Post by zipp on Dec 24, 2008 17:16:06 GMT -5
Yes, it's true. Not a continuation of the last game, but rather a darker theme based on the loss of sanity amidst a world struck with plague.
In any case, the setting would be Lone Wolf, either at the time of the RPG, or the time of the WW (I haven't decided yet), and the theme of the game would mix exploration with psychological questioning.
The trick to this is, I don't have the time to organize as complicated a system as the D20 system. I need to be able to jump online, throw some things at you, and resolve it no matter where I am, so I would be using my own simplified system, which in turn, is a simplified version of Cannibal Contagion, a BRILLIANT system my friend came up with and is hoping to get published sometime soon. Contagion uses the card system, but we'll modify it for a slightly twisted D20 system.
Anyways, I want to run through a quick explanation of how the system would work for us. Then, if you're interested, let me know. I need at least three people, I'm maxing it at five.
SOME GENERAL NOTES ON PARTICIPATION
The following rules should make it clear that you won't have to keep track of a lot of stats or be involved in knowing many rules. The game will be highly description and improvisationally based. It will encourage you to have fun in the environment and really get into your character and into the heads of your fellows. It emphasizes the GAME of role playing game, with the point for you to have fun.
However, games quickly lose their fun if no one participates. I'm planning on logging on at least three times a day to update (maybe more during combat). I'd like to have people who can commit to posting at least three times a day, or at least checking the site three times a day to see if they are needed to post. I don't expect everyone to write a novel of posts, but I do need them around for things like combat.
Read on, fellow adventurers, and let's get this game started.
BASIC STATS
There are four basic stats. These are Combat, Mental, Toughness, and Skills. At the beginning of the game, you assign a value to each of these from: superb, great, average, poor. Each of these decides a stats max value. When you start the game at level one, these values are: superb (4), great (3), average (2), poor (1).
Combat:
This stat decides how good you are in physical combat. Almost every combat will be fought with this stat.
Mental:
This stat decides how good you are with magic. Sorcerors and wizards will use this stat more often than combat with fighting. Mental also decides the state of your mental health and your ability to resist magic. Throughout the adventure, your sanity will often be tested. Fail these tests, and you may find yourself acting very strangely...
Toughness:
How good you are at resisting damage. This will help you soak damage
Skills:
This stat decides everything outside of combat, such as swimming across a rapidly flowing river, or jumping from one moving wagon to another.
The tricky part is, these stats are also your life. When you take damage, you will take it to your stats (your choice, usually, where damage goes). Thus, as your life dwindles, so do your abilities.
Not that there won't be chances for amazing feats of single handed valor (that sounds suspiciously like masturbation as I read this aloud), but because of the nature of your health and stats, you'll often need to rely on team work to stay alive. At the same time, the story is going to be such that you will not always be able to put your trust in your mates.
ENEMIES (really only important to GM)
Enemies, you'll be happy to learn, usually only have two of the four stats, combat and toughness. This is true for almost all animals and monsters. More powerful creatures, however, such as Vordak, may have three (adding mental to the bunch). More deadly, like Helghast, may have all four, and the MOST powerful, such as Darklords or demons, may even have a fifth stat.
There are some set fights in each area, but for the most part, I decide enemies based on my threat level. When a scene begins, I add up all your base stats and divide the number by 5. I also add some threat depending on how hard the scene is and every time you get EXP (see below).
Then I get to spend threat to roll the die and use the generated stats to make monsters:
The usual formula is 1 threat per monster, one die roll divided by 4 distributed amongst their stats. I can spend threat to beef them up as follows:
1- reroll die
1- divide rolls by 3 instead of 4
2- roll a die per stat
2- divide roll by 2 instead of 4
3- don't divide rolls
1- increase a stat by 1
ITEMS
The item system works mostly like the old gamebooks. You can carry two weapons and two items on your person. A backpack adds eight slots to this. Some items take up two or more slots.
Most items have a specific use, like rope is used for climbing or tying some one up, and laumspur heals or prevents damage (very useful in this system).
Weapons add to your damage when you succesfully attack an enemy. Each class has weapons it is proficient in. Entering combat without a weapon you are proficient in takes away 4 from all numbers "rolled" to hit (see below)
Armour, conversely, helps absorb damage.
COMBAT
When you face off against an enemy, you each roll the d20 a number of times equal to your combat score. This is your combat pool. At this point, things become a little strategic.
