In my last game post, I discussed how D&D starts from a straightforward mechanic: roll one 20-sided die. That simplicity quickly turns into complexity and a great number of systems when you have to make it work for hundreds of abilities across different circumstances.
When designing a game, I wanted to create a system that didn’t require looking up the exact wording of a spell or an ability in the index all the time. At the same time, I wanted a game where characters felt like they had unique abilities. I’ve had fun playing Fate. However, the fact that your character’s unique abilities are mechanically just a plus one to rolls makes those rolls blend together. Characters’ gameplay is identical and that makes the characters feel less unique. So the major problem I had in designing a new system was keeping enough abilities to make characters feel unique while combining all of the hundreds of abilities in a game like D&D that do almost the same thing.
My strategy for creating a simple game with the power to generate unique game for players was allowing people to mix and match abilities. Players can bring to bear multiple abilities on the same effort, rather than using only one skill or running a series of skill checks. Using multiple stats at once means rolls are never as simple as rolling a single d20. On the flip side, there are not as many abilities so there are fewer exceptions, and you can use the one system for every circumstance, with a few optional tweaks. Simply put, you’d don’t have to look stuff up once you get the hang of Tox RPG.
Core Stats: Talents, Archetypes, Gifts
In Tox, there are three core stats that reflect the character concept process from this article. Your character will have
Talents that reflect a defining attribute of your character. Specifically, Talents reflect how the character likes to solve problems. Talents include:
Charming - Solving problems with social skills
Deft - Using fine motor skills and reflexes to get by.
Smart - Observing and thinking through your challenges.
Strong - Using physical power, speed, or endurance to overcome obstacles.
Wise - Relying intuition and experience with the inexplicable (gifts and beings that possess them, for example).
Archetypes represent your calling or the types of problems you’re experienced in solving.
Creator - Someone who designs, performs, creates, or repairs.
Expert - Someone who studies, researches, and communicates.
Fighter - Someone who attacks, protects, and handles physical crises.
Prowler - Someone who sneaks, spies, tricks, and manipulates.
Traveler - Someone familiar with how to get from one place to another, including vehicles, navigation, and foreign customs or languages.
Gifts that represent what your character can do better than normal people, whether by magic, advanced tech, divine gift, psychic talent, or unusual expertise. There are 16 of these at the current count. Each gift introduces unique mechanics (adding dice for certain types of rolls, boosting traits, affecting damage or dice rolls, allowing new types of actions, etc). You, as the player, choose which gift mechanic you want and decide what that mechanic looks like in the game. It’s up to you whether your boosted Fighter trait comes from chanting a prayer to a berserker diety or revving your undead-slaying chainsaw arm.
Each of these traits ranges from rank 0 (no particular ability here) to rank 5 (mastery). Characters typically start with 3 traits, one of each type, at rank 3 (professional). So a classic barbarian might have Strong 3, Fighter 3, and Strike 3 (a gift that boosts your attacks). A tank might be Strong 3, Fighter 3, and Barrier 3 (a gift that soaks damage). In contrast, a beguiling con artist might have the traits Charming 3, Prowler 3, and Enhance (boosting their Charming and Prowler traits to masterful or even supernatural ranks).
Using Your Character’s Traits: The Effort System
Whenever you try something risky or unusually difficult in Tox, you can roll to determine whether you succeed or fail. This roll is called an effort.
A unique aspect of Tox is that you can use multiple traits in the same effort. Something you are completely untrained for might use none of your traits (and rely on luck alone), while something you are perfectly trained for uses all three. Tasks in the middle might use one or two traits. Players are encouraged to get creative and find ways to use as many of their character’s traits as possible.
Here’s how making an effort works. You roll three, six-sided dice to score points. If you score enough points (usually somewhere between 1-3) you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. There are two ways to get points:
Luck. You get +1 point for doubles and +2 points for triples.
