Murphy's Rules: Your Favorite Game Is Weird

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Murphy's Rules: Your Favorite Game Is Weird

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Zereth posted:

Dr. Tofu was a character. If you had Dr. Tofu in your team rolling around they were invincible.

Ugh, the loving vegan lobby has their claws in everything :rolleyes:

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 01:15

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:37

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

You can make it work with any other land - all you need is the Gemstone Cavern in the initial draw. For turn-one kills with the perfect draw, however, nothing beats 4x Dark Ritual + Lightning Greaves + Phage:

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 03:37

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Ahhh yeah. At least mine's legal? :ohdear:

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 03:43

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

I regret going down the M:tG rabbit hole. In penance I offer this up:

Traveller Chargen, Expanded - Death Is Certain! _{I'm using Mongoose's 5th Edition here}

So as Rulebook Heavily noted above, Traveller's character creation is a game in and of itself. I'm going to bust it open here, just so you can all see how deep the space-rabbit hole goes.

To begin with, all characters roll random stats to start. You roll 2d6 six times, and assign them as you see fit to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. These are your fundamental attributes, and play into pretty much all of your skill and ability checks later on down the line. High attributes confer a bonus to dice rolls, low attributes a penalty. For the sake of this exercise let's just assume statistically-average 7s across the board, and go from there.

Every profession has a minimum check that you must pass in order to enlist (otherwise you're thrown to THE DRAFT!), with the Scouts requiring you to pass an Int check of 5+ (again on 2d6). This gives Space-Joe Average an 83% chance of making it into the Scouts - pretty good, all things considered. Once he's been accepted, he chooses a specialization, which sets your difficulty checks for surviving a term of service, as well as advancing in your given career path. Since our attributes aren't great, Space-Joe will become an Exploration specialist, which sets his Survival and Advancement at 7+ each - 58%.

Now, we're ready to serve our first term in the Scouts. To do so, we choose from a couple of tables, one which advances our attributes or skills, another which will advance our specialization skills. Assuming we want to advance one of the attributes that play towards survival/advancement, we need to hit two consecutive 1d6 rolls (only a 3% chance now), in order to bump our attributes high enough that we actually get a bonus towards survival or advancement (which also screws you out of some skills). Anyhow, the first term of service is rolled, a skill or attribute is increased, and then we make our Survival roll. Again, there's a 58% chance of passing it - which, admittedly, isn't the greatest - so let's see what happens if we fail.

Failing a Survival roll means being forced to roll on your particular career's Mishaps table. For Scouts, this is a 1d6 table that basically breaks down as follows:

pre:

1 - Severe injury (lose 1d6 from Str, Dex, or End) OR roll twice on the Injury table
2 - Lose 1 Int or Soc
3 - Gain some contacts and enemies from an adventuring mishap
4 - Gain a rival and a rank of the Diplomat skill by causing an interstellar incident
5 - SPACE MADNESS, but no mechanical effect.
6 - Injured - roll on the Injury table

The Injury table is where you DON'T want to end up, since it breaks down like this:

pre:

1 - Nearly killed, lose 1d6 from one physical characteristic and 2 from the others (or 1d6 and 4 from one other)
2 - Lose 1d6 from one physical characteristic
3 - Lose 2 from Str/Dex
4 - Lose 2 from one physical characteristic
5 - Lose 1 from one physical characteristic
6 - Lightly injured! No permanent effect.

If any of your physical characteristics is reduced to 0, you're dead, unless you can pay 1d6*10,000 credits for emergency medical care which leaves you crippled anyhow. Additionally, the more terms you serve, the older your character becomes - after your fourth term, you roll 2d6-(terms) and there's a chance your physical characteristics are wrecked even further. Finally, if you fail even one Survival roll, you're kicked out of the Scouts for good, with no benefits for that term. You can enlist in another career, if you can manage it, but it's probably going to be tougher owing to your mishap.

So let's say you've survived, somehow. Now it's time to roll for an Event! Events are (usually) pretty good, providing miscellaneous skills, bonuses to advancement or benefits rolls, or even a free promotion. However, a 2 on your Event table means a DISASTER! and a Mishap roll (though you're not kicked out for it), and a 3 or a 10 force you to make a skill check or suffer negative consequences. Meanwhile a 7 causes you to have a Life Event, which represents anything from meeting the Emperor to committing a crime to forming a romantic relationship.