You "play" your numbers in any order you wish by declaring them on the forum. I do the same, though before I've seen your numbers. We then compare numbers.
Every time an opponent has a number higher than the one matching it, they score a point. These points represent damage. However, only the final number declared decides who deals their damage. Thus, you have to win the final number in order to hurt your opponent. If the two final numbers are the same, then both fighters take damage.
Many times, players will have different amounts of numbers. The contest always last only as long as there are numbers to match, and you never have to play all your numbers. Also, if you decide to, you can combine two numbers rather than play them seperately.
Finally, if the number of digits of two numbers does not match (a 9 played against a 15, or a 7 played against a 22), a switch-up occurs. In a switch up, the tens digit is removed from the numbers (so a 19 would become a 9) before comparison.
A 1 always wins in a switch-up. A 20 never activates a switch-up.
Once it is decided who takes damage, you can try to resist it. To do this, roll a number of dice equal to your toughness score. For each 18, 19, or 20 you roll, prevent one point of damage. Some abilities and armour lower the number needed to roll.
Some examples of combat:
Beowuuf has a combat of 5, and he rolls the following numbers: 13, 18, 7, 7, 1
A giant spider has combat of 3, and rolls the following: 2, 20, 5
One way this could play out:
Beowuuf arranges his numbers like so: 13, 7+1 (combing the 1 with his 7), 18
The spider arranges its numbers like so: 2, 5, 19
In this arrangement, the spider activates one switch up, making the first pairings 3-2. Beowuuf still wins the first two matches, but the spider wins the match overal with 18-19. Since it only wins one matching, though, it only does 1 damage. Beowuuf can now use toughness to resist.
Another play out:
Beowuuf arranges his numbers like so: 13, 1, 18+7
The spider only chooses to use two numbers: 5, 19
In this arrangement, the first match activates a switch-up, which the spider wins (3-5). But the second match activates a switch-up as well, and since Beowuuf's 1 always wins switch-ups, he wins the match. The spider only played two numbers, so the 25 he created is discarded, but he still wins the match and does one damage (maybe more, depending on his weapons). The spider can now use toughness to resist.
Finally, many combat abilities are activated by playing a certain series of numbers (like 3 evens in a row). Successfully activating these abilities can give you a bonus in combat, like instant kills, extra dice, or extra damage.
ACTIONS OUTSIDE OF COMBAT
Using skills works similarly to combat. I set a DC for the task, and you get to roll as many times as you have skill to try and hit that number. More successes equals a better outcome. So hitting a DC 17 to jump from one airship to another would mean you succeed. But getting three 17's could mean you land on the captain when you make the jump, knocking him unconcious.
EXP POINTS
Every time you do something spectacular (defeat an enemy, find a treasure, foil an evil plot, find a secret passage), you'll get EXP points. These points can be spent to raise your basic stats or grant you new abilities.
Raising your stats to the next level requires a couple things. First, you must have that stat fully healed. Then you must pay the cost of its next level times two. So if you wanted to raise your base combat from 5 to 6, it would cost you 12 exp.
New abilities cost a certain amount of EXP, and like all abilities, have requisites of basic stats to acquire them.
EXP can also be used to help you do something better (the benefits of personal experience). You can always spend 1 EXP to reroll a die, or 2 to add a die to a pool. Threat can be spent in this same way on my side of the table.
INSANITY
Your characters are thrust together in a time of great uncertainty and strife. I'll be secretly keeping track of each character's sanity. As the game progresses and you see the trauma that is inflicting Magnamund, your character's will start to gain insanity points. Periodically I'll be rolling against your insanity. If you fail the roll, it will have penalties. Early on you won't be aware of what these are. I may send you false information in our next PM. Or you may find an item missing from your inventory. As time goes on, though, you'll become more suspicious both to, and of, your fellows. At worst, I'll momentarily take control of your character.
While anything from seeing a child's dead body or being splashed with acid could be traumatic enough to add insanity, the most common way to accumulate these points is by staying in combat too long, where the intensity of battle begins to take it's toll. Thus, it behooves you to end fights quickly and decisively. But try not to do so at the risk of your own health... we don't want to clean you up from the rugs, after all.
WATCH YOUR BACK
A final note on how this will play out. Though you are all together in a team, everyone here has their own goal. You may not even all be of the same alliance. Some may be wanting to take the plague for their own gain. Some will be agents of the Darklords, looking to kill the party. Others could be mercenaries, looking to save their own skin.
