In my second article for Speculative Physics, The Opposition Rests I discussed oppositional mechanics, and put forward the idea of a RPG called Coming of Age. As first of a series of articles, I'm going to look back on that idea and show its evolution as a RPG over the past few years.

Inner Struggle

The basic premise of Coming of Age was to show the path of the player characters rising to their circumstances and overcoming their own flaws and inadequacies to to become something better. Whether they were potential heroes, small timers hoping to make it big, or cadets facing their first big challenge, the main obstacle was an internal one.

As such, the core mechanic was to roll one die representing a character's potential, called a title die, and some number of opposition dice, representing the failings which the character may some day overcome. If the title die won out, then the character achieved her or his goal, if not, then failure resulted. If there was a tie, then the opposition could be reduced. Outside antagonism was rare, and mainly consisted of throwing in one or more dice representing the external forces arrayed against the character.

After further consideration, it became clear that characters need a reason to do things. In essence, players need to buy into the external, as well as internal, opposition. Since Coming of Age was envisioned as being extremely variable in terms of setting and character type, it became simpler to spread the onus of interesting opposition further to the players.

Antagonize

The solution I decided, was to build a system of story points, which could be spent to buy or increase antagonist dice. Those dice gave the players (GM included) an opportunity to work together to determine what challenges their up and coming characters would face. Some were fixed (terrain, environments, and general fixtures), some dissipated when defeated (a locked door, a difficult test), while others would strengthen would return more powerful (the final villain) until finally defeated.

I had all these pieces together just in time for an ersatz playtest session. Things went wrong to begin with, as we acquired new people, the group concept for the characters extended to include everything from Harry Potter-style student wizards to townsfolk under siege by horrors from beyond. As the focus drifted, the antagonist dice were the only thing that kept any sort of unity.

Another problem became immediately apparent. Players needed to take turns, it was too easy to choose a simple action with no real failure consequences and just roll for matches. In fact that turned out to be the only timely way to reduce one's opposition dice. The pacing was simply too slow for a single session, and needed to be adjusted based on how long the game should last. This suggested some additions to the RPG.

Other problems also appeared. Growing antagonist dice simply felt wrong to some players. And the GM role in the game was, at best, ambiguous. The GM would be forced to come up with explanations for each character's internal failings, a monumental task, while at the same time the typical role of setting up antagonism worked fine without GM intervention. These suggested what needed to be removed.

Good Bye GM

The first cut was to remove the GM, and immediately following those pesky growing antagonist dice. In their place players could re-buy defeated antagonist dice at a higher value. And thus the recurring villain only returns because of an ovation.

The additions and general changes were as pervasive. The first was to make antagonist dice more important, instead of reducing opposition dice from matches, the reduction would happen when antagonist dice won the roll. Thus being defeated from the outside teaches you a lesson about your own failings. The title die dominating meant success and earning story points for later use, especially if an antagonist die was defeated. An opposition die dominating meant just an internal failure.

This promised to give a better reward dynamic to players, especially if they could only take one action at turn. Without a GM, play simply happened round robin, giving each player a chance to shine. As an added incentive, I added a second use to the story points. You could spend a story point to let another player re-attempt their action, letting both outcomes apply. This was to accentuate the synergy coming from the communal purchasing of antagonist dice.

With all these changes, I broached another playtest. This time, the characters were all unemployed actors working in a restaurant near Hollywood. Comments suggested two things: the dynamics were still too slow and failing due to internal opposition felt like a waste of an action.

Iterative Refinement

The solution to these problems was simple. First, making opposition dice reduce by two stages, from d12 to d8, from d8 to d4, and from d4 to 0, sped things up consistently. Second, I divorced the opposition dice from the rewards. If the title was equal or less than the antagonist an opposition die was pushed towards reduction. If the title die was larger than the antagonist dice, then a story point was gained, even if the action was a failure due to opposition dice.

Adding these refinements I recently (last night to be exact) did another playtest. This time the characters were galaxy space police cadets, tackling a space pirate attack while taking their final exams. The outcome of this playtest suggested no further changes. Which means its time to rely on external playtesting. For the curious, the current playtest version is here (pdf).

A whopping four pages, it is perhaps the shortest playtest draft I've seen in a long time. But perhaps that can serve as a reminder, that it is as important to remove what is unnecessary as it is to add what is needed.

Next Month: Origin of a System