Natural 7

One of Three

(Check it out: I released a single-session adventure on itch called Quest for the Vorpal Sword. You might use it with Dungeons and Dragons 5e or you might borrow bits for your other games.)

Picking one of three choices is a very popular video game mechanic, and sometimes it even shows up in roleplaying games. In this post, we'll look at what a tabletop game built entirely from picking one of three choices could look like.

Character Creation

Characters are made up of three parts:

Background

To create your Background, pick one of three origins from one of three archetypes.

Experts: You have a specific set of skills and/or knowledge.

Laborers: You've worked in a specific trade for a long time.

Warriors: You've fought a lot of different people.

Items

Characters begin with an item relevant to their Background. Ideally each origin has a choice of one item from 3 options.

Here is an example of an origin item list:

Minstrel. You're skilled at storytelling.

Minstrel Items. Take either a lute, a love letter, or a handheld firecracker.

Motivation

This idea was inspired by this article on Sly Flourish. Your character has one of three motivations that helps you level up.

Level Up

When you level up, make a list of three skills, backgrounds, traits, or activities that were relevant in your most recent adventures. Choose one of those to add to your character. Save the rest for the next time you level up. If you think of a skill that has become far more relevant to your character than an old one on the list, you can replace it.

Example:

Jory went on a few adventures before finally managing to save someone in need for his Heroism motivation (he got very unlucky during the previous adventures). For his level up, he writes down three skills that would have been helpful:

Deciding the most useful at the moment is "City Bartering", Jory learns that skill and adds it to his character sheet. Now he can use it on his adventures! The

The other two skills are saved for the next time Jory levels up, in case he wants to take them that time. After some more adventures Jory levels up again, adding "Winery Management" to his list. Also, because of how many adventures he went on, Jory no longer thinks "Undercity Brawling" is very useful or thematic. He replaces it with "Fencing Initiate", and ends up taking that skill for his level up.

After those two level ups, Jory's skills now include both "City Bartering" and "Fencing Initiate". The next time he levels up, he will be able to choose from a set of skills including:

Core Gameplay

Sometimes you follow a course of action and aren't sure if you'll succeed. Here's how to adjudicate success and failure with a quick dice pool:

Build a Dice Pool

Roll the Dice Pool and take the highest result:

If you ever build a dice pool with 0 or fewer dice, instead roll 2d6 and take the lowest result.

Minor Downsides Choose one of three downsides:

Major Downsides Choose one of three downsides:

Approaching Risky Situations

Characters go on quests to do things. One these quests they might find themselves in risky situations. When they do, they can pick one of three approaches to that situation:

Approach

Adventure Design

When created adventures, give players a choice from three different quests they could go on (inspired by another Sly Flourish article).

Each quest should directly appeal to one of the three motivations previously discussed, however it's alright (and encouraged) to have smaller or less obvious appeals to the other two motivations.

Quests thrust characters into a collection of situations that can be resolved. If you want to prep them ahead of time, think about at least three different ways each situation might be resolved. This can be helpful when trying to decide how the world reacts to the actions of your players.

Quests can optionally benefit from the involvement of three factions. These need not be large groups, but having opportunities for players to pick one of three factions to align with (at least temporarily) can often be fun and exciting.

Example:

The quest selected by the players is named: "Steal the Horned Egg from Lord Faun Elroy"

Situations in this quest:

Three ways the characters might infiltrate the manor: get in through the front door, climb in through a window, scuttle through sewer pipes into the underground kitchens.

Three ways the characters might find the vaults: conversations with Lord Elroy's maids and butlers, scrabbling about the manor, observing the hand-drawn map in Lord Elroy's observatory.

Three ways the characters might open the locked vault door: use the password found in Lord Elroy's diary, threaten Lord Elroy's head butler to open the door or else, tunnel in through a weakened side wall in the boiler room.

Three ways the characters might escape the manor with the egg: the same way they came in, sneaking out in disguise, as loud and violent as possible.

Factions involved in this quest:

Expanding the Game

There are, of course, lots of ways to make this game more complicated and probably a lot more interesting. Here are a few ideas that might be useful:

And also

Final Thoughts

This was a fun little thought-experiment! We look at creating a game from the premise "Pick one of three choices" and I think I did alright. I'm a little disgruntled that my way of rolling dice for the dice pool has four different outcomes rather than three, but I couldn't decide on which outcome to take out.

I hope you enjoyed this little game idea. Have a great week, and see you next Saturday!

Things on my radar: