HOW THE GAME SYSTEM WORKS

Warriors of the Night Wind uses the Silhouette system designed by Dream Pod 9.  Those of you who want a real in depth understanding of it should pick up one of their fine products, such as Heavy Gear, The Jovian Chronicles, or Tribe 8.  Here is a brief overview (hopefully enough of one to get you started, but not so detailed as to get me sued.)

Silhouette uses d6's.  For most skills and actions you roll a number of d6's equal to your skill level.  For example, if you have a skill level of 3 with Warrior Skin Piloting, you would roll 3d6 when making a test.  The results of the die roll are NOT added together.  Instead, the highest die is considered the outcome of the die roll.  If more than one "6" is rolled, each additional "6" after the first adds +1 to the total.  If every die rolled is a "1" then the roll is considered to be a fumble and counts as an overall result of "0" and no modifiers may change this value.   Fumbles are usually fairly benign compared to many game systems, but there are exceptions.  If you fumble a driving roll when attempting to make a turn at 180 km/h, expect catastrophic results.  Likewise if you botch an attempt to fly a supersonic aircraft between two trees.  Finally, fumbling a defense roll will cause you to take a rather high amount of damage, as the amount of damage done is based on the difference between your defense roll and your opponent's attack roll.

Want to use a skill you don't have?  Roll 2d6 and take the lowest.  If the low die is a "1" it counts as a fumble.

The total of die rolls are often influenced by modifiers.  Modifiers are added to the total of the die roll.  If negative modifiers lower the total below zero, the final result is always zero, and cannot go any lower.
 

Action Tests

An Action Test consists of a die roll where the result is compared to a fixed value called a Threshold.  Threshold values reflect the difficulty of the task.  Higher Thresholds indicate more difficult situations.

Because of the peculiar probability curve of the six-faced die system used by Silhouette, the difficulty level of the Thresholds increases dramatically after 7.

If the die total - with any situation modifiers added - surpasses the chosen Threshold, the test succeeds.  The degree of success is defined by the Margin of Success (MoS); a value equal to the dice roll (plus modifiers) minus the Threshold.  The magnitude of the MoS reflects the success of the Action Test.  For example a Mos of 1 is a marginal success, while a Mos of 6 would be a spectacular success.

If the total die roll is less than the Threshold, the test fails.

If the total of the die roll and the Threshold are equal, a draw occurs.  This indicates that there is an ambiguous result in most cases.  In combat situations, draws are decided in favor of the defender.

For skill rolls, the number of dice rolled equals the skill level.  The governing Attribute provides a modifier.

EXAMPLE:  Huzgotabotl has an AGI of +1 and a skill in Acrobatics of 3.  When making a test, Huzgotabotl will roll 3 dice, and add +1 to the result of the highest.
 

Last update: 18 October 2001

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