Right now I have three RPG projects in my head.  One is complete, but beyond my means to actually make. The second is a 'source book', which ironically is fairly far along despite being almost a 'eh, I suppose' idea.

The third has slowly evolved here on the RPGsite. Some of you have seen the threads.  As Ideas strike me I try to hash them out. Recently I've started to see areas where I can't quite figure out how to use everything I've come up with.  Sometimes ideas seem diametrically opposed. Brilliant, at least to me, but incompatable.  I want to harness all that awesome and put it all together, and maybe, just maybe, get off my lazy ass and put out a god damn awesome game to shake the pillars of gamer heaven with. (okay, maybe stare at them really hard.... ) I figure we have enough people here who have done that on their own, why reinvent the wheel... any more than I have to anyway.  Help me, a hobby designer, put my peices together, help me harnass the awesome.

What have I got?

Recently: Binary and gradiated skills.  Special abilities/Kung Fu rated by dots/levels for over the top combat (you'll have to see the threads for that... I'm not going all over it again here), the idea of fluid, dynamic initiative (rather than you go/I go)... paradigm breaking? Maybe.

heroic competence. No more failing to walk up the ramp to your ship and falling and breaking your leg. (I kid because I love....). If the other guy doesn't stop you, you succeed.   At least at skills you know.  

Baseline zero. Characters defined by their deviation from 'normal', which is zero... along multiple interlocking tracks. Attributes, Skills, Other stuff (kung fu dots, 'abilities'/advantages).  


My basic mechanic would appear to be a 2d6 roll against a 7, with indirect modifiers based on comparative values from stats and skills (and fu, I guess...). That is, if my Strength is higher than yours I get a +1, not a straight plus based on my Strength value.

Combat included dynamic 'point spending' where points were also, in abstract, health. You earn points for things that give you the upper hand, lose them both to use (using the upper hand to do something) damage (spending it to offset an enemy attack) or just losing said upper hand.  There were ideas that included shifting points between 'fixed' areas, and burning points 'permanently'.  This idea predates the 'Kung Fu combat' by some months and may either be incompatable, or incredibly compatable.  Kung Fu combat (where your Fu exhausts itself when used, abstracting health/endurance in a fight) is possibly an evolution of this idea applied to a specific idea of combat.

Psychological factors in combat being primary. May be unplayable.

Ship/mass combat being done via 'gestalted character'. That is a space ship in a dogfight is a character, made up of the ship's attributes and abilities and those of the crew in various roles, and is handled as a character in all ways. An army is a character, made up of the attributes and abilities of the units and leaders, and plays like a character.
 
This feels like a muddled mess, being as it's ripped from a dozen older threads of mine over the last year or so. And I'm certain I'm missing stuff, too. That's half the point of this, to start bringing it all together and start writing it up. First I gotta see what really belongs and what just won't work, and what I'm missing.

Oh, and if anyone is feeling charitable and technologically competent a nice list of links to my other threads would not go without a serious round of thanks.:deflated:

I've done some of those in various ways.

Binary and Graduated skills - the Magic in Book of Jalan is binary. If you power it, it works, no roll. Normal skills require a roll unless it's a normal action.

Heroic Competence - all my games. If a normally competent person can do this, you don't need to roll.

Dynamic point spending - also in Book of Jalan, and in the forthcoming Blood Games II. You temporarily burn your stats to power magic, and you can permanently burn stats to gain more powerful magic - it increases your bandwidth.

Baseline zero doesn't seem difficult at all. That's easily done, just a different way of looking at things.

The ship/mass combat thing has me scratching my head though. I wouldn't touch it with a D&D ten foot pole. It's weird, and only a demented Pika would think of it.

-clash

-clash

Well, Clash, I can't claim everything I think of is perfectly unique snowflakes (well.... they are, I tells ya!)

And a lot of them are not hard to do by themselves.  But the dynamic combat right now exists as a subsystem developed in a vacuum, along with the other stuff that half agglomed a while back. I'm still occasionally scratching my head at the Jalan thing I got from you a while back, so i can't comment there.


The binary skills thing is completely random ranting. I don't think it will be hard to do, I just need to figure out how to integrate it seemlessly into the bare bones framework, along with everything else I popped off with randomly in the last year.

I just was sitting around thinking about all the things I've been going on about and saying to myself 'Self... you have all these  ideas of what should be in a game to make it work better, and some pretty fine ideas for an actual game. Now what?'... and the answer was 'write it up and publish it'... only.... how do I take this mess and actually turn it into a manual of some sort?  there is no organization, no cohesion, only ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. So many Ideas I am certain I've forgotten a few of the cool ones.

Spike, what do you mean by "psychological factors in combat"? Freezing? Fear? Hesitation before the killing blow? Sledge Hammer and his gun?

