Myths And Math

 

Simulation and Abstraction

There are many different types of table top role-playing games (often called TTRPGs or just RPGs for short) similar to Mythmaster, each with its own mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. Some RPGs are very story focused, with a small number of rules and a wide margin for players to collaborate on their own shared story. Other systems have many hundreds of pages of baroque rules dealing with all sorts of special cases.

Mythmaster aims to have as few rules as possible, and to keep those rules as generalizable and extensible as possible. Rather than providing explicit rules for attacking a target from horseback with a bow and arrow, or for operating a business as a cobbler in a middle class district in a city, Mythmaster provides a framework that should allow Directors and players to easily agree on new rules on an ad hoc basis.

By relying on an abstract, low-level simulation of decision, actions and results, Mythmaster allows for a rich, systemic, and fair play experience that can progress at a reasonable pace. By empowering the Director and the players with a broad set of coherent systems, and supporting them with a light, but robust simulation, Mythmaster seeks to provide an experience that balances fair, systemic and dynamic play, with the opportunity for deep character development and exciting stories.

Math

As with any RPG, Mythmaster uses some math. Most of it is basic arithmetic and should be accessible to school children. Even if some of the math in these Core Rules seems advanced to you, the game is straightforward enough that you will be able to pick up the math as you go and it will not be a barrier to enjoying the game. Of the new skills you may develop playing Mythmaster; self-confidence, role-playing, public speaking, problem-solving, co-operation, storytelling, independent thinking, and many others, math is probably the easiest thing you will find in this game.

There are a couple of core elements of the game that have to do with numbers that are worth pointing out from the beginning. The first is how the game uses dice, and the second is how the game uses units, scale maps and hex grids. While the maps and grids are optional, the dice are not.

Dice

Mythmaster uses the full range of dice used by many other table top role-playing games. These include the Platonic solids; the tetrahedron (the four-sided die), the hexahedron (the standard six-sided die), the octahedron (the eight-sided die), the dodecahedron (the twelve-sided die) and the icosahedron (the twenty-sided die). Additionally, Mythmaster uses the decahedron (the ten-sided die), and also paired decahedrons (the hundred-sided dice).

For practical reasons it is recommended that each player have their own set of dice, and in many situations having a second or even a third set can be useful. Players can share dice, of course, but who wants to use someone else’s cursed dice?

Dice Reference Conventions

Mythmaster uses the standard conventions for refering to dice and combinations of dice. Throughout these rules you will see refereneces to dice such as d100, or 3d6, or 4d8+2.

When referring to dice, the number after the letter 'd' tells you the type of die needed, and the number before the before the letter 'd' tells you how many dice are needed. If there is no number before the 'd', it is assumed to be a singular die.

Examples:
• 'roll 3d6' means 'roll three six-sided dice and add them together'
• 'roll 2d10' means 'roll two ten-sided dice and add them together'
• 'roll a d12' means 'roll one twelve-sided die'

Occassionally, you will be called upon to roll a d100, which is a hundred-sided die. Probably you do not have a die with 100 sides. That's okay, because we can use two ten-sided dice to generate a number between one and one hundred (which is different from rolling 2d10 and adding them together to get a result between two and twenty). To roll a d100, take two recognizably different ten-sided dice (usually two different colours), and declare which of them represents the 10's column, and which of them represents the 1's column. Roll the two dice simultaneously.

Examples:
• You roll a three on the 10's die and a seven on the 1's die. Result: 37
• You roll a six on the 10's die and a zero on the 1's die. Result: 60
• You roll a zero on the 10's die and a one on the 1's die. Result: 1
• You roll a five on the 10's die and a five on the 1's die. Result: 55
• You roll a zero on the 10's die and a zero on the 1's die. Result: 100

Sometimes the rules may call for you to roll a ‘d2’ or a ‘d3’, or a ‘d5’ this means rolling a ‘two-sided die’, a ’three-sided die’ or a ’five-sided die’ respectively. For a d2, use a standard six-sided die. A result of 1-3 counts as a ‘1’ and a result of 4-6 counts as a ‘2’. For a d3, 1-2 counts as ‘1’, 3-4 counts as ‘2’ and ‘5-6’ counts as ‘3’. For a d5 - as you’ve probably guessed, roll a d10 and divide the result by two. Simple.

Finally, you will frequently see a notation that includes an addition or a subtraction. This simply means you need to roll the indicated dice, calculate the total, and then perform the indicated operation.

Examples:
• 4d8+2 means 'roll four eight-sided dice, and then add two to the total'
• d4+4 means 'roll one four-sided die, and then add four to the total'
• d100-8 means 'roll a hundred-sided die, and then subtract eight from the total'

Probability

In Mythmaster, the primary method used to resolve the outcome of most actions you attempt is through a Challenge. Challenges require you to roll 2d10 to generate a number between two and twenty, which will then be added to some other number.

It is useful, though not necessary, to understand that when you roll 2d10 to generate number between 2-20, it is NOT that case that each possible result between two and twenty is equally likely to come up. In fact, you have the same chance of rolling exactly 11 (10%) as you do of rolling either a 2, 3, 4 or 5 (1%, 2%, 3% and 4% respectively). This is simply because when rolling 2d10 there are many more combinations of how the dice can land that yield results in the middle of the range (say, between 9-13) than yield results toward the ends of the range (say, below 5 or above 17).

For reference, the probability of various outcomes when rolling 2d10 are illustrated below. You will never need to reference this table during play, but it is useful to keep in mind that the probability of rolling certain results diminishes much more rapidly than you might expect the higher or lower the target value.

Distance, Scale and Speed

Mythmaster uses the metric system for calculating weights, distances, speeds and other measures. Additionally, many distances, including the ranges for spells or weapons, and the distances a character can move, are listed in hexes, with one hex equalling two meters. If you see the range of a spell listed as 10h, that means the range is 10 hexes, or 20 meters.

Hex grids are a convention used in many tabletop games for keeping track of distance; a grid of a fixed scale is placed over a map so that distances and ranges can be easily counted. A ‘battle map’ is a top-down map of an environment - such as a road with a wooden bridge crossing a stream - with a hex grid overlaid to indicate scale. Players and the director can then use miniatures or other tokens to indicate where their characters are, what they can see, how far they can move, what is in range of their weapons or spells, etc.

Because each side of a hex covers a 60 degree arc, most angular measurements in Mythmaster use a 60 degree increment to make calculation of arcs simple. Radii - such as the area impacted by an explosion - are also given in hexes, but the central hex where the explosion occurs is considered radius 0, so a blast that had a 3 hex radius would effect the targeted hex, and each hex in every direction out to three hexes distant. (Technically, this means the radius of a 3 hex blast is actually 3.5 hexes.)

Movement in Mythmaster is defined in hexes per turn (h/t). Your Movement is how many hexes your character can move in a turn. A turn in Mythmaster is 5 seconds long. This means that a character with a Move of 6 h/t actually moves 12 meters in 5 seconds, which translates to 2.4 m/s in case you need to know it.