Stealth game mechanic: Pay to succeed

I my Dungeon Quest variant, the process was similar, if you failed a roll, you could pay the difference in determination token to succeed, or accept the failure and gain 1 determination token ( a form of experience). In that case you wasted time, but if gave you more tokens when you failed that could be used later. So you had to determine if it was worth paying the cost now or lose time.

Yes and no, here is how it work, if your stealth is 3 and the guard has 4, then you pay 1 extra time resource to pass into the location. So yes there is no extra cost for guards of 3 or less.

Now the reason you do not roll again is to prevent rolling each time you moved. Once a guard is revealed, you know the cost to move there. So I thought it would be more convenient this way. It's the same result but the other way around. Else for sure, I could roll on every move, passing twice at the same place will yield different results.

To prevent luck imbalance, I can put the starting value of the die on the guard's token. When you reveal a guard, you flip the token and it says "this guard is at value X". This way, you cannot have a lucky or unlucky game, all guards will have a average vigilence every game.

Some events, items, spells could increase, lower or reroll the vigilence of the guard.

Hmm! I like your idea of stamina, it could be use for things that requires more exhaustion like climbing walls, fighting, etc.

Of course there will be health which will also be a resource that you pay to match die rolls. More info on that in my next post.

Right now I am trying to work on a map. Not really sure what should be the scale of a "space". In "Ninja: Legend of the scorpion clan" a moving space cover a large amount of space. A whole house can fit on 1 or 3 space.

Since I want a modular map, I need a way to make it tilable. I might have found some way. You would tile the whole area map first and then you can overlay another tile for inner keeps if necessary.

The other additions, is that since house space are more "dense" they have a second inner sublocation that connects to other adjacent house sub location. So movement inside buildings is slower then outside.

The main issues I have is with time and multiple guards in the same area. For time I have 2 option so far. Each turn will be 30 minute where a time point will be 5 minute (6 points per turn).

Method A: Act on threash hold: The first method consist that doing action spent time points. You can of course spend points to increase success level. When you exceed the 6 points per turn. The AI will act at the end of your action.

Method B: Musical chair or Clock: The AI act on fixed interval of 30 minutes. During your turn, you can spend up to 6 time points. If you do not spend everything, the points are lost, or transfered in experience (not sure). Then the AI act. If your next action cost more than the time left, you lose it.

The impact is that for example, you might want to find a hiding place before AI act. So with method A, if your last action is not a hide action, you might expose yourself.

With method B, you could have a situation where doing action that would cost more than 3 points can only be done once per turn. So any excess points is lost, and if you have do to many expansive actions each turn, you can lose a lot of time this way.

Still, I could make sure that action will never cost more than 3 time. Maybe spending 1 additional time gives you a +2 per point to your rolls, So that there is no reason to spend more than 2 points for a +4 bonus for a single action.

Then there is the multiple guard issue.

If in a area, you have a guard with an alertness of 5 and a guard with an alertness of 3, how do you resolve that.

The first solution is roll 1 die for each guards equal above it's value. That can make a lot of die roll, but also makes the game much more tougher because only 1 of 2 guards needs to be alerted. Still the outcome of alertness could be variable, so it might not be as dramatic, maybe the guard just heard a sound and the ninja already moved into the next tile, so it will have no effect.

The second solution: Take the highest value and add +1 per additional guard. But that would conflict with maiden that would have little alertness but acted as a distraction. So the maiden would give +1 and -1 which does nothing.

The third solution is roll 1 die for the whole group, multiple guards does not give bonus. But if you roll badly, you would alert multiple guards. But the difficulty is the same as a single guard.

Finally it becomes even more complicated when moving between 2 square that both has guards. Logically the check to move out and move in could be combined together like if all the guards on both space were part of the same tile. So moving from a crowded space to another crowded space would be pretty though as you can easily add up 4 guards. Else I would need a check to move out and a check to move in which is a lot of dice rolls.

Yes can could pay time to auto success, but even that starts to be expensive, because you somehow have to pay twice for each movement. Another idea could be that guards are placed on an edge of the tile, when when moving from a space to another, only the edge guards are encountered.

Any suggestion for the issues above are welcomed.

I did some test this morning and it went pretty well, I also got ideas for multiple guards resolution.

You place 2 guards in each square on one of the 4 edge. The results are interesting because almost all edges have 1 or 2 guards, and each square will have of course up to 2 guards. So that makes certain edge more difficult to pass than others. And in all cases, you cannot encounter more than 2 guards at a time what ever the action. The only exception is for patrols, and you generally want to be elsewhere, or at least hidden when it passes.

Since building square have an inner square, there will be additional guards there. When moving inside or outside the building, I will use only the inner guards. When moving between squares, I will use the edge guards, and when doing stuff inside the square, I will use the square guards.

So for the rolling system, I found this new variation, you roll a die for each guard, but you assign the die to the guard. So the odd to get detected are much less dramatic if only 1 of your roll is bad. You would need to have 2 bad rolls to get detected.

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The only issue I have right now is space. If I want to fit a 3x3 square grid on a 8"x8" tile it gives a square of the size 2.625"x2.625". Now for non building square, it's not so bad as I would need to put at most 3 to 5 location or tokens on the square. Now if tokens are layout as a 3x3 grid inside the square, I can easily use 5/8" or 3/4" tokens to fit 9 of them.

But for squares where there are inner areas like house, dungeons, etc. I just do not have enough space to fit the interior and the exterior. Solutions I found so far:

A. Make the interior on an off board tile, You jump from the board to the off board area.

B. There is no interior sub space, but use different rules to reflect the increase in density. The advantage of that, is that digital implementation is easier since there is less exception in map design. I would personally try this route. Thinkinng of using an interior/exterior status marker to interact with Interior or Exterior Guards.

C. Cramp up the space: In theory, I can have up to 9 token in a square, I could try to maximize the space as follow:

- 1 to 4 edge space for guards (depending on how the house is designed). But only 2 can be occupied unless inner guards can move out or vice versa.
- 2 space for interior guards
- 1 Inner space for player ( when outside, the player takes unused guard space.
- 1 Space for Higher grounds (Roof)
- 1 Space for other things: Hiding place, distraction area, Supplies, etc.

So as you can see, it can become pretty dense.

I understand your point of view. It's a kind of theme that requires low failure rates, which means using a more deterministic approach. With the mechanics above, it would be more a resource management, and the "failure" aspect will come from the inability to plan resources for the entire mission.

Else, randomness could come from unexpected events that adds complication which screw up planning, while still having the control of how to spend your resource. You see this all the time in espionage movies, things never go according to plan.

Else, failure can occur when taking risks, again, it's up to you to determine when it's worth taking the risks.

You somewhat summarized the idea. Time is the sun, when the sun rise, the ninja is screwed. So near the end of the night, he is more likely to rush his action allowing him to make mistakes. Because once the sun is up, all guards will be running at him.

The main issue so far is the map. I fyou look at my game idea page:

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=GameIdea.GameIdea201005030517AM

Near the end, I have illustrations with possible map layout. But it's does not really work out the way I want it. I think it feels too much puzzle-ish. Maybe more random events and complications is the key. Ex drawing a card when entering a new tile and maybe even edges ...

Hmm! reminds me of Arkham/Eldritch horror. There could be story based situation that would add more depth and flavor to the missing without having to place all the traps, hidden encounters, and other neat stuff on the board.

That is indeed an area that I have not explored. Could make sense because ninja is all about handling details. So each card could be like a paragraph in a reader is the hero book.

Also with more detail and depth, I can make the map smaller, since there are more thing to do on each space.