Imagination’s Toybox: Core Mechanic

February 12, 2010 4 comments

Everything in the game system is rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with one being the lowest possible value, 5 being “average”, and 10 being the highest possible value.

The game system uses 10-sided dice. These are available from most quality game retailers. If you don’t have access to 10-sided dice, you can use a deck of playing cards with the face cards (jokers, queens, kings, jacks) removed, and draw cards instead of rolling dice.

Your character’s ability score is the number of dice you roll when your character uses that ability. If your character wants to use an ability rated as 7, you roll 7 10-sided dice, or 7d10.

The difficulty rating for a task is determined by the gamemaster. The bigger the number, the harder the task. You need to roll that number or higher on your 10-sided dice. If the difficulty is 5, you need to roll 5 of higher.

The number of successes is how well the character did. Using the above examples, you roll 7d10 for your character’s ability. The difficulty is 5, so you need to roll 5 or higher. You roll 1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10. That is 4 successes, a quality result of 4 on scale of 1 to 10, a little below average.

Most competent characters will succeed most of the time. What is more important is the degree of success. Did the character barely make it, or did something spectacular just happen? This is one of the things that makes Imagination’s Toybox more than just a nuts-and-bolts tactical game and offers opportunities for storytelling.

That’s how the game works, at its most fundamental level. All other rules build from there.