Forum > Design, Development, and Gameplay
New Game Design
Spike:
Haven't see PDQ, though I am not surprised at possible similarities. Going with a 2d6 resolution system means only a few 'types' of games are going to come out. I hope that in the details that what I get is superior... or at least complex enough that it doesn't get boring, while still being fast and easy to learn.
I don't like the character growth through gear philosophy at all. I play shadowrun, but that was always a problem for me, that the guy with the best cyberwear was measurable 'better' than the guy without, but who had better skills.
Power, in combat, comes from getting the edge over the other guy. Some of that edge is skill (which can't be taken away) some is gear (which can) but far superior to both are things like ambush, blindsidings and even willingness to kill and die. The best gun in the world is useless if you are afraid to use it.
The SWAT guy is objectively better than some gutter rat with a zip gun. He's better trained, with better gear. But if he isn't paying attention when that gutter rat comes at him from behind and puts a bullet behind his ear, he's going down. Objective fact. That's why I'm trying to stress modifiers in combat, though I know they are going to slow the game down a little bit.
Computers are common, even necessary for some actions. Due to the possibility for FTL dogfights in the setting piloting and gunning, for example, are more a matter of knowing how to tell the ship's computer what to do. A human being simply can not hope to react fast enough on his own, and without sensors could not even see the target. Likewise in purely military applications you have Microtanks which are again computer controlled but directed by the pilot, Nano-eggs, mentioned before, are military equipment. You can not hope to actually control several million robots the size of a dust mite, the computer does that. There will also be the potential for hacking, as in at least the case of one major faction cumputers are a prevalent as shoes, and viewed as roughly similar in importance to society. Yes, using a computer with the proper software could provide a bonus for activities; this would count as 'having superior equipment' which would be one of the Universal Modifiers...
Skills are going to be grouped. That is each major branch of science is going to be dealt with as a single skill. Life sciences, say. There will be a Guns skill, rather than a dozen. The practice of shooting is roughly similar regardless of what you are shooting. Yes, there is a significant difference between pistols and rifles, which is why you would have an unfamiliarity penalty. I think adding in a specialty system would be useful, though if handled poorly could be unbalancing. Hmm... rather than give a bonus for specialties, I think I'd rather allow the player to buy the skill at a discount and penalize non-speciality useses of the skill.
Spike:
I want to start working on hard rules to take my concepts to the next level, so that I can begin playtesting. As a part of that, not only do I want to have specific things to include, I also would like to cover character creation for that portion of the game.
For the moment let us consider stats.
I was thinking earlier about trying to be a bit non-traditional. I thought about maybe just having a stat that covered all the physical stuff, like 'Athletesism', which led to the same idea bout mental stuff... and to avoid having only two facets to a character that left me with...
Tristat. Oops. Literally, I wound up with three stats that mapped exactly to tristat's stats. Did I mention that I've always found that part of tristat a little bit limited? Sure, my implementation is significantly different, but still: If I don't like it, why include it in a game I'm designing?
Being non-traditional is not a viable goal by itself, so pursuing that for it's own ends is pointless, so we will ignore that and see what we come up with.
Thinking about how 'physical' things are expressed we have two or three ways off dividing athletic prowess. You have the strong guy and you have the fast guy. Sometimes you get the tough guy, but most of the time the strong guy is also the tough guy and vice versa. usually the fast guy is pretty fragile. For the moment that means we will split it in two. Fast and Strong.
We'll do the same with our mental stat for evenness. Smarts can be divided into reasoning power and intuitive power (lets say), though I had thought to stick memory by itself, usually reason has more to do with applying known things, thus memory, so we'll leave it there for now. So, we have Reason, and Intuition for brain power.
If we accept that there should be a third leg of our characterization in Stats, and I've stated that I plan to leave out social attributes, what does that leave us?
I like the idea of motivation and discipline, they'll map well to my psychological aspect of combat. On the other hand, they have fuck all to do with skills for the most part. Not only that, many people might think of them as redundant. One can encompass the other you might say. Technically, Motivation involves doing things for yourself, and discipline is more about doing things for reasons outside yourself (awkward way to talk about it, but essentially accurate), but yeah. And then there is the skill factor.
So, I can leave them as is and confuse or annoy people, I can make this last catagory a single stat or I could find another partner for my 'motivation' stat. I'm rather partial, in that last case, to go with something like 'faith', in a non-religious sense. Again, i'm not sure what skills that would include.
I'll leave this alone pending feedback and/or further rules that might provide a solution/need.
So, we have five, maybe six stats. I decided, easily, to leave the default starting point of all stats at 'average', or +0. It is simpler and makes the option of buying down a stat a concious one, rather than a 'oops, I'm out of points and I left X out...' choice. Now to determine points values.
