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I'm trying to design a fantasy game right now. The original plan was "simple math, simple rules, reskinnable, grid combat, 4e-lite". I'll go into much more detail later this week. IceBox posted:I am trying to come up with names for attributes/ability scores that do not provide players with an excuse to roleplay their characters in a certain way. For example, a character with a low intelligence being played as stupid. I want the names to reflect a character's power, finesse, and resilience in the categories of mental, physical, and social (9 total). My original idea with that sort of thing was to separate "attributes" into classlike roles, such as Defend, Lead, Heal, Strike, etc with each one corresponding to something you do rather than something you are. 9 might be way too many though. That didn't work for me, so I tried fewer scores with broader implications (pick one of Defend, Lead, Control corresponding roughly to Physical, Social, Mental and one of Martial, Divine, Arcane, corresponding again roughly to Physical, Social, Mental, everyone does damage and...). I'm still thinking about that system, it might eventually turn into something, but it didn't correspond with my "simple" goal. Right now, I've thrown out ability scores because gently caress ability scores and the baggage that comes with them. They just don't seem to work with my goal of "simple". so what I have is four "trees" of abilites, Might, Cunning, Arcane, and Leadership. you get a primary and secondary tree, but are not forced to take more than one starter ability from your secondary tree (I think most people will want to take more than that). Your trees become your "abilities" in that you are Excellent or Really Good at your primary and Good to OK at your secondary depending on what you pick. You are Not Very Good at the other two. They also become your "class", but what you call yourself depends on how you choose to portray (skin) your character. For example, Might/Cunning might be a Barbarian or a Ranger or even a mercenary. Cunning/Might could also be apply to those guys or be a thuggish rogue type. Might/Arcane might be a shapeshifting Druid type of dude, or a tribal shaman who is primarily a warrior who's pleased the spirits, or a Paladin who has some holy help. Cunning/Arcane could be a sneaky thief with a few magic tricks or an sniper who enchants his arrows and conceals himself with illusions. Arcane/cunning could be either of those guys with more of a magical bent, or could be an archetypal Gnome Illusionist. I can't figure out why you'd actually want traditional ability scores in your game unless you were emulating D&D or going for an overly simulationist game.
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Aug 15, 2012 09:25
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I need some math help. I have the idea of making "attack rolls" on 2d6, and building character power by increasing the number of d6 rolled every few levels. I'm sure there's a formula that would show me the % chance for each possible value of xd6. Can someone tell me what it is? I'm not good at math (I was in fact terrible at math in high school) but I'm improving. So you have some context and can provide feedback on my terrible idea: You roll xd6, based on your level. There are no attack bonuses or penalties, but there is a Defense Number involved. Roll Attack Dice (xd6), subtract defense number, and get your Combat Score. <2: Miss 3-6: Damage or effect. 7-11: Damage and effect. >12: Damage and effect, extra bennie (I'm not explaining the whole system right now, but this bennie lets you do extra/better actions sooner). Pairs and triples of odds or evens do an extra thing (thus you're more likely to do an extra thing as you level up and get more Attack Dice) I'm only going up to 7d6, so I need percentage chances for each value of 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 5d6, 6d6, and 7d6. Can someone help me please? I'm perfectly capable of plugging a formula into excel and interpreting the result, but I need to know what the formula is so I can work out the Defense Scores for weak/tough monsters at each level. The idea here is that I can scale monster defenses with the expected attack values of the PCs, with the goal of 7-11 occurring about half the time. You don't get +1 to hit, +2 to hit, but you do have some abilities with the potential to temporarily lower a Defense Score. Likewise, you don't give monsters -1 or -2 to hit, but you raise their target's Defense Score. I don't know if Defense Score, Atack Dice, etc are the final terms. Probably not, because I'm thinking about a way to simplify the way actions/effects are expressed. IceBox posted:I want to avoid names like "intelligence" for mental power to help try and break some of stereotypical bonds between things like intelligence and history. How about separating Intelligence into Intuition and Education or something like that? You were already talking about 3 mental stats, right?
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Aug 16, 2012 10:39
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Thanks guys. I used anydice and just copied the results for each range into excel. I might need to rethink this, looking at the figures. Or maybe rethink the effect ranges instead. I guess it's all about how swingy I want it to be. Edit: What do you guys think about a to-hit system based on a static number per level, opposed to a static defense number based on the monster's general dangerousness. The difference modifies a straight up 2d6 roll with the above table of results. Damage is also static but goes up/down a little if you roll a pair of evens/odds. Or roll the damage into the results, so the table looks more like <2 Miss 3-6 low damage or effect 6-9 low damage and effect. 10-11 high damage and effect. >12 high damage and effect and bennie. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Aug 16, 2012 |
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Aug 16, 2012 11:55
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Oh bugger, I figured someone would have done something similar. Oh well, doesn't matter, I think the rest of the game is different enough that it won't mattter. I'll type up a big post on the combat and skill system as soon as I have full use of my left hand back. Typing with some fingers taped together is a huge pain in the arse. The basis is still the 2d6 + attack number - defense number. "Boss Monsters" will modify their defense upward by 1d6 each round instead of just having more hp. Certain abilities will temporarily reduce the target's Defense or increase your Attack, never stacking, since a 2 point total difference on that table is pretty big. Pairs of odds will be bad, pairs of evens will be good, probably with odds giving less damage and evens healing you a bit, since there are not really hit points in the game (well there are, but they don't represent injuries, are called something else, and are usable as more than a measure of being close to KO'd).
