Skills

 Skills in Roll 4 saves are pretty straight forward.

Where background is triggered by the target, or location, or means of the action, skills are representative of the action itself.

There are 8 total skills.

6 of the skills are broad. For example, Move includes running, jumping, flying, as well as moving stealthily. The point is that the PC is Moving from point A to point B, and there might be a consequence for it.

2 of the skills are narrow; specifically, Skirmish and Attune. The reason is that these are the more powerful combat skills. And by giving a combat skill additional uses in a game, it begins to become overpowered.

Consider Dexterity in OGL games. It gives a boost to defense, is used in attacks with certain weapons, and it is used for fine and gross motor skills such as pick pockets and stealth respectively. For an adventure game, this gives a lot of power to Dexterity heavy PCs.

Character Creation

In character creation, the player can simply pick 2 skills they like, or roll d8 twice to generate 2 random skills.

Background Modifiers

I covered Roll 4 Saves' Backgrounds here. Looking it over will provide context for this post.

Background modifiers are setting specific addons to background. 

In a traditional fantasy game, these could be the PC race.

In an intrigue game, it might be a faction designation.

In a Pokemon, or Magic style game, it might be an elemental affinity.

In a real-world game,, it could be your nationality.

Examples can include:

• Academic - Orc
• Squalid - Brown Cloaks
• Noble - Grass Type
• Wild - Spanish

When either the base background or a modifier is triggered, the PC gains the bonus.

For example, an Orc gains bonuses when dealing with other Orcs, or taking action in an Orcish environment, or when using Orcish items.

Character Creation

Just like backgrounds, the player may pick what they like, or determine their modifier randomly.
I usually try to have about 10, but some setting may have more or less as appropriate.

Changes

 Rules

I am reworking the rules for the vanilla fantasy setting. Some of the heritage abilities are a bit lack luster. My First reaction was to simply assign each of the 10 heritages one of the 10 spell types.

Then I was reading through Errant. And this is a big problem for me. I'll read a new system, and be inspired from it, and want to incorporate something from it into my current project.

So Errant breaks the heritages into 4 Ancestries. There are examples of which species fit into which groups (Dwarves and Orcs for the Tough Ancestry).

Each of the 4 Ancestries then gives a Once per Session ability. This means Dwarves and Orcs will have the same ability to avoid being reduced to 0hp once per session.

It is so elegant.

So yeah, now I am thinking of how I can rework my heritages into 3 or 4 basic categories.

Podcast

Probably some time after Episode 6, I'm going to try my hand at giving the Podcast a video component.

My current plan for the flow will be

1. Record using Zoom (Assuming I can get my USB mic to record with a high enough gain.)
2. Upload the video to Youtube.
3. Run the audio through noise reduction if needed.
4. Upload to Anchor and add Background Music.
5. Publish as a Podcast.

This means the videos will lack cleaning up on the audio and background music. But I think it will benefit from the visuals of the characters and rules; making it easier for others to follow.

I'll have to do some experimenting to see how it looks / sounds.

Backgrounds

One of my favorite parts of the Resistance System (aka Spire the City Must Fall & Heart the City Beneath) is the concept of Domains.

Domains are basically areas of life that your character is comfortable with. They are very broad such as Criminal, Religion, or Commerce.

The rules set up that the Domains do not just suggest what your character can do, but who they know, areas they frequent, etc. In other words - devices outside of the character.

A character with Commerce will get the same bonus when performing a trade, when stabbing a merchant, and when fighting a ninja in a general store.

It reminds me a lot of the Skills in Feng Shui 2 (I never read 1st ed) and Backgrounds in 13th Age. Again, they are nebulous and reflect not just what the character can do, but what, where, and who they know.

When designing Roll 4 Saves, I have a strict maximum 3 bonuses to a roll goal, because that will be a d12.

My current goal is to have a super general bonus, a more specific bonus, and a super specific bonus.

Backgrounds fill that General Bonus. When writing the rules, I wanted backgrounds to focus on devices outside of the character (place, target, object), but during the playtest podcast, I realized that this actually really limits some backgrounds. So I am attempting to broaden them to also include specific actions as well. So Academic might have research or debate, Criminal might have Grift of Burgle.

I am still working out the details. But I am leaning to not actually specifying actions in the descriptions.

Saves vs Checks

In many games, we tell players to Check to see if they can do something.

Player: Oh, I failed my check to pick the lock.
GM: Ok, the door is still locked.

~~or~~

Player: I failed my check to hit the foe.
GM: Ok, you missed.

The problem with this model is that it can create failure loops.

Player: Oh, I failed to pick the lock. I guess I'll try again. And again. And again.

Or worse still, it will create dead ends.

Player: Oh, I failed to pick the lock. I guess I'll never know what is on the other side of the door...

The NSR answer to this is to make everything Saves.
The main purpose of a roll is to determine if there is a consequence for the action.
Yes, a consequence of a bad roll might be failure, but this is not the only answer.

Player: Oh, I failed my save when picking the lock.
GM: The door swings open, but a needle stabs into your hand. Take 3 damage.

~~or~~

Player: I rolled a 2 on my save to hit the foe.
GM: You deal 2 damage to the ruffian but he shoulder checks you, knocking you off balance. Your rolls next round are all hard.

At first glance, this is like the narrative first games, such as PbtA and FitD games. However, the GM is the ultimate arbiter of whether a failed save had a successful action, not the dice.

Player: Oh, I failed my save when picking the lock.
GM: The door's lock seems to have jammed, and a guard has stepped around the corner.

~~or~~

Player: I rolled a 2 on my save to hit the foe.
GM: The ruffian parries our attack, and responds with a flick of his wrist. You take2 damage.

This gives the GM more leeway to direct the narrative on failed rolls.