Maybe someone thought the Biotechnology cover was a bit too risque?

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceMaybe someone thought the Biotechnology cover was a bit too risque?

-clash

Smut peddler.

I was always under the impression that site designers added keywords and 'NSFW' type labels to their site.. for example for search engines, and that was how these restrictions work on these sorts of firewalls. They look for the tags. Maybe there is a porn keyword on your site so flying mice will pop up somewhere in a 'porn' search....guerilla advertising?

Of course I know about as much about networking as I do quantum engineering. :rolleyes:  so take it with a grain of salt.



One thing I am thinking of regarding this thread is the Conspiracy X game, both the original and the Unisystem variant. They liked the original's martial arts system enough to port it over directly.  Now, it's only a crude example of the sort of thinking, but: Each level of skill in Martial arts (with a seperate martial art of 'gun fu' gives you access to a number of maneuvers. Things like Elbow Strike, or HeadButt. Some are offensive, some are defensive.  It's not all that hard to get the majority of the maneuvers with a high enough skill... but the real key to the system was the ability to string them into 'combos', giving kung-fu multiple actions without going overboard.  For ordinary, slightly cinematic, martial arts, it has to be one of the best RPG rule sets I've seen. I just want to pull it back even further.  

Lets turn to Anime, a good source for kung fu goodness with wonky manuevers. In Roruni Kenshi, Saito has a 'left handed sword technique' he uses, pretty signature move.  Rather than just buy a 'strike' manuever with his sword, he could buy 'Left handed technique', defining it as a 'fast and hard to defend against (deceptive) manuever.  So, he buys his first level/technique of his school then has a pool of points to buy his maneuver. Now, assume all the classic maneuvers (striking, parrying, dodging) already exist as seperate from 'schools', so he's not buying those. He puts +3 to speed, which would function as initiative among other things, and then rather than buy a 'to hit' bonus, he trades it for double value in a penalty to the other's defense.  If he has points left over, or he buys a higher level in the 'school' he could add points to that manuever, say buying additional damage,  or he could make a new technique in the same school, allowing him to adjust the points he already spent (say, making a slower, more accurate strike) and add to that as the 'higher level' technique.  Either way, he gains the ability to use all those school techniques more often in a fight without exhausting them.  And even though he didn't add any points defensively, he could 'tap' his school technique to defend, he'd just be rolling without a bonus.

Exhausting a 'school' or technique represents both repetition fatigue and opponent familiarity with your moves, which is why it is benefitial to learn multiple moves as well as improve the ones you have. It's possible that when fighting an opponent for the second (or third?...) time that you would start 'unhealed' from your last bout, driving players to get their characters extra training before that big grudge match...

For additional Kung Fu goodness, health is treated the same, at least for 'Dynamic combat'. You get hit and fail your defense, you go down.. unless you have 'health techniques' that you can exhaust.  Most people go down in one hit, but some people you can't seem to stop. Possible: Health techniques can be rolled as a 'second defense'... if successful they don't exhaust. You take that hit and keep coming (possible a 'higher level technique' than basic health... a tiered maneuver... ugh, getting past myself...)

Hmm... this started as a generic brainstorming, but it's getting to the point where I should ask for my dynamic Combat thread to be merged into it....:raise:

Quote from: SpikeI was always under the impression that site designers added keywords and 'NSFW' type labels to their site.. for example for search engines, and that was how these restrictions work on these sorts of firewalls. They look for the tags. Maybe there is a porn keyword on your site so flying mice will pop up somewhere in a 'porn' search....guerilla advertising?

The site is entirely my own hand-coded html. There's no keywords that would equate to porn, of this I can assure you.

Anyways, time to drop this side discussion and get back on topic.

-clash

One interesting aspect of this system I hope to include is free form flexibility.

I am speaking gibberish.

I can use this mechanism for combat, or at least for the basics of combat, which tends to be the heart of RPG's....  

But I can also use it for magic or psionics or 'wonky spurious super powers'. More importantly, they would perforce be mechanically compatable and 'balanced', essentially using the same framework for everything.  

So, I could make a 'kung fu dude' with upteem billions kung fu techniques, or I could make a fireball tossing mage. Neither could claim innate superiority of their chosen design. MORE: The Kung Fu dude could presumably have a kung fu technique that let HIM toss fireballs as well.  He isn't 'stepping' on the Mage so much, as his technique would be individual and distinct... it would even feel different to the player, being... on hopes... less a 'spell casting' and more a physical move tapping into chi energy to call forth elemental flames.




Now we come to the flaw in the plan, the fly in the ointment: what do GM's do to 'stat out' their NPC's? We don't want, obviously, to have the GM make a whole new character for every encounter.  Can we shortcut?

Maybe. Durability in a fight is largely a function of how many technique levels mastered, regardless of how many different techniques are actually known. Obviously, a generic rating of abilities (this guy is a seven technique badass) gives you a feel for how good or bad they are,but it does nothing against the lack of interest a bad guy presents if all he does is 'strike, strike, strike'... if the PC's have cool, powerful moves, then so too should their opponents!

Well. First of all, most opponents shouldn't have as many techniques as heroes do. That's a given. Only the 'Big Bad' at the end of the showdown should be a credible match for the PC's. His immedeate lieutenants can be just about as powerful as a single PC.

but the ordinary guys? One or two levels of technique, at best. More importantly, in groups they are likely to all use the same bodies of techniques, for no loss of ability.  