Think of this as a glorified version of Mafia. You can't trust anyone.
In any case, the setting would be Lone Wolf, either at the time of the RPG, or the time of the WW (I haven't decided yet), and the theme of the game would mix exploration with psychological questioning.
The trick to this is, I don't have the time to organize as complicated a system as the D20 system. I need to be able to jump online, throw some things at you, and resolve it no matter where I am, so I would be using my own simplified system, which in turn, is a simplified version of Cannibal Contagion, a BRILLIANT system my friend came up with and is hoping to get published sometime soon. Contagion uses the card system, but we'll modify it for a slightly twisted D20 system.
Anyways, I want to run through a quick explanation of how the system would work for us. Then, if you're interested, let me know. I need at least three people, I'm maxing it at five.
SOME GENERAL NOTES ON PARTICIPATION
The following rules should make it clear that you won't have to keep track of a lot of stats or be involved in knowing many rules. The game will be highly description and improvisationally based. It will encourage you to have fun in the environment and really get into your character and into the heads of your fellows. It emphasizes the GAME of role playing game, with the point for you to have fun.
However, games quickly lose their fun if no one participates. I'm planning on logging on at least three times a day to update (maybe more during combat). I'd like to have people who can commit to posting at least three times a day, or at least checking the site three times a day to see if they are needed to post. I don't expect everyone to write a novel of posts, but I do need them around for things like combat.
Read on, fellow adventurers, and let's get this game started.
BASIC STATS
There are four basic stats. These are Combat, Mental, Toughness, and Skills. At the beginning of the game, you assign a value to each of these from: superb, great, average, poor. Each of these decides a stats max value. When you start the game at level one, these values are: superb (4), great (3), average (2), poor (1).
Combat:
This stat decides how good you are in physical combat. Almost every combat will be fought with this stat.
Mental:
This stat decides how good you are with magic. Sorcerors and wizards will use this stat more often than combat with fighting. Mental also decides the state of your mental health and your ability to resist magic. Throughout the adventure, your sanity will often be tested. Fail these tests, and you may find yourself acting very strangely...
Toughness:
How good you are at resisting damage. This will help you soak damage
Skills:
This stat decides everything outside of combat, such as swimming across a rapidly flowing river, or jumping from one moving wagon to another.
The tricky part is, these stats are also your life. When you take damage, you will take it to your stats (your choice, usually, where damage goes). Thus, as your life dwindles, so do your abilities.
Not that there won't be chances for amazing feats of single handed valor (that sounds suspiciously like masturbation as I read this aloud), but because of the nature of your health and stats, you'll often need to rely on team work to stay alive. At the same time, the story is going to be such that you will not always be able to put your trust in your mates.
ENEMIES (really only important to GM)
Enemies, you'll be happy to learn, usually only have two of the four stats, combat and toughness. This is true for almost all animals and monsters. More powerful creatures, however, such as Vordak, may have three (adding mental to the bunch). More deadly, like Helghast, may have all four, and the MOST powerful, such as Darklords or demons, may even have a fifth stat.
There are some set fights in each area, but for the most part, I decide enemies based on my threat level. When a scene begins, I add up all your base stats and divide the number by 5. I also add some threat depending on how hard the scene is and every time you get EXP (see below).
Then I get to spend threat to roll the die and use the generated stats to make monsters:
The usual formula is 1 threat per monster, one die roll divided by 4 distributed amongst their stats. I can spend threat to beef them up as follows:
1- reroll die
1- divide rolls by 3 instead of 4
2- roll a die per stat
2- divide roll by 2 instead of 4
3- don't divide rolls
1- increase a stat by 1
ITEMS
The item system works mostly like the old gamebooks. You can carry two weapons and two items on your person. A backpack adds eight slots to this. Some items take up two or more slots.
Most items have a specific use, like rope is used for climbing or tying some one up, and laumspur heals or prevents damage (very useful in this system).
Weapons add to your damage when you succesfully attack an enemy. Each class has weapons it is proficient in. Entering combat without a weapon you are proficient in takes away 4 from all numbers "rolled" to hit (see below)
Armour, conversely, helps absorb damage.
COMBAT
When you face off against an enemy, you each roll the d20 a number of times equal to your combat score. This is your combat pool. At this point, things become a little strategic.
You "play" your numbers in any order you wish by declaring them on the forum. I do the same, though before I've seen your numbers. We then compare numbers.
