There are more than a dozen iterations of the Storyteller System. 1st edition, 2nd edition, Revised edition, Anniversary Edition, Exalted 1e, Exalted 2e, Scion, Storytelling, God-Machine, Trinity and so on.

I thought to marry the best mechanics from each of the games to create a universal system that could be used to run a variety of genres from splatterpunk to heroic fantasy. The Storytelling System task resolution mechanic has the greatest speed and ease-of-use. Exalted and Scion have universal mechanics for adjudicating supernatural powers.

I am not entirely sure how well it would work in practice. Any advice?

Ooooh I can't offer any advice, but I can give you encouragement: I'd love to see such a unified system. Great idea!

What are the major differences? Good place to start I suppose.

Mostly I just wanted a system where all the splats (monsters, exalts, scions, etc) could play together without worrying about conflicting rules or game balance.

For the basic rules I'd just adopt nWoD, GMC, Mirrors and what other supplements have rules useful for replicating unique mechanics from other games (e.g. soak, mental/social combat, etc).

Supernatural powers would use a universal mechanic based off a mix of Exalted and Scion mechanics. Every splat would have Essence/Legend, Charms/Knacks, and so on. Powers from other games would be adapted to that model.

The Humanity/Morality/Integrity and Virtue/Dark Virtue/Urge mechanics are trickier. Punishing PCs for doing typical RPG things like murder and looting with insanity is really stupid, and I'd prefer to keep Morality and Sanity systems separate (if at all). Virtues are pretty universally applicable, but many games didn't have them to begin with while others tie them into the Morality mechanics. There are a dozen different Morality mechanics (Limit Break, Atrocity dice, Torment, Angst, Banality, Forbidden Lore, Memory, Conscience, Aye+Orun, Paths, Roads, whatever) and it all gets very confusing. I'd prefer simplifying these into a universally applicable system or toolkit.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;808348What are the major differences? Good place to start I suppose.

The basic d10-based task resolution mechanic, to say nothing of combat, has always been funky and inconsistent. nWoD made the greatest stride toward simplicity and usability before GMC made things overcomplicated yet again.

A common statistic were simple personality mechanics that were sometimes ignored by certain games. Concept/Calling [nWoD/cWoD/Scion]; a brief description of the character. Archetypes (Nature/Demeanor, Seele/Unseelie Legacies, Virtue/Vice) [cWoD/nWoD]; a trigger used to refresh Willpower. Motivation/Intimacies/Aspiration [Exalted/GMC]; something the character works toward or values.

There are nine Attributes organized by Mental/Physical/Social, including Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Intelligence, Wits, Charisma/Presence and Manipulation. The attributes that vary across systems are Perception versus Resolve and Composure versus Appearance. In nWoD attributes are further subdivided by Power/Finesse/Resistance, creating a 3x3 grid.

A special tenth attribute called Willpower provides the "kicker," or bonuses to rolls. It also does other things depending on the game. In nWoD, it is derived from Resolve and Composure rather than being its own attribute.

The amount and choice of Abilities/Skills varies across games. In oWoD they were never consistent, but were always subdivided by Talents/Skills/Knowledges. In nWoD they are laid out in the core rulebook and divided into Mental/Physical/Social like attributes. There are also skill specialties, but those aren't super important.

Another category of statistics are Backgrounds/Merits/Flaws/Derangements/Birthrights/Conditions. These are the general advantages/disadvantages you would find in other games. They've always been rather sloppily organized and inconsistently applied.

Supernatural powers have never been consistent across games. nWoD made an attempt to standardize these but still fell prey to different for the sake of different. Exalted and Scion were the most consistent, but power creep and poor balance has always been a problem and received much errata (which is more than can be said for World of Darkness). The basic universal mechanic is a statistic that measures overall magical potential (e.g. Essence, Legend, Supernatural Tolerance) and a pool of points used to fuel powers (e.g. Essence Pool, Legend Points, and sometimes Willpower). Plenty of splats in cWoD lacked the former and adjudicated their limitations arbitrarily. Plenty had two or more different pools of points that did wildly different things.

