Friday, February 26, 2010

whoa

So in D&D, hit dice are purely a function of your class and your level and your Con modifier. As your level goes up your Hit Die gets rolled increasing your Overall HP.

Deadlands uses a “wound” system where how much damage you can take is based on your character’s size. But, it stays the same throughout your career. When you take damage the number is divided by 5 (due to your size) and that number is applied to the hit locations (arms, legs, guts, etc.)

I like Race. I think that this makes more sense (Why does my Halfling have the same HP as this Half-Ork? Oh were both Paladins.) I also think this pushes Race to the forefront of the Race & Class selection.

But I’ve come to a quandary.
I don’t want characters to increase with their level. At least not that much. In the western genre there is not often the idea that a character can get shot, a lot, a be fine. They might be unwell and live, but rarely are they just like “Oh yeah that’s just my eye, it’s no big deal”

Right Nowww I have implemented a system from Star Wars “Vitality / Wound”
You have Wound Points equal to your Con Score. Your Vitality points are your regular HP, when they are depleted you go into the Vitality points and when those are gone you’re dead.

But I’m thinking:

What if I combined the DL and D&D:

Upon hitting and Critting (rolling 3 of a Kind) the number is applied directly to wound points.

But upon hitting without Critting, the number is divided by X (this number will be determined by your Race) the result, is subtracted by the wound points.

Anyway, its an Idea

Thursday, February 25, 2010

can you tell?

I'm really starting to take ownership of this game. I think ti's a side effect of really believing it will get published.

So

Saving throws

Force
Finesse
Fortune

instead of describing save vs. effects as how they effect you describe them by how you get through them. By Overpowering the effect mental or physical (force); By finegalling the effect (finesse); or by chance (fortune)
---------------------------------------------------------------

What should your Hit die be based on... I'll go into this more tomarrow

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

I've not been slacking... I swear.

To roll abilities, you roll 3d6. add the highest and lowest number together

Ability Scores - Ability Modifiers

2 - (-5)
3 - (-4)
4 - (-3)
5 - (-2)
6 - (-1)
7 - 0
8 - 1
9 - 2
10 - 3
11 - 4
12 - 5


What I like about this system:

1) Feels distinct
2) Simpler
3) Highly Customisable: If you want to run a horror game; roll 3d6 take the two least. High Power? Roll 3d6 keep the two best. Low power? 2d6

Obviously I'll need to change how frequently you get stat bumps.
etc.
etc.

but I think I like it.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Char gen is short for Character Generation... btw

So totally ganked from various places;

within the mechanics of Character Creation (IE: Rolling stats, assigning feats etc.)

These questions should be answered:

1)Each PC provides a 1-2 sentence story/background for his PC; including what your character did in the war. Did he fight? Where? In what capacity?

2)Each PC creates 2 positive relationships/links with 2 other PCs (possibly just one for smaller partys)

3)Each PC creates a Tension with a PC he has no relationship/link with (optional)

4)Each PC creates a friendly NPC he is linked to

5)Each PC creates an enemy/rival NPC

6)Each PC creates a locality he/she’s related to. (Saloons, headquarters, gardens and so on)

With special thanks to Chatty DM over at CriticalHits.com

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Dropped the Ball

Sorry about that guys.. er guy.

Anyway the Alpha TN Spread is going to be : 8, 10, 13, 16, 22

And now I'm thinking about Char-Gen.

Generating Characters is boring and tedious. And sense my mantra for this game is, "If it isn't fast, it better be damn fun" I'm going to try to make it as fun as possible. So I'll build in the (not my) idea of making character generation part of the play.

The idea being that your first session is just for Char-gen so you start off the adventuring with a cohesive party. And It's interactive so it's fun for everyone, not just boring work that we have to do so we can play. "Would you hurry and pick your feats!"

Of course there will be "quick"-gen rules.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Excel is your friend.

Unfortunately, the snow and ice of last week kept me from posting.

