ShichiNoBushi
Sandokiri
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- Posted: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 21:25:37 +0000
I'll have several observations, pretty much for each chapter. Please make of them what you will.
1. CHARACTER CREATION:
a) Why are those five attributes, and their fiveness, to be explicitly taken as immutable?
b) What are those five attributes?
Since this is the point at which a new player will be statting out the character, these need to be defined. As an experienced RPGer especially, your lack creates confusion in me:
-Does Strength (as in D&D) or Agility (as in WEG Star Wars) govern melee accuracy? Or neither, as in Pokemon?
-Is Spirit like Soul from BESM, Wisdom from D&D, resistance to Mind skills and magic like Final Fantasy, or something else?
-Which stat governs the social skills?
While these are answered later, they're not even addressed in the statting-out step. I should at least have a general idea of what I'm good at if I slot in a positive number, or what weakness I'm imposing if I go negative. Speaking of which:
c) Do I get anything in game mechanics if I do go negative with a stat?
d) The starting gear makes no sense whatsoever.
-Why should it be the case that someone proficient in, say, Rifles or Naginata should get a substantial boon in the form of a "basic" weapon, while a karateka (or other unarmed martial artist) gets nothing for the skill?
Also, since you named Ballistics as a skill, what would qualify as a basic Howitzer?
-"Wealth" is a trait, not a gear. What is the world's actual money system, and how do I know how much of it I have relative to the cost of stuff (or just of living better than the school cafeteria's offerings?)
-Why is it that only those that are generally technologically backward (ie, the Decades Behind negative trait) are not assumed to start with cell phones?
I'm assuming a fairly realistic society other than the magic - something like X-Men Evolution or To Aru Majutsu no Index - for the setting; but even then, variables such as parent social class and simple volition would tend to make the cellphone assumption a bit less... stable.
----
2. SKILLS
a) You give the example of Quantum Physics being overly specific compared to more general physics; but also give examples of definite redundancies such as:
-Archery, bow, kendo, and kenjutsu (but not horse archery)
-Polearms and naginata-jutsu (a naginata is a specific polearm; and assuredly a halberd is not used the same way as a berdysh, pike, or Luzerne hammer.
-Does "sword" include all swords that are not fencing swords or katana? So there's no difference between a kopis, a falcata, a scimitar, a Viking-era sword, and a claymore?
-Wouldn't "general knowledge" be the definition of an overly broad skill?
-Why is child care a social skill, but teaching a trade?
-What does it mean to say that Stealth is a trade?
There are others, but in general it seems that many skills are either too general or too specific.
----
3. TRAITS AND FLAWS
a) Since people only get one trait normally, why are the traits so horribly unequal in their effects on characters?
For example, all of the traits that affect substantial game mechanics (eg, combat) are pure bonuses; and Wealthy is an initial +5 AND a continual passive increase to the Wealth pseudo-attribute! However, skills that aren't substantial get +3 to some category, and -2 to some other category.
I can't even draw an analogy to Pathfinder here, since PF traits are almost on par with feats, and rarely if ever carry internal flaws.
b) Why do Clumsy and Jinx include the idea that these can trigger at other players' discretion? I'd do Clumsy as something like "You receive a -2 on Agility-based checks during combat, or in other stressful situations; you may avoid this flaw's effect by taking twice the amount of time to complete a task" for example.
Jinx also seems like a cop-out flaw, as it doesn't affect the person but people around the person. Instead, "When you roll triples, double 1s, or double anything else and a 1, treat all dice as showing a 1." That's a decently high trigger rate.
c) Why can't characters "cold turkey" out of Addiction, given enough RP time and support?
---
4: EQUIPMENT
Here I'm going to focus on Wealth.
a) What's driving your decision to use a check-to-acquire system for items?
b) How much is Wealth reduced on a successful acquisition? You only say "1 or more."
c) If the Addiction flaw is defined by the need to fuel the addiction, then why shouldn't it affect Wealth somehow (for example, through a +2 to Wealth checks made to obtain the object of addiction, and a -2 to other Wealth checks caused by a reluctance to spend money on other things?)
---
7: CLASSES
"The soldier covers many of the roles in combat whether melee combat, ranged combat, or even possibly as a tactician or other leader. They control and conquer the battlefield mostly through martial techniques."
By modern supernatural high school setting, do you mean the SeeD Gardens from Final Fantasy 8?
That's what I have for the moment.
1. CHARACTER CREATION:
a) Why are those five attributes, and their fiveness, to be explicitly taken as immutable?
b) What are those five attributes?
Since this is the point at which a new player will be statting out the character, these need to be defined. As an experienced RPGer especially, your lack creates confusion in me:
-Does Strength (as in D&D) or Agility (as in WEG Star Wars) govern melee accuracy? Or neither, as in Pokemon?
-Is Spirit like Soul from BESM, Wisdom from D&D, resistance to Mind skills and magic like Final Fantasy, or something else?
-Which stat governs the social skills?
While these are answered later, they're not even addressed in the statting-out step. I should at least have a general idea of what I'm good at if I slot in a positive number, or what weakness I'm imposing if I go negative. Speaking of which:
c) Do I get anything in game mechanics if I do go negative with a stat?
d) The starting gear makes no sense whatsoever.
-Why should it be the case that someone proficient in, say, Rifles or Naginata should get a substantial boon in the form of a "basic" weapon, while a karateka (or other unarmed martial artist) gets nothing for the skill?
Also, since you named Ballistics as a skill, what would qualify as a basic Howitzer?
-"Wealth" is a trait, not a gear. What is the world's actual money system, and how do I know how much of it I have relative to the cost of stuff (or just of living better than the school cafeteria's offerings?)
-Why is it that only those that are generally technologically backward (ie, the Decades Behind negative trait) are not assumed to start with cell phones?
I'm assuming a fairly realistic society other than the magic - something like X-Men Evolution or To Aru Majutsu no Index - for the setting; but even then, variables such as parent social class and simple volition would tend to make the cellphone assumption a bit less... stable.
----
2. SKILLS
a) You give the example of Quantum Physics being overly specific compared to more general physics; but also give examples of definite redundancies such as:
-Archery, bow, kendo, and kenjutsu (but not horse archery)
-Polearms and naginata-jutsu (a naginata is a specific polearm; and assuredly a halberd is not used the same way as a berdysh, pike, or Luzerne hammer.
