Herding Dice

If you are going out to buy the latest edition of the Engine magazine #3 you will find articles about a small experiment in the AGE families of systems. This new one is called SAGE and stands for "simple adventure game engine". The fastest way to get to the parts and existing AGE enthusiast is to flip to the last article which is a conversion guide between AGE and SAGE. Here are some of the main conversions you might be interested and some of the critiques I have for the developers choices. Bonds Instead of Relationships, Class Theme, and Specializations The new element in SAGE "bonds". It uses the same mechanics as seen in FAGE 2e Modern AGE with ranks and wordy themes. I think the developers liked that it represented a small boost of resources that can be spent to improve outcome. What bonds are in SAGE do are basically an additional pool of fortune points. Each bond has a rank and number. You can spend a bond point to create a fortune point to be added back to yo...

Armor plays a large part in the Adventure Game Engine in the pacing problems. Not only are there large health pools and large chances to miss with defense but there can be hefty armor values to chew through as well. Looking at existing published adversaries armor the median armor is 3 which blocks the average 1d6 attack. Here are the basic number equivalencies useful for armor: 1 AR prevents 1 HP of damage during an attack action 2 HP is healed or damaged per 1TN of action, so 2 AR also equals 1 TN 1 TN is equal to 1 SP Armor is essentially a counter to a stat increase for the attacker. The value is more difficult to calculate with rolled damage with it's average value versus a die roll being slightly less than its paper value. This is because with high enough armor much of a die roll is too small to be fully utilized. As such it's not as helpful to balance against the roll portion and instead balance against the ability score progression. The armor progression is where we will...

 The following are equivalent and can be used to convert between each other. 1 MP (mana point) 2 SP (stunt point) 2 TN (target number) (Note: this is used incrementally and is not the base) 4 HP (health point) 1 minor action 0.5 major action 10 yards (measure of distance) All of those equivalencies can be worked out using basic action and stunts. 1 MP = 2 SP, from Skillful Casting stunt 2 SP = 2 TN, from Powerful Casting stunt 2 SP = 4 HP, from Healing Power stunt 0.5 major action = 2 TN, from Defend major action 1 minor action = 0.5 major action, comparing move versus run 1 minor action = 10 yards, using move with zero stats or ancestry is 10 1 major action = TN 10 at 2 MP using Healing Touch (2MP) which is 2d6 1 major action = 4SP, from Healing Touch being average 7HP which divided by two and rounded up for SP cost is 3.5 => 4SP 1 minor action = 2SP, from 1 minor action = 0.5 major action The minor action here is a little stronger than many of the minors actions in the rules. ...

 I have taken a data approach to reverse engineering the AGE action model in two articles so far: https://herdingdice.blogspot.com/2023/07/decoding-mp-from-spell-descriptions.html https://herdingdice.blogspot.com/2023/07/decoding-age-action-economy.html I learned some valuable lessons but afterwards I wasn't happy with the formulas fundamentally.  Why is the TN base a 9? Why use an MP to TN ratio of 3.5 to 2, or 1.75 to 1? TLDR; Summary 2HP = 1SP added to the equivalency formulas. This will keep the Mighty Blow stunt at a cost of 2SP, but will reduce Lethal Blow stunt to 4SP and allow a new stunt, let's call it Crushing Blow, at a cost of 6SP Using TN 10/2MP/2d6 basic spell we can count backwards to find a new base TN for a spell. This turns out to be TN 6 since you take away 4 TN = 4SP = 2MP worth of value The Reasoning  My solution ended up questioning the usefulness of MP as a resource. I have been looking into Fortune in Fantasy AGE and it as a resource matches 1 to 1...

I have been researching the math behind fortune and have found that the new luck and spell push are basically the same mechanic. As a result we can craft a unified mechanic that allows any player to spend a resource to ensure their action succeeds. This address the problem of a "miss" feeling bad in TTRPG play and creating decent trade off of short term success versus long term penalty. TLDR; Summary Combine fortune based "luck" and spell push into the same mechanic for all characters call it "Push Your Luck" player is allowed to replace one die with a new face for the cost of the new die face for example, if you roll a 1 and want at least a 3 to succeed, then you pay a cost of 3 for the new die face value stunts are not allowed since this was initially a failed roll. choose an appropriate resource pool to spend from Modern AGE Master book on page 47 has fortune as an independent resource. This is probably the easiest way to implement fortune even for Fant...

