Threat Levels

All this week, I've been talking about my objectives for Killshot: Reloaded and the goal of creating a more advanced version of the rules. Today, I reveal my plan to deal with advanced jobs and difficulty rolls: threat levels.

As characters in Killshot gain more experience, they take on more complex and dangerous jobs. While opponents surely get better, difficulty rolls and challenges generally do not. Characters improve and master such tasks to increase their chances of success, but in a game, this creates a situation where the only way to keep a challenge  on par with the opponents is to increase the number of dice. If we simply add on more dice for the sake of adding on more dice, we're simply stating the original version of the game is broken.

So we have to increase the threat characters face; the repercussions for failure as their work brings them uncomfortably closer to dangerous or high-profile figures.

Ramping Up The Difficulty

Increasing the difficulty in a game is much like
motorcycle jumping. Too much throttle and you overshoot your mark;
not enough and you land flat on your face. 

I am the Warden!!

In my last post, I talked about the major challenge for Killshot: Reloaded, the upcoming supplement for tabletop's deadliest game. I want to use it as an extension for more experienced characters, particularly with Operation: Killshot, the international espionage theme.

As we all know (and if you've never read or played Killshot yet, you can fix that problem with this link), active rolls attempted against non-opponents are challenged by difficulty levels, each one increasing the number of circumstance dice applied to the Director's opposed roll. By taking on experienced characters - such as those with over 50 training points - the difficulty has to keep up or else the game starts to collapse in on itself.

So here's the issue I'm addressing. Using the rules for difficulty levels as is, I could simply add more difficulty levels with more d10s. In all honesty, that's what I'm trying to avoid. As much as this system is built on dice pools, it can get really out of hand as the experience goes up.

And that's what we're here to brainstorm today. How do we address difficulty levels for experienced characters? Let's begin with some ideas I'm cranially tossing about at the moment.

Killshot... Advanced?

I am the Warden!!

On Thursday, I finally sat down and used a series of words to form sentences, which collected into paragraphs to create an introduction for Killshot: Reloaded. The next supplement has begun.

What was nice about nailing down the intro's first draft was settling on the key aspects for each theme. I had been tossing around a few ideas, collecting notes, yet never truly agreeing on anything save for the general idea and it's name. Having forced myself to make a decision, I can honestly say I'm really looking forward to the challenge this supplement will offer.

Having a basis to work from, I can now sit back and assess what this book is truly about. It's not just about new themes; it's about stepping this game up a notch. An advanced version of Killshot, if you will. I'm going with the assumption many characters (now that "assassin" will not always apply) will be close to 50 training points in total or simply looking to mix it up a little from their previous exploits. I realize now this book has to meet and exceed that challenge in many ways, including handling "higher level" characters.

Let's go through each one by one, shall we?