-Does "sword" include all swords that are not fencing swords or katana? So there's no difference between a kopis, a falcata, a scimitar, a Viking-era sword, and a claymore?
-Wouldn't "general knowledge" be the definition of an overly broad skill?
-Why is child care a social skill, but teaching a trade?
-What does it mean to say that Stealth is a trade?
There are others, but in general it seems that many skills are either too general or too specific.
----
3. TRAITS AND FLAWS
a) Since people only get one trait normally, why are the traits so horribly unequal in their effects on characters?
For example, all of the traits that affect substantial game mechanics (eg, combat) are pure bonuses; and Wealthy is an initial +5 AND a continual passive increase to the Wealth pseudo-attribute! However, skills that aren't substantial get +3 to some category, and -2 to some other category.
I can't even draw an analogy to Pathfinder here, since PF traits are almost on par with feats, and rarely if ever carry internal flaws.
b) Why do Clumsy and Jinx include the idea that these can trigger at other players' discretion? I'd do Clumsy as something like "You receive a -2 on Agility-based checks during combat, or in other stressful situations; you may avoid this flaw's effect by taking twice the amount of time to complete a task" for example.
Jinx also seems like a cop-out flaw, as it doesn't affect the person but people around the person. Instead, "When you roll triples, double 1s, or double anything else and a 1, treat all dice as showing a 1." That's a decently high trigger rate.
c) Why can't characters "cold turkey" out of Addiction, given enough RP time and support?
---
4: EQUIPMENT
Here I'm going to focus on Wealth.
a) What's driving your decision to use a check-to-acquire system for items?
b) How much is Wealth reduced on a successful acquisition? You only say "1 or more."
c) If the Addiction flaw is defined by the need to fuel the addiction, then why shouldn't it affect Wealth somehow (for example, through a +2 to Wealth checks made to obtain the object of addiction, and a -2 to other Wealth checks caused by a reluctance to spend money on other things?)
---
7: CLASSES
"The soldier covers many of the roles in combat whether melee combat, ranged combat, or even possibly as a tactician or other leader. They control and conquer the battlefield mostly through martial techniques."
By modern supernatural high school setting, do you mean the SeeD Gardens from Final Fantasy 8?
That's what I have for the moment.
ShichiNoBushi
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- Posted: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 23:16:25 +0000
Sandokiri
Thanks for your criticism. If there's any real reason my system doesn't make much sense, it's because it has had little practical testing or in depth discussion. Since I haven't had much outside perspective on it, it's likely I assumed somethings would make sense because it did to me.
Answers:
1. Character Creation
- Attributes or abilities or however a system intends to call them are often the foundation of a character and their statistics. If anything, these are the statistics of a character that most deserve to be immutable. Though unless you implied by "immutable" as in their numbers being unchanging, later in the Encounters chapter, I detailed rules on how the character improves including increasing these attributes.
- Both Strength and Agility determine melee accuracy depending on the context as well as any other attribute for any other action. Strength is more often used for heavy weapons like axes and hammers while Agility is often used for light weapons like knives or spears.
- At least in the scenario I made this system for, Spirit represents the soul and either the character's capacity of spiritual energy or ability to manipulate it. It can also be used for resisting certain types of magical attacks but depending on the attack itself. Mind is instead used to resist anything involving mental manipulation.
- Mind governs most social skills. Though depending on the situation, Agility or Spirit could potentially be used instead.
(I'll try to add these details to the document to make character creation easier to understand.)
- The main benefit of giving any of your character's attributes a negative value is more points to spend on any of your others. Afterwards when you would add up the total values of them, they should still add up to 10.
- Regarding starting equipment, I should probably ad a "GM discretion" detail to limit players starting with ridiculous "basic" equipment. It's been a while since I made that list of weapon skills. I could have thought of firearms or just as much though of any weapons that follow ballistic trajectory like catapults, trebuchets, or any other projectiles that fly in distinct parabolas.
- Much like other details of the system, wealth is designed as an abstract stat rather than just an amount of dollars, yen, or whatever currency the character is carrying. Much like the Wealth system in d20 Modern, this stat is supposed to represent the character's potential to buy something especially in a modern setting's complex economy where they are able to use credit or take loans (at least from the characters' parents since they're supposed to still be in high school).
- Since the intended scenario is a modern high school, it is generally assumed the characters have access to cell phones, and it's normal for everyone to have one. The Decades Behind flaw is something characters can take to be an exception as a character without these modern conveniences and also show little aptitude with modern technological devices.
- The intended setting is supposed to be relatively similar to the Index and Railgun series.
2. Skills
- I understand there are many redundant skills, but that is mainly intended for character flavor or just indicating their preferred style or weapon. Different characters could have Fencing, Kendo, or Scimitars, but essentially they are all using the Sword skill just under a different name.
- General Knowledge isn't intended as an all encompassing knowledge skill and more focused on common, everyday, street knowledge. It doesn't have that much depth at least compared to most of the other knowledge skills but can still include details outside the scope of someone completely focused in some sort of scientific research. If anything, it's mostly a miscellaneous knowledge skill.
- Child Care involves social interaction with children around and below the age of 10. Compared to adults, communicating and interacting with children needs a different sort of understanding. "Child Care" was sort of the best name I could come up with at the time (another was "Child Psych." which itself is more of a trade or knowledge). Teaching sort of covers all ages and specifically involves educating others whether it is fundamental studies or more specific subjects. Though the two skills kind of overlap, they are still distinct skill sets. Elementary school teacher would likely need both.
- Stealth was put there because "Trade" sort of became a sort of miscellaneous category for skills. Though Stealth is sort of a combat related skill, it isn't a weapon and not necessarily defensive. Also Stealth could also be used in order to prevent combat and isn't exactly directly related to it.
3. Traits and Flaws
- Honestly, I haven't been able to get much input to properly balance much of the system. Traits are generally intended to be beneficial to the character. Some of them give a +2 to certain stats while some others give +3 and -2. I would expect players to try to exploit the +3 as much as they can, but the trait overall gives them +1. Wealthy is a special case since the +5 is a one time increase to an almost constantly changing stat.