Although related to stunt points, the stunt die is the base of that system. Stunt points could be seen as stunt die doubles, which implies there could be stunt die triple perhaps theoretically. We will stick to stunt die and how it works with advanced tests. Stunt Die Fundamentals Here is the a graph of average stunt die result as compared to different TN values. The stunt die has the counter-intuitive pattern of higher results being more likely with success which is a result of that higher number contributing more significantly to the success itself  As the TN increases the overall average goes down, but the stunt die result on a success goes up. That's the un-intuitive part. Some key data from those curves are the TN 11 values. TN 11 Overall Average - 2.15 TN 11 Success Average - 4.31 With those values we can start looking at pacing for advanced tests which take the sum of stunt die results over a number of rolls. Advanced Tests These type of tests represent longer tests over tim...

At the moment in Fantasy AGE the cost of improving ability scores and focuses is very simple and does not factor in the relationship in the AGE ability tests. Ability advancements affect all relevant focuses and focus only affect themselves. It would be nice if the was a cost formula took that into consideration. Naive option A first option is to value an ability advancement compared to all the focuses in under that ability. However the cost for various abilities would be different. A willpower advancement would only cost 4 (since there are 4 focuses) and intelligence advancements would cost 19 or more (depending on arcana in the setting) since there are so many under that category. Using this method does seem absurd give that discrepancy. Pay for Everything  A second option is that you only consider the focuses that the character knows. Let's start of simply with saying a focus is the base statistic since it's specific. Those increases will cost one advancement. Let's expl...

Second Edition Changes Classes received probably the most of the changes in second edition. The high level changes are: Envoy class Defense advancements Level 6, 11, 16 you get +1 defense Focus advancements At level 11 every focus the character has is automatically upgraded from +2 to +3 At level 11 you are allowed to spend another focus advancement to improve the bonus to +4 Specialization advancements A level 1 you get a specialization advancement In first edition this was at level 4 You ignore ability and focus requirements, but not class requirements when choosing  Additional advancements are recieved at odd levels This is a total of 10 advancements in 2e 1e only had 6 total advancements at level 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 Common Class Advancements There is a new layout for classes which groups advancements into patterns (like even an...

Ancestries are new in Fantasy AGE second edition and they are a modern implementation of races. There is one new ancestry to the line up and the rest are package from first edition and other Fantasy AGE books. They are overall very similar but with a few tweaks. Attribute Bonus In first edition each ancestry had a guaranteed ability score improvement. Dwarf had +1 Constitution, Elf had +1 Dexterity etc. This has been moved in second edition and put in the benefits table with an additional constraint for choosing benefits instead of rolling. Focus Bonus All ancestries receive a choice of one of two focuses. Movement or Speed Bonus This was not changed in second edition. Speed 8 Dwarf Gnome Halfling Speed 10 Draak Goblin  Human Orc Wildfolk Speed 12 Elf Special Ancestry Qualities There is one special quality per ancestry. Most are Dark Sight. Ancestries with Dark Sight Draak, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goblin, Orc Wildfolk (sometimes) Ancestries with out Dark Sight Halfing - Has the "Intr...

Determining starting ability scores is step two of the Fantasy AGE character creation process. The core rules list a few options and I have a couple of suggestions myself. Class Selection While selecting your character's class is technically the fifth step you should pick it as part of the step one character concept. You don't need to make any decisions with in the class but you may need to be aware of the classes primary and secondary abilities in order to make informed decisions when determining starting ability scores. Rolling Ability Scores In first edition this was suggested method but offers the least amount of control over your characters ability scores. Go through the list of ability scores alphabetically and assign the result of a 3d6 roll from the starting ability table. Arranging Ability Scores This method still requires rolling dice but you assign which result is matched to an ability. This way you can at least put the highest scores on your primary abilities for yo...