Quote from: SosthenesSpike, what do you mean by "psychological factors in combat"? Freezing? Fear? Hesitation before the killing blow? Sledge Hammer and his gun?

More along the lines of stressing the importance of Morale in combat effectiveness.  The best trained olympic marksman can be useless in combat if he is terrified. This is what can make psychopaths/sociopaths so very dangerous in real life. They lack the compunctions that keep most of us from being effective killers, and why so much of soldier training is convincing people that they can, and will kill when the time comes.  

I had an example in one of my older threads were I have the Hitman confronted by a housewife and a swat cop, both had the superior position and weapon, but one was easily beaten.. not just because of lack of skill (that was a factor) but also because she was terrified of the killer, while the Swat dude's training and expirence made him confident in his own abilities and dismissive of the 'mythic power' Hitmen have on ordinary people.

Essentially your 'combat mentality' becomes almost more important than any physical skills you have. Unworkable, of course, because player characters tend to be immune to any non-magical psychology....

What about a "Courage" stat that influences initiative? Both courage and initiative are fluent, intimidate would be pretty powerful.

Quote from: SpikeWell, Clash, I can't claim everything I think of is perfectly unique snowflakes (well.... they are, I tells ya!)

Well, I wasn't claiming that either, as I hardly ever have original ideas, and when I get them I'm immediately suspicious of them - in fact the Jalan Magic system was thunk up by my son Klaxon, not by me at all. I was just saying "Don't worry, little pika, it can be done!"

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceWell, I wasn't claiming that either, as I hardly ever have original ideas, and when I get them I'm immediately suspicious of them - in fact the Jalan Magic system was thunk up by my son Klaxon, not by me at all. I was just saying "Don't worry, little pika, it can be done!"

-clash

There was supposed to be a smiley after my comment. I just got lazy trying to figure out which one represented 'righteous indignation'.

Quote from: SosthenesWhat about a "Courage" stat that influences initiative? Both courage and initiative are fluent, intimidate would be pretty powerful.

Racking my brain for more of my original thought processess here: I think there was supposed to be a place on the character sheet that represented essentially a character's default 'battle ready' state, based on various things including weapon skills, various 'advantages', which could then be modified by temporary things (outnumbering the other guys, being ambushed)... and that some 'advantages' would actually make the character in question immune to the effects of this stat (positive AND negative).

But Courage/intimidate actually didn't really fit well with what I was thinking. Of course, I think the original idea started to feel more like playing 'mass combat' than individual combat, which is another reason I stopped working on it back then...

Quote from: SpikeThere was supposed to be a smiley after my comment. I just got lazy trying to figure out which one represented 'righteous indignation'.

:snooty:? :grumpy:? :brood:? :bible:?

More seriously, some good shit in here.

Ship/mass combat being done via 'gestalted character'. That is a space ship in a dogfight is a character, made up of the ship's attributes and abilities and those of the crew in various roles, and is handled as a character in all ways. An army is a character, made up of the attributes and abilities of the units and leaders, and plays like a character.

Strangely enough, i've been working on something exactly the same as that. It's abstract as a concept and the devil is in detail. I don't think that a stat line is enough on it's own. I was going to have a 'hit point/health/wounds/whatever' stat that was actually a count of how many people were in the force. So, 55 hits=55 people. You can then run the combat as a PC vs PC and still know exactly how effective th fighting force is, downgrade the other stats to take that into account etc. A mass combat death spiral, if you like. If PCs are added to the mix, then i'd include what amount to feats or special abilities to the profile. These are things the the PCs bring to the force and only they (in game) can activate or act on them.

Well, for Dogfighting with small PC crewed ships I figured it would be simpler.  the pilot is the 'agility', and is used for such, the Engineer is the health/durability... with maybe a few extras for creative play.

Each player rolls only for what they actually do.  I had some ideas about synergy and teamwork play.

Mass combat, I agree, would be much more... convoluted.  Unless you had a PC 'quartermaster' and 'General' and I don't even know what else...

But most of those rolls could be/should be done prior to combat, not in it.  I'm not a fan of that 'retroactive roll' to see how well you did the day before.  I can see the utility of it, but I wouldn't want to make it a standard method of resolving things.

Quote from: SpikeWell, for Dogfighting with small PC crewed ships I figured it would be simpler.  the pilot is the 'agility', and is used for such, the Engineer is the health/durability... with maybe a few extras for creative play.

Each player rolls only for what they actually do.  I had some ideas about synergy and teamwork play.

Mass combat, I agree, would be much more... convoluted.  Unless you had a PC 'quartermaster' and 'General' and I don't even know what else...

But most of those rolls could be/should be done prior to combat, not in it.  I'm not a fan of that 'retroactive roll' to see how well you did the day before.  I can see the utility of it, but I wouldn't want to make it a standard method of resolving things.