- The "other players' discretion" mainly applies to the case of GM controlled characters lime NPCs and GMPCs. How it works is generally a counter to Lucky and using Destiny Points for fortune. They are once-in-a-while mess ups that can potentially ruin a character or his/her friends. Jinx is sort of special since though it doesn't directly affect the character, it affects his/her relations with the others. Potential friends won't want to hang out with the character since they believe them to be unlucky or can even purposefully hang out with them despite it.
- Much like other Flaws, Addiction can be removed from a character. This can either happen when they would otherwise gain a positive Trait or story and role-play reasons such as purposefully suffering through the hard times and cumulative penalties of going "cold turkey" as you suggested.
4. Equipment (Wealth)
- As mentioned above, Wealth is an abstract representation of a character's purchasing power much like how it was used in d20 Modern. Since their is the possibility of credit and other complicated aspects of modern economy, it is easier to combine it all together into a dice modifier rather than a collected currency.
- Most cases, the amount a character's Wealth stat would be adjusted is by 1 point, but in cases where the purchase value is significantly higher than their wealth, it would reduced by a higher value.
- Addiction is relatively general since it covers addiction to actions, objects, and substances. To make it fair for characters with substance addictions, the flaw doesn't require constant Wealth checks to restock the character's consumable stash. Characters with addictions to actions or items don't need to constantly purchase anything compared to other "addicts". Though the GM can potentially give a hard time to substance addicts warning them that their stash is getting low and need to make a Wealth check or suffer Addiction penalties.
7: Classes
- The classes are intended to generally define how the character plays and their roles especially involving their magical abilities. I suppose Soldiers could resemble SeeDs from FF8 but not necessarily. Soldiers are intended to be more focused on direct combat at least compared to the other classes.
Sandokiri
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- Posted: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 06:19:44 +0000
3nodding
I've had a bit longer to mull this over. Another round of observations:
0. Your system seems heavily derived from d20 Modern in more aspects than just cribbing Wealth. (Compare the attributes as you present them, to d20's stat modifiers. Perfect match.)
------
1. If you're not going to be a mage, then there is an ideal generalist build:
STR -1
AGI 4
END 4
INT 4
SPI -1
For mage generalists:
STR -2
AGI 3
END 3
INT 3
SPI 3
The logic behind this is as such: STR, and SPI for non-mages, are safe "dump" stats. The other three are mechanically vital for a character's survival.
-Strength is basically used for power athletics, certain feats of "lifting bro," and heavy melee weapons. These are all situational at best, and its melee functions can be avoided altogether by using AGI-based weapons.
-Agility is used for light melee weapons, ranged weapons, physical combat defence, and determining whether an actor is allowed to make melee attacks at all. Also some professions.
This is due to the fact that the melee-range "dance" is straight opposed AGI checks. If you don't win the dance check, your opponent controls the range meaning you don't even get to attack. If you do win, you're making *another* opposed AGI check to actually hit.
Given the bell curved dice, a low AGI character would be lucky to even TOUCH a high AGI opponent in melee combat. The opponent will just never be hittable; and worse, when the opponent invariably dances into range for her own attacks, she won't miss.
-Endurance is used for the saving throw vs. death that has to be made every time you take damage. (I know it's KO and not death; but it's more or less equivalent, as death is not addressed by True Self yet.)
-Mind governs all intellectual and social skills, serves the function of both AGI and END in social combat, and many professions.
-Spirit governs magic, psionics, and other FX ability use.
-----
A note on Mind: it's overloaded, especially given the setting. In a school setting (and I know it's based on Railgun, so extracurricular *stuff* will certainly happen,) being generally good at school subjects *and* on the social battlefield is overpowered.
There's also the matter of the Cheerleader and the Nerd being of equal general intelligence, being a match for each other except with respect to their respective dilettante and rocket-scientist ambitions. The distinction between these two stereotypes is expressed with a distinct social stat (often called Charisma) in many games, as it appears to be a useful distinction.
-----
I do also think that many of the skills can still be simplified. Unless there's actually a functional distinction between Welsh longbow archery and kyudo, for example, they can both be covered under Bow or Archery.
I say this because when you present your system to a play group, it will come up. What does it mean to be skilled in kyudo, but not in kyujutsu or archery? If it's cosmetic, then just let the player take the Archery skill and call the character a kyudosha.
You can make distinctions later, as advanced skills (as in WEG Star Wars) or something akin to prestige classes in d20. Perhaps kyudo and kyujutsu give access to different ki-based archery skills later on.
For the social skills, you have five that you consider "relatively professional." Why not simplify them to just one, called Diplomacy? Innuendo and Suggestion are just different "theories" of hiding information in your communication; they don't need to be separate either.
I've had a bit longer to mull this over. Another round of observations:
0. Your system seems heavily derived from d20 Modern in more aspects than just cribbing Wealth. (Compare the attributes as you present them, to d20's stat modifiers. Perfect match.)
------
1. If you're not going to be a mage, then there is an ideal generalist build:
STR -1
AGI 4
END 4
INT 4
SPI -1
For mage generalists:
STR -2
AGI 3
END 3
INT 3
SPI 3
The logic behind this is as such: STR, and SPI for non-mages, are safe "dump" stats. The other three are mechanically vital for a character's survival.
-Strength is basically used for power athletics, certain feats of "lifting bro," and heavy melee weapons. These are all situational at best, and its melee functions can be avoided altogether by using AGI-based weapons.
-Agility is used for light melee weapons, ranged weapons, physical combat defence, and determining whether an actor is allowed to make melee attacks at all. Also some professions.
This is due to the fact that the melee-range "dance" is straight opposed AGI checks. If you don't win the dance check, your opponent controls the range meaning you don't even get to attack. If you do win, you're making *another* opposed AGI check to actually hit.
Given the bell curved dice, a low AGI character would be lucky to even TOUCH a high AGI opponent in melee combat. The opponent will just never be hittable; and worse, when the opponent invariably dances into range for her own attacks, she won't miss.
-Endurance is used for the saving throw vs. death that has to be made every time you take damage. (I know it's KO and not death; but it's more or less equivalent, as death is not addressed by True Self yet.)