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Aug 19, 2012 23:31
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starkebn posted:Brains, Brawn & Balls In the late 90s, I started working on a system with these exact attributes. I hosed almost everything else up though (oh god, percentile everything).
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Aug 23, 2012 05:39
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How about this for the basis of a skill system? For a basis of comparison, the game has 3 classes, which are pretty much the same as D&D power sources (ie, martial, divine, arcane). You have a primary and might have a secondary "power source" with which you define your "class" (ie, martial/divine might be "paladin", but could equally be "war shaman"). Skills are just game effects that you can do. How you do them is based on something you choose for yourself based on your power sources. That is, you pick a game effect to be good at, and then decide how you do it. Examples: A wizard guy who takes Survival, uses magic to track game and identify berries, light fires, bind debris into shelters, etc. A paladin prays so he doesn't need to eat and doesn't feel the cold. A warrior who takes Open Doors knows how to quietly jimmy them open. A wizard speaks Words Of Opening. A thief uses his lockpicks and acid vials. A shaman talks to the Wood Spirits who twist the door's planks and pop it open. A warrior takes Climb and hauls himself up walls with main strength, pitons, and hammers. A rogue leaps from ledge to ledge. A wizard turns his hands into spiderhands. The cleric rides up on a divine cloud. The martial artist guy simply focuses his will and runs right up the wall.
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Sep 20, 2012 07:21
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Splicer posted:/\This is kind of how my will-never-get-finished fantasy heartbreaker thing is going/\ It's how mine's going too. Mine will also likely never get finished, although I now have the basics all down in writing. Skills were the last thing I needed to work out how to do, and I worked out that I should do them like that last week and then stalled again. I don't have a list of them, but I know how they'll work now. I should post a rundown of the system and see if anyone thinks it's cool. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 14:49
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OK, I'll give this a shot. It's a brief overview, and typing it is making me get my thoughts out in a way that's readable by other people. There is a Basic System for Resolving Stuff. It always involves rolling 2d6. Snakeeyes always fails/misses. Boxcars always succeeds, but might not succeed very well. In combat, you will add your Bonus to the 2d6 and subtract the enemy's Defense, then consult the game's only table. Result: <2: Miss. 3 to 6: Apply attack's damage or effect. 7 to 11: Apply attack's damage and effect. >12: Apply attack's damage and effect. Add a die to The Ring (explained in a sec). Dice show up odd doubles: -2 damage. Dice show up even doubles: +2 damage. Snakeeyes: You miss. Boxcars: You hit even if your result is <2. Do half damage or the minimum possible effect. You have At-Will attacks which do static things, and Special Moves which utilise The Ring. Skills will work in a similar way with the table result being a degree of success thing. Opposed skill checks will be your 2d6 + your skill - opponent's skill. The Ring: At the start of the combat, place a 6 sided die in the ring. Each round where you take an action, add another 6 sided die to the ring. Making a Special Move burns these dice. Each special move has a minimum number of dice you must burn. Each burned dice either rolls for extra damage or applies an effect depending on what Special Move you're using (depending on effect, you may need to roll to see how effective the, um, effect is). You can't burn more dice than you have. You don't have to burn all your dice. When combat is over, remove all remaining dice. Special Moves: These are built by the player from a list of effects like Push, Pull, Stun, Heal, Buff, Debuff, etc. You get a new one every level, subject to some restrictions. Characters: There are 10 character levels in the game, you get tougher at each one, but there are no increasing numbers except for Luck (hit points). YOu mostly get more Stuff To Do. Characters have a Primary and Secondary Thing that they can do, which kind of form your "class". The Things are Might, Cunning, Arcane, and Leadership, corresponding roughly to the D&D archetypes of fighter, thief, wizard, and cleric/warlord. You always have two of those things, with all your starter At-Wills and at least half of your later at-wills and Special Moves coming from your Primary Thing. The idea here is that your primary/secondary thing can encompass any fantasy archetype, without having a big list of archetypes. I;m calling it a skin for now but I need a better word. So Might/Leadership might be skinned as a Paladin, but so could Leadership/Might depending on what you actually want to do with your Paladin. So could Might/Arcane if you;d rather be a smiting paladin than a healing paladin. Like I said before on this page, your skin will determine how you perform your skills. Special Moves can be pretty much anything. You make them up yourself and name them. They are broadly categorised into stuff like Move Friend, Move Foe, Grant Defense, etc. Some things aren't doable by some classes. There are no ability scores. Weapons and armour and stuff: Weapons are divided into Hand, Large, and Ranged types. They do damage based on their type and whatever power you're using. Armour is divided into Light, Medium, Heavy, and Shield. It has Defense and Soak, defense making you harder to hit and soak absorbing damage. Light armour gives you a move bonus. Heavy gives you a move