For consideration, it might be worth offering how I'm trying to exploit the essence of MG's in RPG. I know this is not a proper MG, but (I hope) shows how MG's broaden the mind to mechanical design. What irked me about conventional RPG mechanics is that they are very discrete, very isolated, which makes causal chains and extended actions very difficult to model; balancing the modifiers over a long series of rolls and interactions is tremendously difficult. Excess use of mechanical resolution also challenges immersion and the suspension of disbelief, in that the narrative structure (which IMO) we are trying to emulate does not break out of story mode in order to toss a few dice and decide whether Gandalf throws the Balrog off the bridge or not. Anyway, what attracted me to the idea of MG's was the flexibility of the resolution system, and interpreting this into RPG has produced a mechanic that, I hope, takes advantage of the some of the principles. Essentially, task resolution is conducted over phases, with the number of phases roughly proportional to the complexity of the task (base 1-6 in current mechanic). To progress from one phase to another requires that a condition be met - hence the term Conditional Mechanics. Conditions may or may not be ability rolls made by a character - the Ritual of the Sun, frex, might have a phase whose Condition is the presence of the Sun Mask (insert McGuffin to taste). This binds game-world activity into the mechanics in a coherent manner, allowing me to exploit all sorts of cultural features in a game mechanical manner. Using phase-based mechanics was prompted by the condition idea, which was prompted by MG's, but has triggered a further discovery. even sticking to the conventional ability roll structure for each phase in a sequence, I can still produce effects that do not occur in other RPG's. The degree of success in the first phase carries over to the subsequent phases as a result modifier, and thus the sequence of difficulty levels (1-6 again) can be itself produce a kind of task profile, frex: /\ Hill: 3 5 3 \/ Ditch: 5 3 5 \__ Down slope: 5 3 3 __ / Up slope: 3 5 5 Although I have not done sufficient experimentation to determine if these will work out quite as I imagine them, but hopefully provides quite a lot more depth than the usual "roll to hit" or whatever. The flow of carryover points will be influenced by how and where the character hits the high or low thresholds, and these can be mingled with purely world-based conditions as discussed above. I hope that as this mechanical method expands I will end up with a game that represents a smoother and more plausible environment without opting in and out of mechanical resolution at the whim of the GM, but rather leaves the extent and method of resolution largely in the control of the players. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #14 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com