The Morality/Road and Virtue/Urge mechanics are by far the messiest mechanics and were mostly inconsistent across games too. In the original Vampire you had Humanity, which measured how monstrous/evil the PC was and punished the PC for violating it with various mental illnesses; the three "Virtues" of Conscience, Courage and Self-Control were used variously for adjudicating Humanity violations, resisting fear effects, and resisting coercion or violent rage (and sometimes Willpower was used for these too, it was never consistent). Most of the later games dropped these entirely. Exalted and Scion expanded on the Virtues and made them actually useful for something. nWoD dropped the Virtue mechanics and tried to unify the Morality mechanics and later gave up on any consistency; the writers realized at some point penalizing PCs with insanity or whatever was stupid so, rather than dropping the insanity as would be expected, they came up with shortcuts to allows PCs to violate their Morality without the usual consequences.

In simpler terms, it is a horrible mess with a few diamonds in the rough in desperate need of cherry-picking.

I'll go into the mechanics in more detail in a following series of posts, as well as some commentary.

Task Resolution
The basic task resolution system of all the games can be summed up like so:

• Roll a number of d10s equal to X, where X is generally an Attribute + Skill.
• Tally the number of dice that come up greater than or equal to Y, where Y is a number from 3 to 10. These are known as "successes" (not to be confused with succeeding on an action).
• The action succeeds if the tally equals or exceeds Z, where Z is a number from 1 to 5 or equal to the tally of an opposing roll.

The purpose of the Y and Z variables vary dramatically across games. For example, games where Z was variable allowed characters to get "automatic" successes. I won't explain the many variants here, except to say that the simplest and cleanest variation is the one used by nWoD, at least before latter books began messing with it.

Combat
Combat has always been an iffy issue. Every game has physical combat, where characters roll dice pools to inflict damage. The steps of combat can be summed up like so:

• Roll to attack target
• Roll to defend target
• Roll to inflict damage
• Roll to soak damage

The games have variously simplified or overcomplicated these instructions, either by combining them, making them static, and/or removing them entirely. Again, nWoD has the simplest and fastest instructions (a common trend, as you may notice). GMC, meanwhile, introduced "intents" that allowed for combat to break out without requiring slaughtering the opposing side to "win" as well as an explicit option to surrender (which were duplicated from previous mental/social combat mechanics); on the other hand, other GMC changes made combat more tedious or excessively gritty (I expect the Hurt Locker book will include new options for making combat less gritty... exactly like it was in 1st edition nWoD).

While many games treat mental and social conflicts purely through normal rolls, others have introduced rules for Mental/Social Combat. These have varied even more dramatically than the physical combat rules, and I won't go into them here. Suffice to say, I would prefer having Mental/Social Combat rules modeled after the Physical Combat so that conflict resolution operates similarly for all tasks. This also obviates the need for a separate Sanity mechanic, as that function would be rolled into Mental/Social Health.

Virtues
Virtues/Urges/Dark Virtues as per Exalted and Scion are fine as is. I would not use them in tandem with Morality mechanics for the sake of simplicity and avoiding redundancy. Virtues more or less cover the same function as Morality anyway, even to the point of such mechanics as Limit Break, Virtue Extremity, Resonance and so on. I feel that it is better designed than Morality, and if I made any attempt to improve Morality I would make it more like the Virtue mechanics.

Morality
The Morality mechanics are the most hotly contested mechanics across games. You do something bad, you roll to see whether your character felt remorse depending on the severity of the action, if he didn't then he lost Morality, then you roll to see if he acquires a mental illness. While the intent made some sense (you act like a psychopath, you become a psychopath), the execution was horrible and blatantly unrealistic even for roleplaying games. In real life, people suffer mental illness because of remorse, not in spite of it.

Nonetheless, too many complaints amounted to "only Christians think casually murdering people in your way is wrong." To put it bluntly:

QuoteIn general, there are very few humans who can stand the thought of truly ending the life of another human without military training. The military has developed many studies over the years to evolve the best training curriculum to dehumanize the "enemy" and enable their soldiers to kill enemy soldiers. Even then, when a soldier is tasked with actually shooting a bullet that would end the life of another human being...many would rather intentionally miss. It is this (strength, in the case of all human life, but weakness in the case of human life with an opposing ideology) that makes modern militaries attempt to make the enemy soldiers appear as "unhuman" as possible. Otherwise, despite how some may make boasts to the contrary, in truth most people - including law enforcement - are loath to take a life unless absolutely necessary in the course of self-defence or the protection of others.