-Mind governs all intellectual and social skills, serves the function of both AGI and END in social combat, and many professions.
-Spirit governs magic, psionics, and other FX ability use.
-----
A note on Mind: it's overloaded, especially given the setting. In a school setting (and I know it's based on Railgun, so extracurricular *stuff* will certainly happen,) being generally good at school subjects *and* on the social battlefield is overpowered.
There's also the matter of the Cheerleader and the Nerd being of equal general intelligence, being a match for each other except with respect to their respective dilettante and rocket-scientist ambitions. The distinction between these two stereotypes is expressed with a distinct social stat (often called Charisma) in many games, as it appears to be a useful distinction.
-----
I do also think that many of the skills can still be simplified. Unless there's actually a functional distinction between Welsh longbow archery and kyudo, for example, they can both be covered under Bow or Archery.
I say this because when you present your system to a play group, it will come up. What does it mean to be skilled in kyudo, but not in kyujutsu or archery? If it's cosmetic, then just let the player take the Archery skill and call the character a kyudosha.
You can make distinctions later, as advanced skills (as in WEG Star Wars) or something akin to prestige classes in d20. Perhaps kyudo and kyujutsu give access to different ki-based archery skills later on.
For the social skills, you have five that you consider "relatively professional." Why not simplify them to just one, called Diplomacy? Innuendo and Suggestion are just different "theories" of hiding information in your communication; they don't need to be separate either.
ShichiNoBushi
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- Posted: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 07:08:46 +0000
Sandokiri
Thanks again for looking over my rules and your criticism.
It is a little disappointing that there are some "optimum" builds for my system. Sort of why I opened it up for others to look at. Though since it's more of a story-based system, I generally hope that players would generate their characters according to their interpretation of them rather than being munchkins.
If you haven't seen it, here's the build for my GMPC
Attributes:
Strength -5
Agility 4
Endurance 2
Mind 5
Spirit 4
Skills:
History +5
Occult +3
Math +4
Technology +2
Pop Culture +1
Traits and Flaws:
Talent [Occult]
I sort of figured at some point that Agility and Mind do too much especially how high Agility can potentially dominate melee combat. If you look at my RP thread, you can see a fight that sort of went that way. I might consider adding a Trait called Combat Charger or something that allows them to potentially skip through a couple levels of Melee range from Ranged range (R1 to M2) as part of a Standard action. Or at least just a maneuver or something.
I'm not sure how I'm going to handle Mind's overloaded-ness. The main distinctions regarding how it's used is just which skills it's used in. More intellectual characters have invested in knowledge Skills while a "cheerleader" character has focused on social Skills and maybe relies on certain Traits like Cute or Pretty.
For the time being, I'll stick with the optional redundant Skills. But if it ever actually turns out too confusing for players, I'll just simplify it down to just Skills like Sword or Archery.
Also, I recently added Powers Detect, Illusion, and Telekinesis when a potential player suggested them and I noticed their absence. I also sorted the Powers alphabetically. I would like to know other suggestions for other Traits, Flaws, and Powers.
Sandokiri
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- Posted: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 09:11:24 +0000
You could put the social skills under Spirit; Big Eyes Small Mouth takes this approach, with most social Attributes being governed by the Soul Stat, and the few social Skills that exist at least having Soul as a possible governing stat.
As for Combat Charger, I'd advise against using the Trait system to shore up core mechanics in such a direct way. Instead, try this:
Make each defence mode based on a different attrib, then give each an ability when used successfully. These special movements do not cause the -5 Defence penalty for trying to move without winning the dance check (the opposed AGI check for who gets to dictate range.) If you are not in range to use an option, of course, you may not choose that option.
Parry - Str. When you successfully parry, you may forcefully unbalance your attacker. If you are in your weapon's range, you may immediately attack; your opponent defends at -3 Defence. If you are not within your weapon's range, you may immediately move to your weapon's range and attack; your opponent defends normally.
Dodge - Agi. When you successfully dodge a melee attack, on your next turn only, you get +5 to the dance check.
Block - End. When you successfully block:
If you are unarmed, you may try to start a grapple if your combat skill has the Grapple property (such as judo.) If your opponent is armed, you may make an opposed END check to disarm, or an opposed END check to find an opening and counterattack.
If you are using a shield, you may make an opposed END check to trap your opponent's attack with your shield for a moment, allowing you to counterattack.
It doesn't have to be these; these are just "I should be pondering sleep" brainstorms.
As for Combat Charger, I'd advise against using the Trait system to shore up core mechanics in such a direct way. Instead, try this:
Make each defence mode based on a different attrib, then give each an ability when used successfully. These special movements do not cause the -5 Defence penalty for trying to move without winning the dance check (the opposed AGI check for who gets to dictate range.) If you are not in range to use an option, of course, you may not choose that option.
Parry - Str. When you successfully parry, you may forcefully unbalance your attacker. If you are in your weapon's range, you may immediately attack; your opponent defends at -3 Defence. If you are not within your weapon's range, you may immediately move to your weapon's range and attack; your opponent defends normally.
Dodge - Agi. When you successfully dodge a melee attack, on your next turn only, you get +5 to the dance check.
Block - End. When you successfully block:
If you are unarmed, you may try to start a grapple if your combat skill has the Grapple property (such as judo.) If your opponent is armed, you may make an opposed END check to disarm, or an opposed END check to find an opening and counterattack.
If you are using a shield, you may make an opposed END check to trap your opponent's attack with your shield for a moment, allowing you to counterattack.
It doesn't have to be these; these are just "I should be pondering sleep" brainstorms.
Gray Ran
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- Posted: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 20:15:47 +0000
Your rules are written pretty clearly. Good job on that.
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
- What is the game about? You need a core premise and I'm not seeing one.
How is your game about that? Your game should be about something, how do your mechanics and procedures address this?
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
ShichiNoBushi
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- Posted: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 21:24:56 +0000
Sandokiri
You could put the social skills under Spirit; Big Eyes Small Mouth takes this approach, with most social Attributes being governed by the Soul Stat, and the few social Skills that exist at least having Soul as a possible governing stat.
