RPG Design Patterns

Attribute, Conflicted Gauge (“Blood Potency”), Faction (Clans and Covenants), Flaw (“Derangements”), Game Master, Generalized Contest, Gift, Hit Points (“Health”), Idiom (“Morality”), Last Man Standing, Point-Spend Gauge, Priority-Grid (character generation), Skill, Template, Trauma Gauge

The World of Darkness characters have nine primary attributes: “Intelligence,” “Wits,” “Resolve,” “Strength,” “Dexterity,” “Stamina,” “Presence,” “Manipulation,” and “Composure.” These attributes are related to one another as shown in the following table:

So, mental actions involve Intelligence, Wits, and/or Resolve; Physical actions use Strength, Dexterity, and/or Stamina; Social actions utilize Presence, Manipulation, and/or Composure. Attributes listed on the “Power” row represent a level of raw force on which the character can draw in each of the three areas. Finesse attributes represent the character’s flexibility and quickness in a given area. Resistance conveys the character’s mental, physical, or social toughness.

Attributes are generally rated between 1 and 5 “dots,” although supernatural characters can have substantially higher values. These ratings are initially purchased by spending three pools of dots, one for each of the Mental, Physical, and Social categories. The player prioritizes these categories: the highest priority category gets a large quantity of “dots” from which to draw while the lowest priority gets a small amount.

Characters have gifts and skills that are similarly broken up into the categories of “Mental,” “Physical,” and “Social.” Purchasing skill ranks and gifts is analogous to buying attribute values in that players prioritize the three ability categories. The more a player emphasizes a category, the greater the number of “dots” he gets to spend in that category. Like attribute values, skill ranks range in value between 1 and 5.

Each Vampire character is a member of one of five “Clans” and one of six “Covenants”. The various Clan choices are “Daeva”, “Gangrel”, “Mekhet”, “Nosferatu”, and “Ventrue”. The Covenant choices are “Carthian Movement”, “Circle of the Crone”, “Invictus”, “Lancea Sanctum”, “Ordo Dracul”, and “Unaligned”. Ostensibly, a character’s Clan is determined by the bloodline of the vampire that spawned him. A Covenant is essentially a political movement or organization. In design pattern terms, a character’s Covenant is a Faction and his Clan is both a Faction and a Template (since it determines a character’s starting skills).

Vampire characters also have an attribute known as “Blood Potency.” The character rating in this attribute limits the ranks he can attain in various vampire-related skills (“Disciplines”). However, a vampire’s Blood Potency value also determines the minimum Blood Potency rating of his prey. Highly potent vampires demand highly potent sustenance. Characters with a Blood Potency of 1 can feed on the blood of animals. A higher Blood Potency forces a vampire to prey on humans or possibly even other vampires. So, there exist valid reasons for characters to want both high and low Blood Potency ratings at different times. Therefore, Blood Potency is strongly conflicted (and, subsequently, quite interesting from a design standpoint).

Finally, characters have a “Morality” attribute (“Humanity” in Vampire: the Requiem) that follows the Idiom pattern. The attribute gauges the character’s soul, his sense of “right” and “wrong,” by the acts he performs. Selfish or evil acts tend to degrade Morality while charitable and trustworthy acts raise it. (In Vampire: the Requiem, charitable acts only allow the player to spend experience points to raise Humanity if he chooses. There are no “free” Humanity gains once you become a vampire.) When a character’s Morality drops, he may experience a “Derangement,” such as “Depression,” “Paranoia,” or “Hysteria.” Even more severe consequences are possible as well. In Vampire: the Requiem, if a vampire’s Morality drops to zero, he becomes an uncontrollable raving bloodthirsty monster that is no longer playable as a character. High Humanity provides benefits as well. A vampire in touch with his human side can stay awake after sunrise longer and mingle with mortals more easily.

Contests in The World of Darkness are performed using d10 dice pools. The number of dice rolled is usually the sum of an attribute value and a skill rank or, in cases where skills are not pertinent, the sum of two attributes. This number can be modified by the game master depending on circumstance. When rolled, any dice coming up with a value of 8 or more count as successes. Any die rolling a 10 is rolled again in an open-ended fashion to potentially generate even more successes. In general, only one success is needed to accomplish at a given task. But, multiple successes indicate that the character triumphs in a spectacular way. The more successes generated by a roll, the greater the character’s mastery of his endeavors.

If a character’s action is directly opposed by the actions of another character, both sides roll as described above. The character obtaining the greater number of successes wins. The magnitude of his victory is not determined by the difference between the two rolls, however. All of the victor’s successes are counted in determining the conflict’s outcome. The loser’s successes are discounted.

Depending on type, weapons give bonuses to the wielder’s dice pools in melee. The successes of attack rolls directly translate into damage on a point-per-point basis. Damage counts against the target’s Health attribute, which follows both the Hit Points and Trauma Gauge patterns. Damage is divided into three types: Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated. Bashing and Lethal are ordinary forms of damage that can be healed with relative ease through supernatural means. Aggravated damage cannot be healed so easily and is inflicted in different ways on different characters. For examples, silver weapons deliver aggravated damage to werewolves. Vampires are similarly vulnerable to fire.

The game master can call for an extended roll in situations where he feels a task will take a while to accomplish. In such cases, he comes up with a total number of successes he believes the task requires and allows the player to accumulate successes through a number of rolls. He will also generally state how much game time each roll represents and may decide that the character has a limited amount of time in which to attain victory. If the player obtains the requisite number of successes within the specified number of rolls, the action succeeds. Otherwise, it fails, but can sometimes be re-attempted at a later date with penalties.

At the beginning of a scene involving conflict, players roll a d10 and add their characters’ “Initiative” attributes to determine the action sequence. Players take turns in order of highest initiative total to lowest, at which time the sequence repeats (without a re-roll) until the conflict ends.

The World of Darkness rewards players with experience points. The amount is generally between one and five points per session. The size of the award is determined by the game master based on the quality of role-play, the amount he believes a character would have learned from an adventure, the degree of danger involved, and the level of heroic performance. One point is awarded for just showing up to the game. Experience points can be spent on obtaining new gifts, gaining ranks in skills and attributes, and raising “Morality.”