penalty. The actual description is left to the player. Like I give a gently caress if it's Plate Mail or Dragonforged Black Iron Warplate or Really Heavy Bear Hides. Hit points and dying You don't have Hit Points. You have a resource that's currently called Luck. Every successful attack against you that does Damage removes your Luck. When you are Out Of Luck, the next blow puts you Down and you get a Wound. You can take your character level +1 in Wounds before you are Dead. Wounds might give you a penalty at times. I might add a second table to the game for this. There is no way to heal a Wound in combat, and there's no point since being Down lasts until the end of the fight. Various Special Moves might restore Luck. Bad Guys Categorised along the lines of 4e monsters, or else built as characters. If they're built like monsters, they have a basic attack and some Special Moves based on their type. They get a Ring like the characters, but it's shared amongst groups of similar baddies. They don't take Wounds. When their Luck Runs Out, they get killed. Maybe BBEGuys that are supposed to last will take Wounds instead. Edit: gently caress, that took forever to decipher from my notes. I really need to organise the hell out of those. I;m going to bed. Further edit: I currently have my right ring and pinky finger taped together because the ring finger is broken. I keep hitting ; instead of '. Sorry. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 16:08
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gnome7 posted:The Ring sounds like a really neat mechanic, but you could probably use it outside of combat too. Whenever a player takes an action that requires a die roll, they add 1 die to The Ring. This could open up non-combat Special Moves that require burning dice. Thanks. To use the ring out of combat, I think I need some sort of "scene" mechanic so I can say "at the end of the scene, remove dice from the ring". I'm just not sure how to do that well. Potentially just use "scene" for combat too and have skills burn dice in and out of combat. It gets tricky at that point if I want to keep it simple.
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Sep 21, 2012 02:46
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The Ender posted:Hey TG; I'm fumbling around with the formatting for an RPG PDF, and I'm not sure where the setting information belongs. What about a short story at the start of the book (or a series of vignettes), then rules, then fluff? So you get flavor first, but not too much of it. Then you get the rules, which I imagine include character generation which probably includes or references fluff. Then the detailed fluff. If you put references to fluff throughout the rules, with pointers to the page where that thing is described in full, that could work well too. I liked the way Apocalypse/Dungeon World did it, with each character page including a short "You are... You do... Your friends..." paragraph in front of the rules.
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Sep 22, 2012 05:40
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The Ender posted:Can anyone suggest some good alternatives (dice-based or not) to using percentile dice if I want to have straight-up 0% - 100% percentage range resolution mechanics? What are you trying to do? Percentile dice are probably the easiest method of getting a 1-100 number without getting an actual physical d100. Edit: Oh, you said 0 to 100. gently caress if I know. Comedy option: 
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Oct 15, 2012 15:33
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Percentile systems: I had an idea a while ago that never went anywhere. It had a "roll under" d100 resolution for everything, with lots of modifiers, so you could "easily" see your percentage chance of success. I say "easily", but after you hosed around with the modifiers for various things, the whole system was horribly unwieldly so I dropped the idea. Then I went for a system where you added ability score + skill + d20 roll and compared it to a target number from 1-100. The idea was that 1-100 is a loving easy way of expressing things "the average human could do this 50% of the time", "a skilled warrior should succeed 90% of the time". I lost interest though. But I'm still working on that thing I mentioned a few pages ago. --- Core classes? I went with Physical, Arcane, and Spiritual (or Divine, haven't decided yet). You pick a Primary one of those and a Secondary one. Most of your "at-will", or common moves come from your Primary thing at first. Your Big Special Moves come from your Primary or Secondary thing, with no obligation to ever learn anything from your Secondary. The theory is that you build "classes" or archetypes, or whatever from the blocks there. So some possibilities are: Physical with nothing in secondary: Fighter, thief. Arcane with nothing in secondary: Wizard, sage. Spiritual with nothing in secondary: Healy/smitey priest, weird psychic monk. Physical/Arcane: Tolkienesque elf warrior, magic assisted sniper, or maybe D&D wizard/thief. Arcane/Physical: Classic D&D fighter/wizard or maybe wizard/thief. Physical/Spiritual: Paladin, tribal war shaman. And so on.
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Oct 18, 2012 14:38
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Error 404 posted:On the subject of ties: Could it be based on how many allies have succeeded this round, or even a binary "if a player's ally has succeeded this round, a tie is a success (doesn't work for GM controlled creatures)"? No idea if that'll work or fit in or anything though, but it might be a cool tide of battle thing. It sounds like a relatively unlikely event.
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Oct 27, 2012 14:29
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Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.
