Types of Event Rolls

Event dicing is probably going to seem more complicated while you are reading about it in this sourcebook than it will be to do while you are storygaming. We think that the that the "mental math" of determining event dice pools and results is pretty quick to master. We provide examples to help picture how it works.

Challenges vs Conflicts vs Combat
In the SGO system, a challenge is anything that tests either a player or a character's ability to achieve something they desire. A player might be challenged to only say/type in polite and positive ways to other players via OOC chat when they are upset or annoyed. A character might be challenged to keep their temper and respond in a civil manner when they are upset or annoyed by other characters. The two things ideally shouldn't imprint on one another. When talking about event dicing, we're talking about character challenges, not player challenges.

Simple & Complicated Challenges
For the purpose of event dicing mechanics, the term a simple challenge refers to where an event caused by the character attempting to overcome some kind of obstacle in order to achieve a goal that isn't going to -directly- affect another character and no other character is helping to assist or interfere. When another character is going to assist/interfere in the goal (but otherwise no characters are being directly affected), this creates a situational modifier that has to be accounted for and creates a complicated challenge instead. Challenges are rated by a challenge difficulty that is set by the player who's character is making the challenge. The standard challenge difficulty in 10.

A Challenge Example
This means an ordinary human character (echelon 3) with ordinary brawn (applicable attribute with rating 3) who lacks any specific advantage (+ trait modifier) or disadvantage (- trait modifier) facing the simple challenge of successfully opening a closed, unlocked door (trivial difficulty of 3) shouldn't under normal circumstances (no situational modifiers) even make an event roll for that action. The difficulty rating is 3; they already meet a 3 in their attribute pool after looking at modifiers. The event dice never subtracts from the dice pool assembled by traits and situational modifiers. But if that same ordinary human character with their ordinary brawn is trying to break down a locked bedroom door by slamming into it (ordinary difficulty of 7) and another character is grabbing their arm to try and stop them (minor interference = -1 modifier) then the event dice would need to be at least a 5 for them to completely succeed: brawn 3 -1 situational modifier because of minor intervention = 2 vs. target difficulty of 7. {This example is a complicated challenge, not a conflict because the acting character's target is the door not shoving away the person reaching for them.}

Players do NOT need to use an event diceEvent Dicing to make a roll every time their character faces a challenge. Some players will like making event rolls more than other players. The troupe members playing a scene together have complete collaborative control of how much or how little they use event rolls to shape the narrative in subsequent rounds of posts. Flexibility Is For The Sake of Friendship: try to keep the amount of event dicing to something everyone posting in the scene would enjoy.

Character Conflicts
Just as it takes two dance partners to tango, it takes two characters to have a conflict. A character/character conflict is when two or more characters are interacting together and both have different objectives. Conflicts don't have to be violent. Whenever the acting character (the character who is going to be posted next) acts upon a target character in order to get a desired reaction that isn't guaranteed to happen. As with character challenges, they can be simple (just one character acting and one character reacting) or complicated (someone else is trying to assist or interfere with the acting character's action or the target character's reaction).

Dicing Character Conflicts
A character-character conflict is diced just like a character-object challenge except that the player of the target character sets the difficulty for the conflict event roll. The target's player get to determine how hard it would be for what the acting character to succeed in their objective of doing a specified something to their character. They base the difficulty they set on their characters traits and any situational modifiers they see (their character might be easier to intimidate, for example, if the acting character is holding a gun). The target's player can also veto any action they know would make them (not their character) feel "ooky" and ask for the acting player to pick something else for their character to do. Flexibility is for the sake of friendship when it comes to what acting characters do to target players in conflicts.

Combat Dicing
Combat involves two or more characters acting at the same time to attack or escape. Not all combat is dangerous or lethal. It can even be more social based than physical based; more screaming then chasing or punching. What combat systematically different from conflicts is that two or more characters are trying to act at the same time. The event roll is going to determine which player gains the narrative power, aka control of the posting order to the subsequent rounds of posts. So before a post round begins, the players of every character in a combat declares what they want their character to do and makes an event roll for their own character. The player who gets the highest result can opt to go first and narrate out their character's action as being successful but leaves it to the victim's player to decide on what type of damage and how much damage their character just took and what all the other characters see as a result. Or they can opt for the victim's player (or someone else) to post first, describe the scene, let the victim's player describe the damage done, and then finish the round of posts in a way that includes any details they want to add that enhance the sense of their character's victory over their opposition.

During combat, every player has equal right to do anything narratively naughty or nice to any unsheeted extras who might have been mentioned as in the background during their turn to post. Anything a player wants to detail happening to one or more of them during their turn writing a post doesn't require any additional event dicing; it should simply not cancel out something specifically established by someone else previously in the post order. The only thing to keep in mind while killing, maiming, rescuing or saving extras during combat is that IC actions can have unexpected IC consequences. Dicing Challenges

Dicing Conflicts & Combat

HG/LB Reaction Mechanic