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Mechanic Monday! Conflict Chips


Today’s Mechanic Monday is about Conflict Chips!

I’ve always made fun of opposed rolls in RPGs, specifically d20’s and the natural 20 auto-succeed. Like I always picture someone standing in front of a skyscraper and going, “I want to jump over this thing, and there’s a 5% chance I will.” It’s a bonkers implication, and also, 20 sides is just SO MUCH variance, especially when 90% of that variance could mean the difference between meeting or falling short of a static target, and 10% of it represents a complete departure from how the other results compare to the target.

It’s also guilty of a sin that’s very much under the popular microscope right now: output randomness. You do all your decision making, and then you roll the die to see if you succeed, fail, super-succeed, or super-fail? Good luck, I guess? I think there’s a reason so many mechanics have sprung up to mitigate die rolls - key points, luck points, guaranteed re-rolls, etc. But luck mitigation only goes so far, and the farther it goes, the more it highlights the band-aid over the broken arm; dice can’t “remember”, they’re not affected by their results the way other randomizers are. A card pulled from a deck stays out until it’s placed back in. A 20-sided die is going to have a 5% chance of you jumping over a skyscraper, every time you roll it.

Some like the variance, and I should concede that output randomness is not inherently bad, just unpopular and not to my personal liking. And I will admit, that it’s not a given that RPGs should place tactics over strategy, nor that players should have too much control. Suit the mechanic to the game, so let us not try to wring too much apple juice from this orange.

Still, my personal preference for a less random, more tactical conflict resolution mechanic did spring to mind as a fix to this situation (whether it truly is a problem or not) as well as being inspired by the secret credit betting by the Jinteki faction of Android: Netrunner. For those unfamiliar, some Jinteki cards ask that both players secretly spend zero, one, or two of the game’s currency, concealing the credits (or lack thereof) in their closed hand; they simultaneously open their hands to reveal each player’s bet, with effects and consequences for who won or lost the bet, or different effects depending on how much each player bet. So that was also in the back of my head when I cobbled together the following:

Conflict Chips
Each player has seven chips, numbered 1-7, sorted into two pools, either Unspent or Spent. Whenever two players need to resolve a conflict, each player hides one of their Unspent chips in their hand, and then both players simultaneously reveal their choice. The higher numbered chip wins the conflict. Both players move then place the revealed chips in the Spent pool. Once all of a player’s chips are Spent, move all chips to Unspent.

So basically this is a simultaneous bid with a variance of 1-7. Obviously, you can tweak the numbers, they don’t have to be consecutive, you can include 0 or negative numbers, you can shrink or expand the range. Other possible tweaks: Each number also has a custom ability; exceeding the other player’s bid by 3 or more has added bonuses; you can move an Unspent chip to the Spent pool in order to move two lower-value Spent chips back to the Unspent pool; instead of resetting once you’ve spent all your Chips, reset when there’s one Unspent chip left, or everyone resets whenever any player resets; certain situations call for a lowest-bid winner instead of a highest-bid winner.

There’s lots to explore here, but it has a nice tidy elegance to it. There’s bluffing, and it allows for short- and medium-term planning. You can dress it up and scale it up pretty easily, or keep it simple. I should find a game to actually build around it.

Ok that’s all! I’ll be shocked if I ever do this again, but for the time being, I’ve posted two Mondays in a row. Madness. Mayhem. Cats and dogs living together. Til next time.

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