As for Combat Charger, I'd advise against using the Trait system to shore up core mechanics in such a direct way. Instead, try this:
Make each defence mode based on a different attrib, then give each an ability when used successfully. These special movements do not cause the -5 Defence penalty for trying to move without winning the dance check (the opposed AGI check for who gets to dictate range.) If you are not in range to use an option, of course, you may not choose that option.
Parry - Str. When you successfully parry, you may forcefully unbalance your attacker. If you are in your weapon's range, you may immediately attack; your opponent defends at -3 Defence. If you are not within your weapon's range, you may immediately move to your weapon's range and attack; your opponent defends normally.
Dodge - Agi. When you successfully dodge a melee attack, on your next turn only, you get +5 to the dance check.
Block - End. When you successfully block:
If you are unarmed, you may try to start a grapple if your combat skill has the Grapple property (such as judo.) If your opponent is armed, you may make an opposed END check to disarm, or an opposed END check to find an opening and counterattack.
If you are using a shield, you may make an opposed END check to trap your opponent's attack with your shield for a moment, allowing you to counterattack.
It doesn't have to be these; these are just "I should be pondering sleep" brainstorms.
As for Combat Charger, I'd advise against using the Trait system to shore up core mechanics in such a direct way. Instead, try this:
Make each defence mode based on a different attrib, then give each an ability when used successfully. These special movements do not cause the -5 Defence penalty for trying to move without winning the dance check (the opposed AGI check for who gets to dictate range.) If you are not in range to use an option, of course, you may not choose that option.
Parry - Str. When you successfully parry, you may forcefully unbalance your attacker. If you are in your weapon's range, you may immediately attack; your opponent defends at -3 Defence. If you are not within your weapon's range, you may immediately move to your weapon's range and attack; your opponent defends normally.
Dodge - Agi. When you successfully dodge a melee attack, on your next turn only, you get +5 to the dance check.
Block - End. When you successfully block:
If you are unarmed, you may try to start a grapple if your combat skill has the Grapple property (such as judo.) If your opponent is armed, you may make an opposed END check to disarm, or an opposed END check to find an opening and counterattack.
If you are using a shield, you may make an opposed END check to trap your opponent's attack with your shield for a moment, allowing you to counterattack.
It doesn't have to be these; these are just "I should be pondering sleep" brainstorms.
I like your suggestion for the counter-actions for the Defensive Skills. If I have any argument, I might say rather than Block being able to transition into grapple, that option would go with Parry instead. I used to attend a Jiujitsu Club back in college, and in that we focused on parrying and then transitioning into grabs and armlocks and such. Though I sort of like the counter-attack as well. I already sort of figured that though Parry wasn't an "innate" skill like Dodge and Block which are essentially "trained". But investing in Parry has the advantage that it can be used in either case that Dodge or Block could. To give Strength more usage, I might allow Block and Parry to be usable with it
Active Defense could also be an optional character action where the character (secretly) chooses either of those methods you suggested and reacts to attacks depending on what they planned for. They can ready to counter attack, to backpedal, or to disarm.
At this point, I'm sort of considering to remedy the cowardly archer problem by introducing a Charge action: take a full turn, the user takes a penalty to Defense the next round (-2 probably), gets a bonus to the Agility maneuver check (+2?), and gets to skip from either R2 to M3 or R1 to M2 if the Agility check succeeds (otherwise ends at M3). I might also allow them to make an attack if they end within their weapon's range. Traits might be available to improve that somehow.
I also figure if Strength could be good for anything in particular, Grappling combat might especially benefit from high Strength. I already have a grappler PC, and he already won a fight with a high Agility character. Though Agility could arguably also be used for Grappling, at least Strength would almost be the only Attribute for forcing character movement or resisting forced movement. Any other propositions for uses of Strength would be appreciated.
Gray Ran
Your rules are written pretty clearly. Good job on that.
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
- What is the game about? You need a core premise and I'm not seeing one.
How is your game about that? Your game should be about something, how do your mechanics and procedures address this?
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
Other than Risus, I'm not especially familiar with either of those systems. I have also played Risus, and though the experience playing with my friends was amusing, I don't quite like the system itself and think it's "too simple", maybe. It's simply you get X number of points and distribute them into a collection of "clichés", and sometimes the GM would give other constraints. While playing, I almost always chose to use my ability with a value of 5 and never found any reason to use a 1. As soon as any of your clichés are brought down to 0, your character's out, and you have no reason to ever resort to your last resources or risk getting any of them immediately dropped to 0 and losing.
Except for the last few chapters, the majority of the system should be usable for virtually any setting. Though I intended to create this system for my forum RP which has a sort of supernatural high school setting. The last chapter on "Penenlightenment" especially covers this concept.
If I have any comments to advocate my combat "mini-game", it's primarily to get into the nitty-gritty details of the fight for the sake of cinematic action or tension rather than it simply being "I hit you. You hit me. I hit you. You hit me." Somewhere in there there might be a few misses and eventually one of them loses. I'm not sure what kind of "club participation" games would be involved, but that would be up to later inspiration.
Gray Ran
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ShichiNoBushi
Gray Ran
Your rules are written pretty clearly. Good job on that.
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
Everybody else seems to be on top of the fiddly mechanical stuff, so my questions are going to be fairly conceptual.
Why would I play this and not, say, Risus(rules are super simple), or the Smallville RPG(hyper-focused on drama and inter-character conflict), or the Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine RPG(a diceless slice of life game where XP is gained by exploring feelings)? Because nothing about this system actually seems at all suited for the genre you're trying to get at or the medium it's supposed to be played in. It just looks like GURPS Lite plus... classes? What?
What is the purpose of this game? Or rather, scratch that--
- What is the game about? You need a core premise and I'm not seeing one.
How is your game about that? Your game should be about something, how do your mechanics and procedures address this?
For example:
You include this super detailed combat mini-game. Why? Because not all RPGs have that, and there are much better ways to go about an action game than this. What specific function does this combat mini-game and all its various parts serve in furthering the overall purpose of the game? Why not have a Club Participation mini-game instead? Or a Random Mutation mini-game?