As I said previously, I would prefer using the Mental/Social Health from the associated combat mechanic to handle mental illness. Essentially, meeting a specific condition or "crossing a breaking point" would cause the character to lose Mental Health due to stress in much the same way as fatigue or deprivation damages physical Health. There are two broad types of Breaking Points: when the character violates their conscience they suffer damage due to the guilt eating away at them and when the character is exposed to a traumatic stimulus they suffer damage due to terror/horror. Experience too much stress and the character may suffer from mental illness in much the same way they can suffer lasting injuries.

That covers normal people without supernatural powers. When dealing with characters who have supernatural powers, nWoD modified the Morality for splats by type. Vampires had Humanity, Werewolves had Harmony, Mages had Wisdom, and so on. Having low values made certain actions more difficult and each kind had a modified list of triggers compared to Morality, but otherwise they generally functioned the same down to the mental illnesses. As more books were made, new rules were made. Mechanics were added that were designed specifically to allow characters to violate their Morality without being penalized, and some splats altered Morality so drastically that the characters could go around killing people without a care in the world. This was all because the original mechanic was stupid to begin with because it was specifically meant to be a punishment.

So screw punishment. I'd give the splats Dark Side mechanics: they can become more powerful at the cost of their souls. Now losing Morality is actually a temptation rather than a punishment.

Integrity
I'm going to discuss Integrity separately from Morality because, while similar, it makes lots of changes. Most pertinently it tries to take control of the character away from the player. After crossing Breaking Points, players roll to see how their character acts, ranging from guilt to freak out to whatever. This is exactly what the original Morality system did.

Instead of that, I propose that players dictate how their character acts based on how much Mental Health damage they've taken. I'll discuss this more in the next section.

Mental & Social Combat
These sorts of systems can be hotly contested, but Exalted and GMC both have social combat mechanics. The nWoD has also explored it previous in both Mirrors and Danse Macabre (the latter's Social Combat abbreviated in Invite Only). As I've stated repeatedly, Morality/Integrity would be folded into this mechanic.

Furthermore, I question the sense behind separate Mental and Social Health. For reference, I've read the following series of articles:

• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2011/10/social-combat.html
  
• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2013/07/social-combat-part-i-social-hit-points.html
  
• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2013/08/social-combat-0-socialmental-hit-points.html
  
• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2013/08/social-combat-doing-damage.html
  
• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2013/08/social-combat-willpower-and.html
  
• http://www.realityrefracted.com/2013/08/social-combat-when-and-where.html
  

Continuing, in article #5 we're given an argument that Mental and Social Health are the same. Which would make sense: if you've lost all self-confidence it would be difficult to perform mentally-trying tasks and if you're mentally exhausted then it would be difficult to perform emotionally-trying tasks. It also stands to reason that Willpower would overlap with Mental/Social Health, since a character who has spent all their Willpower is said to be mentally/emotionally exhausted but there aren't any mechanical consequences for this. Ergo, Willpower would be the Mental/Social Health or closely tied to it; at least, I would make a distinction between Willpower as social backbone/mental energy and something like Sway/Power-Over.

Much as physical damage is divided into degrees of severity (bashing, lethal, aggravated), so would mental/social damage. The equivalent of bashing is taken to spend Willpower to boost rolls or resist social/mental combat and lethal is taken for crossing breaking points. The effects of losing Willpower would be mental/emotional exhaustion/stress, represented by "wound penalties" to social and mental rolls. How player role plays the effects of this exhaustion/stress would be up to them, depending on the type of damage and what caused it (e.g. hissy fit, listless and tired, panicking, etc). This also has the side effect of making Willpower much more important, since spending too much causes mental fatigue.

