Conflict Basics #

I am going to assume you want some kind of conflict, drama, or something in your game, regardless of how low the stakes are. If you think you don’t, what exactly is your game anyway?

This doesn’t mean it requires a dedicated subsystem, however! Even games that theoretically edge into a type of conflict can choose to sidestep it in favor of something else. Adding a prominent subsystem of conflict to a game draws attention to that kind of conflict and that increased emphasis may not actually contribute to the kinds of stories you’re trying to tell via gameplay.

Valiant Horizon #

This is a game about heedless heroism. As such, Danger doesn’t really apply here, despite what a lot of other “heroic fantasy” style games do; most of that is abstracted away. It’s a game about being big heroes with your friends, however, so Skirmish fits the bill well. Duels could, but that’s more of a 1 on 1 focus which isn’t the goal, so they’re omitted.

NULL_SPACE #

This is a game about frequently being at risk of personal harm, either by actively hostile enemies or just by the environment as a whole. In the basic game, this is all more or less treated as Danger. Modules will bring in Skirmish (by fleshing out combat on foot) and Duel (by fleshing out ship combat).

Machinations of Court and Frame #

This is a game about representatives of noble houses clashing against each other, often on a proper battlefield. While narratively it might technically make sense to have them engage in group combat (Skirmish), that would likely pull the emphasis out to something unnecessary. Therefore, that kind of thing is de-emphasized and does not warrant a proper subsystem, whereas Duels require that kind of attention and emphasis. Danger can exist, but not in the physical sense, as you’re largely assumed to be shielded from physical harm aside from clashes between the worthy; instead, it can exist in the social sense.

In some way, shape, or form, Endurance is a character or situation’s capacity to stay a going concern in the narrative, either in the short term or the long term. This has common names like HP, Health, Composure, Vigor, and Structure.

Mapping to challenges and goals, a Simple Challenge version of this is purely “on or off”: a character or situation is neutralized with one successful outcome. For a complex challenge version of this, the Endurance of a given character or situation is how many complications prevent a similar neutralization. A more numeric version is treated as a Goal or Threat (for instance, a more traditional HP situation): Endurance, in that case, is the Threshold.

An important classification for Endurance is to define it as short term or long term:

• Short term Endurance is very transient. It’s either reset in a very lenient timeframe, with fairly minor actions, or by using common resources: very frequently this can be within a scene or outside of it.
• Long term Endurance is of greater import. It’s either reset in a stricter timeframe, by using more scarce resources, or by threatening other situations (like limited time).

For non-player characters, in most cases these can be the same. For player characters, however, this greatly changes the kinds of risk they’ll be willing (or able) to take and how serious the kinds of actions that reduce it are considered.

For numeric goal/threat-based Endurance bear in mind that an average Low Die Effect is about 2, an average Mid Die Effect is about 3.5, and an average High Die Effect is about 5. For player characters, I would recommend putting Endurance in the 10-18 range (and practically, 12-15 in most cases) as a result:

• 10 Endurance will withstand about 5 smaller, 3 middling, or 2 larger instances of Harm.
• 12 Endurance will withstand about 6 smaller, 4 middling, or 2-3 larger instances of Harm.
• 15 Endurance will withstand about 8 smaller, 5 middling, or 3 larger instances of Harm.
• 18 Endurance will withstand about 9 smaller, 6 middling, or 3-4 larger instances of Harm

You can also have more than one kind of Endurance, or split how player characters and other characters are treated. Sometimes these stack up on each other, or sometimes these are for separate purposes. As a design space, you can also introduce a half-Endurance Threshold to trigger or gate certain effects - common names are things like Staggered, Winded, Bloodied, Damaged, and so on. (If using multiple kinds of Endurance, you can instead trigger this off of one of the kinds being depleted.)

Valiant Horizon #

Valiant Horizon’s Endurance is Vigor. It’s a very short-term form of Endurance, as it’s restored at the end of combat or by using various character abilities. When characters are at half or lower, they’re Winded, which triggers or alters various abilities.

Player characters have 10-15 Vigor depending on their Class.

NULL_SPACE #

NULL_SPACE has two kinds of Endurance for player characters. One is just called Endurance: it represents an ability to avoid rather than withstand bodily injury. It’s more short-term, as easily-found items restore it and it comes back with rest. The other kind is called Health: it’s more long-term, as it requires proper medical care to restore and diminishing Health represents taking actual bodily harm.

