Blog Challenge: New (Year’s) Resolution Mechanic
I issue a challenge to YOU and ye to all bloggers! In the dawning light of 2024, you must come up with a New Year's Resolution. But I’m not talking about your typical forbearance from vices or oaths to lift weights. I’m talking something way more important: Resolution Mechanics.
I intend to keep this post short and sweet (as an indication that this challenge is no great commitment), so if you want exhaustive treatises on resolution mechanics, you can look to my own recent defense of the blackjack roll under method or Goblin Punch’s exhaustive (but never exhausting) review of resolution mechanics in general.
My challenge is thus: In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and give it a name. It doesn’t need to be good (in fact, most the good ones have probably already been taken). It just needs to be new! You don’t need to plan to use it in your games; it can be absolute detritus for you. But one blogger’s trash is another designer’s treasure. You never know how great an impact one throwaway idea on a blog might have.
List of Entries:
“2 Roll 2 Under” from Prismatic Wasteland (see below)
“Copenhagen Positioning aka Schrödinger's Resolution” from Alone in the Labyrinth
“Sword Slash to the Chest, and You're on Fire” from Jackalope Mail
“2 Roll 2 Under”, the Sequel to Roll Under
My New Year’s Resolution Mechanic assumes D&D-esque ability scores, ranging from 3-18 (or even as far as 20). Whenever a character attempts something risky or uncertain, they roll 2 dice and add them together. If the sum of those dice is lower than their applicable ability score, they succeed. If it is higher or equal to their ability score, then they fail.
The twist is the size of the dice. That depends on the difficulty of the task. The referee determines if it is Trivial, Easy, Moderate, Hard or Extreme. The player rolls 2d6 for Trivial, 2d8 for Easy, 2d10 for Moderate, 2d12 for Hard and 2d20 for Extreme.
That’s all that you need to do for this challenge! I will include links to all participants down below. This next part is a little extra, but I wanted to test out the statistics behind this completely jury rigged mechanic. So I am going to compare two characters, one with a middling ability score (10) and one with a quite good score (16) in both this rule and 5e’s resolution mechanic.
| Difficulty | 5e Odds of Success | 2 Roll 2 Under Odds of Success |
|---|---|---|
| Trivial | Average Dude: 80%; Talented Dude: 95% | Average Dude: 83.33%; Talented Dude: 100% |
| Easy | Average Dude: 55%; Talented Dude: 70% | Average Dude: 56.25%; Talented Dude: 98.44% |
| Moderate | Average Dude: 30%; Talented Dude: 45% | Average Dude: 36%; Talented Dude: 85% |
| Hard | Average Dude: 5%; Talented Dude: 20% | Average Dude: 25%; Talented Dude: 68.75% |
| Extreme | Average Dude: 5%; Talented Dude: 5% | Average Dude: 9%; Talented Dude: 26.25% |
A Twist to the Challenge
The mechanic must be new, obviously, but I don’t expect you do to an exhaustive search to ensure that no one else has ever thought of using dice in that way before. But as an enforcement mechanism, if anyone comments on your post and shows that some other game uses that resolution mechanic, (1) cool, you just discovered a new game! And (2) you must either give that commenter a shout out in your next post, let them suggest a topic for you to post about, or otherwise give them plaudits.
The 2023 Bloggies
Blog challenges are only one way to celebrate the vibrant blogging scene in TTRPGs! Another is the Bloggies, awards for excellence in blogging, which are this year being hosted by Zedeck Siew. The shortlist just got announced! And voting is happening via Google Forms, with a link on Zedeck’s blog but also linked on twitter, bluesky (I’ve generally been retweeting them, if you are having trouble locating the day’s voting). Go vote! Go read blogs! Then design your new resolution mechanic.
