it a bit more.

Logic:

This skill is basically the knowledge skill of the game. It could also work similarly to the Spout Lore skill of Dungeon World if the GM is OK with the players helping define a bit about the world themselves.

That’s it for this time. That’s pretty much all of the main mechanical ideas I want to include also. From here it’s all about writing up the manual, getting specifics sorted out, and playtesting.