Bones Beneath Meat

Let’s Try This Again

I’m so grumpy that I have not committed to a an action resolution mechanic for Opera Eterna. Recently I began leveraging my sw persona and livestreaming as I work on a hack of Forbidden Lands, (I will talk more about that project at another date,) and working on this hack has been a breath of fresh air. My design goal is, first and foremost, fanservice and so I am trying to keep it simple and adhere fairly close to the Year Zero Engine. This means the skeleton of the game is already there for me to build on! No bespoke rules, no challenging conventions, no getting lost in the mire that is trying to do something New and Unique.

With Opera Eterna on the other hand, I have a lot of aspects that define the system but that fundamental part has always been so shaky because early on in the pursuit of challenging Big Unified Resolution Mechanic I laid and fell into my own ideological trap. In art school, a critical lens is a highest virtue, so I have learned to ask “why” and be uncompromisingly intentional at every step of a project. As a result, I once again set too many goals for myself to challenge fundamental design elements. As often happens in these instances, I spun my wheels for a while. I had fallen into a rut.

I came to appreciate the importance of creating expandible systems in the last two years, but the damage from those early decisions had a lasting impact. I have struggled to find the right skeleton to fit into all this flesh I’ve been gestating. I don’t want to be too mad at myself about it, though, because as much as I love the origins of this project in Ironsworn, the resolution mechanic has not been inspiring to me.

You’ve possibly seen in previous playtests that step dice were my first foray back into a unified resolution mechanic, but they felt blegh in practice. Privately I had shifted to a combination of step dice and numerical modifiers with once again no unified resolution mechanic. The one place where step dice continues to function is my progress bar adaptation of Ironsworn’s progress mechanic, which I previously detailed as part of OE’s bond mechanics, but also factor into hit points (HEART) and other trackers. So there’s some consistency at least?

I can just not leave things alone so I want to publicly explore a universal resolution mechanic here to try and engender some kind of commitment. Hold me accountable!! I dare you!!!

d10 Dice Pools

The real reason I am writing this today though is because I think I might have found The One for me Opera Eterna. I have been loving dice pools lately. Between the aforementioned FbL hack and my recent dive once again into For The King 2, I am living a life of polyhedral abundance. One of my favourite things to do while playing FTK2 in particular is to imagine — as I always do when playing video games and as I in fact already did in my multi% blog posts (part 1 | part 2) — how I might adapt its systems to a tabletop format.

They are long posts, however, so in summary, FTK uses multiple percentile rolls to resolve each action. The action taken determines the specific quantity of dice and the table of results. In combat, equipment defines the actions available to you. Outside of encounters, however, they are also be defined by vehicles, interactable objects, traps, events, or really anything external to your character.

For instance, a dagger might have a “cut” ability which asks you to roll 2d% Speed. This means 2 percentile dice are rolled and each is considered a “success” if the result falls under your character’s speed stat. Bringing it to the table, I adapted that idea to a d10 pool system (which, despite my initial assumptions, are actually fairly easy to find at your local game store).

As I hinted at at the end of that blogpost, I felt that the would lend itself well to a crafting and project-focused game, which in a recent fugue state, I realized actually works kind of perfectly for OE’s life sim focus. I’ve also maintained that in OE you don’t have an ATTACK command. Instead you USE a weapon, tool, or anything else. Like in FTK, many of the actions you can perform are contextual, based on what you are using, where you are, etc.

Despite my reservations on using a system from a very silly game for my very personal and honest project, I think this might be the answer I’ve been looking for. So, for now at least, Opera Eterna has a d10 dice pool resolution mechanic.

WHY???

The thing I like most about a dice pool is that there are multiple ways to read a check. This satisfies my unquenchable thirst for overloading mechanics. Let’s look at a check made with 3d10 as an example:

Each d10 has a pass and fail state. This means there are 4 outcomes: 0, 1, 2, and 3 successes. You can read a check as a numerical result, but you can also read it as a “perfect” check if all rolls succeed or a “miss” if all fail.

From a design standpoint, this provides multiple levers to push and pull. I can assign meaning to the results of the roll according to number of successes, perfect, and miss states. Furthermore because the quantity of dice is external to the character, I can add or subtract the number of the dice in the pool according to the action. This affects the numerical range while simultaneously altering the likelihood of perfect and miss results by adjusting the quantity of dice.

Job Design

One of my design goals for OE is to use stories from my diasporic Italian background to create compelling jobs that providing expressive character options, build diversity, and genuine party play. This means I am leaning into the “game-y” and tactical qualities of digital RPGs, including turn-based and MMO play styles.

