Here's one thought for an interesting setting:
The corebook describes a human colonization effort on a new planet. The planet has unusual heavy metals that the colony hopes to one day exploit. These rare earths also seem to be increasing the prevalence of psionic powers amongst the colonists, especially among the native-born.
The first setting supplement details another continent on this planet, which is actually a fairly typical fantasy setting with elves and orcs. There is even a human kingdom here, which started when one of the colony ships crashed on this continent. I was tempted to put in something completely different and fantastical, but I had a really cool idea of an elven mage piloting a tree like a mecha/treant and fighting against a human, purely technological mecha and I want that in the setting somewhere. This supplement will contain all of the magic rules and suggestions for what happens when the colonists move to this continent and interact with the fantasy races there.
Second setting supplement is a slightly more distant colony ship that landed near a particularly concentrated deposit of heavy metals. This colony is somewhat more established because some of the people have been developing unusual physical abilities which have helped immensely in terms of construction and resource gathering. This setting is much more urban and (you guessed it) has superheroes and villains among the population.
From here we can go off-world to see what sort of galactic culture exists, what alien races are out there and what sort of adventures can be had in this universe.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Magic and Psi
(Sorry about the late post. You'd think I could keep up with a monthly schedule, but my life had to go and be stupid on me.)
Now to get into the magic and psionics rules. This is still an area that I am feeling out, but here are my ideas so far.
The major necessity is that is fit together much better with the system that surrounds it. So magic and psionics will both be skill-based, allowing them to improve with use, and will feature milestones in their advancement.
But what will make them different? In most cases, it's not much of an issue, as a game will often feature only one or the other. But universal games, or those with "kitchen-sink" settings often find magic and psionics butting up against each other. And they often suffer for it, typically because the systems are so similar that there's little point in differentiation, or different for the sheer sake of being different.
One conceit that's been used in modern fantasy fiction is the idea that magic and psionics are largely the same thing. People with reliable intuition, poltergeists, medium abilities, and such are simply untrained wizards. This first came to my attention in Simon Hawk's "Wizard" series, but has also shown up in the more recent and more popular "Dresden Files" novel (notably "White Night").
But those stories present psychic ability as a lesser form of the power, and if you're going to be anything, you become a wizard. Trade in your intuition for divination spells. Telekinesis gets channeled into apportation magic. Which is no fun from a gaming perspective. Players want their psionics to be a valid, equal and interesting choice, not a lesser option.
So let's take that split and refine it. Psychic powers are crude, but powerful. Magic spells are specialized, but efficient. When faced with a locked door, a telekinetic can reach into the lock with his mind and jiggle the parts around until they unlock. A mage in the same position can simply cast a knock spell.
Also, magic is very precise, while psi is flexible. That knock spell is very useful against locked doors, but useless when you're trying to pick up a weapon from across the room. Or trying to move boulders out of the way to save people from a cave-in. It all depends on how many Power Points you're willing to invest in it (Yes, I'm planning on using a Power Point system for magic and psi, in keeping with the source material).
While I've got a good portion of the psionics system figured out (it was actually my initial inspiration for the milestone system), magic is much trickier.
First of all, how are spells learned? Should a milestone grant a number of spells available for casting? Or maybe learning a magic skill gives you access to a specific spell list and you can try to cast any spell on that list, but at a penalty, and milestones allow you to buy off that penalty. And should there be a point at which a skill roll is not needed for the casting of a spell?
I'm sure actual spell lists will come as I develop the game further and get more into the setting.
The next challenge is spell resistance. Rolling against a stat makes a degree of sense, but in a percentile system, chances are pretty low. So someone with a pretty good Dex score (say 25) has only a 25% chance to save against a fireball spell. And once we factor in the contested action mechanic (blackjack percentile rolls), it becomes even more bleak, since a caster can have an 87% chance to cast the spell, and if he rolls anything over 25, that high Dex means nothing.
One potential to this is allowing either resistance skills that can be improved or making milestones available that provide bonuses to magic resistance.
Now to get into the magic and psionics rules. This is still an area that I am feeling out, but here are my ideas so far.
