Wow, I've been away for a while! My apologies to anyone that's been reading this. Anyway, status update on things:
I've basically stopped work on the handful of projects listed here. Rul-Skaath is still rolling around in my head. It needs a better name and a smoother system. For the time being, I'll leave it alone, but it's the one I'm most likely to revisit.
In the time I've been gone, I've picked up the Dresden Files RPG and Strands of Fate, both FATE games. FATE is a system I've avoided in the past, but curiosity finally got the best of me. Once I've had a chance to see the system in play, I intend to post a review of it. As yet, though, all I've been able to do is read the things.
I also picked up Unknown Armies. I don't think I like the system on that one, overall, but I really like the adept magic system and the detailed stress meters. Again, I haven't had much chance to play with it due to player scarcity during the holidays, though.
Showing posts with label rul-skaath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rul-skaath. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Friday, May 28, 2010
Basic Combat
Later on, I intend to have a slightly more in-depth combat system for Rul-Skaath, but I don't really intend fighting to be a huge focus.
Anyway.
Attacking
To make an attack, the attacker rolls Personal Prowess versus the defender's Personal Prowess. If he succeeds, the attack hits, and for every full 2 points by which he succeeds he adds +1 to his effective Might for determining the effects of the hit, to a maximum of +4.
Integrity
Each character and physical object has an Integrity rating, which is simply a percentage signifying how damaged they are (100 points of Integrity is 100% Integrity; full health.)
A character at or below 50% integrity has a -2 penalty to rolls and totals. A character at or below 10% integrity has a -4 penalty to rolls and totals. A character that is reduced to 0% integrity is disabled.
Damage
The damage dealt by an attack is (1d8+6+Personal+Might+Level minus the target's Personal+Might+Level) > value. The target's Integrity is reduced by that amount.
(note to self: that is math, and ugly math at that; is there a way to get a similar effect in a more intuitive manner? Hm.)
Anyway.
Attacking
To make an attack, the attacker rolls Personal Prowess versus the defender's Personal Prowess. If he succeeds, the attack hits, and for every full 2 points by which he succeeds he adds +1 to his effective Might for determining the effects of the hit, to a maximum of +4.
Integrity
Each character and physical object has an Integrity rating, which is simply a percentage signifying how damaged they are (100 points of Integrity is 100% Integrity; full health.)
A character at or below 50% integrity has a -2 penalty to rolls and totals. A character at or below 10% integrity has a -4 penalty to rolls and totals. A character that is reduced to 0% integrity is disabled.
Damage
The damage dealt by an attack is (1d8+6+Personal+Might+Level minus the target's Personal+Might+Level) > value. The target's Integrity is reduced by that amount.
(note to self: that is math, and ugly math at that; is there a way to get a similar effect in a more intuitive manner? Hm.)
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Simple Conflict Resolution
Every RPG needs a conflict resolution system of some sort; it's what distinguished it from the 'I shot you!' 'no, you missed!' 'nuh-uh!' ad nauseum of childhood games of 'pretend'.
In general, when taking an action, you roll an octahedral die (1d8 using the commonly accepted notation), and add the result to the sum of two attributes plus any modifiers and possibly level, and compare the results to a Difficulty.
If the result of your roll is less than or equal to the Difficulty, you fail.
If the result of your roll is higher than the Difficulty, you succeed.
For opposed actions, the Difficulty is usually two of the opponent's attributes, plus modifiers and possibly level, plus 4. This addition of 4 means that when a character is opposed by an exactly equal opponent, his chance of success or failure is 50/50.
Standard Roll
1d8 + attribute + attribute + modifiers + level?
vs.
Difficulty
4 + attribute + attribute + modifiers + level?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Measurement
Everything in the game is, by default, simply measured in 'units'. These don't properly convert to any real-world measures, since nothing in Rul-Skaath is real and objects and beings can exist on all sorts of scales.
A character's avatar is Personal Might > value units in height, by default.
On his turn, he can move to and/or interact with anything within Personal Domain > value units that isn't protected by some sort of barrier. He can't move or act through barriers, but he can through mid-air. If his turn ends off the ground and he can't fly, however, he falls.
This movement is somewhat abstract; during your turn (both before and after you take any other actions) you can move around all you like within the radius of your movement, you just have to pick some specific point at which to end your movement at when your turn ends.