Now I will gladly talk a little shit about Expedition 33, but one thing it did do well was get my mind turning over synergies between different abilities. The “picto” system allows you to build your characters with a myriad of skills that often follow a “when X then Y” format. For instance, one picto allows you to occasionally apply the “marked” status to an enemy when you use a free-aim shot, while another applies the burn status when you attack someone with the marked status. This type of skill chaining gameplay was both simple and evocative, though it never really sung in practice; my Maelle burn build stopped functioning on a game engine level at around 40,000 burn stacks 🙁

There was at least the promise of compelling buildcraft there, and all it required was a light touch. With my interest in party composition/player roles in the job system and with that kind of design in mind (a focus on simple but evocative modifications to fundamental mechanics), I began exploring how Jobs can have both “command” and “passive” abilities. Where commands are specific checks with their own dice pool and specified outcomes, passives instead modify other checks and open up opportunities for buildcraft.

As an example: the mafioso has two core parts of their kit: violently taking things and the kiss of death. SIEZE and KISS. Now, so far SIEZE has functioned a lot like MUG in the Final Fantasy franchise. Thieves usually learn the STEAL command, which when activated performs a check to see if an item can be stolen. This ability is often later upgraded to MUG, which allows the thief to steal while also attacking an enemy.

My first iteration of OE actually had that exact evolution, where the thief job could be upgraded to bandit and have their command change as a result. As the thief job became the mafioso, I dropped the original duo and replaced it with a single command. I now find myself, serendipitously coming back to the same idea from a different angle: what if SIEZE was a passive?

Note that this doesn’t preclude the inclusion of a STEAL command either, which unlike the USE command, could have its own unique outcomes. Two avenues to accomplish the task, neither of which is strictly better than the other but which synergize with different playstyles and provide distinct experiences… This is buildcraft babyyy.

USE > SWORD

Earlier I mentioned that as you play you will have to USE weapons, tools, and other gear to perform certain actions. We might describe a sword like this:

Each time you USE your SWORD to SLASH you roll 3 dice. If your action is directed at an applicable target, you mark progress equal to the number of successes. A perfect will not trigger anything by default, but a miss will degrade the item’s condition, meaning one of the rolls will automatically fail. This prevents scoring a perfect on future checks, making equipment maintenance an important part of play.

To state the obvious, there is an interesting interplay between the size of the dice pool and the what it expresses about the item it’s describing that looks like it’s describing the weight and power behind a piece of equipment:

Mining and Crafting

While the spectrum above most obviously maps to weapon sizes, I think this system is equally if not more interesting in calendar play. For instance, characters can start projects, including crafting items and structures in their environment. Like everything, projects are assigned a progress bar that will need to be filled to complete the task. Projects, in addition, often require resources. These resources, by default, need to be gathered from the environment.

Certain tools like the AXE, PICK, and SICKLE have the GATHER action. When a phase of the day is spent gathering, you will acquire a number of resources equal to the number of successes rolled. USE > SICKLE [3 Grace] > GATHER > HERBS and you will gather 0-3 herbs in that phase.

In my family, I have hear stories about two kinds of witches: the magara and the strega, both of which are playable jobs in Opera Eterna. Like the mafioso above, the magara and strega will modify the GATHER action in different ways that express their social roles.

The magara is a fortune-teller and folk-healer and so will utilize an abundance of herbs in her remedies, so as a passive ability, she is able to generate an additional herb on a perfect GATHER.

The strega, on the other hand, is a witch of the wilds, both respected and feared. Her more esoteric knowledges mean that on a perfect GATHER she will acquire a single unique herb instead with a special property.

Once again this mechanic enables expressive character roles in a very game-y way. Where the magara’s approach to herbalism acts as a reliable support, the strega instead brings new utilities. I’m excited to expand on this approach to really, truly, and fully flesh out the jobs that are at the core of this game.

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A Letter from Me

My Patreon will be evolving soon. The grant system that has funded my art practice to this point has not been receptive to my work in games over the past year, so I have to seek other avenues to fund my practice.

Opera Eterna: a game of operatic science-fantasy inspired by diasporic Italian folklore and futurism, is coming to my Patreon. If you appreciate what I do and want to play this love letter to JRPGs consider following me over there. As a free member you will get notified every time I write a post like this. If you choose to buy me a coffee, you’ll get access to game files (including all new releases on itch.io), get occasional studio updates, and best of all, support my work as an independent artist who happens to love making games.

Footnotes

1. The action economy in encounters is based on the tempo mechanic, which I’ll discuss later.

Source

• Photo by Julia Taubitz