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Dedman Walkin posted:
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Feb 24, 2014 21:30
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Hulk Smash! posted:Some of these skills are less obvious than others... I assume that Tall-Tellin' is Lie/Con but what's Guts in relation to Spirit and what's the difference between Search and Scrutinize? Sorry, I should have been a bit more descriptive in my post. To lie, you need a Smarts skill called Bluff (also handy for poker). Tale-Telling is storytelling, basically. I took it for the preacher to help with delivering a sermon, but it could also be used to, say, be a lawyer to tell your case, be a politician to glad-hand for voters, just entertain people around the campfire, and when you realize that monsters exist and feed off fear, Tale-Telling is used to drain the Fear from the land, and replace it with Hope. Scrutinize is used to see if someone's lying to you (the skill used to counter Bluff). Search is used to spot things (be it hidden goodies or an ambush in the waiting. (the skill used to counter Sneak) Area Knowledge shows how much you know about a place. Everyone knows their home region for free, but you can buy concentrations to get info on a certain town, or region, or state. Guts is used when you run into scary poo poo, or a very gristly scene. It's used to keep your head when bad things go down. So if, say, a monster bursts into a saloon, you'd roll Guts to not panic and run away, and instead face down the thing. Failing Guts checks means the Marshall can roll on a Fear Table to see how poorly you react. Dodge is used in combat to avoid getting hit. Faith is how strong you are spiritually, and as previously said, Blessed use it to use their Miracles. You don't have to be Blessed to have Faith, you can be a really pious cowpoke and not have the Arcane Background.
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Feb 24, 2014 22:10
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Dedman Walkin posted:Explanation. Gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks 
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Feb 24, 2014 22:15
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Alumnus Post posted:ORATIO XVIII VEL RECTUS VIGINTIS SVB FIGVRA 3d6 This is super cool and I am looking forward to seeing what you make with this.
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Feb 24, 2014 23:01
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I know what I'm doing the next time a pbp Persona game rolls through.
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Feb 24, 2014 23:14
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  ORATIO XVIII VEL RECTUS VIGINTIS SVB FIGVRA 3d6 Okay, the weird esoteric bullshit’s done now. If you just came for the chargen, it starts here. There’s still some weird bullshit in the explanation, but I’m afraid it’s pretty much unavoidable. Sorry! It’s a good idea to have at least some sort of general, unformed idea before you begin, even if it’s just a list of cool-looking playbooks, or something as simple as “sneaky bastard” or “a wizzard.” For this to work, you’re gonna need: • A Tarot deck. I don’t care what you use. I’m using the Crowley-Thoth deck because it’s the one I have, but I’m also linking images from the conventional Rider-Waite deck. If you don’t have one, there’s a bunch of spread-generating sites you can find with a quick Google search. You can look specifically for one with a Tree of Life spread, or just pick one with ten cards and rearrange them in your head. • If you want to stick strictly to how this stuff is ‘supposed’ to be interpreted, probably you’re gonna want some books. Otherwise, just roll with it! Do whatever it is you do to get creative. You’re gonna want to: • Turn your cards over one at a time. This’ll let you gradually develop the character. • Remember that this is a guide, not a prison. If you like your ideas better than what the cards, the Tree, or this guide say, use yours! The ultimate goal here is to make a kick-rear end character that you’d have fun playing, not to study the ~*grand mysterees*~ of Life, the Universe, and Everything as interpreted through the western occult tradition. If you want to do that, you might want to start reading books by people who know more than me. Lon Milo DuQuette's a good starting point, and he's also hilarious. As outlined before, we'll be rolling with the "Bird-Lady Bard" idea everyone else is playing with. My Lord and Dungeon Master Kellsterik wants to hear more about the culture of another sort of birdmans I rolled up for his campaign, a mashed-up Lantern/Sky-Dancer eaglemans named Nasir ibn-Quzah, that uses wind instead of light for his 'little light' move. I did the spread before I saw that post, so I'll be adding in some post-spread notes to each bit, that adapt the idea to his specs. Let’s get right down to it! Supernal Triad posted:#1. The Prince of Cups. Since we're in the gap between triads here, it's time for a bit of experimentation. I haven’t actually done the bit about the secret 'eleventh point' I’ve outlined in the explanations before yet, nor had a DM who’s been interested in collaborating. All the same, we're gonna give it a shot. We’ll be the DM as well as the player, and draw our hidden, eleventh card, for secrets and things we don’t know. I drew this card after #10, but I'm placing it here, between 