A character's avatar is Personal Might > value units in height, by default.
On his turn, he can move to and/or interact with anything within Personal Domain > value units that isn't protected by some sort of barrier. He can't move or act through barriers, but he can through mid-air. If his turn ends off the ground and he can't fly, however, he falls.
This movement is somewhat abstract; during your turn (both before and after you take any other actions) you can move around all you like within the radius of your movement, you just have to pick some specific point at which to end your movement at when your turn ends.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Attributes Revisited
Every character in Rul-Skaath has the following Attributes:
Personal (PS) -- inherent capabilities of the character's avatar
Wondrous (WN) -- the character's ability to use powers
Sovereign (SV) -- the character's ability to create and manipulate terrain and other characters
Might (MT) -- direct power and influence and resistance to the same
Domain (DM) -- range and area of effects
Prowess (PW) -- chance of success in action and ability to evade the actions of others
Level (LV) -- a general scale of power
By default, LV begins at 0 and every other Attribute begins at 5. Starting characters must then choose one non-LV Attribute to subtract 2 from, and two others to add 2 to.
In play, these attributes are usually used by adding one together one from each category, referring to them by the names from the first two categories. For instance, PS+MT+LV is referred to as Personal Might, and SV+DM+LV is referred to as Sovereign Domain. If the word 'basic' is included, this means LV is not added, so for instance Basic Personal Might is merely PS+MT.
Personal (PS) -- inherent capabilities of the character's avatar
Wondrous (WN) -- the character's ability to use powers
Sovereign (SV) -- the character's ability to create and manipulate terrain and other characters
Might (MT) -- direct power and influence and resistance to the same
Domain (DM) -- range and area of effects
Prowess (PW) -- chance of success in action and ability to evade the actions of others
Level (LV) -- a general scale of power
By default, LV begins at 0 and every other Attribute begins at 5. Starting characters must then choose one non-LV Attribute to subtract 2 from, and two others to add 2 to.
In play, these attributes are usually used by adding one together one from each category, referring to them by the names from the first two categories. For instance, PS+MT+LV is referred to as Personal Might, and SV+DM+LV is referred to as Sovereign Domain. If the word 'basic' is included, this means LV is not added, so for instance Basic Personal Might is merely PS+MT.
The Table
# > type
Whenever something in these rules is written as # > value, that means find the closest rating '#' on the table and use the value listed with it. Similarly, # > rating means find the closest value to '#' on the table and use the rating listed with it. # can be a simple equation, usually adding a few numbers together. For instance, 20 + 5 > value should be read as 25 > value, which is 1,792.
Close Enough?
During actual gameplay, numbers from the table may be unnecessarily precise. The Game Master should feel free to fudge numbers by a few percent; that is, pretty much everything but the first two digits of a number can be ignored. The resultant error is generally so minor as to be insignificant to gameplay.
The Octahedron
I think my dice mechanic will be a simple d8 + modifiers, with the main modifiers being the relevant attribute. In contested rolls, the defender automatically gets a 4 instead of rolling, and ties go to the defender.
This allows a decent range, and means that on an average difficulty (where you need a roll of 4 to succeed), +2 (remember, this means a doubling of your attribute's value) halves your chance of failure, and -2 (halving your attribute's value) halves your chance of success.
Without adding some kind of way to get extra bonuses or something, though, this does mean that a character can, for instance, never hit someone in a fight that is four times as skilled as him. While that kind of makes sense, I wonder if there should be some sort of low probability of automatic success.
Or some kind of 'luck point' resource players can spend to add to their rolls or something, for the one-time-only dramatic success type events.
This allows a decent range, and means that on an average difficulty (where you need a roll of 4 to succeed), +2 (remember, this means a doubling of your attribute's value) halves your chance of failure, and -2 (halving your attribute's value) halves your chance of success.
Without adding some kind of way to get extra bonuses or something, though, this does mean that a character can, for instance, never hit someone in a fight that is four times as skilled as him. While that kind of makes sense, I wonder if there should be some sort of low probability of automatic success.
Or some kind of 'luck point' resource players can spend to add to their rolls or something, for the one-time-only dramatic success type events.
