User:Guybrush/storyteller draft

The Storyteller System is the basic set of game mechanics in the role-playing games published by White Wolf Game Studio. Games using this set of rules include the World of Darkness product line, Exalted, the Trinity line, and Street Fighter: The Role-Playing Game.

In the Storyteller system, a player character is defined by a set of Traits, most of which are rated on a scale of 1-5, though some may have a value of zero, and some traits are rated between 1 and 10. Traits are broken up in to categories:


 * Attributes are the character's inherent capabilities, including their Strength, Charisma and Intelligence. There are nine attributes, divided into three groups: Physical, Social and Mental. Generally Attributes have a minimum score of 1 for creatures of at least human ability.
 * Abilities are things the characters knows or can do, including things like combat skills, scientific or occult knowledge, and artistic ability. These are sometimes grouped into categories as well, though how varies between game lines.
 * Advantages is the catch-all category for Traits that do not fit into the others. This usually includes Willpower (the character's strength of will) and Backgrounds (traits that define a character's history and backstory), but also includes any supernatural or extraordinary powers or abilities (like Vampiric Disciplines, Aberrant powers, or the Charms and Spells of the Exalted).

The basic system for resolving conflicts involves rolling a dice pool of ten-sided dice. The size of the pool is usually determined by the character's rating in one or more Traits, the most typical for common tasks being Attribute + Ability. Pools usually consist of three to ten dice, though Exalted is notable (or infamous) for requiring upwards of twenty or thirty dice to be rolled at a time.

Example: A "Dexterity + Melee" roll for a character with a Dexterity score of 4 and a Melee score of 3 involves 7 dice.

When a character wishes to attempt an action, the player rolls a number of dice equal to relevant dice pool. Each die that comes up with a specific number or higher is considered a success. The number which must be rolled, and how many successes must be scored, varies depending on the situation and which version of the system is used.


 * In the World of Darkness game-line, the number which must be rolled is known as the "difficulty" and is dictated by the Storyteller, ranging from 2 to 10. The default for most actions is 6. The Storyteller may also require multiple successes.
 * Exalted and the Trinty series use a flat "target number" for almost all rolls, 7 for Exalted and 6 in Trinity. In these games, the "difficulty" indicates how many additional successes beyond the first must be scored.
 * The new Storytelling System, which replaces Storyteller in the new World of Darkness, uses a fixed target number of 8 for all rolls.

Example: a roll of five dice with 7, 7, 3, 2, and 10 would be a total of 3 successes, assuming a target number of 7.

The World of Darkness games offered a "specialty" rule, where a result of 10 on any die counted as two successes when the roll pertained to some specialty the character had trained in or was adept at. In Exalted, 10s automatically count as two successes for non-mortal characters (for example, Exalted, spirits, Fair Folk, and other magical beings).

In the World of Darkness games, each 1 rolled subtracts an effective success. In Exalted, 1s do not count unless the player also rolled no successes. In either case, the result is a "botch", or a spectacularly bad failure at the task being attempted (for example, a player who botched a roll to jump off a train might break a leg).

Ordinarily, only a single success is required to achieve the player's goal. In many cases, particularly trying or challenging tasks are assigned a threshold, a minimum number of successes needed to succeed. For example, convincing a suspicious guard of your good intentions may be a "threshold 3" roll; it is made harder because of the guard's wary nature, and the player must roll at least 3 successes to succeed at all. In Exalted, the term is "difficulty", and the roll required (7 or above) is called the "target number". This difference can sometimes be confusing for players moving from one system to the other, because of the use of "difficulty" in the World of Darkness rules.

More complicated variations on this basic idea are introduced in each game-book's rules, such as opposed rolls (where two or more characters roll to achieve more successes than the others).

The new World of Darkness line from White Wolf uses the Storytelling System, more or less a rewrite of the Storyteller System drawing from various revisions from the system's history.

See also d20 System.

Category:Role-playing games