That makes sense for mundane situations, but what happens when you bring in supernatural powers of persuasion? Rather than taking a shortcut past it, mind control and similar effects are integrated into the Social/Mental Combat mechanics, much the same way powers like super speed and super strength are integrated directly into physical combat.

Conclusion
That what I have for now. Next time I'll discuss Merits and Conditions. I look forward to any critique.

EDIT: Just a little bonus post here. Borrowing a mechanic from new World of Darkness, Exalted and Scion, all PCs and NPCs have a statistic called Rank that roughly determines their power level. Rank has a number of benefits:

• The amount of Willpower a character can spend in one turn is equal to Rank/3 (rounded up).
• The amount of Essence a character can store is generally equal to Rank x10 or Rank^2.
• The amount of Essence a character can spend in one turn is equal to Rank x2.
• The maximum value a character can raise his Attributes and Skills is equal to 4 plus Rank/2 (rounded up).

Rank N/A: Ordinary people, mundane animals
Rank 0: Weakest of supernatural beings (e.g. ghouls, wolf-blooded/kinfolk, sleepwalkers/proximi, etc)
Rank 1-3: Heroes (PCs generally start at this level)
Rank 4-6: Demigods
Rank 7-9: Gods
Rank 10: Beyond manifest conception

Wow, I dont like Rank

Unifying it?
Good idea.

My own input:
Mental, Social and Physical health, they all affect each other.
Ever heard of psycho-somatic illnesses?
Or PTSD, that may be due to physical hurt or stress, but causes mental and social problems?
To me, social problems and mental is not the same things, but each of them, even the physical, may affect and worsen the other two.
But.
It seem very unnecessary to note "social damage", so let's just use physical and mental.

As for mental damage, I think willpower still works fine, and think damage to it should be noted as decreasing the max amount of points in it.

As for something to fuel special powers and magic, I suggest Chi/Ki.
Yes, several manga differentiates between magic and chi, as magic uses external power, and chi internal.
However, as Chi essentially exist in everything, thus even air and fire and water, I see no difference between manipulating ones own chi, or any "free" chi.

Also, you could take a look at my game pdf (link below), as it has a possible way of handling spells.
(It has a different combat resolution system, but the stats is based on WoD originally.)

Quote from: TristramEvans;808603Wow, I dont like Rank

That's okay. Would you please explain why?

Quote from: Catelf;808617Mental, Social and Physical health, they all affect each other.
Ever heard of psycho-somatic illnesses?
Or PTSD, that may be due to physical hurt or stress, but causes mental and social problems?
To me, social problems and mental is not the same things, but each of them, even the physical, may affect and worsen the other two.
But.
It seem very unnecessary to note "social damage", so let's just use physical and mental.

As for mental damage, I think willpower still works fine, and think damage to it should be noted as decreasing the max amount of points in it.

Yes, I agree. In Mirrors the system for social combat doesn't actually have a Health analogue. It uses a statistic called "Sway," which replaces the usual system of successes on social roles. When a character tries to exert influence on another character, the successes on their social roll are converted into Sway on the character being influence. Sway comes in "casual" and "intimate" degrees (similar to bashing and lethal damage), with an "unnatural" degree being created only by supernatural mind control (and which can cause side effects like derangements). The character being influenced can spend Willpower to cancel out Sway on a one-to-one basis.

For Willpower as mental health, I'm thinking of dividing it into degrees like with Sway and Health damage. Normal uses of Willpower to boost rolls, engage in mental combat and such cause the equivalent of bashing/casual. Stress due to crossing breaking points would be the equivalent of lethal/intimate and take longer to heal. I'm not sure whether there should be an aggravated/unnatural equivalent or if that should instead be covered by loss of Willpower dots (e.g. spending a dot to create a new vampire, losing dots due to soul loss, etc).

Quote from: Catelf;808617As for something to fuel special powers and magic, I suggest Chi/Ki.
Yes, several manga differentiates between magic and chi, as magic uses external power, and chi internal.
However, as Chi essentially exist in everything, thus even air and fire and water, I see no difference between manipulating ones own chi, or any "free" chi.

I'm using the generic word "essence" to refer to this, since I'll be writing the rules in English, which basically means the same thing. While all splats would have Essence, it means different things to each of them (vampires gain Essence from blood, changelings from emotion, etc).