All player characters start with 6 Health and 4 Endurance: this means that by default, a character can take 2 smaller, 1-2 middling, or 1 larger instance of Harm before Health is affected. This can be augmented by equipment (which usually only increases Endurance) or traits (which can increase Health and/or Endurance).

Non-player characters and challenges, however, aren’t given the same treatment by default. They’re more like simple or complex challenges: one successful player action can neutralize the challenge represented by a particular unprotected/untrained character, while more sophisticated characters and challenges might have complications. They might be represented instead by Goals for challenges where tension arises more from spending time and resources pushing the ball forward as a whole than any individual action taken.

Machinations of Court And Frame #

Dueling mechs have Structure. It’s fairly long-term, in the sense that it can’t be restored until physically repaired; but it can also be kind of short-term in the sense that it mostly matters in the context of a single duel and frequently characters can send it off to be repaired afterwards.

Mechs have 12-18 Structure depending on size. When they’re at half or lower, they’re Compromised, which triggers or alters various abilities.

If Endurance is your ability to stay in the narrative, Harm is any event that brings a character closer to leaving the narrative, while Completion is anything that brings a situation closer to being resolved. This has other common names like damage and stress.

Numeric Harm/Completion effectively treats part of a situation as a Goal or Threat. In this configuration, this is the Progress: typically Harm/Completion is expressed as Low, Mid, or High Die depending on the source and how impactful it’s intended to be. These can have “types”, which allows us to introduce a few ideas:

• Resistance: Step down incoming Harm/Completion of that type.
• Vulnerability: Step up incoming Harm/Completion of that type.
• Invulnerability: Divide incoming Harm/Completion of that type by 5, round down.

Non-numeric Harm/Completion is considered at a “success” level, where one instance of “harm” or “completion” is enough to resolve a simple challenge or remove a complication. Here are those same concepts, translated over:

• Resistance: A complication that usually needs to be removed before the challenge is completed.
• Vulnerability: A property of the challenge that indicates it’s more readily doable if cleared a certain way (for instance, bypassing a step of removing Resistance)
• Invulnerability: A complication that can’t be removed, meaning that it needs to be actively bypassed in some way or another.

It usually doesn’t “type” harm in the same way; rather, specific complications interact with specific features.

Valiant Horizon #

There are two types of Harm: Magical and Weapon, both of which reduce Vigor. A lot of abilities will grant Vulnerability or Resistance to one of these, and several Classes have built-in Resistance to one kind of Harm or the other.

NULL_SPACE #

Harm is player-facing. There are three types of Harm: Kinetic, Ballistic, and Hazard. The first two reduce Endurance before Health, but Hazard Harm reduces Health directly (making it far more dangerous, and not to be employed lightly). Various pieces of equipment can grant Resistance and/or Vulnerability, with some very specialized pieces of equipment granting Invulnerability to certain kinds of Harm (i.e. a hard vacuum suit granting Hazard Invulnerability).

Challenges, on the other hand, represent anything from technical problems to hostile enemies and are non-numeric.

Machinations of Court And Frame #

Harm affects all duel opponents equally. It’s untyped, so Resistance and Vulnerability are more “generic”. However, there are other kinds of defenses: Evasion X prevents all attacks with Harm greater than or equal to X from dealing Harm, and Block X prevents all attacks with Harm less than or equal to X from dealing Harm. (There’s no undoing Harm in a duel, so different defenses make sense to compensate.)

What happens when Harm reduces a kind of Endurance to 0? In most cases, the answer is defeat: this is the act of being removed from conflict. In some cases this is permanent for the scene (or for the narrative as a whole), but in other cases characters can go in and out.

In some cases, it might make sense for loss of one kind of Endurance to instead create a penalty or put a character in a different position, much like half-Endurance triggers mentioned earlier.

Valiant Horizon #

Defeat never means anything permanent for player characters unless they opt into it: even in cases where all players are defeated, that’s explicitly stated as an opportunity to change the flow of the story. In combat, however, player characters can be revived from the brink of defeat by other characters.

When it comes to enemies opposing them, players always have the option to decide what defeating them means when their vigor hits 0.

NULL_SPACE #

When characters have 0 Endurance, Harm gets redirected to Health. When characters have 0 Health, however, they’re always incapacitated and run a risk of dying.

Defeat of characters in combat is assumed to kill them if proper, lethal weaponry is used; if intentionally nonlethal weaponry or more unsuitable means are used, it’s more questionable.