The major necessity is that is fit together much better with the system that surrounds it. So magic and psionics will both be skill-based, allowing them to improve with use, and will feature milestones in their advancement.
But what will make them different? In most cases, it's not much of an issue, as a game will often feature only one or the other. But universal games, or those with "kitchen-sink" settings often find magic and psionics butting up against each other. And they often suffer for it, typically because the systems are so similar that there's little point in differentiation, or different for the sheer sake of being different.
One conceit that's been used in modern fantasy fiction is the idea that magic and psionics are largely the same thing. People with reliable intuition, poltergeists, medium abilities, and such are simply untrained wizards. This first came to my attention in Simon Hawk's "Wizard" series, but has also shown up in the more recent and more popular "Dresden Files" novel (notably "White Night").
But those stories present psychic ability as a lesser form of the power, and if you're going to be anything, you become a wizard. Trade in your intuition for divination spells. Telekinesis gets channeled into apportation magic. Which is no fun from a gaming perspective. Players want their psionics to be a valid, equal and interesting choice, not a lesser option.
So let's take that split and refine it. Psychic powers are crude, but powerful. Magic spells are specialized, but efficient. When faced with a locked door, a telekinetic can reach into the lock with his mind and jiggle the parts around until they unlock. A mage in the same position can simply cast a knock spell.
Also, magic is very precise, while psi is flexible. That knock spell is very useful against locked doors, but useless when you're trying to pick up a weapon from across the room. Or trying to move boulders out of the way to save people from a cave-in. It all depends on how many Power Points you're willing to invest in it (Yes, I'm planning on using a Power Point system for magic and psi, in keeping with the source material).
While I've got a good portion of the psionics system figured out (it was actually my initial inspiration for the milestone system), magic is much trickier.
First of all, how are spells learned? Should a milestone grant a number of spells available for casting? Or maybe learning a magic skill gives you access to a specific spell list and you can try to cast any spell on that list, but at a penalty, and milestones allow you to buy off that penalty. And should there be a point at which a skill roll is not needed for the casting of a spell?
I'm sure actual spell lists will come as I develop the game further and get more into the setting.
The next challenge is spell resistance. Rolling against a stat makes a degree of sense, but in a percentile system, chances are pretty low. So someone with a pretty good Dex score (say 25) has only a 25% chance to save against a fireball spell. And once we factor in the contested action mechanic (blackjack percentile rolls), it becomes even more bleak, since a caster can have an 87% chance to cast the spell, and if he rolls anything over 25, that high Dex means nothing.
One potential to this is allowing either resistance skills that can be improved or making milestones available that provide bonuses to magic resistance.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Micro-Mega-Damage
While I mentioned the use of an armor divisor system to represent mega-damage in my first post, an idea that would save me some math has recently occurred to me, though it does have something of a catch.
The catch is, you'd have to give up all of your polyhedral dice and rely solely on the d10.
What I'm proposing is a damage-scaling system (sort of like how MDC works, but smaller so it's not as cheesy) where the next tier up isn't 100 points of damage, but only 5. And the reason that you'd have to leave all your other dice behind is that the average roll of a d10 is 5 (5.5 for those detail minded folks out there), so a 1d10 damage die could simply be averaged to 5 points of damage, or 1 point of damage on the vehicle scale. And rolling 5d10 damage against a vehicle and then dividing by 5 could be simplified to rolling 1d10 vehicle scale damage.
So this scaling mechanic has the ability to save us from the "buckets o' dice" problem of human-scale weaponry vs. heavy vehicles. It also grants the armor-like property of mega-damage to things that probably should have it.
For example, in the Rifts system, a car has about 200 SDC. An untrained mook does 1d4 damage (average roll 2.5) with a punch and has 2 attacks per melee. So at an average 5 damage per 15 seconds (I'll let someone with stronger math skills factor in the 15% miss chance due to the fact that he could miss his roll to hit), that car is useless after about 10 minutes of some guy (nobody special) punching it. A combat trained character could do it faster.
Under a x5 scaling system, the car has only about 40 vehicle scale hp, but it takes 5 points of human-scale damage to cause 1 hp. If an untrained human still does only an average of 2.5 damage per hit, that converts to 1d10-3 (it gives a larger range, 0-7, but retains the same average). Since only results of 5,6, and 7 (8,9, and 10 on the die) would damage the car at all, that's about a 30% chance of doing 1 point of damage on a successful hit. That feels a bit more realistic to me.