Skill. You can pair individual dice with one of your traits, using a maximum of 1 Talent, 1 Archetype, and 1 Gift. If a die rolls the rank of its paired trait or less, you get +1 point.
Here are a few examples from the free Tox Demo PDF that I’m putting together.
Adapting Effort Rolls with Buffs (and Debuffs)
Sometimes a character is at a particular advantage or disadvantage. That’s why Tox adds one more element to the effort mix: tags. Tags are a one-use ability that can change the outcome of a roll.
For example, the tags that can buff your character’s effort include Expert and Safe. The expert tag lets you reroll a die. The Safe tag makes the effort less risky, protecting you from adverse circumstances or giving an opponent -1 point on their efforts against you.
In contrast tags like Impaired and Risky can debuff your efforts. Impaired takes a way a die (lowering your chance of doubles and limiting you to a max of two paired traits). Risky adds negative consequences for failure.
When a character thinks of a clever solution, gets help, benefits from a particular Gift, or otherwise has favorable circumstances, they can get a buff for their effort. On the other hand, if the character is making an effort with complications or adverse circumstances, they can have a debuff.
Efforts with a Time Limit
The beauty of using a dice pool is that it also lends itself to managing situations where characters might need to divide their focus. In these cases, you can allow players to split their points or even their dice pool.
For example, if characters have a limited time to research, let them roll and spend their effort points on different topics. They could spread their points thin to learn about several different topics or go all in on one subject.
On the other hand, if you want to run a turn-based tactical combat in Tox, you can allow players to split their dice pool. They could throw all their dice into moving, or attacking, or defending. Or they could take several actions, rolling a two-dice effort for attack and a one-die effort for defense for example. This latter approach allows a character to do more but at the cost of getting fewer points from doubles.
Of course, if you like to keep things simple, you don’t have to do tactical combat or timed efforts. The game master could just tell a player that they’re getting hit with a 3-harm attack, and let them roll their full dice pool to reduce the harm (damage) by one with each point, for example. Then they can attack, doing 1 harm per point unless the defender can mitigate it.
The great thing about the effort system is that you can use it as is for anything, and then start tweaking it as you get familiar with it. The more advanced gameplay is there for people who want to add some variation and challenge, but it’s not dramatically different than the basic effort system.
How the Effort System Has Panned Out Over Years of Playtesting
I admit I’m extra proud of this last bit, getting an entire tactical crisis system almost entirely out of just splitting your dice pool. D&D has a complex system of actions, reactions, bonus actions, and movement on your turn. I’ve noticed how D&D players often forget whether a certain ability is a regular action or a bonus action, or that they can boost their move or defense by taking special actions. In Tox, you get all of this just by splitting your dice pool on separate efforts.
When testing Tox online or at conventions, it usually takes me an extra moment to explain roles. Twice, I’ve run into someone who really didn’t like or get the effort system after a couple of examples.
However, I get a lot of time back and much quicker gameplay with fewer interruptions by having a single effort system with tags rather than having a skill system, a save system, advantage/disadvantage, conditions, and combat action economies, all interacting with lengthy indices full of similar but ever-so-slightly different abilities.
But Why is It Called Tox?
I have left out one key system from Tox RPG, one that merits its own post. While you can use your Gifts like a skill, the real fun (and danger) comes from powering them up.
The gift mechanics that I mentioned before are only accessible by activating your gifts. These let you not just roll against your Gift but add dice or tags or trait ranks, or otherwise influence efforts.
However, activating gifts also opens you up to negative consequences. Each character with a Gift chooses a Tox Effect that represents a flaw, limitation, or weakness in that character’s abilities.
In games like D&D, these flaws are baked into abilities: limited spell slots or ability uses, exhaustion for berzerk barbarians, random spell effects for sorcerers, or a warlock’s sinister obligations to a shadowy patron. In Tox RPG, on the other hand, you get to mix and match Gifts and Tox Effects, creating a unique combination of power and weakness for your character.
I look forward to covering Gift activation and Tox Effects in the next post!