A Matter of Scale
I want to go with a logarithmic scaling for attributes, a bit like the stats in Blood of Heroes or the Speed/Distance table in GURPS. Annoyingly, this necessitates adding a table to my game (the bane of immersive RPGs!) but I think it might be okay, being really the only table that's part of the game mechanics.
I think I'll set it so that +2 to an attribute represents a doubling of its value, and an odd-numbered attribute is 1.4 times the value of the even-numbered attribute before it. So...
Attr..Val
8.......5
9.......7
10.....10
11.....14
12.....20
13.....28
14.....40
15.....56
16.....80
...That's the basic idea, assuming I center the attributes on 10.
I think I'll set it so that +2 to an attribute represents a doubling of its value, and an odd-numbered attribute is 1.4 times the value of the even-numbered attribute before it. So...
Attr..Val
8.......5
9.......7
10.....10
11.....14
12.....20
13.....28
14.....40
15.....56
16.....80
...That's the basic idea, assuming I center the attributes on 10.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Characters and Attributes
So, what is a player character in Rul-Skaath?
The idea is that one day you awaken in this strange, semi-abstract world with your memories fragmented and broken. What happened? Who knows? Perhaps this is the afterlife. Perhaps mankind reached the technological singularity and you're in a virtual world. Perhaps you've simply gone insane. I intend these various beliefs to form the basis of many of the religions and political factions of Rul-Skaath, so I don't want to give a single absolute answer to this.
Characters retain their memory and personality from when they were human, generally, but disorientation and delusion are common, and various people may have contradictory memories. It should be possible to step into the game as yourself, any of your previous role-playing characters, or even a blank slate.
Once in Rul-Skaath, characters are no longer human, however. They aren't so strictly bound by the laws of physics, geometry, or biology, but instead are bound by this universe's set of dreamlike rules.
Their attributes should reflect that. Here is what I currently have:
Might (MT) -- A character's Might is how solidly real he is; how much of an influence he can have on his surroundings and how much he can resist the influence his surroundings exert upon him. Might is roughly analogous to Strength and Stamina in other roleplaying games, but also determines things like how hot a fireball thrown by the character is or how much punishment a conjured barrier can take.
Domain (DM) -- A character's Domain is the reach of his influence. This includes perception, range, movement, and the radius of area effects.
Prowess (PR) -- The finesse trait, basically. To affect another being, Prowess is pitted against Prowess, with the defender's success meaning he has somehow evaded the influence.
So far it doesn't look like I need other skills, though I've had some thoughts about adding a second axis: Personal, Sovereign, and Wondrous. These would be added to the base traits to determine hybrid traits of a sort, so you'd use (for example) Personal Domain to determine movement distance, Wondrous Might to determine the power of a conjured lightning bolt, and Sovereign Prowess to successfully trick, misdirect, or manipulate others socially.
The idea is that one day you awaken in this strange, semi-abstract world with your memories fragmented and broken. What happened? Who knows? Perhaps this is the afterlife. Perhaps mankind reached the technological singularity and you're in a virtual world. Perhaps you've simply gone insane. I intend these various beliefs to form the basis of many of the religions and political factions of Rul-Skaath, so I don't want to give a single absolute answer to this.
Characters retain their memory and personality from when they were human, generally, but disorientation and delusion are common, and various people may have contradictory memories. It should be possible to step into the game as yourself, any of your previous role-playing characters, or even a blank slate.
Once in Rul-Skaath, characters are no longer human, however. They aren't so strictly bound by the laws of physics, geometry, or biology, but instead are bound by this universe's set of dreamlike rules.
Their attributes should reflect that. Here is what I currently have:
Might (MT) -- A character's Might is how solidly real he is; how much of an influence he can have on his surroundings and how much he can resist the influence his surroundings exert upon him. Might is roughly analogous to Strength and Stamina in other roleplaying games, but also determines things like how hot a fireball thrown by the character is or how much punishment a conjured barrier can take.
Domain (DM) -- A character's Domain is the reach of his influence. This includes perception, range, movement, and the radius of area effects.
Prowess (PR) -- The finesse trait, basically. To affect another being, Prowess is pitted against Prowess, with the defender's success meaning he has somehow evaded the influence.