I pretty much decided that whenever possible I should reduced the very least point value to one whenever feasable. Math is easier and character creation faster that way. Since our points for stats won't be migrating anywhere else, they only have to balance against themselves. Thus the point cost of one upgrade should be one point. For G.P. let us consider that a fully averaged out character should be 'better than average' across the board, so five or six points total to buy with, meaning that the best upgrade needs to stay within that total. So, our points costs go 1, 3, 6, with a maximum of +3 to any stat. Alternatively, I could make it 1, 2, 6 which I like better. On the other hand, I really would not mind having the top of the range be +4, though I can't articulate why that should be. This isn't much in the way of points, and it sort of negates teh idea of rolling for them. More points equals more power and more variableness.
On the 1, 2, 6 spread, I like it because it sets aside the very best in any catagory as special, while still allowing very competent people to stand out from the crowd. I'd still like a bigger spread of stats, which would mean more starting points too, but I'd still like that extra gap in cost. One idea is to make the last level of a stat only available with a trait, again going back to my idea of making the three parts of a character influence each other. To avoid backtracking, the trait would have to be stand alone, giving you the actual point as well. While I can see the logic in forcing them to spend the stat point as well, it does jam up the creation works, thus is not desireable.
Tell me what you think.
Post script: Thinking back to my Fast/Strong tough issue: Stereotypically fast people tend to have more endurance (think marathon runners, gymnasts), which means we can balance the use of toughness as a part of strength with endurance for fast, potentially. To make it stick, however, endurance needs to mean something. Well, we've got a bit before I really need to hack out the combat rules so I've got a little time to think on this.
Spike:
It is not a mystery to me why I left out a social stat the other day. On the other hand, I realized that my answer to the missing stat, that is to put social 'traits' into the third part of character design, and again the 'social skills' thing was sort of haphazard.
The issue as I see it is one of balance. Your prettiness/socialbility should have no influence on your ability within your chosen feild. Putting in social 'traits' alongside 'combat traits' means only that i've move the playing field a little bit. I still think charisma and beauty belong in this area, but I've had to do some mental shuffling in how I approach it.
One thing I think I need to do is seperate 'innate' traits from 'learned traits'. I sort of like this, though it does make things a bit more complex.
I'm not talking about simply marking one trait as 'learned' and another as 'inate' but actually making them a part of character creation.
Essentially you would have a pool of 'innate' traits to start with. While there might be some overlap with learned traits, essentially these are only available at character creation.
For example you could start with 'Fearless' as an Innate trait, which would eliminate all combat stress modifiers (positive as well), but you could also draw upon learned traits like 'combat veteran' or what have you that accomplish the same thing (eliminating the penalty for combat stress..), either at character creation or later through character growth.
Beauty would be innate, as would basic charm/charisma, as would being ambidexterous. Under limited circumstances you could gain one of these (surgery, say), but otherwise they are untouchable.
Now, also at character creation you have the rest of your trait pool to draw upon. You could possibly chose to buy extra innate abilities (to represent a prodigy or someone blessed with ability, but not expirence) or you could turn to the more flexible learned trait catagory, where your combat techniques might also fall.
Now: Social skills... without a specific Stat to apply to them what should I do? Obviously this isn't a horrid state of affairs, its not like they are crippled by not having a supporting 'stat', but I am sure that simply settign them ot one side will be unfair to 'social characters'. Having them work backwards from traits is confusing.
I can assign them to various other Stats. Intimidation is easier to do for big strong guys, so they don't have to work as hard to learn it. Charm tends to be a memory function (remembering who is who, what they like, and so forth) though this is touch-and-go assignment.
Or, I can go with the traits thing, leaving social stuff to be slightly weird, that is, certain traits (innate ones) work on social skills as high stat's do.
One idea I have is to treat Social ability much like i will combat, that is the Stat's don't directly influence most combat, but the way they interface does (derived social abilities), with an option for 'social combat' against NPC's. Social combat is a hot button issue with some people, but leaving it to 'only against NPC's' strikes me as more functional than simply not having rules for it at all.
It does occur to me that I should fully resolve this issue before attempting to focus on Skills and traits more fully.
Spike:
I was thinking back to my earlier post about having a 'multipurpose' pool of points for 'combat' that players could spend being heroic. I've not established them very well for you partly because I wasn't sure if they fitted into the game as it was developing.
I'd like to revist that concept again, taking into account everything that we've discussed here so far and possibly shaping up what was looking like a deadly dull, overly complex combat chapter (the antithesis of my fast and easy idea) into a lean mean combat machine.
First of all, I am very nervous about trying to sell a combat engine that uses something other than dice (in addition too, that is). I have yet to see a game that used counters really succeed. Deadlands maybe, but I think the current edition doesn't even use the 'fate chips'. I don't know if this is because it's gamer tradition or because there is a fundamental flaw in asking people to maintain 'counters'.
Of course, there is an option to have a 'combat slide counter' on the edge of the character sheet as an alternative. But.. you want to hear how I think it will work first. Fair enough.
