Basic mechanic is 3d20, keep the middle value (exceptions below) and add bonuses from your attribute (and other stuff, also below). There are four attributes- Brawn, Finesse, Mind, and Spirit, and starting characters assign +3, +2, +1, and -1.
Results-wise, you get 1-4=Very Bad, 5-8=Bad, 9-12=Mixed, 13-16=Good, 17-20=Very Good. You might argue that this could result in bearingfailing forward, but even if so they at least provide a fucking table of what happens for each of these values! Hell yeah! (more below)
Also, it gives you the option of rolling for both PCs and enemies, or only rolling for the PCs like some other foofoo games.
Challenge Numbers: There are two forks of this game, Smooth and Gauntlet. The differences seem very small and specific but in this case the way you succeed is different, and- actually, shit, hold on.
Tavern Tales editions: So this game is dead, as in officially unsupported and released CC in 2017. The kickstarter edition, or last official edition, became the fork known as Smooth, and this is intended to be a (relatively) lighter ruleset with more narrative options. The other fork, Gauntlet, is intended to be slightly crunchier as far as stat blocks, movement, etc., but that also isn't 100% making sense to me. I will try to keep these two straight but I can guarantee I will fail.
Back to Challenge Numbers: This actually seems backwards, though I need a deeper dive into comparing the two forks. In Gauntlet you roll dice for damage, monsters have some stats and hit points, and there are more rules for positioning and such. In Smooth this stuff is taken care of by Challenge Numbers, which are somewhere between "number of successes required" and BitD "clocks." While technically the Gauntlet version is crunchier, it doesn't feel that way. Look at this nightmare from Smooth.
For Challenge numbers the MC creates a line of checkboxes that equal the number, and successes (called "Good Tales" because fuck me) tick off boxes. It actually specifies that apart from enemies with bigger health bars and challenges that take more time and effort, in a battle you can combine multiple enemies onto one line, separated by vertical lines. Then when you do a number of successes greater than or equal to one of the segments, you've defeated one of the monsters. How this is different from monsters with hit points, I don't know.
Increasing Decreasing/Rolls: This is what we would normally call "Advantage/Disadvantage." Pretty self-explanatory, if the situation is extra difficult you keep the lowest of 3d20, and vice versa. They stack and cancel each other, and having two Increases or two Decreases trigger results of 20 or 1 respectively.
Advantage: This is... FATE aspects, I guess? You use one of your traits or expend resources or whatever to spend an Advantage point and get a +1 bonus. Sometimes you spend a point and sometimes you roll for it, or just get it from the MC.
Bolstering: Bolstering or being Bolstered grants Advantage. I think. Honestly I am still having trouble deciphering what's what between the forks and also in general. The question remains, why the fuck is Bolstering a thing?
Basic Mechanic, again: The results above are for Gauntlet, with five degrees of success. In Smooth, there are only three degrees (bad, mixed, good). This keeps happening because it's a real pain in the ass to remember what's different between the two editions.
Summary: I've tried as hard as I can to just address the mechanics, and those boil down to 3d20, keep middle result, add modifiers and adjustments.
As far as the rest of it- I hope my fragmentary paragraphs reflect the confusion I was having figuring out the two forks. Basically, Gauntlet is a fairly standard lite heartbreaker, with stuff like damage dice and hit points and movement speeds feeling very familiar to people who have played D&D. Smooth is more narrative-focused, clearly trying to be closer to BearWorld or FATE. Both editions share the primary disadvantage of those two influences, which is reliance on MC whimsy/fiat on a spectrum of "A Lot"<--->"All".
Ultimately I feel like the two forks should be a single ruleset with all the variations being modular. That would be very cool, as I think a lot of the components of Tavern Tales are very slight improvements on their influences. The five degrees of success and table that tells you what that means in what context is superior to BearWorld's failforward foppery. Having stacking Increases/Decreases Advantage/Disadvantage etc. gives better granularity than 5e. If the Advantage Fate Point system can synch up with the rest of the mechanics it can be at least as good as FATE's. "Neutral Tales" in Smooth are just BearWorld "Moves" but the name is slightly less ass than "Moves". Read that Sitch, you filthy animals.
I feel like there is potential here, nothing particularly unique, but perhaps a nice collection of lite modular rules to plunder. The main question for the Den is what you think about the basic mechanic? Have at it.