I created a spreadsheet detailing the odds for any particular outcome of a roll of three, six-sided dice. I then, using the D&D percentages as a rough guide, created Target Numbers (DC’s) for various levels of difficulty. I think the spread is something like:
8 simple
10 challenging
12 difficult
14 Hard
16 Heroic

I’m going to do like Deadlands and give you the TN’s in the front of the skills section, then give a couple of examples in each skill instead of like in D&D where, because of the layout / presentation, you constantly have to refer to each individual skill. (or at least I do)

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

CHar Sheet action!

So I totally got some graph paper out and created the Alpha version of the 'Spider' Character sheet.
It seems like a small step, but, what is on the char sheet really seems to set the mood for the game. I really like that on the back of d20 mod sheets, they have all the feats in little check box form.

anyway gotta go

sorry

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

too many secrets mechanics

I am trying, with 'Spider' to create a very simple system.
As few rolls as posible
As few "wait what's the rule for that?" moments as posible.

I want to boil everything, as much as posible, down to a "core mechanic". So that in any given situation, you know what to do, or at the least how to adjudicate the situation beacause everything else works this way.

The problem is, that there are so many COOL! ideas. Oooo! What if there were
'focus points' or 'railroad tokens' or whatever.

I find myself getting destracted by what are really good ideas, just, not what I should be doing.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Brain dead Monday

Fluff vs Crunch

Fluff: the setting

Crunch: the rules

Crunch is the mechanics, where as Fluff is the skin around the mechanics.

Fluff: “I jump from the roof of the saloon to the second-story window next door”
Crunch: [I roll 3d6 and add modifiers and meet the Target Number of ‘28’]

Today I wrote some fluff about the northwest state in the land of the game "Spider"
...

Friday, February 5, 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Alignment (check), XP (not so check)

Reading an article over at Critical Hits and I think I will drop the alignment idea in favor of a two word personality description.
Virtue & Vice

One word that describes something good about you, the other something not so good.

Ex:
Kind / Ego-centric
Generous / Sarcastic
Punctual / Murderous
and the list goes on.

_______________________________________

Now for XP..

um i dunno, just give yourself some xp.

No, I think I will have it goal focused, as in, "What is the party trying to accomplish?"
Rescuing the Princess
Putting the restless soul at peace.
Closing the gaping portal to the Spirit plane.

I dunno

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

No two brains are not on fire.

... you need 50 xp to attain the next level for any given level.

10 'challenges' give enough xp to level


each challenge accrues one player 5xp
(+-) bonus xp

....

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Moving along the Plot

Plot xp means you reward the players for moving the plot.
This got me thinking about “units” of plot, in order to dole out xp for those units.
In a general sense an RPG adventure is like a movie. A movie can be broken up into sequences and further into scenes.
Using the RPG – Movie analogy:
A movie is an adventure or series of adventures; we need to rescue the princess from the evil Prince Humperdink.
An act or Sequence is a smaller part of that plot; we need to resurrect the Dread Pirate Roberts.
A scene is the smallest unit and comprises of a single combat, a few skill checks, etc; we need to use our diplomacy to convince Miracle Max to resurrect the Dread Pirate.

So what gets the reward, a scene? a sequence? an adventure? A combination of the three?
What if the players chase a wild goose, creating unnecessary scenes?

Monday, February 1, 2010

X to the P

Eureka!

I realized just how hard I was making this for myself, and that this really is going to be a different game.

In D&D you gain experience through doing stuff (killing monsters, disarming traps, etc.) and someone has painstakingly assigned a number to every monster, trap, etc. that you can do so you know exactly how much XP you get for everything you did.

On the other hand, games like Deadlands, have no such system. Deadlands gives out XP for generic things like finding clues, killing significant baddies, solving mysteries.

And so I realized, you don’t need to know how many glowing orbs of experience each monster drops. Because that encourages players to open the door, kill what’s inside. (Not that that’s necessarily bad.) If you instead reward the story, which might be, “open the door and kill everything inside”, you can (theoretically) have the best of both worlds.