Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

05 Jan, 2024

This post was initially written for Prismatic Wasteland's January 2023 resolution mechanic blog challenge. It definitely doesn't meet the challenge's desired originality -- it's just a gloss on an idea developed on Traverse Fantasy (so all gratitude & credit to her) that in turn is arguably a specific way of implementing commonplace d6 skills -- but it does try to solve a problem that has vexed me in the past, so hopefully there's still something useful here.

The Problem

I've always been underwhelmed by how most D&D-type games¹ handle assisted skill checks by applying a small modifier to a single character's roll. For example, two books within arm's reach as I write:

Sometimes one PC will want to lend a hand to another as they attempt a difficult feat. To do this, the player first describes what sort of action they are taking to help their comrade. If the GM agrees that their effort makes sense and would be helpful, the player then rolls a relevant skill check against the same difficulty as the original check. If it’s a success, the other PC gets a +1 bonus on their roll. Multiple PCs can try to help, but the acting PC can’t earn more than a +1 total bonus. (Worlds Without Number)

Sometimes two or more characters team up to attempt a task. The character who’s leading the effort—or the one with the highest ability modifier—can make an ability check with advantage, reflecting the help provided by the other characters. [...] When a number of individuals are trying to accomplish something as a group, the GM might ask for a group ability check. In such a situation, the characters who are skilled at a particular task help cover those who aren’t. To make a group ability check, everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds. Otherwise, the group fails (Fifth Edition D&D)

Perfectly serviceable, but I still think the way most rpgs tie resolution mechanics to the capabilities of an individual character is kind of peculiar. Irl, groups of 3-7 venturing into dangerous areas almost always operate as a tightly-knit unit (e.g. firefighters, special forces, cave divers, astronauts). Nobody tackles a life-or-death challenge alone if they can help it.

Other examples that come to mind:

• Anything strength-based is made significantly easier with help from others.
• Regardless of one's stance on 'social skills', the idea of a party 'face' with the highest stats is pretty weird, especially since at the table most players are weighing in, interjecting, suggesting ideas, etc.
• Informational skills like perception & lore are (almost always) immediately shared with the group and thus only one success is relevant even though everyone rolls a check
• When my childhood scout troop did simulated first aid contests, we always operated as a team -- in the emergency scenarios we were presented with, our ability to collaborate made all the difference. Ditto for wilderness survival.

I contend that none of these scenarios are well-modeled by hinging success or failure on one person's abilities and slapping on a +1 or Advantage to represent the helpers.

With that in mind, what if we started treating individual resolution rolls as an edge case rather than the default? Traverse Fantasy's post about OD&D being a worker placement game started me on this line of thought -- in it, Marcia B. observes how the OD&D mechanics for opening doors (up to three characters can try to roll, success if anyone gets a one or two) hint at a more general mechanic where each party member can allocate effort to one task or another.

why not increase the chance by some amount, say 1/3 per person, instead of letting each person as factor roll independently? of course, it makes it so that three people automatically succeed at the task, but that's not the interesting thing. allowing one roll per factor allows the difficulty of a task to scale down per factor without eliminating the chance of failure, has diminishing returns per additional factor of effort (i.e. per person), and also acts a visual indicator of effort spent on the task.

The rest of this post is an attempt at expanding on her proposal.

Teamwork makes the dream work

First, the context of a skill roll:

• Skill rolls are called for when success or failure is impactful OR when diegetic resolution is too tedious or difficult. Players may always attempt supersede a roll with a detailed description of what they are doing.
  • The latter are integrated mainly within exploration procedures
• Skill rolls use up one exploration turn unless that seems egregiously unrealistic

A skill roll requires the GM to state:

• A collaboration cap: how many characters can contribute?
• Ease: how many pips to roll under for success? (Probably limited to 1, 2, or 3)
• (Optional) If more than one success is required. (This sets a minimum to how many characters are needed for a task; I can't think of obvious examples of this being appropriate but wanted to include it.)
• Stakes: what happens on success and failure? To whom does it apply?

Players may negotiate fictional positioning to change these parameters before rolling.

All helping players roll their dice, needing (by default) only one die equal to or under the Ease level to succeed.