3 and 4. The Abyss posted:#π. 0 - The Fool. That’s the first triad finished. We've got a central Big Theme everything revolves around: plots, secret violence, and subtlety. We have two competing lesser themes: hope for a better future on the good end, and family troubles-slash-personal issues on the bad end. Some good stuff so far, but it’s time to bring this stuff out of the realm of ideas and start actually getting concrete. Let's move on! Ethical Triad posted:#4. The Eight of Swords. That's the second triad completed, so now it's time to start getting actually concrete, and get to work on her character sheet. Considering all the Princesses we’ve seen here so far, let’s go with The Princess as her playbook! Royalty without a kingdom is usually pretty fun to play, and the archetypes this playbook invokes are perfect to fit with the themes we’ve developed so far. We’re going with a bird-lady, so what kind of a bird is she? We have an eagle up on the top, and a lot of things for water, so I think I’ll go with a waterbird for her. I did an eaglemans by this method already, so I think we’ll try something different. We’re going to go with the crane, heron, and ibis as a basis for how she looks. Most of those have "royal" connotations, and they also look totally  . The crane especially is revered in China and Japan as a symbol of immortality. We’ll give her a Look, modifying things to allow for her birdy nature: Mischevious eyes, Royal feathers, Willowy body, Jeweled regalia; and a Drive instead of an Alignment: Revenge! Get back at someone you believe has wronged you. Fits well with the less happy connotations of the Prince up at the top. I’m not feeling a name yet, so we’ll leave that for the last triad--which is coming up right now. Hope you're ready!Psychological Triad posted:#7. The Nine of Swords. We're almost done! Only a little bit left to go, and so close to the end, we’ve got almost everything we need here. Two competing themes of hope and family troubles, and one big theme of secrecy and plots, manifested as a bloody inter-family war that our bird-lady’s side lost. So much death, failure, and loss has given her a very unpleasant personality with some redeeming characteristics nevertheless; and a harmonizing theme of completion and success through perseverance. Time to give her a name. I like to name my characters in a way that echoes their inspirations and character traits. We’ll go for maximum anime here, and name her Keiko Kijuku. The Kingdom posted:#10. The Six of Disks. Hooray, we’re done! From something as simple as “bird-lady,” we’ve come up with an entire character concept, full of potential adventuring hooks and interesting bits of fiction. Some of the ideas we came up with didn't entirely pan out, and I probably didn't follow my own formula 100% to the letter. That's fine! The end result was a cool character that I'd totally enjoy playing. In fact, if anyone does want to use this character, I'm giving it away freely. I'm about at my limit for active games I can join right now - three is plenty. I’d like to point out that this is not a chosen spread: I took the cards as they came, and didn't throw anything out just because I didn't like it. If you still want a bird-lady bard, we've taken the Princess playbook - so it’s as simple as taking her multiclassing or Worldly Concerns moves as advances. Time to type up her character sheet and call it a day. Character Sheet posted:
And that's that! I hope you enjoyed this ridiculously complicated means of generating cool characters. I actually did my first spread as just "Generic Fighter" for this, before the bird-lady bard thing took off. If there's interest, I could post it. Some other time though. Holy poo poo, writing this took literally all day from morning to sunset. If anyone ends up actually trying to use this to make a character, I would love to hear about it. It could probably be adapted to things like campaign settings, Grim Portents, or notable NPCs pretty easily, as well.
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Feb 25, 2014 01:04
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I'm going to spoil that string of effortposts with this: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness! TMNT is massively hindered by using the Palladium system, which we all know is one of the least functional almost-functional game systems you can find - but since the starting point is making animal-people, a bird-woman bard is within our grasp right from the word go! Step 1: The Eight Attributes Palladium has eight attributes: IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB and Spd. These translate roughly to Intelligence, Willpower, Charm, Strength, Dexterity, Toughness, Hotness, and Spd. (Speed.) I'd also like to point out that literally two lines into the chargen section the book says the first step is to roll up the eight attributes, then only lists seven of them. Anyway, it's 3d6 down the line. If an attribute is rolled 16+ you get to add +1d6 to it, meaning that awesome stats are even more awesome. That gives us:
