All In Devlog 1: Themes of Risk in TTRPGs

TTRPGs are inherently tied to risk. Because TTRPGs usually affect a continuity of events, failure or success in combat, intrigue, or exploration usually serves as a deciding factor for later events. Therefore, genuine stakes are involved in every conflict, and in a game with heightened emotional stakes, characters often have to choose if they want to engage in a conflict or accept a resolution they are not entirely happy with.

A problem I have observed in TTRPGs is that the continuity of the story or the underlying assumed narrative rules of the game often heavily lean toward the player characters. This undermines a sense of risk and the personal stakes of the story. To clarify, I am not against tipping the scales in the favour of the players. TTRPGs are about living the lives of fantastical people, and power fantasies usually revolve around success. However, I want to experiment with boiling down this concept of personal risk into a mechanical cornerstone of gameplay. This is the first part of a series focusing on the development of a TTRPG system named All In that seeks to explore this design concept.

This first part of the devlog details the creation of the underlying cornerstone of the system, the theming of the system, and basic character elements.

The Base Mechanics

When thinking about risk mechanics in other games, one of the easiest to understand and most widespread is the betting system in Poker. In fact, it is so ubiquitous that its elements often serve as metaphors in risk-management scenarios (“going all in,” “when the chips are down,” etc.).

I decided that a character’s current situation in this new system would be represented by a reservoir of chips that characters could bet to engage in risky scenarios, either coming out with more chips or losing some due to bad consequences. In my mind, a character in a gunfight could choose to bet many of their chips, therefore taking a large risk such as exposing themselves, but potentially gaining a huge advantage such as a better sightline.

The climactic moment of such a game system would naturally be when a player puts all of their chips on the line, potentially sacrificing everything they have. In poker, this is referred to as All In, giving the system its name.

This presents an interesting narrative question: what do the chips actually represent? Originally, I thought that a character would have different chips for each statistic, and every different type of chip would represent a character’s resources in that statistic (losing intelligence chips in an intelligence-based challenge would indicate a loss of confidence or circumstances changing to no longer be covered by a character’s expertise). After trading ideas with some people on r/rpgdesign (a wonderful community of game designers!), I eventually settled on simply having one reservoir of chips, which I decided would represent a character’s standing within the literal plot of the story. Instead of representing a concrete aspect within the world of the game, a character’s pool of chips would instead represent the overall circumstances surrounding them, and their plot relevance. This representation requires a bit of imagination to grasp, but you can think about it similarly to the perception of a character by a theoretical audience. If a character is demonstrated as doing well in a narrative, the audience is convinced they are a powerful character, regardless of what their in-universe capabilities are.

The Theming

After I had the central mechanic planned, I wanted to find a genre or theme to anchor All In around. While I originally wanted to have the system encompass all possible themes in a GURPS-like way, I decided it would be much easier to develop with the trappings of an existing type of narrative to build off of. The glitzy aesthetic of poker and the associations of bluffing and luxury led me to choose the classic spy thriller in the vein of James Bond as a guiding fantasy.

The Dice

With the associations of casinos and risk already being heavy within the system, I made the resolution mechanic a roll of two six-sided dice. This accomplishes two important things: it ties the physical action of playing the game more to the genre it is representing (two six-sided dice are emblematic of spy dice games), and it causes the distribution of results to end up on a bell curve, making extreme results more extreme and exciting. To add more excitement, I added the mechanic of an Exploding 12. Following this rule, if a player rolls two sixes, they can roll an additional six-sided dice, adding this to the total. If this also ends up being a six, they can continue rolling. This mechanic is, of course, heavily inspired by the exploding dice of Kids on Bikes, and serves to make extraordinary victories even more extraordinary.

The game should not be completely unforgiving either. When the characters have ample resources, they are allowed to use them to improve their chances of success. This allows players a little more leeway in the early phases of the game, and further pushes players into situations where they have to make serious decisions about which risks to take.

Creating Characters

When creating a spy for All In, I wanted players to have both a great degree of freedom and for the character creation to be quick and easy. This would encourage players to take more exciting risks, as they are not faced with hours of paperwork if they end up losing and have to create a new character.

Statistics

I wanted to keep the number of statistics low to lower the overhead of character creation, so I tried to distill the essence of a spy’s main characteristics into four categories, each represented by a playing card suit (this is both interesting thematically, allows for randomized character creation using a deck of cards, and will impact the game later).

Physical (Spades): a spy’s physical ability to run, shoot, and pull off stunts.
Suave (Hearts): a spy’s ability to manipulate the opinions and actions of others.
Wit (Diamonds): a spy’s raw intellect and their knowledge about other operatives, organizations, and fields.
Resources (Clubs): a spy’s relationship with their sponsoring organization and their preparedness, reflecting how much equipment they have on them and how much equipment they are able to obtain during the game. Defining a character’s tools in this way also takes pressure off of the player, as they do not have to keep track of inventory on their character sheet.

Each of these statistics can range from 1 to 9, and each add to a dice roll when such a dice roll is made.

The system of having four statistics represented by playing cards is inspired by Dust Devils, and my experience with Dust Devils meant that this game was almost a western!

Perks

To differentiate characters from one another and allow more tactical and creative freedom, I wanted the main mechanical features of a character to be a set of traits they have. These would be similar to feats in Dungeons and Dragons, being available to all characters to choose from, allowing one to create a unique mix of abilities. More on the way that these perks are chosen, purchased, and perhaps even written by players in another episode of this development journey.

Organization

The defining feature of a spy is that they quintessentially do not work alone. They are usually sponsored by a larger organization whose goals they represent and whose plans they execute. Following this logic, every character would choose an organization or patron, which would then give them unique perks or bonuses.

Bringing it All Together

After a player creates their spy—starting with a name and character concept and fleshing them out with a set of statistics and unique powers—each character starts with 20 chips to their name.

When a character has to take on a risk or engage in an action whose outcome is unknown, they are asked to make a roll by the GM, corresponding to one of their main four characteristics. The GM decides a Difficulty Limit and an Ante. For every roll, the GM must reveal the Ante to the player but can choose to keep the Difficulty Limit to themselves. The Ante is how many chips the player must bet from their reserve in order to undertake the action.

Once the player has bet the number of chips required, they roll two six-sided dice, adding their corresponding statistic to the result. If this final result meets or exceeds the difficulty limit, the character succeeds in their goal, and optionally (decided by the GM) gains a fixed number of chips from the bank. If the character fails, something bad happens to their character and they lose the chips they bet.

Next Steps

All In is currently in its very rough development stages. Next steps in development include:

Creating a List of Perks to Choose From
Creating a List of Organizations to Choose From
Implementing more defined mechanics for “folding” or backing out of a conflict
Defining what adventures and games might look like within this system with different phases of gameplay and frameworks for character interaction

Below is included the download for this early draft of the rules, including some sample Perks, one sample government, and a more detailed rules guide.