So far it doesn't look like I need other skills, though I've had some thoughts about adding a second axis: Personal, Sovereign, and Wondrous. These would be added to the base traits to determine hybrid traits of a sort, so you'd use (for example) Personal Domain to determine movement distance, Wondrous Might to determine the power of a conjured lightning bolt, and Sovereign Prowess to successfully trick, misdirect, or manipulate others socially.
Rul-Skaath
Part of what drove me to begin this blog is as a tool to organize my thoughts. I like to fiddle with RPG mechanics and I'd like to try my hand at an amateur RPG of my own, but so often I just let the ideas sit in the back of my mind until they're forgotten again. I've found that having to explain my reasoning and ideas to people helps me work. And here I do have an audience of sorts.
So, my game...
It will be called Rul-Skaath, possibly with a sub-title made of actual words. The name comes from a location I made for an RPG I ran years ago, which will be the central hub and starting location of this game.
The inspiration for this game comes from a number of sources.
Blood of Heroes (RPG) -- Ideally, I want this system to have that sense of scale, where the rules function both for meaningless goblin minions all the way up to planet-crushing gods. This game shouldn't simply assume a character is human-sized, with human-average traits.
Exalted: The Fair Folk (RPG) -- The premise of this game is similar to a wyld-only Fair Folk game, in that the characters should wield some direct control over their reality and surroundings, potentially building entire worlds and nations for themselves out of the ether.
Second Life (MMOG) -- For similar reasons to the above; I want to incorporate some of the 'sandbox' feel of Second Life into my game. If a player wants his character to have a house, it should be possible for him to actually mystically construct one, possibly constructing the surrounding fairy-tale forest as well if he has the inclination and sufficient power and skill.
Various MU*s (PC games) -- Again, this is for the sandbox 'you can build anything' feel, especially present in Social MUSHes. I'm also thinking the game world itself should be structured similarly, with stuff divided into rooms (places you can be), exits (ways to get between places you can be), and objects (things that can be in places). Exalted's wyld functions similarly with its waypoints and journeys, so I'll have to put some thought into how to differentiate my game so I'm not simply playing follow the leader, but this method works so much better than trying to apply euclidean geometry to such a malleable, free-form setting.
dot Hack (various media) -- In my mind, the visual style of this game is similar to the .hack series: all the terrain should have a sort of bigness to it. Vast, sweeping plains; thick and ancient forests; blasted nightmare-lands of ash and tar; all dotted with inexplicable dungeons and strange terrain features, and with an air of loneliness and dream around it all.
So, my game...
It will be called Rul-Skaath, possibly with a sub-title made of actual words. The name comes from a location I made for an RPG I ran years ago, which will be the central hub and starting location of this game.
The inspiration for this game comes from a number of sources.
Blood of Heroes (RPG) -- Ideally, I want this system to have that sense of scale, where the rules function both for meaningless goblin minions all the way up to planet-crushing gods. This game shouldn't simply assume a character is human-sized, with human-average traits.
Exalted: The Fair Folk (RPG) -- The premise of this game is similar to a wyld-only Fair Folk game, in that the characters should wield some direct control over their reality and surroundings, potentially building entire worlds and nations for themselves out of the ether.
Second Life (MMOG) -- For similar reasons to the above; I want to incorporate some of the 'sandbox' feel of Second Life into my game. If a player wants his character to have a house, it should be possible for him to actually mystically construct one, possibly constructing the surrounding fairy-tale forest as well if he has the inclination and sufficient power and skill.
Various MU*s (PC games) -- Again, this is for the sandbox 'you can build anything' feel, especially present in Social MUSHes. I'm also thinking the game world itself should be structured similarly, with stuff divided into rooms (places you can be), exits (ways to get between places you can be), and objects (things that can be in places). Exalted's wyld functions similarly with its waypoints and journeys, so I'll have to put some thought into how to differentiate my game so I'm not simply playing follow the leader, but this method works so much better than trying to apply euclidean geometry to such a malleable, free-form setting.
dot Hack (various media) -- In my mind, the visual style of this game is similar to the .hack series: all the terrain should have a sort of bigness to it. Vast, sweeping plains; thick and ancient forests; blasted nightmare-lands of ash and tar; all dotted with inexplicable dungeons and strange terrain features, and with an air of loneliness and dream around it all.
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