Other than Risus, I'm not especially familiar with either of those systems. I have also played Risus, and though the experience playing with my friends was amusing, I don't quite like the system itself and think it's "too simple", maybe. It's simply you get X number of points and distribute them into a collection of "clichés", and sometimes the GM would give other constraints. While playing, I almost always chose to use my ability with a value of 5 and never found any reason to use a 1. As soon as any of your clichés are brought down to 0, your character's out, and you have no reason to ever resort to your last resources or risk getting any of them immediately dropped to 0 and losing.
Except for the last few chapters, the majority of the system should be usable for virtually any setting. Though I intended to create this system for my forum RP which has a sort of supernatural high school setting. The last chapter on "Penenlightenment" especially covers this concept.
If I have any comments to advocate my combat "mini-game", it's primarily to get into the nitty-gritty details of the fight for the sake of cinematic action or tension rather than it simply being "I hit you. You hit me. I hit you. You hit me." Somewhere in there there might be a few misses and eventually one of them loses. I'm not sure what kind of "club participation" games would be involved, but that would be up to later inspiration.
That's not quite what I'm getting at. You've told me what your system is not. So what is the True Self system? What does it bring to the table that other games lack? How are you implementing this feature?
re: The "I hit you, you hit me,"
I'm not sure that you're attacking the problem from the right angle. Having the option to do one in two sets of a whole bunch of fiddly things in your turn doesn't mean that anybody is going to use more than one or two. Lots of options, or having a combat mini-game at all, doesn't mean that fights are going to have tension.
Look at what makes tension in a dramatic anime. Tension is created from stakes and uncertainty. A character needs this thing, but this other thing is standing in their way. Tension mounts when the stakes are reinforced and when the challenge escalates, and often these things happen at the same time. The context, means, and pressure for the characters to succeed changes from beat to beat.
Some games build that sort of state change into the outcome.* The player or their opponent did a thing, and because of that the situation changed significantly. The player now has to deal with that or leverage it. That adverse state change makes tension and helps compel the player to action.
A death spiral, like the one you have incorporated now, is an artificial means to make that state change. It doesn't create any sort of state change that is meaningful in the game world, it just makes a character less competent over time until they go splat. This makes using your lesser stats just as bad as in Risus. This is opposite to the way fighty anime works (Railgun is one of those fighty shows, right?) -- the more damage you take, the better you do.
*For example, Apocalypse World has this bit of rules.
SEIZE BY FORCE
When you try to seize something by force, or to secure your hold on something, roll+hard. On a hit, choose options. On a 10+, choose 3.
On a 7–9, choose 2:
• you take definite hold of it
• you suffer little harm
• you inflict terrible harm
• you impress, dismay or frighten your enemy
Gray Ran's Note: (on a 6 or less the GM, called an MC in Apocalypse World, picks from a broader list of options that change the situation. Inflicting harm is one of them. Harm is basically meat points. When you fill all harm boxes you choose: die or change a stat to -1.)
HARM
When you suffer harm, roll+harm suffered (after armor, if you’re wearing any). On a 10+, the MC can choose 1:
• You’re out of action: unconscious, trapped, incoherent or panicked.
• It’s worse than it seemed. Take an additional 1-harm.
• Choose 2 from the 7–9 list below.
On a 7–9, the MC can choose 1:
• You lose your footing.
• You lose your grip on whatever you’re holding.
• You lose track of someone or something you’re attending to.
• You miss noticing something important.
On a miss, the MC can nevertheless choose something from the 7–9 list above. If she does, though, it’s instead of some of the harm you’re suffering, so you take -1harm.
Because there is no combat mini-game inflicting violence is just another action you can take in a scene and scenes flow conversationally. The rules above work because A) a player can get a bad result and not have to wait too long to be an active agent in the game again and B) it makes every instance of violence brutal and palpably tense.
ShichiNoBushi
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Gray Ran
That's not quite what I'm getting at. You've told me what your system is not. So what is the True Self system? What does it bring to the table that other games lack? How are you implementing this feature?
re: The "I hit you, you hit me,"
I'm not sure that you're attacking the problem from the right angle. Having the option to do one in two sets of a whole bunch of fiddly things in your turn doesn't mean that anybody is going to use more than one or two. Lots of options, or having a combat mini-game at all, doesn't mean that fights are going to have tension.
Look at what makes tension in a dramatic anime. Tension is created from stakes and uncertainty. A character needs this thing, but this other thing is standing in their way. Tension mounts when the stakes are reinforced and when the challenge escalates, and often these things happen at the same time. The context, means, and pressure for the characters to succeed changes from beat to beat.
Some games build that sort of state change into the outcome.* The player or their opponent did a thing, and because of that the situation changed significantly. The player now has to deal with that or leverage it. That adverse state change makes tension and helps compel the player to action.
A death spiral, like the one you have incorporated now, is an artificial means to make that state change. It doesn't create any sort of state change that is meaningful in the game world, it just makes a character less competent over time until they go splat. This makes using your lesser stats just as bad as in Risus. This is opposite to the way fighty anime works (Railgun is one of those fighty shows, right?) -- the more damage you take, the better you do.
*For example, Apocalypse World has this bit of rules.
SEIZE BY FORCE
When you try to seize something by force, or to secure your hold on something, roll+hard. On a hit, choose options. On a 10+, choose 3.
On a 7–9, choose 2:
• you take definite hold of it
• you suffer little harm
• you inflict terrible harm
• you impress, dismay or frighten your enemy
Gray Ran's Note: (on a 6 or less the GM, called an MC in Apocalypse World, picks from a broader list of options that change the situation. Inflicting harm is one of them. Harm is basically meat points. When you fill all harm boxes you choose: die or change a stat to -1.)
HARM
When you suffer harm, roll+harm suffered (after armor, if you’re wearing any). On a 10+, the MC can choose 1:
• You’re out of action: unconscious, trapped, incoherent or panicked.
• It’s worse than it seemed. Take an additional 1-harm.
• Choose 2 from the 7–9 list below.
On a 7–9, the MC can choose 1:
• You lose your footing.
• You lose your grip on whatever you’re holding.
• You lose track of someone or something you’re attending to.
• You miss noticing something important.
On a miss, the MC can nevertheless choose something from the 7–9 list above. If she does, though, it’s instead of some of the harm you’re suffering, so you take -1harm.
