Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Cruel animal testing

The other day with my last post on actually setting up my own game got a lot of responses that seemed to find it complicated. That isn't really true. It's less complex then it sounds, there's just a lot of little pieces to it. And 3-5 large ones named your players.

The only thing I'd consider a challenge is the latter.

And even then, they're alright. In response to that post, the 'slowest' friend actually was quite motivated and I helped them make large swathes of progress with planning their character. So much so that we actually got a lot of testing for a very, very basic set up of a single character using all the rules against an enemy a few times.

It ended very... appropriately to the series that inspired it. On the third fight too. It was however a very interesting And reassuring.

The most controversial part of my game would definitely have to be the very harshly limited mana people have. Its the most bitched about thing among my players but I find it an intrinsically important aspect of setting up the world. So I have been deeply paranoid about it.

Complaints against it include such that it's a broken, horrible system if you can't always turn a profit with a fight with the main enemies that provide the way to get mana back, and that the sheer amount of things you have to pay for are cruel. (E.g. You'll pay a little with reactive use of a defense power in response to being attacked.)

The first I really want to be a point of the game. In a group you likely won't get a fair share. That's part of the harsh reality you're meant to overcome. (By friendship or violence.) When alone your chances are better, but in addition to the risk of death that comes with no support, you're the only target and need to burn more mana to win. The only real way to overcome that is gauge how little defense and offense you need, by holding back your full levels of ability you save little bits of mana, how miserly can you be (e.g. could the environment help kill?) or just overwhelmingly strong, so you need few attacks to put them down.

Anything less, being wasteful or of poor judgement should end in disaster. It need not be lethal, that's its own thing. I feel thats appropriate.

The test, largely a single character against forces, in one case obscenely powerful in comparison, in another case drawn out against multiple fairly weak gated enemies in small number and the last against a few strong enemies with a smidgin of tactics were all very revealing.

Each drained a large percentage of mana, causing only a very small profit of gainback from the kills. But then that might be a perfectly reasonable point for being alone. The risk of death I can only describe is deliciously accurate to what I want. The ability to escape exists but isn't a given, and on re-learning that the arbitrarily weaker minions are capable of lethal damage as well as nonlethal was very uplifting. Approaching death is both predictable enough to be fair, and erratic enough to still snatch people before a guaranteed escape.

To get back onto the first paragraph and the main subject of this, if people do actually have interest in tabletop games. They need not feel so afraid. Not every person nor game needs silly things like playtests, common sense and the typical book's suggestions are all you truly need. These help a game, but that's just like anything one does a lot vs. something one does casually as a hobby. It's practice for the future.

Try it and see.

Setting up your own Tabletop RPG: Special edition report from the front lines

I've been sick, again, and thus missed my lesson at the suicide hotline yesterday. Fortunately it was an overview day that was only a couple hours, as opposed to 7 hours cram and practice. I suspect I did not miss much. I asked  the people in charge to contact me with the online component if anything important was missed, but they have not yet, so I'm hopeful that's the case.


Instead, large parts of yesterday that weren't wasted were spent trying to sort things out for my upcoming game. It's been quite a mess, as such a project tends to be, and given my recent posting on the subject, a few thoughts about it might be interesting.

Complicated systems

Ahh, I'm finally 'officially' running the end game, wherein lies points of no return and such for my game. It was a busy one today, and some weird things came up.

Nothing else has also reminded me of how I feel about Cthulhutech in a long while.

I certainly like the system, its complex set of rolls make the game feel dynamic. It gives it a very anime feel, where even without skill, a little luck can turn an attack into something massive, skill only adds to it. It really adds a lot when not only are you in a fight with some sort of lovecraftian tentacled monsters, either in a mech or in a fleshy monster suit, and it can suddenly turn around on you and leave you very wounded, or go in your favour ripping it apart like something from Evangelion mechanically.

But boy oh boy, rolling six attacks, then six dodges, then six armour checks, then a tenacity check for each of the six attacks that did damage, then a duration for how long the poison lasts every time it works as just one action among many, on top of doing this for combat of all sorts, such a lovely mess.