So here's the question, guys: This feels a lot cleaner than the current MDC system and seems to produce more realistic results. Is it worth giving up all of those funny little dice?
Bonus question: Am I doing my math right? Do I only think this works like I say it does?
The catch is, you'd have to give up all of your polyhedral dice and rely solely on the d10.
What I'm proposing is a damage-scaling system (sort of like how MDC works, but smaller so it's not as cheesy) where the next tier up isn't 100 points of damage, but only 5. And the reason that you'd have to leave all your other dice behind is that the average roll of a d10 is 5 (5.5 for those detail minded folks out there), so a 1d10 damage die could simply be averaged to 5 points of damage, or 1 point of damage on the vehicle scale. And rolling 5d10 damage against a vehicle and then dividing by 5 could be simplified to rolling 1d10 vehicle scale damage.
So this scaling mechanic has the ability to save us from the "buckets o' dice" problem of human-scale weaponry vs. heavy vehicles. It also grants the armor-like property of mega-damage to things that probably should have it.
For example, in the Rifts system, a car has about 200 SDC. An untrained mook does 1d4 damage (average roll 2.5) with a punch and has 2 attacks per melee. So at an average 5 damage per 15 seconds (I'll let someone with stronger math skills factor in the 15% miss chance due to the fact that he could miss his roll to hit), that car is useless after about 10 minutes of some guy (nobody special) punching it. A combat trained character could do it faster.
Under a x5 scaling system, the car has only about 40 vehicle scale hp, but it takes 5 points of human-scale damage to cause 1 hp. If an untrained human still does only an average of 2.5 damage per hit, that converts to 1d10-3 (it gives a larger range, 0-7, but retains the same average). Since only results of 5,6, and 7 (8,9, and 10 on the die) would damage the car at all, that's about a 30% chance of doing 1 point of damage on a successful hit. That feels a bit more realistic to me.
So here's the question, guys: This feels a lot cleaner than the current MDC system and seems to produce more realistic results. Is it worth giving up all of those funny little dice?
Bonus question: Am I doing my math right? Do I only think this works like I say it does?
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A System Worth Fighting For!
Now we get into the nitty gritty of the combat system, what makes it tick, what we want to keep and what we want to get rid of.
Initiative and Actions
Nothing is wrong with the initiative system as written. The main change that is going to come here is from the movement to a d10/percentile system.
Clarity and intuitiveness is a goal as well. I've heard stories of things going horribly awry due to misunderstandings of the rules. In one story, each player takes all of their actions at once, so Player 1 takes their 3-5 attacks, then Player 2 attacks 3-5 times, etc. until the last player in the initiative gets so mad at having to wait so long and having most of the enemies defeated already that he uses his 3-5 actions to attack the other PCs!
Probably the simplest way to set up an initiative order is to make a die roll and add it to an attribute (probably whatever I use to represent speed). 1 or 2d10 for granularity and interest. Not too much more or randomness will overwhelm character ability. I definitely want character ability to matter much more than it does in the current iteration of Rifts.
One possible solution to the action situation is to implement "initiative passes." I saw this in at least one version of Shadowrun. Initiative is rolled and everyone takes one action in initiative order. Then 10 is subtracted from everyone's initiative and anyone who still have an initiative above 0 can act again. This cycle continues until no one has a positive initiative total anymore. Then initiative is rerolled for the next round.
Another option is "tick-based" initiative, which has notably appeared in the second edition of Exalted and the Feng Shui RPG. Every action that a character has a cost which generally reflects how long the action takes to complete. Small quick actions may be taken multiple times while another character who takes more involved actions must wait much longer until they can act again.
I'm not firmly decided on which option to use quite yet.
Combat Movement
One thing that definitely needs clearing up is combat movement. In Rifts, movement is governed by the Speed attribute, but it is not well explained. There is a table detailing running speed in miles and kilometers per hour, but no real explanation of how it governs movement over a combat round. While some gamers are content to play out battles using only their imaginations, or simple sketch-maps, there are those who cry for the minis and gridded battle mat when fights break out.
