Deathwish is really starting to come together! Of greatest importance, the core mechanic is complete, and I’m quite happy with it. Without further ado or comment beforehand, here it is:
The Core Mechanic: A task roll (skill check, attribute check, etc.) is made by rolling 1d10 against the actor’s applicable trait value, modified by the Difficulty of the task. If the die roll is equal to or lower than the target number, the task succeeds with a Value equal to the number on the die. If the roll is higher than the target number, the task is failed (with a Value of 0 if any mechanic calls for one). Average tasks are rolled against the base trait value; difficulty levels successively double or halve the base value. Thus, Easy tasks use twice the trait value, Hard tasks use half, and Very Hard tasks use one-quarter.
Example: Bullet Bill has Computer Operation 4. For Easy tasks, he rolls against an 8; for Average, a 4; for Hard, a 2; and for Very Hard, a 1. He’s trying fix a computer that can’t access the Internet. The GM rules that this is an Easy task, so Bill must roll an 8 or less — an 80% chance of success. As long as he rolls an 8 or less, he wants to roll as high as he can. He rolls a 7, and the GM declares that this is sufficiently high that he fixes the computer in ten minutes, just one-third of the time it would normally take.
This idea is the basis of everything else in the game: equipment ratings, damage rolls, initiative, and many other things that are yet to be developed. This means that, no matter what you’re doing, you always roll the same dice in the same way — essential to a simple, clean game design. Further, all that messy-looking division is done before play and recorded on the character sheet — next to “Computer Operation: 4,” Bullet Bill has “8/4/2/1″ on his character sheet. Difficulty modifiers from circumstances, equipment, wounds, etc. just move the target number left or right along that four-number progression, so you never need to do any math to figure out what you need to roll.
An essential component of this mechanic is that the dice are always read as they lie — there are absolutely no modifiers to the dice on the table. The mechanic borrows from The Price is Right in that you want to roll high, but if you roll higher than your trait value, you fail. Opposed tests, then, are basically just a roll-off — but the higher-skilled character has more numbers that succeed (and that are higher than their opponent can possibly get). No counting successes, no figuring margins of success — you just roll, and if you succeed, you beat anyone with a lower number than you.
This mechanic also restricts high levels of success to higher trait values, which reflects that only experts achieve outstanding results under almost all circumstances. Your trait value (modified by Difficulty) is also the highest Value you can get on a roll — if you need a check Value of 3+ to win that crowd over, hack a computer in time, or punch the crazed ganger in his amped-up adrenaline gland and you’ve got a skill of 2, tough luck. (Those tasks would also be 20% less likely to succeed for someone who did have a skill of 3+ — they’re quite hard.)
Success Values are mostly used in opposed checks, to get a quantitative value from a task roll (for example, how much progress was made), for improved effects for good rolls (e.g. increased damage, reduced time taken), for tasks of such a nature that only someone qualified has a chance of success (ones that aren’t necessarily difficult, per se — difficulty shifts do their own thing and can be combined with Success Values — but are sensitive or complicated), and in damage rolls. In most checks, they aren’t necessary but are nice to have. Difficulty levels rate the chance of simply succeeding — and note that, since everything in Deathwish runs on a 0-10 scale, even expert characters have trouble performing hard tasks, including many rolls in combat. On the other hand, they rock at the easy stuff.
So that’s it — the basis from which all things Deathwish stem. There’s lots more — what Difficulty levels represent, what trait levels mean, how traits get modified by equipment and circumstances, how serial actions work — but that will come. As a test of this concept’s grokability, I’ll sum in up in a sentence:
“Roll a d10 and try to get as high as you can, but not above that number on your character sheet.”
I like it. I hope you do, too.