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Nov 4, 2012 07:56
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I started this thing for the Fantasy Heartbreaker contest a while back. It's still unfinished as gently caress, but I think I have the basis of a coherent system down now. I keep on rewriting every time I pick it up again. I'm especially unhappy with the Skills section (basically deals with anything not done in combat). So, I've finally decided to share what I've done so far. I organised my notes into human-readable form (they were shockingly disorganised), did another rewrite of some stuff, and put it on my google drive. I would appreciate a critique. If you think it's crap, that's fine but please say why it's crap. It's also in a pre-alpha state, with a lot of stuff like "the movement works like 4e", and a lot of stuff that's flat out not there (like more than vague guidelines for making Special Moves). The game is not currently playable. If the consensus opinion is "this is going in a bad direction", I can't see myself continuing to work on it, so I'm more after conceptual critiques than "this one particular part is worded wrong" critiques, if that makes sense. The game is currently not named. Here is the google doc. Tell me how bad my ideas are. https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_lcRLIeo0J3Q2RkZF92RXc5cms Where there's red text, it's because I'm either explaining where I'm going, or have several ideas about how to proceed.
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Nov 21, 2012 14:18
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TK-31 posted:But then again I despise Level-based games in general, so take that with a grain of salt. All the alternatives I've seen to levels that still involve character advancement are still subject to the "wait to get cool stuff" thing though. Even if you start with cool stuff, you end up "waiting" to either get more cool stuff, cooler stuff, or both. How do you approach advancement if not "more cool stuff" or "your cools stuff gets cooler"? Even FATE does this, in a way, where you swap skills, gain new skills, or trade out aspects.
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Nov 22, 2012 11:25
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Ratpick posted:The idea is that the math of the game stays the same at all levels, so no nickel bonuses to rolls or anything, but the characters gain more options. Think of this as a game where each level either gives you a new power (to use 4e terms), spell or skill trick (to use a 3e term). How tenable, in the long term, is a system where the math stays the same all the time and characters only advance in terms of gaining more tricks to pull? The way I did levels in my Fantasy HertbreakerTM was to increase the not-dying points (luck and stamina) each level, and to upgrade your At-Wills and gain new Special Moves on alternating levels (I posted the wrong version of my notes earlier in this thread - it has a new Special at each level). It "only" has 10 levels though. That said, it's supposed to be the "basic set". The Special Moves aren't in the game yet, either. I'm still unsure what the best way to approach them is - I kind of want them in "talent trees" but I equally want them to be this point-buy move building system. Edit: I want them to be point-buy because then you can get whatever power you like each time you get a power. I want them to be in Talent Trees because I had this idea about "prestige-class-esque" branching trees. For example, you start as a Rogue, and after a certain number of levels, you can specialise out into something specific (like Deadly Assassin or Burglar or something). The level splits for these would be the same for all classes, and you'd be explicitly encouraged to start the game at any "branching" level that appealed to the players. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Nov 22, 2012 |
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Nov 22, 2012 11:53
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Yeah, I've been thinking about it since before I made that post, and I'm definitely leaning "point-buy". "Talent trees" aren't in the notes I posted, and probably don't go with the rest of what I've written, although they were the original idea. Yes, the power system I have in mind (not detailed in the notes, but present) is "within the constraints you chose at the start, get a power that does one or some of these things", with stuff like "affect area", "ongoing duration" etc being available to everyone, and "extra damage" either automatically occurring or being available to choose based on how well you do on your combat roll. There aren't "classes" exactly, so saying "within the parameters of your class" doesn't work - what happens is you choose two of Might, Cunning, Mystic, and Leadership and there are certain effects available for your Special Moves depending on what you chose (and you get two at-wills from one and one at-will from the other). Read the notes I posted and tell me what you think 
Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Nov 22, 2012 |
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Nov 22, 2012 12:21
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Ratpick posted:Oh, by the way, I did notice one inconsistency in wording: you alternate between Arcane and Mystic for your Ability Trees in the Skins section at least. Ah, gently caress. Mystic was originally called Arcane, but since I want the "stat" to encompass all spellcasting, I renamed it to Mystic. Ability Trees is a carryover from an earlier rewrite too, I just never got around to changing it. When I rewrote and compiled the set of notes I had (which were scattered all over a spreadsheet), I didn't think to check everything I copy/pasted. Ability Trees... Roles? Simply "Abilities"? Talents? In my very first set of notes they were called Things, as in "the Thing that you're good at is..." I have no idea now, the file where I tracked the renaming stuff is nowhere to be found. But it's 1am and I'm going to bed. Edit: If they're not going to be in trees, they're hardly "Ability Trees", is what I'm getting at.
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Nov 22, 2012 15:11
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I don't see it working unless there's a narrative resource of some sort - FATE would get real messy if you could declare stuff without fate points.