Because there is no combat mini-game inflicting violence is just another action you can take in a scene and scenes flow conversationally. The rules above work because A) a player can get a bad result and not have to wait too long to be an active agent in the game again and B) it makes every instance of violence brutal and palpably tense.
re: The "I hit you, you hit me,"
I'm not sure that you're attacking the problem from the right angle. Having the option to do one in two sets of a whole bunch of fiddly things in your turn doesn't mean that anybody is going to use more than one or two. Lots of options, or having a combat mini-game at all, doesn't mean that fights are going to have tension.
Look at what makes tension in a dramatic anime. Tension is created from stakes and uncertainty. A character needs this thing, but this other thing is standing in their way. Tension mounts when the stakes are reinforced and when the challenge escalates, and often these things happen at the same time. The context, means, and pressure for the characters to succeed changes from beat to beat.
Some games build that sort of state change into the outcome.* The player or their opponent did a thing, and because of that the situation changed significantly. The player now has to deal with that or leverage it. That adverse state change makes tension and helps compel the player to action.
A death spiral, like the one you have incorporated now, is an artificial means to make that state change. It doesn't create any sort of state change that is meaningful in the game world, it just makes a character less competent over time until they go splat. This makes using your lesser stats just as bad as in Risus. This is opposite to the way fighty anime works (Railgun is one of those fighty shows, right?) -- the more damage you take, the better you do.
*For example, Apocalypse World has this bit of rules.
SEIZE BY FORCE
When you try to seize something by force, or to secure your hold on something, roll+hard. On a hit, choose options. On a 10+, choose 3.
On a 7–9, choose 2:
• you take definite hold of it
• you suffer little harm
• you inflict terrible harm
• you impress, dismay or frighten your enemy
Gray Ran's Note: (on a 6 or less the GM, called an MC in Apocalypse World, picks from a broader list of options that change the situation. Inflicting harm is one of them. Harm is basically meat points. When you fill all harm boxes you choose: die or change a stat to -1.)
HARM
When you suffer harm, roll+harm suffered (after armor, if you’re wearing any). On a 10+, the MC can choose 1:
• You’re out of action: unconscious, trapped, incoherent or panicked.
• It’s worse than it seemed. Take an additional 1-harm.
• Choose 2 from the 7–9 list below.
On a 7–9, the MC can choose 1:
• You lose your footing.
• You lose your grip on whatever you’re holding.
• You lose track of someone or something you’re attending to.
• You miss noticing something important.
On a miss, the MC can nevertheless choose something from the 7–9 list above. If she does, though, it’s instead of some of the harm you’re suffering, so you take -1harm.
Because there is no combat mini-game inflicting violence is just another action you can take in a scene and scenes flow conversationally. The rules above work because A) a player can get a bad result and not have to wait too long to be an active agent in the game again and B) it makes every instance of violence brutal and palpably tense.
I honestly can't think of anything features of my system that I'm sure no other does. I pretty much created it as an original system for an RP and a story I wanted to share. If I can say anything to promote it that I feel makes it unique, it's that I designed it specifically for story driven games. Some of the focus is on one-on-one conflict since physical combat is done through relative position and distance to each other rather than representation on either a table-top grid whether real or virtual. It's possible to have more characters in direct combat, though it makes it more complicated almost requiring N-1 extra relative distances for each Nth additional character. I've played another RPG system for a LARP at a convention, and I wasn't quite satisfied with it especially when there were characters that were supposed to work better solo but never had a chance at one-on-one combat. Playing with a party in games like D&D is sometimes fun, but I figure a system that focuses on one-on-one fights could be interesting and that would work well in a forum or text communication based RP format. Posting an update to the combat grid after each turn whether it's through images or ASCII art can get tedious. In summary: the True Self RPG system focuses on one-on-one encounters and text-based role-play.
I suppose the "Destiny Points" I use in the system could be used for solving that "dramatic tension" issue. They are rewarded for good role-play and used at crucial moments to either give bonuses or keep the character in the fight. Features of DP I wrote rules for so far are a +5 bonus to a roll after the result was declared or automatically succeed on a check to resist falling unconscious or conceding. Other possible uses I thought of are improvising a Variant for a Power for the Encounter or for a round ignoring penalties from Wounds and Errors. Another option: if the scenario seems to difficult for the player, they may spend a DP to "discover" some detail of the scenery to potentially use to their advantage. Also, if the PCs are getting too lucky for how an encounter was planned and likely ending it too early, the GM can give the effect of a Destiny Point to the NPC and instead compensate a DP for the PC(s) directly affected by it.
Though it doesn't directly affect the character during combat, the system also has a feature in it to let hardships and difficulty improve the character. At the end of an encounter, the PC is granted 2 points to improve their Attributes: one of them they choose where it goes while the other is automatically applied to the "most detrimental attribute" or the Attribute that was used in the most failed checks which includes checks that would have failed but had a DP spent on them.
One system I looked at is one called Burning Wheel. That sort of also has a weapon reach mechanic that two characters need to maneuver around. One other detail from the rulebook was an optional rule that allowed the player to in place of taking a serious wound, they may instead take some sort of major setback such as losing their important weapon. It might be significantly detrimental for the character, but it won't be as bad as character death.
Gray Ran
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- Posted: Sat, 21 Feb 2015 06:22:14 +0000
Nevermind. Enjoy your game.
Sandokiri
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- Posted: Sat, 21 Feb 2015 19:38:43 +0000
ShichiNoBushi
I honestly can't think of anything features of my system that I'm sure no other does. I pretty much created it as an original system for an RP and a story I wanted to share. If I can say anything to promote it that I feel makes it unique, it's that I designed it specifically for story driven games.
It's not so much that. If I can try to rephrase the question:
For some reason, I want to get involved in a game set in a high school where many of the students have superpowers (eg, X-Men Evolution, Sky High, Smallville, Railgun, etc.) I have several game systems to choose from, and can help the GM add skills relevant to a school setting.
Gray Ran wants you to sell your engine considering alternatives such as d20, Tri-Stat, Gurps, etc.