Mutants and masterminds is certainly just as complex at times, especially with certain plans of mine, but oh boy. A single save or two a turn, combined with only the very occasional defensive rolls, will be such a load off of my mind.

A friend of mine just did a post detailing a recent test, and while we discovered a few issues we're gonna have to work on for my upcoming game, but even in spite of that, simply rolling attack, receiving toughness, then adding trip? Childsplay to me. Adding all manner of other negative effects are just a little more of this. D20 has issues but complex rolls in my opinion aren't one of them.

Another good thing about a new game, hopefully, a fresh start for players and gameplay. One of the funnier things today, having to talk one of the players being very stupidly stubborn into spending a limited but easily enough regained resource to avoid something that'd possibly kill them due to a massive roll. They have a tendency to be stupidly stubborn on these things. Or maybe they were just suicidal, who knows.

In the mess, I offered to even make a secret deal to forgo damage to help me with plot a bit. Then proceeded to get into around an hour long discussion basically about how I'm awful for offering such. Seemed valid to me at the time, I want more then one player dealing with the last game session or two and saving the world and all that nonsense. It'd probably cancel the game, that'd mean a LOT of wasted effort. Maybe I shouldn't have offered such, and normally wouldn't, but circumstances got to me. Still, of all the things to complain about. Mercies like that are rare things, especially from me.

I guess I can only hope that thy won't bitch so much when it doesn't come up with the upcoming sessions, or my next game, I've shown my players this before and happily will again, where sudden and unceremonious death will be not just happen, but likely be standard, because with its circumstances I know I'll always have room for another Player Character to fit in.

Designing a villa- helpful, benign ally

Be warned, Madoka Magica spoilers inside.

A couple things have inspired this. Mainly the announcement of "Sparkly Magic Adventure RPG", a wonderful title that sounds like it came from a very self aware design team, where its few screen shots suggest you play as the character, a concept already done once (though at the time of posting that link's down, but I played it earlier the same day.)

Mohikan5 showing just the beginning of things I've gone through trying to come up with this.

I should note, I will have to try to not give away too much, since I have players that read this place, but a mix of truth, misdirection and avoiding the issue will hopefully work well.

Finding a balence, crippling and empowering.

I've been so slow with this blog lately. I'm going to try and kick it back into gear. I have no excuse right now, being on internet with a bandwidth limit doesn't give many other options for things to do anyway.

I've been hard at work though. Within the next two weeks, I'm hoping, I will finally be finishing up the very long campaign I've been running. Trying to figure out how to get things going. I can only hope I'll get something climactic enough once it's done.

And once I'm finally finished with it, I'll be free of the Cthulhutech system, at blood last. It had its problems, but I tend to love it for them, but after running two very long campaigns, an attempted third and playing in another, I won't be touching it again until I hear a very appealing concept.

....Instead with my new game, I'm jumping into Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition, a game in which two of MY friends are finishing up long running campaigns soon. Maybe when its over, if these plans don't ruin all my friendships I'll have finally thought up ideas for a more original system to offer my friends.

Stat by stat, putting it together~

Stat by stat,

Putting it together

Power by power,

Only way to make a true monster.

Every little idea for a complication

Only satisfactory when it makes evil laughter.

Having just the concept is frustration

Gotta have the points make it real

Statting it all-

That's what counts.

Awful song parodies aside, they have it very right at times when it comes to finishing one campaign and starting another and you want to make both work right and impress and/or horrify your players.

Plans for the future: Psychoka

I wonder if I'll ever come up with a more original name for this? It works, though.

As I mentioned before, this is a game I'm planning, heavily inspired by the anime "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (Highly recommended, though it definitely isn't for everyone.) In it, each player will be a freshly contracted magical girl, who was granted a wish by a magical, invisible animal like cute mascot creature for the price of fighting the evil "Eidolons".

This being a major source of inspiration for him. Source, Inaba Taiju.