Apart from being pretty strong, that sucks. Oh well!  We also generate Hit Points by rolling 1d6 and adding PE. That gets us the maximum of 12 HP. Step 2: Animal Type You roll to generate your animal type randomly. First you generate a broad category - rural, urban, wild, wild birds, or zoo - and then a subcategory within that. However, since we're going for a bird-lady I'm going to cheat a bit and select wild birds. A quick roll on the sub-table gets us a base animal of quail. I poo poo you not. I was hoping for a duck, but quail will do. Step 3: Cause of Mutation So just how did our quail come to be a superhero? It's a percentile table, and my roll turned up Random Mutation. This directs us to roll on the Wild Animal Education Table to determine how she learned her skills. A roll of 83 on the percentile table gets us Adopted by a Mentor. Sorry, a "mentor" - the book has it in inverted commas for no reason I can imagine. Ranging from 41-90, this is far and away the most common result on this table, and basically makes you a ninja Step 4: BIO-E Points, Special Abilities, Psionics, Growth Levels (Steps), Human Features Now we get to the meat of generation. All animals get a pool of BIO-E points with which to buy special powers, including buying up or down their size. The smaller and weaker an animal the more BIO-E it gets: elephants, for example, start with 0 and in order to have any powers beyond 'being an elephant' will need to sell down their size to generate BIO-E. I flip forward to the wild fowl section and discover that as a quail we start at size 3 (at the small end - about 9 inches long) with a Medium build (which affects how we appear if we adopt a human appearance) and 75 BIO-E to spend. We get to be a biped for free, but have to purchase hands, speech, looks and other powers (like flight). I spend 10 BIO-E for full human looks (large eyes, light feathers instead of hair, powerful legs) and 10 for full human speech. For some wacky reason wild fowl have the option to buy extra limbs with human hands for 20 BIO-E, so why the hell not? Four-armed bird lady it is. Now, I could spend 20 BIO-E to get flight on top of that, but since my previous character could fly I'm going to burn all the remaining BIO-E on an increase in size: this bumps her size up to 10, which also gets us 35 SDC, which are a kind of hit points: SDC represent cosmetic damage, scratches, bumps, etc. while loss of HP is serious injury. There's a handy chart for turning 'size' into height and weight, and some rolling makes her 6'2" tall and 186 lbs. Our ninja quail can't fly but she is tall, kind of thin, and hexapodal. Oh, also, the boost in size gets us +4 PS and +2 PP (for 18 and 11, respectively). Step 5: Equipment and Money We've already rolled up $1200 for our ninja quail. The equipment chapter has prices for: swords, knives, guns of various kinds, night-vision goggles, lockpicks, dynamite, cameras, helicopters, cars (including the "Bently"), acid (by the half gallon), a modem ($180!), but no musical instruments. To Google! I find a keytar for about $200, which will occupy two of our girl's arms, a katana for $300, and the remaining $700 goes on the cheapest submachine gun I can find. I should probably have picked up some armour (or clothes) but whatever. We can open the game by raiding an Abercrombie and Fitch or something. Step ??: Rounding Out Ones Character We've stopped counting steps at this point, but chargen isn't finished yet. Also, leaving the apostrophe out of "one's" is causing me physical pain. Here we cover alignment, experience (none yet), skills and education, and equipment (again?). I choose Anarchist as an alignment, which makes our lady basically an amoral adrenaline junkie. She's not evil, but she's definitely out for Number One. When it comes to skills we get quite a few. We get Hand to Hand: Ninjitsu for free, which gives us "+3 to pull punches, roll with punches, and roll with falls" at level 1 and a variety of combat manoeuvres. Now normal folk who want to select Ninjitsu have to buy a bunch of prerequisite skills - but as a "mentored" character we get them for free! Acrobatics, Climbing, Prowl, and "at least one form of fencing". Since there only is one fencing skill, I'll have that (it grants +1 to strike and parry when you use a sword). We also get three ancient/ninja weapon skills - I choose Sword, Blunt, and Paired Weapons, because Paired Weapons is so broken it's hilarious. There's a line I recall from the manga Blade of the Immortal: "An amateur can't fight a guy who does it two-handed - it's like an ant fighting God." This is a good description of Palladium's Paired Weapons skill. We also get three military/espionage skills (I pick Detect Ambush, Detect Concealment and Pick Locks) and ten secondary skills. I pause for a quick digression on the subject of Palladium skills: the physical skills boost your stats when you take them, making them a fantastic choice over basically everything else. There's even a paragraph explaining that yes, those bonuses are cumulative. So I take the SMG weapon proficiency, since I've already bought one, the Sing skill because there isn't one for playing musical instruments, Motorcycle so she can get around (after acquiring a bike from somewhere), and then I stock up on physical skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Body Building, Boxing, Gymnastics, Running, and Wrestling. This gives us a total of a 70% sense of balance skill, a 70% chance to walk a tightrope, 87% chance to climb a rope, 49% chance of climbing... anything else, 83% backflip skill, all those skills again from a different source (with different bonuses), +10% Prowl, +8 to roll with punch/fall, +3 to parry and dodge, +1 to body check (1d4 damage + knockdown), +1d4+8 PS, +2d4 PP, +4 PE, +5d4 