We've already established that I want to make realistic modifiers govern combat. call it my catch-22, I want the game to be fast and simple, which precludes realistic combat modifiers, I want realistic combat modifiers which means I can't be fast and simple. Ugh.
To avoid massive lists of 'must be memorized' modifiers I have already considered a more generic list of 'minor' and 'major' modifiers. Having good cover is a minor, +1 to defence, etc. You would have positive and negative modifiers and so on. Of course, one major problem that I see is that you can collect a massive collection of potential modifiers, especially once you include skill. Even if you split your mods up between offensive and defensive (which could be a mistake, defensive positions offer offensive benefits, not the least of which is confidence) you could still potentially break the 2d6 roll, ESPECIALLY with a high skill on top of things.
So, rather than have modifiers to the roll, instead we turn them into 'advantage points' for the fight. Characters will have a given starting number based on some arcane formula yet to be developed, then every positive modifier and negative penalty in the combat affects this. The pool does not refresh in the fight, but changes to the combat situation can affect it.
So, let's say that Bob, who has the high ground and good cover (among other things) has an advantage pool of 10. He spends 5 points in the fight shooting shit up, but the enemy has advanced up the nearby hill, removing his high ground, so he loses the point for that, taking him down to four. Bob decides to hold onto his points for the moment. Later a flash fire sweeps through the enemy position, clearing away the scrub brush that made them hard to see, they not only have no cover, but are on open ground now! Bob's points go up to 6! Bob unleashes hell on them before they can move to safer ground. Note that if the enemy retreats from their hill, bob will also get back his high ground point.
Of course, in actual practice, the enemy (NPC's)... that is the GM would have a pool to draw on as well and so penalities are actually applied to that pool, not Bob's. (open ground, etc). I'd like to keep just a pool for players, as that simplifies things a lot AND keeps the game moving faster, but then requires special rules for PvP or significant badguys who should have their own pools to be a real challenge. The GM would normally track one pool for all NPC's in the fight.
One thing I have in mind is this: If the combat pool drops below the inherent pool of the character during the fight, then his inherent pool is reduced for the rest of the game (or in game day?).
Another thing: Running completely out of points is bad, really bad. Worse than just not having access to advantages. this is the 'overextended' or the suicidal option. Not bad as a fight finisher, but terrible when it's still going on.
So, just what are these 'advantages' used for? I'm glad you asked. Everything. They are used for extra attacks, extra accuracy, extra damage. They are used to avoid the unavoidable (sniper's bullets, artillery shells) at high cost, they are added to defense, used to absorb damage, everything.
They are used even if the fight hasn't started yet. This is how players avoid being sniped and ambushed when NPC's catch death all around. (well, that and GM's not beign dicks, but that is outside the purview of the game designer).
This puts a radically different spin on combat than what I illustrated in my earlier posts, but the idea was always there in teh background waiting to fall into place.
What'cha think?
Spike:
One thing that has me pondering weighty stuff is my 'skills list'. I do not feel comfortable attempting to assign a 'points total' for skills developement without knowing what we are looking at.
Specificity is a big issue here. How fine do I want to draw my lines?
Irony: this is a critical task, yet it is idiot simple; drawing up a list of skills that players will use.
I know i don't want half a dozen 'gun' skills, or 'hit people skills' and so forth. Yet... is ONE gun skill really all I need? Is it? What about 'piloting' or 'mechanical stuff' skills?
I'm really tempted to sort things into 'professional' skills. No one learns to fix a starship engine without learning quite a bit about the various subsystems involved with said engine. Rather than treat these as seperate skills, make one 'starship mechanic' skill, or even just 'mechanic'. On the other hand, if I reduce them down to far, it becomes a farce. For ease of creation skills would be grouped according to stats, keeping in mind our intent to give a point break for exceptional stats.
Again, there could be a mechanical advantage to taking a specialist skill instead.
Lets say that I use a general purpose 'combatives' skill to measure competence in melee combat with any weapon or none. A player could opt instead to learn fencing which provides the same level of skill with a sword but at a significant point's break. A competent Combative person is just as capable with a sword as a competent fencer in a fight, but would lose in a contest setting where they were limited to just swords. take the sword away and the fencer is suddenly nearly helpless.
Let's say I have specialist skills penalized by two levels outside of their focus. Let us suggest that 'competent' costs four points and Novice costs one. Competent specialists could cost two points, more than their non-feild level of skill, less than their unfocused skill competetors... does that sound about right?
My other concern is 'additional benefits' from skills. I like this idea on the face of it, but I worry that it will hamper people from expanding on the basic skill list as needed. But what do I mean?
Combat skills, for example provide a moral boost to offset combat stress penalties. They would also contribute to a combat 'advantage' pool. Another skill might offer a 'reputation' at higher levels, or a social advantage.
A pilot, for example, might also be at an advantage when shopping for a starship, as would a mechanic due to their familiarity with the equipment.
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