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Nov 23, 2012 01:26
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One problem is that "finding hidden stuff" is so contingent on the type of game you're playing that you can never have just one good way to approach it. AD&D was very much a game about sprawling dungeon complexes, where the goal was "steal the treasure" rather than "kill the baddies". Bypassing rooms or whole dungeon levels was not only supported and cool, it was mechanically a good idea because you'd almost always got more xp for stealing the treasure than you would for beating the dragon. So searching every room carefully for the special secret way into the treasure room was important, as was finding ways to bypass the killer wolf pits and whatever else. In later D&D editions, it's not like that. The in-system benefits (namely xp) come from defeating the monsters and completing plot goals. So bypassing them, and all the systems and rules for doing so, start to seem lame. There's nothing wrong with either style of play, but if you were to play an AD&D game where you were required to fight everything in a classic dungeon (and got no xp for carrying off the loot), you wouldn't have as much fun - just like "failed perception, miss the cool thing behind this secret door" isn't that great in 3e or 4e. One good way to approach this is with narrative resources. In something like DFRPG, "your tracking spell fails" is just lame as hell. But it's made better by the fact that you have this narrative resource to compensate for that sort of failure (fate points), so if you somehow still don't have enough fate points to make your spell work, chances are another character has enough to approach the problem differently. It's not "gee, you all failed your perception checks, I guess the baddies got clean away" - if you really want to find them, you trade future narrative control for the ability to do so. Another good way to deal with the whole perception thing is "failing forward". When a character fails to notice something, the game/plot advances anyway, just differently than it would have had they noticed that thing. They don't miss out on a cool extra that can only be found if you pass a certain test in a certain area. Like zachol said, failing your perception check might mean fighting the BBEG in his arena of doom rather than a random room he hasn't really prepared as a trick-laden ground for his showdown. That's pretty cool, but "not finding the secret door and missing the bonus objective because of a single die roll" is lame as hell (unless, of course, it's an AD&D-like dungeon crawler where there are many special extra areas and discovering some while missing others is part of the general feel of the game - and even then it's lame if the only way to find it is "check perception here").
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Nov 23, 2012 04:39
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Different topic... P.d0t posted:I read through the doc you posted and I wanted to comment on your skill idea. Collaborating? I have a feeling that I'd be incredibly frustrating to work with. I'm very disorganised and am "working" on this so irregularly that it's progressing at a snail's pace. That said, I like your skill list better than mine. I'd been thinking of some sort of "check to see if you know this" skill that encompasses all knowledge skills, probably tied to the primary/secondary tree that you chose. I'd also been thinking of a system more like the AD&D secondary skills, where you pick from a list of backgrounds and then if you explain in-character how you're solving the problem at hand with your skills, you roll to see if you succeed (and maybe tie that into "bonus if it's also covered by your primary/secondary ability", but we're starting to get into FATE aspects by that stage). I kind of want to go with this because it keeps skills vague and separate (and "like Basic D&D"... well, that didn't even have a skill system).
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Nov 23, 2012 04:46
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Halloween Jack posted:Of course, dealing with the design sense you're talking about requires one to see the PCs as moving through a story arc, rather than around an imagined physical map. There are a lot of people who can only see a gaming scenario (like the archetypal dungeoncrawl) that way, and see it as a failure when you have to nudge the PCs because they're been going around in circles due to failing a skill check. I'm not sure it does. In a map-based dungeoncrawl, noticing something that gives you an advantage but doesn't chop off part of the game is doable and can be cool So there's this secret passage that leads to the room where the princess's friend is imprisoned (rescue the princess being the main goal). You can find it by... *A perception-type check in the hall where the door is. *Discovering the previous adventurers' map of the place (the room is hinted at but not explicitly mapped). *Following the guards that bring the food there. *Finding the prisoner manifest, which has one room with a letter instead of number code. It comes with a partial map that has other hidden rooms marked with letter codes. *When they finally rescue the princess, she tells them she heard her friend being dragged off in X direction, and then the noise of sliding stone. Of course, if they get to the friend before they do other stuff, she's got info that will help them out elsewhere, or give them the location of other secret stuff, or whatever. "Dungeoncrawl" doesn't have to mean "pixelbitching hellscape".
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Nov 23, 2012 07:02
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P.d0t posted:One quick question for you: Since I'm not really designing with "classes", that's hard to answer The most trouble I'm having is how to integrate non-combat spellcasting into the game, so that's what I've been completely failing to work on. I'll post my vague ideas about casting though. Combat spellcasting is easy: "Dice roll = <damage>+<effect> via <mundane/divine/magic>". Because Basic D&D and AD&D had no actual skill system, I think folding noncombat casting into the skill system works. Problem is, I don't want to have a mechanical difference between "I climb walls" and "I magic myself up walls". Non-combat spellcasting that's just "Skill roll = <degree of success> via <magic>" seems a little... flavorless. Then again, with the idea being to build an almost-flavorless dungeoncrawl game where the players add all the flavor via character skinning*, maybe that's a good idea. *I have some ideas in the vein of collaborative world building too, but I'm not even sure how necessary world building is in a game about going down holes and killing bad guys. I just don't want players to be locked into "Elves are like this and orcs are like that" with no input.