Also very important, it should work for both descriptive combat and gridded combat. One thing that I hated about Savage Worlds is their use of the "Savage Worlds inch." You are assumed to be mapping everything out, so all measurements are given in inches (representing 1 inch on the tabletop). This wouldn't be so bad, but this "inch" translates into two yards. Meaning that when my players asked about distances, I had to take the time to convert 1 inch into 2 yards. Usually just a doubling or a halving, depending on which way the conversion was going, but it still took away from my valuable game time. D&D's 5 foot square or GURPS' 1 yard hexes are far more intuitive.
Attack and Defense
Now we get into the actual dice rolling. Combat will be resolved with percentile rolls, just like every other die roll in the system. Attack and defense will be a pair of "blackjack" rolls (roll as high as you can as long as it's below your skill %). So if the attack is successful with a result of 48, the defender must roll higher than 48 but less than their defending skill % in order to avoid the attack.
This does a pretty good job of mapping the Palladium combat dice flow to a percentile system. It will also serve as a model for opposed actions outside of combat, a mechanic that Palladium has been sorely lacking. The recent addition of the Perception roll makes this all the more obvious. Especially since the rolls it opposes are percentile rolls (like Prowl) and the Perception check is made on a d20.
Initiative and Actions
Nothing is wrong with the initiative system as written. The main change that is going to come here is from the movement to a d10/percentile system.
Clarity and intuitiveness is a goal as well. I've heard stories of things going horribly awry due to misunderstandings of the rules. In one story, each player takes all of their actions at once, so Player 1 takes their 3-5 attacks, then Player 2 attacks 3-5 times, etc. until the last player in the initiative gets so mad at having to wait so long and having most of the enemies defeated already that he uses his 3-5 actions to attack the other PCs!
Probably the simplest way to set up an initiative order is to make a die roll and add it to an attribute (probably whatever I use to represent speed). 1 or 2d10 for granularity and interest. Not too much more or randomness will overwhelm character ability. I definitely want character ability to matter much more than it does in the current iteration of Rifts.
One possible solution to the action situation is to implement "initiative passes." I saw this in at least one version of Shadowrun. Initiative is rolled and everyone takes one action in initiative order. Then 10 is subtracted from everyone's initiative and anyone who still have an initiative above 0 can act again. This cycle continues until no one has a positive initiative total anymore. Then initiative is rerolled for the next round.
Another option is "tick-based" initiative, which has notably appeared in the second edition of Exalted and the Feng Shui RPG. Every action that a character has a cost which generally reflects how long the action takes to complete. Small quick actions may be taken multiple times while another character who takes more involved actions must wait much longer until they can act again.
I'm not firmly decided on which option to use quite yet.
Combat Movement
One thing that definitely needs clearing up is combat movement. In Rifts, movement is governed by the Speed attribute, but it is not well explained. There is a table detailing running speed in miles and kilometers per hour, but no real explanation of how it governs movement over a combat round. While some gamers are content to play out battles using only their imaginations, or simple sketch-maps, there are those who cry for the minis and gridded battle mat when fights break out.
Also very important, it should work for both descriptive combat and gridded combat. One thing that I hated about Savage Worlds is their use of the "Savage Worlds inch." You are assumed to be mapping everything out, so all measurements are given in inches (representing 1 inch on the tabletop). This wouldn't be so bad, but this "inch" translates into two yards. Meaning that when my players asked about distances, I had to take the time to convert 1 inch into 2 yards. Usually just a doubling or a halving, depending on which way the conversion was going, but it still took away from my valuable game time. D&D's 5 foot square or GURPS' 1 yard hexes are far more intuitive.
Attack and Defense
Now we get into the actual dice rolling. Combat will be resolved with percentile rolls, just like every other die roll in the system. Attack and defense will be a pair of "blackjack" rolls (roll as high as you can as long as it's below your skill %). So if the attack is successful with a result of 48, the defender must roll higher than 48 but less than their defending skill % in order to avoid the attack.