Every time an opponent has a number higher than the one matching it, they score a point. These points represent damage. However, only the final number declared decides who deals their damage. Thus, you have to win the final number in order to hurt your opponent. If the two final numbers are the same, then both fighters take damage.
Many times, players will have different amounts of numbers. The contest always last only as long as there are numbers to match, and you never have to play all your numbers. Also, if you decide to, you can combine two numbers rather than play them seperately.
Finally, if the number of digits of two numbers does not match (a 9 played against a 15, or a 7 played against a 22), a switch-up occurs. In a switch up, the tens digit is removed from the numbers (so a 19 would become a 9) before comparison.
A 1 always wins in a switch-up. A 20 never activates a switch-up.
Once it is decided who takes damage, you can try to resist it. To do this, roll a number of dice equal to your toughness score. For each 18, 19, or 20 you roll, prevent one point of damage. Some abilities and armour lower the number needed to roll.
Some examples of combat:
Beowuuf has a combat of 5, and he rolls the following numbers: 13, 18, 7, 7, 1
A giant spider has combat of 3, and rolls the following: 2, 20, 5
One way this could play out:
Beowuuf arranges his numbers like so: 13, 7+1 (combing the 1 with his 7), 18
The spider arranges its numbers like so: 2, 5, 19
In this arrangement, the spider activates one switch up, making the first pairings 3-2. Beowuuf still wins the first two matches, but the spider wins the match overal with 18-19. Since it only wins one matching, though, it only does 1 damage. Beowuuf can now use toughness to resist.
Another play out:
Beowuuf arranges his numbers like so: 13, 1, 18+7
The spider only chooses to use two numbers: 5, 19
In this arrangement, the first match activates a switch-up, which the spider wins (3-5). But the second match activates a switch-up as well, and since Beowuuf's 1 always wins switch-ups, he wins the match. The spider only played two numbers, so the 25 he created is discarded, but he still wins the match and does one damage (maybe more, depending on his weapons). The spider can now use toughness to resist.
Finally, many combat abilities are activated by playing a certain series of numbers (like 3 evens in a row). Successfully activating these abilities can give you a bonus in combat, like instant kills, extra dice, or extra damage.
ACTIONS OUTSIDE OF COMBAT
Using skills works similarly to combat. I set a DC for the task, and you get to roll as many times as you have skill to try and hit that number. More successes equals a better outcome. So hitting a DC 17 to jump from one airship to another would mean you succeed. But getting three 17's could mean you land on the captain when you make the jump, knocking him unconcious.
EXP POINTS
Every time you do something spectacular (defeat an enemy, find a treasure, foil an evil plot, find a secret passage), you'll get EXP points. These points can be spent to raise your basic stats or grant you new abilities.
Raising your stats to the next level requires a couple things. First, you must have that stat fully healed. Then you must pay the cost of its next level times two. So if you wanted to raise your base combat from 5 to 6, it would cost you 12 exp.
New abilities cost a certain amount of EXP, and like all abilities, have requisites of basic stats to acquire them.
EXP can also be used to help you do something better (the benefits of personal experience). You can always spend 1 EXP to reroll a die, or 2 to add a die to a pool. Threat can be spent in this same way on my side of the table.
INSANITY
Your characters are thrust together in a time of great uncertainty and strife. I'll be secretly keeping track of each character's sanity. As the game progresses and you see the trauma that is inflicting Magnamund, your character's will start to gain insanity points. Periodically I'll be rolling against your insanity. If you fail the roll, it will have penalties. Early on you won't be aware of what these are. I may send you false information in our next PM. Or you may find an item missing from your inventory. As time goes on, though, you'll become more suspicious both to, and of, your fellows. At worst, I'll momentarily take control of your character.
While anything from seeing a child's dead body or being splashed with acid could be traumatic enough to add insanity, the most common way to accumulate these points is by staying in combat too long, where the intensity of battle begins to take it's toll. Thus, it behooves you to end fights quickly and decisively. But try not to do so at the risk of your own health... we don't want to clean you up from the rugs, after all.
WATCH YOUR BACK
A final note on how this will play out. Though you are all together in a team, everyone here has their own goal. You may not even all be of the same alliance. Some may be wanting to take the plague for their own gain. Some will be agents of the Darklords, looking to kill the party. Others could be mercenaries, looking to save their own skin.
Think of this as a glorified version of Mafia. You can't trust anyone.