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Nov 24, 2012 07:46
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MadRhetoric posted:A thought: has any elfgame system appropriated FF7's Materia system? Freely customizable and shared ability pools seem like an interesting dynamic for a loosely classed game. Can you give us a rundown of what you mean? Ability pools are customisable and shared between the whole party? Like, everyone can do anything on the ability list as long as you've unlocked it, or there are some abilities that are party abilities and other abilities that are not? I have never played a Final Fantasy game, partly because that sort of thing didn't appeal to me at the time, and partly because now people who will not loving shut up about how it's the best game ever have completely turned me off ever trying it.
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Nov 25, 2012 09:59
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Skill talk... I've come up with the following skill list/system for my game. Remember, it's a dungeoncrawler with optional hexcrawl rules coming later. Pick 2 from this list: Vigor: Jump, climb, swim, balance, tumble, endure etc Discovery: Track, spot, notice, listen, find trap etc. Subtlety: Hide, sneak, open lock/door, find/remove trap etc Charisma: Bluff, diplomacy, intimidate, etc Knowledge: Know something about something. You are Good at the ones you picked, and Mediocre At Best at the other. For each skill (even the untrained ones) choose whether you do it through Mundane, Spiritual, or Arcane means - so basically whether you trained hard, your god helps, or you know a magic spell for just this situation. The skill system look like this at first level: Roll 2d6 for a trained skill and 1d6 for an untrained skill. Subtract the Difficulty. <2 Failure with a condition (because you tried and it didn't work). 3-6 Failure: you know you can't succeed and so don't try. 7-11 Success, you did what you wanted. >12 Resounding success (you can do it and also help someone else do it, or it gets you an extra benefit). An average-difficulty at first level is 5, so a trained newbie character succeeds a little under 60% of the time if he has no help. Low Difficulty is 3, High is 8, giving the trained newbie around 27% to succeed at High. Trained characters don't have to roll for Low difficulty checks of their level or below. (There is a box on the character sheet for the difficulty number at which it's easy enough for you to do without checking - so the GM says "test Subtlety 9" and you get to say "Haha, nope, I got this"). Now, it looks like an untrained person can't succeed. That's right, at first level at average difficulty. They will succeed 50% of the time at Low difficulty checks. At second level (and then every second level after that), you get another d6 (to all skills) - so your skill at everything goes up, and you can start doing stuff you formerly couldn't achieve, so long as the difficulty is low enough. Now, those numbers stay pretty constant throughout the progression (the Difficulty number changes with the character's level, but there's always roughly the same chance of success/failure). To summarise: A short list of dungeony skills. You choose whether you cast spells, ask god/spirits, or trained hard to achieve the effect. There is a number on your character sheet that tells you the difficulty you don't even have to roll for if you are trained in a skill. The better you get at being an adventurer, the less likely it is that you'll have to check to see if you can do something minor, and the better you get at everything related to adventuring. Edit: The game has 10 character levels. So you end up rolling 7d6 for skills (and attacks) by the end. Is that too many dice in anyone's opinion? The whole system is just d6s, and I like rolling a handful of dice, but it seems like that might be too much addition. I can scale the system back to max at maybe 4 or 5 d6, but that loses some of the "you are progressing" feeling with the numbers going up... Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Nov 25, 2012 |
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Nov 25, 2012 10:57
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TK-31 posted:Materias are items that you can slot into your equipment, and in doing so they give you spells, new commands (as in Steal, Transform, Throw) or passive bonuses. Use a Materia long enough, and you learn the ability for good. So for a tabletop game, it's a magic item that bestows an inherent bonus on you if you use it enough, I guess. You might for instance take the orc cheiftain's Bloodrage Amulet, and when you use it X times to hulk out, you learn how to hulk out without it. Then pass it on to someone who hasn't learned to hulk out yet. I can see it being a cool sandbox game - figure out what powers you want, find the baddies that use that stuff, and then gradually absorb the power from whatever item you take from them that gave them that power in the first place.
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Nov 25, 2012 15:38
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Rexides posted:Time points. D&D has always had this in the form of rounds/turns. Early editions had "turns" as the measure of exploration activities (takes X turns to thoroughly search Y area) and certain races or classes had the ability to (sometimes, unreliably) find hidden stuff without spending that time. There was no explicit advice about putting in time constraints, but ad&d RAW has it all built in with torches, lanterns, protective spells, and wandering monsters being based on Turns. The system could do with a shitload of refining (time points sound awesome) but it was there from the start.
