Fort Heking
Recently I picked up For the King 2 for my live-in partner who had unexpectedly fell in love with the original. For him, it seemed to scratch the dungeon-crawling dice-rolling itch that your typical old school D&D affair might offer, but without all of the theatre of the mind nonsense that most RPGs employ. (Also, a notable boon was that it just wasn’t D&D).
FTK is one of those games that lovingly recreates the tabletop experience for a digital audience. Its gonzo ragdoll-physics, zero-to-hero character progression, and Very Bad storytelling make for a good environment to play out little goofy adventures with OCs like our twinky stablehand, Male Lesbian, and his faithful blacksmith bear friend, Zaddy, who unfortunately perished on their very first quest. Yippee!!
The particulars of how FtK ports the tabletop hexcrawl, however, are super interesting! It doesn’t seem to perfectly match up to any specific analogue antecedent, and as a result tends to spin the idea of a skill check in fun ways that I think could be backported to tabletop games for some fun shenanigans.
For this analysis I am going to be looking at elements that are common across both FtK and FtK 2, which means I won’t be addressing mechanics like the combat grid, traits, and loadout.
How it works
The Roll
FTK uses a unified resolution mechanic, meaning that one mechanic is applied across the system to determine the outcomes of player actions. In FtK, all resolutions are handled by a variable dice roll-under percentile check, which I am just going to call a “multi%” for brevity’s sake. Before I do, though, let’s break it down a little further.
- By “multiple dice” I mean that variable quantities of dice are rolled for a single check. Usually this ranges between 1 and 5, but there are extraordinary circumstances.
- By “roll-under” I mean that players want to roll under a target number, which in the case of FTK is determined by one of the character attributes.
- By “percentile check” I mean that the roll is made using percentile dice, so the results generally range from 1-100.
In practice, without external modifiers, this might look as follows:
Male Lesbian the stablehand has an awareness rating of 68. He attempts to perform a task that challenges his awareness of his surroundings — perhaps navigating a dense wood. The task requires that he rolls 3 dice. He rolls 52, 81, and 71, meaning only one out of three checks are considered successful because they fall under his awareness rating of 68.
The Results
You might be asking “wtf does that result even mean though?” Well, dear reader, let me tell you clearly and confidently: it depends.
This is because FtK applies its universal resolution system practically everywhere across the game. As a result, different contexts require different kinds of results, so while the procedure for rolling die is uniform, the results show a lot more variance. Let’s take a look at a few:
- During each exploration turn on the overworld map, a character must roll a set number of dice for movement. For each successful roll, the character is allowed to move an additional space. This is an example of a graduated result, where the result of the roll improves the quality if the result in a roughly linear correlation.
- In combat, when a character attempts a basic attack on an enemy, they roll a number of dice specified by the type of arm they are wielding. For each success, the damage the attack deals increases as with a graduated result, but 0 successes almost always results in an automatic miss, and a full success (where all dice succeed) almost always results in an automatic hit. The full success will also sometimes trigger a special effect, like applying burning to an enemy or dealing splash damage to adjacent targets. This is an example of a fringe result, where the lowest and highest possible results add additional effects.
- In combat, when a character attempts a special action like cleansing a condition on an ally or taunting an enemy, they will roll an often small number of dice specified by the item they are using to try to trigger the effect. In these cases, the character must roll a full success to trigger the effect. This is an example of how FtK handles a binary result, where the effect of the action will either succeed or fail with no gradation between them.
- If a character encounters a special event, they may be invited (or forced) to attempt a roll with a set number of dice to accomplish a task. The results on these rolls are usually spelled out in a table, where each possible number of successes has a different outcome. These often have a loose correlation with more successes=better rewards, but the rewards are frequently very different. A roll that might give you some EXP with one result will give you an item at another, or skip your turn with a third and instantly kill your character if you fail it entirely. Some of these event rolls even play with the reward correlation by inverting the relationship between successes and quality, or placing the worst/best result right in the middle. These are all examples of what I’ll call irregular results.
Strategy
Succeeding in your quest in FtK requires making strategic decisions about how and when to control for what Keith Burgun terms “output randomness,”¹ or the randomized result of a player’s decisions. This is a familiar component of many tabletop RPG experiences, where you are maximizing your positive modifiers through character growth and skill choice to improve your chances of success when the die are finally rolled. In FtK this type of modification occurs primarily in your choice of character classes at the beginning of the game, in your choice of equipment (both apparel and arms, which I’ll consider separately), and in your use of the “focus” mechanic right before you roll.
At character creation, players will create a party of adventurers by selecting from among a handful of civilian classes. Each of these adventurers will begin with an attribute array according to their chosen class, along with a couple class-specific (and sometimes exclusive) skills that will predispose the adventurer towards a specific build. For example, the herbalist profession begins the game with high scores (70s) in awareness and intelligence, moderate scores (60s) in talent and speed, low scores (50s) in strength and vitality, and the standard 50 luck. When combined with their special abilities “Find Herb” and “Party Heal”, you get a picture of a character that is generally predisposed to acting as support for the party while accomplishing tasks and wielding weapons that require a keen eye or esoteric knowledge.
After creating your party of adventurers, you will be continuously be tasked with equipping them with more powerful equipment as your adventure progresses. Your choice of equipment is one of the most impactful decisions you will make in establishing a character build and will arguably set you up for success or failure in the long term. Your choice of equipment can be broken down further into apparel and arms, which are functionally unique elements of your build.
- Apparel’s primary function is to both provide damage mitigation and modify your character attributes. For instance, characters who equip heavier apparel like plate armour will expect to see a boost in their armour (which mitigates physical damage) and bonuses for attributes like strength and vitality (making every roll that tests these attributes a little easier) with some penalties to attributes like intelligence (specializing them away from those rolls). By modifying your attributes, your choice of equipment becomes important both in and out of combat.