Disaster: if all dice come up 6, something really bad happens (if appropriate)

Character skill provides extra dice without counting against the collaboration cap:

• Untrained: 0 dice or maybe a d12 if the ref thinks it could be attempted at all.
• Apprentice: 1 die (Adventurers start out at apprentice level in all basic adventuring skills (athletics, survival, riding, stealth, first aid, etc.))
• Journeyman: 2 dice
• Master: 3 dice²
• (Fill in your preferred skill advancement system here)

Example rolls:

• Jumping over a chasm: collab cap 1 (you're on your own), ease 2 (success on 2 or lower, 33% chance), stakes: make it or fall and die horribly. Most characters roll 1 die, but a fighter who is a journeyman in athletics gets two (56% chance). This is the 'standard' skill roll, now an unusual edge case where players can't really help each other.
• Climbing a 10' smooth wall: collab cap 3 (two people can boost up one climber), ease 2, stakes: wasting time on failure, and each success gets one person to the top, at which point they can reach down and help others, boosting the collab cap for subsequent rolls.
• First aid: collab cap 5, ease 2, stakes: stabilize on success, on failure, another step on death tracker or another roll on death & dismemberment or something
• Cooking a beef and onion pie for the Viceroy: collab cap 4, ease 1 (he's picky and has lots of options), stakes: on success he eats the whole thing, on failure he nibbles a corner and then orders a turkey leg instead.
• Remembering obscure lore: collab cap ∞, ease 1, stakes: on failure, gotta hit the books!
• Opening stuck doors: collab cap 3, ease 1, stakes: on failure, wasted time & an extra encounter roll
• Hunting/foraging: collab cap ∞, ease according to terrain type, stakes: feed the party or use a ration or go hungry³
• Searching a room: collab cap ∞, ease varies by hidden object (e.g. any 2s might uncover the lever under the desk but at least one 1 is needed to detect the loose floorboard), stakes: missing hidden items and/or needing to roll again (wasting time) or explore diegetically (also wasting time).
• Lookout duty: collab cap ∞, ease varies by light level and location (higher in darkness, forest, etc.), stakes: surprised if an encounter is rolled
• Abstracted combat(!?): collab cap based on frontage (i.e. width of corridor or room and number of enemies), ease tied to abstracted enemy combat power, stakes: take damage or roll on some abstract injury/death/dispersal table

Math

(Note: Marcia already calculated most of these numbers in her post, linked above) Here are the odds when using a d6:

For disaster results (chance of all dice coming up 6):

The success rates feel generous, so I also ran the numbers with d10 rolls:

I think I prefer the d6 version, but the whole thing surely needs fine-tuning. Maybe a d8 splits the difference? In general, the goal is to allow for difficulty levels that are unlikely for one person but soluble to the efforts of several. I'd also rule that chances over 75% round up to 100%.

Notes & other ideas

• This system doesn't account for ability scores or modifiers. I think you could tune the DCs of another system to work with the 'everybody rolls, one success needed' principle outlined here, but that's for someone else to tackle. Or a sufficiently high modifier could just give +1 die.
• It could be cool (but probably too complicated) to distinguish between diminishing returns and compounding benefits when adding helpers.
• It might be simpler to simply give trained characters a smaller die, making success more likely. Maybe d8 -> d6 -> d4.
• Maybe this could be extended to magic? Say, detecting magic becomes a skill that mages have, operating similarly to the lookout roll described above. Or allow MUs to contribute dice to cast a spell above their level. Maybe mash it together with GLOG magic somehow?
• I don't usually like rolling for stealth, but there's a case to be made for using an inverted system where one failure screws it up for everyone. Or maybe if there are more failures than successes the party is busted. Not sure, both feel inelegant.
• Could this be used for group saves as well?

Concluding thoughts

Pros:

• Low-level characters with poor skills can still contribute meaningfully alongside highly-skilled characters. No more having your +4 haberdashery made irrelevant by your buddy's +5 haberdashery.
• Everyone gets to roll something each exploration turn. Less active players may feel more involved, and there's less of a 'spotlight' effect.
• Makes collaborative activity the default, calling for an individual roll is the exception rather than the rule. Less time wasted figuring out who has the biggest bonuses.
• Losing hirelings and low-level PCs has a bigger impact on how the party functions
• Provides some mechanical support for designating something as an 'x-person task'.
• Doesn't require adding or subtracting, just comparing numbers and calling out success. Character skills are fairly easy to track, non-fiddly.

Cons:

• Lots of die rolling, likely to slow down exploration.
• Could encourage to rolls-not-roles if used indiscriminately. (Not unique to this system, though)
• Success chances are hard to judge intuitively - the core 'interesting choice' posed is something like: 'am I more useful trying to get that door open or acting as a lookout for the goblins we know are prowling around here?' One's relative impact on either task may not be obvious.
• Arguably overcomplicates d6 skill systems that are already serviceable.

Finally, I'd argue that this system could subtly shift the game's ethos away from heroic individualism, incentivizing the involvement of companions, hirelings, and befriended NPCs.⁴ What other effects this would have on the overall character of the game I can't say for sure.

Discuss on Reddit

#archons-and-armigers #game-design #slush-pile