Part 3, other vsM SRD ideas

I would add two more targets above Impossible for supers types of games:

Inhuman (drawing a black ace will count as a success)
Divine (drawing the Ace of Spades will count as a success)

The odds are steep, even for someone with a 6 attribute, but not crazy. There is a 22% chance of an Inhuman success and a 12% chance for a Divine success.

Then again, this would give room for attributes up to 8 for the Cosmic powered characters.

Interesting...

    Part 2, the math of the vsM system.

To make a grittier game, change the starting attributes to one 3, two 2's, and a 1.

Change the target values to 10 + the face cards.

Your highest attribute will have a 56% chance of success to do a Hard thing. In other words, draw at least one Queen with three tries from a deck of cards.

I haven't even attempted to deal with opposed draws. Oof! the Math!

    Lately I happened upon the vsM SRD. The SRD was based on the vsMonsters game by Phillip Reed.

I was fascinated by the core mechanic, defined like this:
_Draw a number of cards equal to the appropriate Attribute. Compare the value of your highest card against the target value. If the card value is equal to or higher than the target value, the action succeeds. If it is lower, the action fails. _

You start the game with an attribute of 6, two attributes of 4, and one attribute of 3.

Target Values were 4 (Easy), 6 (Average), 10 (Hard), King (Very Hard), Ace (Impossible).

So I did what I always do with mechanics I've never seen, I did the math.

If you have an attribute of 6,
Easy - 0.999998625
Average - 0.999606651
Hard - 0.955488316
Very Hard - 0.653263007
Impossible - 0.397229661

If you have an Attribute set at 6, you will succeed. Seriously, a 40% chance of doing the Impossible. I like those odds!

If you have an attribute of 3,
Easy - 0.997466063
Average - 0.974660633
Hard - 0.775565611
Very Hard - 0.400723982
Impossible - 0.217375566

Your lowest attribute will still do pretty well.

So when you're playing this game, your players will succeed a lot. Reminds me of playing Dungeon World, and playing DW was a lot of fun. 🙂