- Conversely, arms primarily impact your success in within FtK’s combat mode by providing access to arm-specific abilities. Each arm is a unique beast, determining which combat abilities you have access to, each of which is a unique roll. A character will want to choose an arm that both tests their specialized stats and provides special utility as necessary. The arm design in FtK is so dense, in fact that I have a deeper analysis just after this section. Stay tuned!
- Lastly, FtK employs a focus mechanic as a way to provide the player with limited but extremely potent control over the outcome of a roll. A character starts with a small number of focus points depending on their class which can be spent 1-for-1 to automatically succeed on a single die roll and provide a positive modifier to any other rolls in the same test. For instance, if a test requires I roll 3 dice, I can spend 1 focus to ensure a minimum of one success and improve my chances on the remaining two, or push myself even harder and spend three focus points to guarantee a maximum result. This on-the-fly control of output randomness can help players overcome even the most daunting challenges with a little bit of focus. The catch is that focus can only be reliably restored in towns or in camps.
To Arms
Combat is the place where your adventure will probably end. Whether the end comes as a result of your motley crew completing their heroic quest by taking down a challenging foe in a final conflict, or it comes as a result of being pecked to death by a flock of crows that just won’t die (RIP Male Lesbian and Zaddy), it’s probably a fight that will seal your fate.
Combat in FtK is also primarily a test of arms. While class, apparel, and focus will aid your chances of success here, battle is fought in its entirety with abilities which are exclusively determined by a characters choice of arms. Because combat is the razor edge that your adventure balances on, your options for equipment here are suitably pithy, with a robust system of variables for a player to balance.
Each arm in FtK tests a single stat in all of its abilities stat usually corresponding to the type of arm you have equipped. Characters who have high speed scores will probably opt to use daggers, for instance, while characters who are talented will probably want to equip themselves with a whip or boomerang.
Arms are also categorized into those that deal physical damage (usually traditional weaponry like swords, bows, etc.) and those that deal magical damage (fantastical weapons like staves, tomes, and lutes tend to occupy this category). Physical damage is mitigated by a target’s armour, while magical damage is instead mitigated by a target’s resistance. There is a third type of damage mitigation using evasion, which has a set chance to completely negate damage, both physical and magical. Targeting foes with less protection against a given damage type is a natural strategy to maximizing damage output with your attacks.
Each arm comes with a specific set of 1-3 abilities that are the primary factor to consider when equipping your characters. Excluding shields, the first of these abilities will always be a “basic attack” with your arm. These attacks are always tests with 1-5 dice with both graduated and fringe results. The results are graduated because the more successful rolls on a test, the more damage you will deal with your attack. The results are fringe because a total failure will always miss (barring certain modifiers) and a perfect success will always hit, negating your target’s chance to evade.
As a result of this combination of graduated and fringe results, using an attack with more dice will result in more reliable damage output as your chances to hit a fringe result decrease with each additional roll in the test. These arms also tend to boast higher damage ranges as well, meaning that if you do happen to roll a perfect success with a 5 dice attack, you will be dealing substantial damage. As a side effect of more dice and fewer fringe results, however, you are less likely to negate your target’s evasion, substantially reducing your damage output against nimble foes.
Basic attacks might also include additional effects (usually relegated to fringe results) such as “splash”, which deals partial damage to adjacent targets, “pierce”, which bypasses armour and resistance, or “poison” (or other similar condition), which applies a status effect on a perfect success.
The remaining abilities on an arm are either a secondary attack or a special ability. Secondary attacks are often simple variants on basic attacks and follow all of the same principles but may, on occasion, introduce a negative accuracy modifier in exchange for some additional potency. For instance, a secondary attack might apply a stun on a fringe result where a basic attack would not, but requires an extra die on the test and applies a -5% modifier for each roll.
A special ability, on the other hand, is a test with a binary result that is usually much more potent than effects you can access through standard attacks. For instance, cleansing status effects, bolstering defenses, boosting attacks, changing turn order, totally negating damage, taunting opponents, and restoring focus points tend to fall into this category.
A few more factors that players might consider when arming their characters:
- Arms are either two handed or one handed — the latter of which allows the weapon to be paired with a shield as a secondary arm to provide additional defenses and access to abilities like Taunt.
- Arms may also on occasion modify attributes or provide new passive abilities which can be utilized in exploration as well.
- Arms may be generally “breakable,” which permanently destroys the arm on a total failure, adding another fringe result to every ability. Usually focus points can not be applied to these weapons either, meaning they are bound to break even with extremely high attribute ratings.
- Guns, specifically, need to be reloaded after every shot, but in exchange are some of the most potent arms available.
Staving off Insanity
So, the initial draft of this post was going to exceed 5k words and it was tormenting me. I decided as of the time of writing this that in the interest of temporarily sedating the demons in my brain that are currently affixed to this I would split this post into 2 parts.
So, what’s to come? Well, Part 2, which is already WELL on its way, is going to take the analysis contained within this part, codify its mechanics at the table, and then explore how it might be applied to new work. Male Lesbian WILL return for Part 2, rest assured.
This all ends up leading to further insight into the design implications behind FtK’s resolution rolls, and explores the possibility of leaning further into it, including within other genres of play. Let’s hope I don’t succumb to the demons before then. I feel like I’ve found some diamonds here, after all.
Notes
- Randomness and Game Design by Keith Burgun. Keith Burgun Games. 2014.
Further Reading
- Ian McDougall has a delightful series of blogposts on Benign Brown Beast similarly exploring how to port Runescape’s mechanics to tabletop RPGs.
A small child forgets her mother.
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