I think the dogfight thing could work. Have baseline stats for different types of ship/craft and then add on the stats of the relevant PCs to get your end profile. This will then give you model variances like the old Spitfire vs Messerssmidt (sp?). So the advancement of your ship as you add more complex mechanical/electrical equipment (or upgrade to a better model) can act as a sort of character advancment for the craft too.

Quote from: One Horse TownI think the dogfight thing could work. Have baseline stats for different types of ship/craft and then add on the stats of the relevant PCs to get your end profile. This will then give you model variances like the old Spitfire vs Messerssmidt (sp?). So the advancement of your ship as you add more complex mechanical/electrical equipment (or upgrade to a better model) can act as a sort of character advancment for the craft too.

Yeah, definitely. You wouldn't discount a radical size difference in Armies just because one is commanded by Mother Russia herself (in other words, no one) and the other is commanded by Napolean....

Gads, thats aweful. Todays dose of aweful analogies curtesy of... welll.... me

More tidbits for the cookpot.

Some folks love Mook Rules. Some folks hate them.  I'm sort of in the middle, really.  The Awesome Kung Fu rules sort of imply a level of mookdom.  Obviously someone with a minimal level of 'Fu' dots, none or one, is pretty helpless in the face of others with more 'fu'.  (NOTE: Recall that the 'Fu' rules is shorthand for any and all 'heroic abilities' as well. I call if Fu because that's what i was thinking of when it came to me. The system, as envisioned/half-designed, should work equally well for magic, for example.)

Now, while hardly Canonical to the original inspiration to the idea (namely Final Fantasy Advent Children), Kung Fu movies are probably one of the biggest single sources for Mooks in gaming. In fact the first dedicated mook rules were in Feng Shui, which is lauded by many, including at one time me. (the newness has worn off, sadly).   I think, however, that the mook rules missed the boat in some ways in Feng Shui. Mooks are used by badguys to test the heros, to drain their resources, to soften them up for the final showdown. In FS mooks exists to be filler for the fight, someone for the players to mow down in droves to prove their coolness.  Now, that is not an invalid use of Mooks, by any stretch, but it's incomplete.  While FS mooks CAN be a challenge they aren't really useful to 'stress' the hero, to drain his ability to fight.


Now, since Mookdom is already inherent to the rules as 'written', why not use them fully.  Corresspondingly you have two types of 'Mooks'. The first type are just your 'unskilled' opponents, those without any Fu, or just minimal Fu.  Their purpose is that of any other 'unskilled' NPC.  Now, low 'Fu' NPC's (and characters) could still serve valuable roles in game.  That's a balance issue to be adressed, possibly by character creation. For example, the 'Fu' points could also be used to buy some other mechanical advantage that doesn't apply to combat. One has to decide how much Fu and how much 'not-Fu' to buy, low Fu characters conversely will have higher 'not-Fu' abilities.  

But the second use of Mooks would be this: They are 'Fu Points' available primarily to NPC's.  A Villian (traditionally, though in theory a hero could have mooks supporting him...) could be given access to 'extra fu points' in the form of a Mook rating.  Now, like all other fu he has to divy up his abilities within that feild. Mooks are rated in 'numbers' and 'quality'.  Each dot of Mook-Fu provides inherently One Mook.  Each Mook uses the full Mook-Fu rating as their ability, and each Mook has to be knocked down individually, thus potentially 'exhausting' the hero's fu. Now, optionally, a point of Mook-Fu can be traded away for extra bodies. Say five.  Now, this weakens all mooks bought with that track of Mook-Fu. You can have multiple tracks.

So, the bad guy in Big Trouble in Little Chinatown had two tracks of Mook-Fu. One was the streetgang, one was the 'Four thunders'.  Lets say each had four points of Fu.

Each of the four thunders was worth Four points of Fu in a fight, making them pretty bad ass opponents for that level of adventure (Jack Burton had One Fu point.. catching thrown objects! Maybe Two if you have a generic 'lucky bastard Fu')

The Street Gangers had One point of Fu... enough to make them a threat to Jack, but not anyone else. They could have 19 gangers in any fight (one for each point, trade away three for 15 extras). In theory, they could have traded away all four points for 24 bodies, but then they are barely a threat at all, being unable to roll at all against anyone with Fu (defensively that is, they could still attack, thus possibly (just possibly) exhausting defensive Fu).

Now: the four thunders don't have to be modeled using Mook Rules.  Given that they had a few lines/independent scenes (well, two of them did) they could just as easily be modeled as lesser villians. Henchvillians, really.  Also, the Big Bad couldn't tap the Mooks as Fu when Jack stuck him in the head, they'd been exhausted fighting the party mooks (see, players can get mooks too...), and the only remaining Thunders were too far away.  The big bad used his last Fu point to catch the knife in the first place, but Jack still had his 'catch thrown objects' Fu to fall back on.  The right point of Fu in the right place, at the right time saves the day!

What do you think?