OOC: Dance Dance Revolution Groove Radar Rating for NPCs

In a recent episode of the Stop, Hack, and Roll podcast, hosts Brandon and James discussed using the Dance Dance Revolution Groove Radar as a replacement for the standard six-stat set for player characters. I’ll admit, I almost immediately stopped paying attention to what they actually said about it, because I begant to think about how it would instead work as a great replacement for Challenge Rating (I know they briefly touch on it at the end of the discussion). Rather than a single number to represent how difficult a monster is to defeat, the Groove Radar would be able to give a visual representation of how a monster will work in a fight. This is not new exactly, certainly more traditional video games have used this kind of ranking system before, though I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows of a TTRPG that uses something similar.

This article is going to see how closely we can hew to DDR’s Groove radar. To start, let’s take the five axes of difficulty and see how we can port them over to begin crafting an NPC difficulty system around them.

Stream – Step density (General step/time ratio)
Voltage – Peak Density of Steps (Most steps in one measure)
Chaos – Number of off-beat steps (breaking rhythm)
Air – Double Steps and Shock Arrows (Simultaneous actions and forbidden actions)
Freeze – Freeze Steps (press and hold)

Stream essentially represents an average pace over the course of a set amount of time, so I think that our Stream can represent the expected damage/harm over a round of conflict. In a Lancer- or Pathfinder 2e-like game, it would maybe change how many action pips the enemy gets, or how many pips it costs for basic actions.

Voltage would represent the peak damage/harm the NPC is capable of. This might necessitate a tactics blurb, talking about what the optimal use of actions is for maximum harm would be.

Chaos could represent the breadth or variety of attacks. Alternatively, it could act as an “off-beat attack” allowing the enemy to act out of turn (think 5e legendary actions). The more options an enemy has to take, the more variables the players will have to prepare for, or be surprised by.

Air represents simultaneous and forbidden actions. Simultaneous actions feel like they require some sort of coordination between players. Perhaps the enemy has a shield that parries the first attack in a round, meaning the players have to decide who “wastes” their turn. The shock arrows in DDR are a restriction, but also a fakeout, potentially tricking you if you don’t pay attention. Because RPGs generally aren’t about real-world reaction time, I think it’s enough to say that the forbidden actions should simply punish the normal actions the players want to take. Perhaps an enemy could be holding a fragile item that the party is meant to retrieve, and any damage they take is also applied to the item. This one is pretty out there at the moment, and would likely be reserved for more difficult enemies.

Freeze calls for the player to hold one body part still. This could maybe incorporate lair effects such as vines that damage movement. Another option could be to have some required action every round, like a lever to be held to stop the self-destruct from going off.

Stream, Voltage, and Chaos are all pretty straightforward, though there is a certain level of overlap between Stream and Voltage that I think we could maybe reshuffle, but I won’t worry about for now. Similarly, Freeze and Air seem like they have a bit of overlap, as they both represent restrictions on the player. Perhaps they could be combined in some way, and a new rating added to represent the duration of a fight/song. Perhaps Stamina? That seems like it fits the naming of both the monster and PC’s ability to stay in a fight. But that can wait for a future article. For now, I’m going to stick with what we have before this article becomes something unwieldy, or, God forbid, a full game.

Let’s make a monster and see how it works out. I want to come up with something that shows the breadth of the Groove Radar. I think a necromancer fits the bill quite nicely. To me, a necromancer represents a dangerous enemy who is also fairly weak. They have a high Chaos because of how many spells and minions they have at their disposal, once you can get in close they aren’t going to be able to put up much of a fight. High Voltage shows that with the right combination of those minions herding PCs, the right AoE spell can deal a lot of damage. But they’re not a lich, so they don’t have some secret item that needs to be destroyed, and any old sword or arrow will do the trick. I think this is about how the chart would look at the top of the stat block.

I like the look of that, but I can’t help but feel like there’s something more we can do besides just making Challenge Rating more work for whoever gets to do layout while making an RPG book. I think I’d like to return to this, and see what happens when we lean deeper into the DDR mindset, where each encounter is there for the PCs to survive and be graded on, rather than something for them to defeat as soon as possible.