This does a pretty good job of mapping the Palladium combat dice flow to a percentile system. It will also serve as a model for opposed actions outside of combat, a mechanic that Palladium has been sorely lacking. The recent addition of the Perception roll makes this all the more obvious. Especially since the rolls it opposes are percentile rolls (like Prowl) and the Perception check is made on a d20.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Variations on a Theme
As much fun as it would be to publish BTR setting-free and let you use your old Rifts books with it, there are people who would be turned off by a setting-less system. And since the BTR mantra is doing things Better Than Rifts, it would be fun to see if I can extend that to setting design.
While the Rifts setting has a lot of cool things going for it, it conveys very little in terms of consistent theme. Consistency is lacking within the sourcebooks at times, even. Just look at the Vampire Kingdoms sourcebook. It spends quite a bit of space detailing the vampires and the Vampiric Intelligences, then veers off into these small communities in Mexico that don't really support the vampiric theme, and concludes with rules for traveling shows and circuses. Useful material, all told, but it doesn't feel like it belongs in the same book.
Does the Rifts setting have a theme, even if the individual books don't?
Rifts Earth is in the grip of evil forces. Not just the chaos that is to be expected from a setting where all of civilization has been stripped away, but the advancement of supernatural evil. The setting avoids being dark largely by adding layers of gonzo and tech porn. Whether it's the Coalition, the Splugorth, or Vampiric Intelligences, evil abounds.
The only things that stand in the way of this evil are the PCs. The forces of good are small and nowhere near as entrenched as evil. For every Cyber-Knight there are probably 100 demons or undead or other evil minions.
Which brings up an interesting point. If the forces of good are so small, they must be rather powerful to stand up to all that evil. Which brings us to all of the things that Rifts characters can do to themselves in order to stand up to the forces of darkness. Crazies, Juicers and Borgs are some of the most common to appear in the source material. Palladium writer Jason Richards goes into some depth on this.
So we can look at the theme of Rifts as "Sacrificing your humanity in order to protect humans from the inhuman."
The challenge is: If I were to focus on this theme in the BTR setting, it would not be very comfortable to many Rifts players. For them, the charm of the game is that, if you were to list the various character types of a typical party, would sound like the the beginning of a joke where the first sentence ends in "... walk into a bar."
What do you think? Should I design around a dark theme and make a very dark game? Or should I focus on the gonzo element and come up with a setting and theme that enables that?
While the Rifts setting has a lot of cool things going for it, it conveys very little in terms of consistent theme. Consistency is lacking within the sourcebooks at times, even. Just look at the Vampire Kingdoms sourcebook. It spends quite a bit of space detailing the vampires and the Vampiric Intelligences, then veers off into these small communities in Mexico that don't really support the vampiric theme, and concludes with rules for traveling shows and circuses. Useful material, all told, but it doesn't feel like it belongs in the same book.
Does the Rifts setting have a theme, even if the individual books don't?
Rifts Earth is in the grip of evil forces. Not just the chaos that is to be expected from a setting where all of civilization has been stripped away, but the advancement of supernatural evil. The setting avoids being dark largely by adding layers of gonzo and tech porn. Whether it's the Coalition, the Splugorth, or Vampiric Intelligences, evil abounds.
The only things that stand in the way of this evil are the PCs. The forces of good are small and nowhere near as entrenched as evil. For every Cyber-Knight there are probably 100 demons or undead or other evil minions.
Which brings up an interesting point. If the forces of good are so small, they must be rather powerful to stand up to all that evil. Which brings us to all of the things that Rifts characters can do to themselves in order to stand up to the forces of darkness. Crazies, Juicers and Borgs are some of the most common to appear in the source material. Palladium writer Jason Richards goes into some depth on this.
So we can look at the theme of Rifts as "Sacrificing your humanity in order to protect humans from the inhuman."
The challenge is: If I were to focus on this theme in the BTR setting, it would not be very comfortable to many Rifts players. For them, the charm of the game is that, if you were to list the various character types of a typical party, would sound like the the beginning of a joke where the first sentence ends in "... walk into a bar."
What do you think? Should I design around a dark theme and make a very dark game? Or should I focus on the gonzo element and come up with a setting and theme that enables that?
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Give Me That, Stat!