Finally, at the end of all of this, you roll your Advancement check. If you pass, congratulations! You are now Rank 1 in the Scouts. If not, better luck next term. If you manage to rank up, you gain an extra benefit roll. If you can make it to rank 5, you get even more extra benefit rolls AND a +1 to your benefit rolls when they come up. But good luck achieving that without losing an arm or being spaced!

BUT let's say you beat the odds. You're a Rank 5 Senior Scout with most of your limbs intact, your body hasn't withered away too badly, and you've actually got a lot of life experience under your belt. Time to retire, or, at least, quit the Scouts and take your 55-year-old self adventuring. Time for the Benefits rolls! Six terms served, plus three for rank, means nine benefits rolls, each with a +1. To get a Scout Ship, you'll need a 5 or 6, twice (the first time you gain the Scout Ship it's only a loaner). This is actually easy to do - 97% chance that it can be done, assuming you even make it to this point. But you probably died four terms ago.

Traveller character creation is awesome, basically. I was first introduced to it through Megatraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy, a totally bitchin' PC game, when I was probably 10 years old. For someone with no idea what an RPG even was, it was supremely confusing and tough to follow the character creation, but after a huge amount of trial and error I got it, and eventually made my way across the galaxy murderhoboin' and accidentally spacing my own crew members by forgetting to put oxygen tanks in their vacc suits.

Bonus art from Mongoose Traveller, a conspicuously familiar gentleman:

_{Spike Spiegel enlisted in the Navy but died on the operating table.}

Majuju fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Mar 20, 2013

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 17:37

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Yeah, the example chargen in the book really plays up attaching a narrative to your character creation process, which is super cool. Plus you can create Vargr (space wolf-men) or Hivers (crazy aliens with sixfold symmetry).

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 17:49

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Shadowrun has a long tradition of trolls being able to destroy tanks with composite bows, too. Though I don't think this has anything to do with the velocity rules, and is just an extreme application of mega-strength.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2013 00:03

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Splicer posted:

ungulants

Sentient, horselike ointments?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2013 23:10

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

What about its intrinsic value lying in its relative uselessness? Like, presuming your civilization's advanced enough to require a form of currency, doesn't it make sense to use a metal that has no real industrial application? You could make your coins out of iron or nickel or whatever, but wouldn't you rather make barrel hoops and armour? Plus it's easy to work with, meaning your mint is easier to run.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2013 00:19

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

rantmo posted:

It's in one of the really, really early campaign/adventure (I can't remember what WoD's version of those were called) that takes place in Mexico, and has Mexico in the title. I think it was Diablerie: Mexico, but I can't swear to that.

It would be awesome if this is actually in like six or seven different Vampire books, in the same formatting, some of them apropos of nothing.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 16:14

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

deadly_pudding posted:

For 20 weeks of labor, I expect that hole in the ground to be paved on all walls and floors with stone, with an ingenious blood drainage system that self-cleans in the rain.

New idea for adventure: a lich's immaculate, self-sterilizing dungeon, featuring floor-to-ceiling gleaming marble and more secret compartments containing oozes than should be allowed by law.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 18:03

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

[*]The C-27 Heavy Plasma Cannon has a range of 488 km. (They probably meant "feet".) Just in case you need you need to shoot somebody across state lines...

Yeah they meant metres instead of kilometres, which approximates to 1600 feet. You wouldn't even be able to use a tenth of its typoed range: distance to horizon if you're standing on something 100 metres tall is only like 20 km.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 18:31

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

Kwyndig posted:

That wouldn't kill you instantly. Quickly, yes, but not instantly, your blood's mostly water anyway, instead you would suffocate to death, which brings back the horrible drowning rules...

Christ, I just thought about this seriously on an actual physiological level, and god drat am I bummed out now

# ¿ Nov 9, 2013 06:35

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:37

Majuju: Dec 30, 2006; I had a beer with Stephen Miller once and now I like him.

So what happens if you Polymorph Any Object a tame animal (or your familiar, or something) into a humanoid, then level-drain it into wight-dom, then the spell's duration runs out?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2013 22:48

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