Rules: Reign and Secrets

[bryant]

It might be worth rereading the reference material for Secrets first.

OK. So: how to implement this in Reign? I’m thinking aloud, because pondering it in solitude for a week hasn’t gotten me much progress. Rough edges ahead.

Reign skills are on a 1 to 5 scale. A character’s knowledge of a Secret should cap the points they can have in that skill, as per the base model. Or, hm. Skill plus stat generally caps out at around 10, so perhaps Secret knowledge caps the dice pool? That provides finer-grained distinctions.

The poles: if one person knows it, the dice pool caps at 10. If a lot of people know it, the dice pool caps at 1. Filling in between them:

1: 10 dice
2: 8 dice
3: 6 dice
4-5: 5 dice
6-7: 4 dice
8-10: 3 dice
11-20: 2 dice
21+: 1 die

It’s still worth having more dice in your pool to overcome die penalties.

OK. Secrets provide control, vision, vulnerability, and blindness.

Blindness is fairly easy; it’s an opposed roll between Sight + Sense and your Secret plus your Knowledge skill. You want to win in Width to see the problem before it becomes problematic, in some situations. At other times, only Height matters. Possible variation: use the maximum dice pool instead of Secret + Knowledge. While I’m going to try to avoid perception rolls in general, it’s appropriate for this magical element.

I don’t know how to do the vulnerability yet. Some conversion factor for penalty dice, perhaps?

Control is a Secret + Knowledge roll. Consider using the magical rules from Supplement 3 to define the scope of control based on the number of people who know the secret.

Vision is a Secret + Sense roll, probably usually opposed.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[bluegargantua]

Huh,

First off - I really, really want to take Reign out for a spin so if you get this to a "let's play" stage, keep me in mind.

Second -- if a secret is widely held, it'll be useless. Greg does the math in the book and once a pool drops below 4 you'd be better off not using it.

How about -- the more people who know a Secret the less effective it is. This is represented by not by capping the pool, but by capping the height. In other words, if I'm the only one who knows a secret, my matches can be up to 10 "high". If 10 people know, the matches can only be up to 3 "high". It doesn't invalidate matches, it just reduces their height. So if 10 people know the secret and I get a 2x8 roll, that automatically becomes a (less effective) 2x3. So even if a secret is widely known, there's still some (minor) value to having a high die pool in it.

Vulnerability -- you know how you can roll to defend and get "gobble dice". Do a reverse gobble die here. If your Secret is 5, you roll 5 dice and any matches you get are added to the matches rolled by the opposition. Again, the "max height" bit applies here so if you've got a lot of skill in a widely known secret, the sets you generate will be pretty small. Conversely, if I'm the only one who knows a secret, I can give some really high matches to my opponent.

Further, if I roll a 2x5 on my Vulnerability and my opponent gets has any 5's, he adds his fives to the set that I've given him (essentially, he gets extra dice to roll). So I'm always helping my opponent and the more skilled I am in the secret, and the rarer the secret, the more help I give to my opponent.

Does this help stir the pot?

later
Tom

[bryant]

Yeah, that's /way/ better. Much better cap implementation; excellent vulnerability implementation.