Quote from: Catelf;808617Also, you could take a look at my game pdf (link below), as it has a possible way of handling spells.
(It has a different combat resolution system, but the stats is based on WoD originally.)

I'll take a look, thank you. Handling powers basically falls into one of two ways: either as static effects (e.g. astral projection, turning into an animal, super speed, etc) or as magical skills (e.g. necromancer, mentalist, fire wizard, wise woman, etc). Combat resolution is an iffy issue. I'm thinking I'd just provide different levels of detail/grit and let groups make their own choice what to use.

The social combat system in Danse Macabre works just like the regular combat system as in nWoD 1st edition.

I am familiar with that version of the WoD. I like the simplicity of the system. A few remarks. I didn't like the Virtue/Vice system, morality in general (acting evil getting crazy), the boring combat system (no dodge/parry roll, no damage roll) and some skills I never used like Empathy, Socialize, Expression and Politics. Science, Crafts and Academics didn't get much rolling either, just as Medicine and Animal Ken.

We didn't use morality, virtue/vice and no predator's taint in vampire so you could call it very basic.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;808782That's okay. Would you please explain why?

Just the sheer amount of calculations based around a disassociative concept. Just my personal taste though.

I think the cleanest iteration of Storyteller was the Trinity Storyteller system, because it was simplest -- one target number, for example, count successes, and a very simply combat system.  If I were going to do a unified Storyteller, I'd start there, and then start cataloging  dice tricks, like Exalted's dice adders, doublers, Aberrant's mega-attributes, and Adventure's amplified Backgrounds.  Then I'd decide from the beginning whether I want to use certain tricks like Adversarial Backgrounds, merits & flaws, and the like.  Catalog at the beginning what works and what you'll be using, and then rely heavily on those.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;808806The social combat system in Danse Macabre works just like the regular combat system as in nWoD 1st edition.

Yes. The social combat in Mirrors works differently.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;808806I am familiar with that version of the WoD. I like the simplicity of the system. A few remarks. I didn't like the Virtue/Vice system, morality in general (acting evil getting crazy), the boring combat system (no dodge/parry roll, no damage roll) and some skills I never used like Empathy, Socialize, Expression and Politics. Science, Crafts and Academics didn't get much rolling either, just as Medicine and Animal Ken.

We didn't use morality, virtue/vice and no predator's taint in vampire so you could call it very basic.

I would discard the Virtue/Vice mechanic entirely if no significant rules rely on it. (Exalted and Scion define Virtues differently.) I've already explained my view on Morality/Integrity. The predators taint has been reworked in Requiem 2nd edition into a social influence mechanic. I would prefer keeping combat simple: rather than fighting to the death, after one side is defeated the winner decides their fate (e.g. concede to demands, death, etc.).

Quote from: TristramEvans;808828Just the sheer amount of calculations based around a disassociative concept. Just my personal taste though.

Ah. Well, the calculated values will be presented in a table. I just wanted to provide the background formulas for reference and because I can't post a table here.

I've always been distantly familiar with ST, so I don't have any detailed advice.

However, I think system design in  general has shown that reward is much more effective than punishment.

That is, anything like Virtues and Humanity should probably work such that characters can do Something when cleaving to them, rather than cueing screwball comedy when violated.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;808877I think the cleanest iteration of Storyteller was the Trinity Storyteller system, because it was simplest -- one target number, for example, count successes, and a very simply combat system.  If I were going to do a unified Storyteller, I'd start there, and then start cataloging  dice tricks, like Exalted's dice adders, doublers, Aberrant's mega-attributes, and Adventure's amplified Backgrounds.  Then I'd decide from the beginning whether I want to use certain tricks like Adversarial Backgrounds, merits & flaws, and the like.  Catalog at the beginning what works and what you'll be using, and then rely heavily on those.

Trinity does have a dodge roll?

 In nWoD you roll attack - defense and the amount of successes is the damage. In second edition you apply the weapon mod. to the damage instead of the dice pool. That's better. But the dodge option is still dissapointing in that version.