>>69661I've put some thought in trying to make the system as bare bones as absolutely possible and this is what I have so far. Each successive iteration I've been stripping out more and more until this is what I'm left with so far. I still don't know if the categories quite make sense/work in my playtesting so far, even though I can force them to work…
My main issue atm are the action/theme oracles. In practice, I find I do need them to be that small so that the whole system "fits in human memory" without too much effort for a new player. By making them "multiplicative" I can capitalize on the exponential compression to really expand their power, e.g., you "roll" 3 times to get a word for each category, and the word combination defines the theme/noun or action/verb. This allows me to "fit" a lot more words into the same space. However, I find the theme/action oracle to still be really abstract to work with in playtesting so far. It's hard to bullshit up a MBTI/Compass system to define nouns/verbs.
The fate oracle I think works well when you play with the principle of "If you aren't willing to accept 3:7 or 7:3 odds, then don't bother with the fate oracle and just have it happen in the game."
Idk, I'm going to do a bit more playtesting to see if I can even out the action/theme oracle kinks.
I've got a more complete writeup I'm working on w/examples/etc., but I wanted to make sure I could at least get it not only on a single page, but on a single page with plenty of white space and DEAD simple (it's got to be done all in your head!).
Again, I don't know if I'll be arsed to finish up the full writeup, but whatever. I find the full writeup interesting as it not only explains all the design choices so far, but also explains what I've noticed in some other playtesting, which is that the system seems to have far more applications than just games.