If I Ran the Zoo. Everway (1996 Role Playing Game)

So been thinking about the old game and what I might do with it to make it a little easier to run/more to my tastes - give it a veneer of crunch to fall back on, you know.

Everway had three mechanics for determining how things turned out:
Law of Karma (Does the character have cool enough abilities to manage this thing?)
Law of Drama (a.k.a. Rule 0: Does success or failure fuck up my story as the GM?)
Law of Fortune (Draw a card when you're stuck, apply the results to what happens.)


I think that time and advancements of RPG technology (and it is a technology) have shown that there's a little missing and a little extra here.  We'll start at the low-hanging fruit and work our way up the tree.

1) The Law of Drama - If there is one thing I have learned from the 90s, it's that Rule 0 is Bad Design Always.  I don't always agree with story gamers, but when I do, it's on things where they are right.  Rule 0 is bad, but it is close to a much better thing that the aforementioned group did come up with "Say Yes or Roll the Dice."  Now this doesn't fully apply to Everway, being a diceless system and all, BUT, there's something still in there worth taking forward.  Say Yes or Law of Karma.  Now, here is something about the SYoRtD rule that has bugged me in the past, but I think I can fix my problem by making something explicit: Say Yes or Law of Karma applies to the players as well as the GM.  This lets the GM make things happen and the Players either say yes or try and stop it.  I take it as implicit in many story games, but I want to make it VERY EXPLICIT for Everway, since, again, no dice.



2) Action Economy - I'm going to get to the Law of Karma in a moment, but this one is a little lower on the tree.  Everway was one of the first games to give you the choice between task-based (D&D), goal-based (Burning Wheel) and scene-based (Polaris, kind of) resolution, but since it was one of the first, it never really knew its name.  I like that you get the choice between the three, but I want them to be, again, explicit, identified, right out there where people can see and know them by their fruits and shit.Action Based is the default - We're going through a swamp ROUSs swarm our boat.  We try to fight them off.  Here, both GM and Players have the chance to let the other dictate what happens or we apply Law of Karma to the action and see where that gets us.  Burning Wheel's Let it Ride rule is in effect.  If you do something, it is done.  If you lose something, it is lost.Task Based is something that Players can ask for if something is very important to them.  This is exactly like Bringing the Pain in The Shadow of Yesterday.  Do I hit this rat?  Do I protect my companion from that rat's attack?  The likelihood of suffering is increased, but the likelihood of losing something for good to a bad turn of events is decreased.Scene Based is something that the Players of GM can call for when resolution is more a case of which way things are going to go from here than determining what stakes are won or lost. Do we get through the swamp with a little or a lot of trouble and how are we feeling when we get to the other side? 

3) The Law of Karma -  The simplest version of the Law of Karma was that resolution favored the actor with the highest element, and that applied to how the GM decided the task/action/scene was going to go.  I can totally sneak up on the ogre, but if I fight him, I will win at the cost of my shield or an injury... Stuff like that.  Built in, though, were other things, your Powers, your Specialties, any strategy, arms, tactics, evidence, whatever, and how you approached it.  Fighting the ogre was always going to be about my Fire and his, but since he's a lot tougher than me and I'm a lot smarter than him, if I played into being strong enough to overwhelm him then things were not going to go as well as if I feinted and drew him out.
Since this is where the resolution is going to get done, this one requires a little more than the others.  I'm not a big fan of GM fiat being the baseline and resolution being the best deal I can persuade out of the GM - well, actually, I am, I'm kind of good at it, and in a diceless system, there's always going to be an element of that (a big element of that), but I think, by making it a little more granular, and, again, explicit, you can get something that's a little easier on player and GM and more equitable for both as well.Start with making it Primary Element (as determined by what's going on - I'm Fighting an Ogre, so Fire) vs Primary Element, then give the difference between the Secondary Element (determined by *how* we do our thing - I want to fight smart and trick the Ogre, so Air, and he wants to stand strong and tough and tire me out, so Earth - of dear, I am smart, but he is tougher than I am smart so he gets the difference between his Earth and my Air).  Now here's the painful part.  Put a 0 behind everything.  200 points instead of 20, Element thresholds at every 10 (but no reason why you can't have a 45 in Air and a 25 in Earth).  You get a Specialization for each and broad ones are worth 5 (Fighting) and narrower ones are worth 10 (Sword Fighting).  I don't like it, but it does free you up for certain things.Powers are worth 10 a piece for Frequent, Versatile, Major and Really Major.  When you use them, they either contribute half their value or all their value to resolution depending (I can firebend the hell out of an ogre, and I can use it to entertain children to get the village elder to like me, but it's much better on making ogres sad than it is village elders happy).  Gear can be worth 1 to 5, depending on what it is, how good it is and how directly it applies (rope and grappling hook are great for climbing walls, okay for fighting ogres, if I have a plan, and not very useful for ingratiating myself to village elders unless they have a wall to climb and no rope and hook of their own).  Plans and clever tactics can also be worth 1 to 5, and this is something that GM fiat gets entirely to itself.At which point, this comes down to total and compare, with the winner getting the spoils, EXCEPT:You can bargain at this point - if the Player is behind, they can offer up the loss of a tool, an injury, let the GM have their way on something to get their way in the resolution.  Likewise, if the GM is behind, they can offer up extra goodies or to give the Player their way on something to take a dive.  Either side can just call it and let the totals fall where they may.4) Law of Fortune -  I like the cards, and I think that Players can, come what may, ask for a pull of the cards and see how that changes things.  The only thing I would do differently with the Fortune Deck is make sure every card had some mechanical tie in it. Some do; Summer and War make Fire super effective, for instance, but some don't and I would want to look through that to make sure everything was balanced underneath while remaining thematic.  I think that a pull from the Fortune Deck should probably swing up to 20 points in Karmic terms.  Or, you can just trust the GM and skip right to the Fortune Deck if you think that your Fire, Air, Firebending and Grappling Hook plan are not going to take that ogre down.

5) My Druthers - I think I might also throw in the some of character generation stuff from Minimus, just for the sake of having everyone tied together by something other than "I walked through a magic door."  Still thinking about that one.