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Nov 26, 2012 02:22
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Rexides posted:You mean 1E? I started with 2, but even if it was still there, at that age I was too engrossed reading about magical dudes to pay attention to anything else. Yes, 1e. Basic had it to a lesser extent and then 2e had it as an optional rule or some obscure page in the DMG that nobody read. The point is, Basic and AD&D weren't about telling stories, they were about raiding dungeons and exploring wilderness. Time was an issue because you were going to run out of light sources and protection spells, not because "rescue the princess before midnight". "Exiting the dungeon" wasn't always (or even commonly) a possibility, and every turn you wasted checking the next 10x10 stone passage for secret doors was tense because the DM was rolling to see if wandering monsters showed up and ate you. I'm not saying "blah blah storygames blah blah things were better back then". Things were different though, and there were different expectations. I maintain that one of the problems with D&D is designers removing elements without understanding why they're present and what they connect with (or worse, not removing elements that were connected to something that got removed). 2e still tracked "rounds" and "turns", even though the exploration element was largely divorced from the time system by then. Rexides posted:But even so, having a power recharge system based around the adventuring day does not mesh well with exploration actions that take up minutes. Yep, it's dumb as poo poo. Magic should only be daily X if there's some sort of actually cool in-game reason. Like Dresden Files and "lasts until next sunup/sundown", those times being "reset" times for lots of magic spells and supernatural critters. Even then, you don't get "2 fireballs per day", it's more like "the tracking spell the faeries gave you won't persist past dawn". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 10:16
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I need people's opinions. I'm working on the math for my game, and I came up with something (this is not a math post). My goal is "Basic-D&D dungeoncrawler", and I was reading over the Basic D&D books. Levels. Levels everywhere. "My 3rd level Character casts a 1st level Spell on the 2nd level of the dungeon". This lead me to thinking about dungeon crawling and what those early D&D games were like. The DM would build a dungeon (segregating the dangerous monsters into "deeper" levels), and the PCs would go off and murder their way through it, trying to find all the cool stuff and being careful not to go too "deep" before they were ready. Second level characters would try to confine themselves to the first or second level of the dungeon - they'd usually be careful not to venture to the fourth or (gasp) fifth level because they'd be hosed right up almost instantly). So, I was thinking of a game with only 6 levels. 6 character levels, 6 attack progression levels, 6 ability progression levels, 6 difficulty progressions, and 6 dungeon levels per game. The only dice you roll are d6s, but I assure you that's coincidental. Who really runs giant 20-character-level long-term dungeoncrawl campaigns these days? I'm guessing almost nobody. But a short multisession not-too-serious dungeon crawl is fun, right? So, set the final level for your game from 1-6. Build your dungeon in sections (levels 1-whatever). Every challenge on Level 2 is a Second Level Challenge. Every bad guy has Second Level Armour Class (for his monster category). The Big Bad Evil Guy is on the last dungeon level, and he's a BBEG:2 if your dungeon ends at 2. PCs, of course, are free to roam wherever they like in the dungeon. They just need to be careful not to delve too deep, or too greedily. Good idea? Awful idea? Mediocre idea? I just want a dungeoncrawl game that's not too loving hard to set up.
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Nov 26, 2012 13:19
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Rexides posted:So, if "greedy delving" is associated with going down a level before they level up (insert Order of the Stick joke here), then what does that mean for the metagame? I was thinking of going with "find enough Treasure to level up". There's a limited amount of Treasure per level, and of course the lower levels have more Treasure, so... You find Treasure by defeating baddies and looting their stuff, by bypassing (skill challenge) the baddies and stealing their stuff, or in Lost Hoards (find the clues and figure out how to get to it). It's just "Treasure" and a value. When the party has accumulated enough Treasure, they level up, and can safely go down a level That, or XP (reduced for monsters lower than your level?) and a system of Time Points like you mentioned earlier to prevent grinding.
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Nov 26, 2012 14:08
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Splicer posted:Sounds fun as balls to be frank. If you haven't played Descent you should, the campaign mode is very similar to what you are describing. Not too close, but enough to crib ideas from/get a feel for it. I have played Descent. I initially didn't have much fun with it. Then I realised that it's HeroQuest not Basic D&D, and I was cool with it. Ideally, I'd like something about half way between D&D and the D&D spinoff boardgames, without D&D's baggage. D&D's baggage is so hard to get away from when you're a long term D&D player trying to design a game. I keep thinking of Big Muscly Sword Guy as "the fighter", but he's not a D&D fighter at all.
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Nov 26, 2012 14:36
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"RPG: The Boardgame: The RPG" sounds like exactly what I was going for. Obviously I don't have the resources (or desire) to make up dungeon tiles like Castle Ravenloft, and I think I want more RPG-ish than that, but the vibe is definitely right. On treasure/advancement/etc... If I went with the treasure system, you'd have to find almost all the treasure in a level before you advanced. The way the fighting math is working right now, it looks like you'd sometimes win fights one level higher than you, but it'd be less than half the time. So if you're stumped, bored, or just want to  , you can charge down the dungeon and see how that goes. As far as resources go, I've got "hit points" that refresh after each fight, and "surges" that refresh... not sure. "Surges" let you get up again at the end of a fight where you run out of hitpoints, power a Special Move even if you don't have Special Move Power (the dice ring thing from earlier), or auto-succeed a skill check. I'm thinking you get X Surges per character level, or possibly Surges recharge after a certain time if I go with Time Points or a Thing Tracker. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Nov 26, 2012 |
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Nov 26, 2012 15:49
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Halloween Jack posted:The way I eventually settled on rationalizing "dungeons" in my fantasy settings is to say they're tunnels into the Underworld--a nightmarish Silent Hill like environment--so there's always justification for "something big and nasty will come for you, or something awful will happen, if you stay long enough." Raiding dude's planar fortresses in Planescape. At X time the BBEG realises you're there and releases the hounds. At Y time he releases the killer bees. At Z time he closes the gates and starts hunting you, so if you're not advanced enough, you're probably hosed. Way more boardgamey than what I had in mind, but pretty cool.