All games can opt to be story-driven or engine-driven; that's on the GM for the most part. The engine is just there to resolve conflicts fairly and add high degrees of uncertainty to non-conflict tasks. To sell your game as "story-driven," you'd have to describe how the story actually affects the engine.
Quote:
Some of the focus is on one-on-one conflict since physical combat is done through relative position and distance to each other rather than representation on either a table-top grid whether real or virtual. It's possible to have more characters in direct combat, though it makes it more complicated almost requiring N-1 extra relative distances for each Nth additional character.
I'd have to say that for an anime roleplay setting, being limited to 1:1 is a catastrophic weakness; but 1:1 means that your possible complication is actualised in most magical girl and sentai settings - just as one example.
Not being able to handle Gundam or Dougram or any other mecha anime, that's one thing. But not being able to handle Sailor Moon in a magical high school setting? That's... that's... erk! sweatdrop Yeah, that's what it is.
Quote:
I've played another RPG system for a LARP at a convention, and I wasn't quite satisfied with it especially when there were characters that were supposed to work better solo but never had a chance at one-on-one combat. Playing with a party in games like D&D is sometimes fun, but I figure a system that focuses on one-on-one fights could be interesting and that would work well in a forum or text communication based RP format.
It can; and actually, AD&D Second Edition's expanded rules (called Player's Option) had duelling rules, including a very... interesting system for magical duels. Complete Psionics Handbook had built-in rules for psionic duels - a system (that quite unlike the rest of 2e psionics) meshed well with the existing engine.
Just be aware that even in worlds literally made of 1:1 combat, nonstandard combat does occur. Just two examples:
-Street Fighter (the one with the Chun Li shower scene,) the climactic battle is Ryu and Ken vs. Bison.
-Pokemon, even from the beginning when the game couldn't support 2:2 battle, had Team Rocket fighting in unison and causing frequent 2:1 battles, and occasionally 3:1 if Meowth opted to fight. If Ash (or whoever) got help, these would turn into mass melees quickly.
Quote:
Also, if the PCs are getting too lucky for how an encounter was planned and likely ending it too early, the GM can give the effect of a Destiny Point to the NPC and instead compensate a DP for the PC(s) directly affected by it.
Most games that use a system that's straight-up like DP (eg, Star Wars force points, d20 Modern action points) assume that any significant opponents (ie, planned encounters) will include at least a small number of points - and that players won't get compensated for these enemies' ability to get fudges.
In other systems (eg, the Catalyst properties such as Battletech or Shadowrun,) the equivalent system is actually an attribute that gives a certain number of fudges that recover over long periods or time (or in similar ways to those found above.)
Quote:
Though it doesn't directly affect the character during combat, the system also has a feature in it to let hardships and difficulty improve the character. At the end of an encounter, the PC is granted 2 points to improve their Attributes:
I trust that you're assuming that actual encounters will be infrequent? Just by comparison, these are just four other systems and what they assume concerning the gaining of general roll modifiers:
d20: About 14 encounters per level; a half-modifier (that is, +1 to a stat) is gained at every multiple of 4.
BESM: About 4 or 5 game-sessions per character point; this can be used to improve a Stat (equivalent to your Attributes), or stored to improve an Attribute later (similar to your Traits, but can be taken up to six times for augmented effect.)
Battletech: Characters gain some fairly small number of EXP per session (typically in the 8-15 range.) Raising an Attribute(equivalent to your Attributes) costs 100 EXP as a basic rule. EXP is also used to advance Traits (often more expensive) and Skills (usually much cheaper), so the actual rate of Attribute improvement may be in the 15-20 session range per Attribute.
d6 Space (AKA Not Star Wars wink ): Typically, you'll get 3-15 character points per adventure (typically 3-4 game sessions.) The stats are expressed as a number of d6, with +0-2 as a fixed modifier; raising a stat by training (directly spending points) costs 10x its current d value (so for 3d+2, it costs 30) and requires you to LOSE an opposed stat check against 4d. If you lose, you gain +1 fixed modifier; if you reach +3 this way, it's converted up to the next d+0. If you win, you only recover half of the points and may never again try to raise that stat with training. Narratively, you reached your genetically-determined peak.
Thus, an expectation of about 10-15 game sessions since you'll also be spending character points on skill improvements and minor fudges (1 CP = +1d to a roll.)
Compare to True Self, that gives 2 Attributes per encounter. That has the potential for some seriously fast power creep.
BESM: About 4 or 5 game-sessions per character point; this can be used to improve a Stat (equivalent to your Attributes), or stored to improve an Attribute later (similar to your Traits, but can be taken up to six times for augmented effect.)
Battletech: Characters gain some fairly small number of EXP per session (typically in the 8-15 range.) Raising an Attribute(equivalent to your Attributes) costs 100 EXP as a basic rule. EXP is also used to advance Traits (often more expensive) and Skills (usually much cheaper), so the actual rate of Attribute improvement may be in the 15-20 session range per Attribute.
d6 Space (AKA Not Star Wars wink ): Typically, you'll get 3-15 character points per adventure (typically 3-4 game sessions.) The stats are expressed as a number of d6, with +0-2 as a fixed modifier; raising a stat by training (directly spending points) costs 10x its current d value (so for 3d+2, it costs 30) and requires you to LOSE an opposed stat check against 4d. If you lose, you gain +1 fixed modifier; if you reach +3 this way, it's converted up to the next d+0. If you win, you only recover half of the points and may never again try to raise that stat with training. Narratively, you reached your genetically-determined peak.
Thus, an expectation of about 10-15 game sessions since you'll also be spending character points on skill improvements and minor fudges (1 CP = +1d to a roll.)
Compare to True Self, that gives 2 Attributes per encounter. That has the potential for some seriously fast power creep.
ShichiNoBushi
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- Posted: Sat, 21 Feb 2015 23:57:58 +0000
Sandokiri
I'm sorry. I stared at your post trying to think of something, but I can't come up with anything else I haven't already said. With your comments, I'm having a hard time giving an unbiased opinion to sell my system other than that it's MY system. I still like it not just because of that, but I can't say anything to convince anyone to play it instead of other systems either of us mentioned. I'm still hoping for some suggestions to improve it, but I have qualms about tearing major features of it that I thought I put a thought into.