Bending My Own Rules

One of my favourite things about working on my own tabletop system has been establishing rules for the game, and then finding ways to break them. Maybe it’s my detail-oriented mindset—my need to test and prepare for every possibility—but I get satisfaction from saying “This works…but what if it didn’t?”

In most cases, this manifests as abilities that allow players to circumvent negative game mechanics. In a few rare cases, though, I like to go further—more than I probably should. I’d like to get into some examples, but since this is my first post on Immortal Freedom: The Roleplaying Game, I should explain basic game mechanics first.

The way encounters work in Immortal Freedom: The Roleplaying Game isn’t really different from most TTRPGs:

1. The GM sets up a scene.
2. The player tells the GM what they want to do.
3. The GM determines if a roll is necessary.
4. The player (with help from the GM) determines if their character has anything that can modify the roll.
5. The player rolls their dice pool to perform their intended action.
6. The roll’s outcomes are resolved, and the consequences play out.

Possible ways to resolve the roll include:

• Failure
• Mixed Success
• Success (Full Success or Regular Success)
• Critical Success
• Free Intuition

I won’t get into the details right now. It’s a lot to explain, and it’s not necessary for what I want to discuss in this post.

What I want to focus on is that in Immortal Freedom: The Roleplaying Game the main RNG is achieved through dice rolls. While it’s fun to empower players by allowing them to side-step the RNG, completely removing it would also remove the Game from Role Playing Game, effectively transforming a play session into an improv session. Don’t get me wrong—I believe improv is a necessary component to the TTRPG experience, and it’s fun in its own right. But without a game mechanic to simulate chance, it’s left up to the players to introduce impactful complications and hardships at inappropriate times.

It’s not that players are necessarily incapable of weaving interesting narratives. It’s more that leaving the looming threat of failure to an impartial entity like dice rolls adds an element of tension and surprise, while removing the responsibility and blame of making situations more difficult from the participants. Of course, one could make a case that the GM decides the intensity of consequences, but the decision to implement failure is still left to chance. In any case, rolling math rocks is exciting, and leads to interesting situations.

Originally posted by noonlight-stims

So when thinking about how I can break the rules, completely removing dice rolls is something I try to avoid as much as possible. When I do, I make sure there’s some other cost for the players to pay.

And yet, I still have the urge to break the system, which leads to the Risk Analysis specialisation.

As an aside, during character creation, players select a species, a class, a quirk, and specialisation. A character’s specialisation makes them unique, whether within the group or from others that share their class.

And Risk Analysis is probably the most unique specialisation I’ve added to the game so far.

It is an attempt at gamifying the unnecessary bureaucracy surrounding financial services, specifically when it comes to risk assessment. If you’re unaware, there are entire industries that run on taking people’s money, then deciding whether those same people deserver financial security (it sucks). Specifically, the inspiration for Risk Analysis came from movies like Stranger Than Fiction and Along Came Polly, the first of which is actually decent, though both movies suffer from the manic pixie dream girl trope.

Originally posted by ellix730

I just thought it would be funny to have a character who is so focused on analysing risk that they completely side-step random chance.

In other words, no math rocks.

Here is an excerpt from the first draft of the rulebook regarding the Risk Analysis specialisation.

While you have this specialisation, you do not roll dice when performing actions. Instead, you must calculate the risk involved in performing an action before taking said action. The closer your risk calculations are to the GM’s calculations determines whether you succeed.

Risk is assessed based on the class and species of the player character, the potential incoming damage, the threat level of the encounter, and the character’s ability to tackle the intended action. Success is measured differently from the standard ruleset, but the consequences remain the same (except for the ability to gain Intuition, which isn’t possible via risk calculation).

What this means is that every time the player wants to perform an action, they must guess how much damage their player character will receive if they fail, as well as the level of the encounter. They must then calculate a risk score based on all available information.

This requires as much extra work as it appears. But the point here isn’t to empower the player, but instead to provide a different, potentially interesting way of approaching gameplay.

I provide the following example in the rulebook:

Originally posted by doyougifwhat-igif

I don’t expect this specialisation to see much use in play. It’s a lot of work—for the player and the GM—and can be tedious. But for someone who wants to really embody an overly meticulous character, I can see them having a good time with it. It can also appeal to people who don’t like chance, or maybe to people who are themselves particularly meticulous. Including Risk Analysis in the game is at the same time a joke, and a way for me to bend my own rules.

Apart from Risk Analysis, I also included a few other complex specialisations and quirks. For example:

• Infected – Character is inflicted with an incurable illness that drains them physically, but can lead to great power at higher levels.
• Mechanical Proxy – Character controls a robotic android from a remote location, with the majority of their interaction with the world occurring through the android.

To be clear, the vast majority of quirks and specialisations offer simple character empowerment, and it’s left up to the player to make things interesting once play starts. The quirks and specialisations listed above do much more of the heavy lifting, while also giving opportunities for interesting complications and developments.

The feedback from my players on these out-of-the-box quirks and specialisations has been pretty lukewarm so far. In retrospect, I can see why new players wouldn’t want to bend the rules while they’re still getting used to the standard ruleset. My hope is that players will be more inclined to explore weird, rule-bending options for their characters once they’ve gotten used to the game.