One of the major issues facing me as I work on this project is what attributes I should use. The Palladium uses a set of 8, six of which are readily identified as the same ones D&D uses (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). Physical Beauty is equivalent to the Comeliness score used in earlier editions of D&D. Speed is its own thing, elevating a character's movement rate to the status of a rolled stat.
What's the logic? There are 3 mental stats and 5 physical stats. At least that's how it looks, since Physical Beauty is nominally a physical stat, even though it doesn't provide bonuses to physical stuff.
They actually make a degree of sense if you look at them as a series of Attack/Defense pairs. Strength and Constitution are the "physical" pair. Strength (P.S) has to do with dealing damage, while Constitution (P.E.) is all about resisting and surviving damage. Dexterity (P.P.) and Speed are the movement pair, with Dexterity being the basis for weapon skills and Speed attaching itself to dodging ability and a few other things (for those Palladium nerds out there who remember when high Speed gave a bonus to Dodge). Intelligence (I.Q.) and Wisdom (M.E.) form the mental pair.
That just leaves Charisma (M.A.) and Physical Beauty (P.B.). While they can be considered the "social" pair, they really are an odd couple. But then, many old school games (which Palladium certainly is) do not have strong support for social interaction in the mechanics. Adherents insist that it's part of the charm of these games, that the inability to simply "roll for it" fosters roleplaying and thinking in character.
So what do you think, guys? Should I bring this game fully into the 21st century (or at least the 1990's) with detailed rules for social interaction? Or should I drop all social mechanics and let players resolve it at the table, old school style?
Comments are open!
What's the logic? There are 3 mental stats and 5 physical stats. At least that's how it looks, since Physical Beauty is nominally a physical stat, even though it doesn't provide bonuses to physical stuff.
They actually make a degree of sense if you look at them as a series of Attack/Defense pairs. Strength and Constitution are the "physical" pair. Strength (P.S) has to do with dealing damage, while Constitution (P.E.) is all about resisting and surviving damage. Dexterity (P.P.) and Speed are the movement pair, with Dexterity being the basis for weapon skills and Speed attaching itself to dodging ability and a few other things (for those Palladium nerds out there who remember when high Speed gave a bonus to Dodge). Intelligence (I.Q.) and Wisdom (M.E.) form the mental pair.
That just leaves Charisma (M.A.) and Physical Beauty (P.B.). While they can be considered the "social" pair, they really are an odd couple. But then, many old school games (which Palladium certainly is) do not have strong support for social interaction in the mechanics. Adherents insist that it's part of the charm of these games, that the inability to simply "roll for it" fosters roleplaying and thinking in character.
So what do you think, guys? Should I bring this game fully into the 21st century (or at least the 1990's) with detailed rules for social interaction? Or should I drop all social mechanics and let players resolve it at the table, old school style?
Comments are open!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Airwolf Missile Rule - explained!
Some of you may have heard of this or run across it: Up to 3 missiles may be dodged, but any salvo of 4 or more missiles hits automatically.
This has become known as the "Airwolf missile rule" after the '80's adventure show Airwolf. In one episode, much is made of a weapons system that fired 4 missiles at once, because "nobody could dodge 4 missiles." Of course, the Airwolf helicopter winds up dodging all four missiles. So why can't you?
The answer: Playability. Since each missile requires an attack roll, then a dodge roll, then a damage roll, a large salvo of missiles has the astonishing ability to bog down play. So while this rule feels like a wallbanger (and is), it does have a reason to exist.
Lesson learned: BTR will need to have a mature and playable set of autofire rules for quickly and easily resolving multiple-projectile attacks.
This has become known as the "Airwolf missile rule" after the '80's adventure show Airwolf. In one episode, much is made of a weapons system that fired 4 missiles at once, because "nobody could dodge 4 missiles." Of course, the Airwolf helicopter winds up dodging all four missiles. So why can't you?
The answer: Playability. Since each missile requires an attack roll, then a dodge roll, then a damage roll, a large salvo of missiles has the astonishing ability to bog down play. So while this rule feels like a wallbanger (and is), it does have a reason to exist.
Lesson learned: BTR will need to have a mature and playable set of autofire rules for quickly and easily resolving multiple-projectile attacks.
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