Returning to our Rouruni Kenshin example: Nameless Shinsen Gumi would all use just the generic teachings of the Shinsen Gumi. Higher level SG's would use the same teachings, only have more of them (more techniques). All could be standardized. If you want to make things more interesting, move technique points around: This SG has less SG Kung Fu, but has additional points in Punching! (following the standard, but not inflexible, punching pregen example...)  This allows the GM to stat up an entire group in one go (making the core techniques his bad guys use) as unique snowflakes without spending five days in character creation.

Maybe.

Quote from: SpikeAnd here we come to the crux, the horns of the delimma.

Lists and tables and spells are all serve a purpose. To a limited extent they are even necessary. They exist because we are not all game designers, they exist because we are not all, and certainly not always, perfectly creative, imaginative beings. Sometimes you just need to select a prefabricated event and go.

As I've commented elsewhere, the greatest design flaw in Exalted isn't the buckets o'dice, or the immense tactical play for what is essential a powermonger exercise... no, its the fixed lists of charms, the prevelance, the innate superiority of one 'build' over another, one charm over another. This 'build' mentality is the same thing that irritates me no end in D&D discussions. They work on the inherent flaws of fixed lists.

The solution is not the elimination of lists, of prefabbed abilities, of tables and all their ilk. It is not to abstract the rules out to meaningless. The solution is to make the lists, the charms, the tables all inherently open. To make, as a part of the core of the system, the ability to add new lines, not just for the GM, but for the players as well. New lines that are not 'home brewed' that  are not antithetical to outsiders to that one table, that are not subject, beyond the inherency of GM driven play, to approval, to judgement calls to make them 'work'.

I have in my mind a vision, crude and unfinished for how this can work, how to remove the boundaries of my sandbox, to expand it out.

Imagine then a world... lets say a kung-fu/FFVII:advent children sort of world, where people with awesome fighting abilities face eachother in city spanning battles, each fighter brings unique abilities to the table, each weapon deserves its own name, and has its own abilities as well, and mastery of such weapons is it's own kung fu, it's own style.  

We could do what Feng Shui and Exalted did, give lists of trees of abilities, page after page of technique, exhaustively detailing every idea that came to our minds.  Eventually players will find the best techniques, the best abilities that we list, and then we will have 'builds' and have accomplished nothing. We could argue then that we can expand our exhaustive list by adding supplements, but then you risk 'power creep' and 'splat banning', removing the universiality of our 'master list'.

What if, instead, the initial list were modest, listing a the core techniques that every fighter should know (dodge, punch, kick, block...) and how they advance, and then a few unique 'fu' techniques (Broken Sword Style, Falling Rain Style) detailing specific weapons, and others detailing specific weaponless styles (White Eyebrow, DemonClaw technique), but rather than exhaustively list out every style we include as the core rules the framework we used to create all those styles, a universal framework.  A framework where the player or the GM can design his style based on decisions about speed vs. power, offence vs defense, list higher level techniques and fancier moves, lets say a dozen or so variables in all, detailing every facet of combat. Perhaps we can include a list of minor 'tweaks' that go beyond the numbers, tweaks like :Broken Sword style is very powerful against White Eyebrow technique.  Or: DemonClaw users' hands are hard enough to parry weapons without injury

And we include a list of said minor techniques, a long list, and we make it interactive, where GM's and players can submit a the minor tweaks they use in their games, and download a free PDF, or simply peruse online the current 'master list' of player created styles and tweaks, thus tapping the entire player base and making everything 'canon'... all with a frame work.


I dunno, just noshing it around, I guess....

Hmm, well, I have both. Here is the short version from my free core rules. Essentially, you have different magic for different purposes. I have a free form system and a spell list system with a hybrid of the two called the Chi system.

However, it sounds like you are talking about the Free Form System. This is based on two rolls (usually PIE and CON but can be any two stats that fit the class) one which regulates activation and the other that regulates any damage from channeling the power for the effect. The class usually have areas of specialty they choose. For instance, Psi choose something like Telekenesis or Prevarication. Telekentics can do anyting that involves energy to move something. The difficulty is determined by the GM (with some suggestions from the rules) and the modifiers applied. It may be that it is a very difficult effect (minuses to PIE) but the character is in an extremely calm state (plusses to WIS in this case). For Druids in Roma it is based on their tribe and they get three areas of speciality. So a Celtic tribe on the sea might have Ocean, Healing and Travel. This means the druid may attempt any effect dealing with those areas. So, on a ship at sea he may be able to calm a storm or freeze a patch of the ocean to disable the enemy ship or part the waters in a sea. IT is up to the imagination of the player.

And, as you noted, I developed this system for many of the reasons you sited. I wanted to have a system of magic that allowed the player to sit at the table and come up with the effect they want. You can even cast outside your specialty but an large modifiers. It is a powerful tool for a designer. You can make a class (or whatever you want to call a character profession) and allow a lot of latitude in the way it is played.

This is just my take though, not meaning to hijack your thread or anything.
Bill

I remember seeing it in Nebuleon, but I don't recall exactly how it worked. It didn't get too much attention that I recall, which may be why it didn't stick. I'll have to dig the book up and look again at it. Right now I have game books scattered all over creation. Some at work (Oops! ) and in three rooms of the house.

Until I have another go at it, I will refrain from commenting... but I don't see it as a thread jack at all.

Homework... you guys keep giving me homework! lol...