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underside dev diary #8: statless in seattle pt.3
🕑 Added 2024-01-20 16:46:17 +0000 UTCso that's approaches sorted out. but approaches are only half the battle. in underside, when you do something dangerous and you're not sure you'll succeed, you make a conflict roll. this is the game's basic resolution tool, and your relevant attributes decide how many dice you roll. your approach will always be part of that decision: it represents your personality, a core philosophy of how you approach problems. but if your approach represents how you're doing something, what about what you're doing? approaches are adjectives, but what are your verbs?
i've always thought that verbs are one of the most powerful tools in game design. undertale totally upends the conventions of the RPG genre by adding just one more verb -- the 'MERCY' button. the moment you see that button, the moment you press it, you are being taught not only a core game mechanic but a core theme, a core idea that the game holds closely. this idea can be as lofty as undertale's focus on compassion and reconciliation, but it can also be much less abstract. stray famously has a dedicated meow button. why? because it's a game about being a cat, not just 'a game where you play as a cat' but 'a game about being a cat'.
and of course, this applies to ttrpgs! of course, when you're not limited by coding and world design, you can technically use any verb you want to when roleplaying. but one of the most important purposes of ttrpg rules is to give you verbs, to offer you ways of interacting with the world that tell you something about a particular kind of story. for example, i've talked in one of my previous dev diaries about anti-social social mechanics, about how it excited me to see monsterhearts and thirsty sword lesbians limit the verbs you had access to and in turn expand, rather than constrict, their respective visions of the social world.
so in underside, you construct your die pool for a conflict roll by adding the dice you get from your approach (an adjective) and either an angle (if you're using your power) or a skill (if you're not). skills will get their own dev diary, so right now i want to talk about angles.
angles are six very broad groupings for ways you can use a power. when you make a superhero ttrpg, you have to ask yourself: how am i going to represent superpowers? basically every piece of superhero media ever made has variety of powers as a loadbearing element. its fun to watch how the guy who can move really fast but only in sunlight fights the guy who turns into a uranium elephant! but when it comes to making mechanics that give these powers valence, you run into a problem: a variety of powers threatens a variety of mechanics, an intense scope creep of interlocking systems and subgames. some ttrpgs take this head-on and become complex point-based hero-building systems. and that's cool if you like that, but that's not underside. so underside needs to take the other side and say 'you can leave the specifics of your power up to the narrative of the story, and it's up to the narrative and you guys to make that count'.
mechanical differences, therefore, give way to story differences. if one character can throw hydraulic punches and the other can shoot plasma beams, they'll both be rolling hurt if they want to kill somebody -- but the first is going to have to be up close, and if anything goes wrong it's the latter who's going to be saddled with collateral damage. instead, underside's angles take the role of guiding verbs, telling you what kind of things powers do here. they hurt, they control, they disrupt. they're violent and conflict-laden things and when you hone your power, you're not really shooting stronger or bigger fireballs. you're just getting better at violence