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Nov 26, 2012 16:03
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Splicer posted:Surges could recharge every time you go down a level. There's no in-game rhyme or reason for it but it might work gameplaywise. It's easy to remember (We went down a level, everyone fill their surges) and a per-floor resource would buff a "Just bull through and run" gameplay style. I'm going with Luck as the "surge" name. As in "drat, it's lucky that dagger missed my heart" and "lucky I remembered to bring a Macgyver Macguffin" and "wow, it's lucky your arrow hit him right in the loving eye". Since luck is so unpredictable, it kind of fits as a metagame resource. Also, it lets me write "when your luck runs out" and "if you are out of luck" a lot.
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Nov 26, 2012 16:42
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:A full 20-level nothing-but-dungeon-crawl game. . . I am not sure how that wouldn't become tedious in this day and age where 4E was openly designed as a dungeon crawl game and yet tried to work in everything else even then. Exactly my point. Very few people would even try, and they'd usually give up before they got anywhere near level 20. I was envisioning 1-2 sessions per dungeon level, so a full 6 level dungeon would take about 12 sessions at most. OneThousandMonkeys posted:This is good but does it include mechanics for Appropriate Level Traps? Of course. On the second level, there are second level traps, which inflict appropriate second level effects on second level characters. A trap approached by an appropriate level PC will be detectable most of the time, if the PC is trained and looking. Its effects should hinder exploration and burn resources. A trap approached by a one-level-lower PC who is trained and looking will be detectable some of the time. Its effects should drastically hinder exploration and burn lots of resources. A trap approached by a two-levels-lower PC who is trained and looking should be barely detectable and block further exploration and/or burn lethal amounts of resources. If the former, then the block can be overcome once PCs are closer to level-appropriate. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 06:07
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:OK, well in that case I am not sure why we are even talking about PCs getting ahead of themselves, though. Because it's certainly not entertaining for PCs to get in over their heads to a degree where Death Is Certain if they went the wrong way through the complex. These are sort of practical problems that may only be solved by good GMing though. Point is that one level ahead of yourself is OK if you're lucky, skillful, or don't care. Two levels ahead of yourself is at the point where yeah, the traps kill you, the monsters kill you, and the 10x10 stone passages look really foreboding. Remember, 6 levels in the game. "Two levels ahead of yourself" is like 10 levels ahead of yourself in 4e terms. I'd like the Minimum Dungeon to be 2 levels (3 or 4 sessions max, maybe even 2 if Level 2 consists solely of the BBEG room). Good GMing? The intent was to be explicit as gently caress that poo poo like "a chute drops you directly to level 5 lol good luck with that" is utter bullshit. Hell, the generic design back in the Basic days was "if there's stairs going down, poo poo gets more dangerous if you go that way". Retaining that isn't a bad idea, and neither is having some other obvious in-game way of saying "Level 2 is thataway".
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Nov 27, 2012 07:44
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MadRhetoric posted:The main thing holding back class parity in fantasy game design is the designer's inner grog. Kill that, and it's quite liberating. I disagree somewhat. That's part of it, but the main thing holding back class parity is classes. Why spend time balancing Fighter and Rogue when you could spend time developing a pool of universal balanced abilities and let people pick the ones they like and say ... by magic or ... with my trusty sword?
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Nov 27, 2012 09:45
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I'm not saying Classes are bad design - not by a long shot. Just that by their nature they tend toward imbalance. I'm not even saying that they're inherently imbalanced, just that a fantasy game that ditches D&D while retaining classes is difficult because by the very nature of "classes" you end up mentally comparing them to D&D's fighter, paladin, rogue, etc. I can even see that working to the game's detriment, as people mentally categorise your game's Assassin as a D&D Rogue when he's more like a modern spy-thriller-action type who moves in high society, gets invited to jousting tournaments (and is a good knight-in-armour fighter), and then slips through the shadows in the evening doing his real job, and arranges things so that it looks like the Duke's men assassinated the Baron's brother when really it was the King's plan all along.
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Nov 27, 2012 11:13
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I'm pretty sure the idea of "this class has weak and strong abilities to choose from" is bad too. Unless you mean that every class gets both weak and strong abilities, which is kind of ok as long as you don't try to balance by saying "oh yeah, that guy gets a really strong ability but this guy gets 5 bad abilities instead!"
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Nov 27, 2012 11:38
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