Spd, +12d6+1d8+10 SDC, +1 attack/round, automatic knockout on a natural 20 attack roll, and an automatic pin/incapacitate on a natural 18+. Not bad. I was going to collate all that into a full character sheet, but it's after midnight and it would be a total mess anyway. Gail the Quail knows virtually nothing about anything, but she can hammer the ever-loving poo poo out of people in hand-to-hand combat - and accompany herself on keytar and vocals while she does it! (At level 1 she could take Shredder, mainly due to Paired Weapon cheese. The ninja turtles themselves would probably be trickier because of their armour ability that soaks all damage if the attack roll is too low. And she has a 3/20 chance of instantly winning any fight with every attack she makes, so as long as she stays alive she's got a fighting chance.) EDIT: I'm going to write up that character sheet, more or less. It's not quite finished yet. Gail the Quail 6'2", 186 lbs Alignment: Anarchist Full biped, full human looks, full human speech, four arms with human hands. Stats
Side note: A speed of 21 means she can sprint the 100 metres in about 13 seconds - which is kind of lovely for an allegedly superhuman score. Usain Bolt, on a slow day (100m in 10 sec) clocks in with a Spd of 30. 16 HP 92 SDC Skills Acrobatics Backflip Climb a rope Climb other things Climbing (Palladium skills  )Detect ambush Detect concealment Motorcycle Pick locks Prowl Sense of balance Sing Walk a tightrope W.P. Fencing (+1 to strike and parry with swords) W.P. Sword (+1 to strike and parry with swords) W.P. Blunt (+1 to strike and parry with blunts) W.P. Paired Weapons (hilarious superiority) W.P. Sub-machine gun (dakka) Combat 2 attacks per round +11 to roll with punch or fall +3 to pull punches (why would we ever do this?) +3 parry +3 dodge Knockout on a natural 20 with an unarmed attack Pin/Incapacitate on a natural 18+ with an unarmed attack Body check for 1d4 + knockdown, +1 strike Kick for 1d6 damage Jump kick for 2d6 damage, takes two actions Katana for 3d6 damage, +2 strike, +2 parry SMG for 4d6 damage plus all sorts of ridiculous autofire bonuses Gear Katana, SMG, radical keytar. Shopping List Clothes, boots, motorcycle. potatocubed fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 01:33
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P.d0t posted:I heard about this from reading the chat thread, and I figured I should throw my own game in the ring. Actually, should I just stat up some characters? I'll take concept requests, but tbh the system is pretty lo-fi.
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Feb 25, 2014 04:06
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Ego Trip posted:I want to play Legends of the Wulin so bad right now. Then my posts are working as intended. On the subject of complimenting posts, speaking as someone who likes both tarot symbology and things that help you think up characters, your posts are pretty cool.
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Feb 25, 2014 04:10
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Take FATAL, add horses, remove anal circumference, and you get... I don't think anyone has done this yet in FATAL and Friends, but they should, its… something. quote:A game about the daring adventures and everyday lives of people in the Old West, Aces & Eights lets you tell the tale of the West that could have been, in your own words, deeds and history. The Aces & Eights game allows for rugged cowboys, brave Indians, murderous desperados, determined lawmen, sturdy prospectors, powerful rail barons, and all of the characters we think of when we watch a good western movie or read books about the expansion of the American frontier. Sounds fun, right? quote:To determine your gunfighter's Speed, roll a d4. Record this number then flip a coin to determine if the value is positive (heads) or negative (tails). The result is your gunfighter's Speed score - somewhere between -4 and 4. Repeat the process to determine Accuracy. code:code:Our gunslinger clearly prefers to take his time and put one right between the eyes. quote:Each character has between 21 and 24 hit points (hp) determined by rolling a d4 and adding 20. This gives you a measure of how much physical damage your gunfighter can sustain before keeling over. code:quote:For basic gunfighting, weapons are restricted to a few general categories of firearms (see Table 2.1-1: Basic Firearms). You may either choose your weapon from this list or roll a d6 to randomly determine your armament. code: quote:If you want to get a "feel" for your gunfighter, you may also choose to roll on one or more of the quick background tables found on the following page. code:That wasn't bad. People were telling me that this was like an old west Hackmaster, full of circle strafing gunslingers and spreadsheets for your cattle drives. The next chapter is only a few pages and has all the stuff for shooting, it couldn't be that bad…  Oh… We get to do character creation all over again, and this time, it is much more complicated. To start off, we get 75 Building Points (BPs) to do stuff with. Next, we roll for ability scores. Strength, intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Looks, and Charisma. Sound familiar? 3d6 down the line, each with a d100 percentile score added! code:If we don't like these, there are options. We can sacrifice points in one score to raise another, with diminishing returns (an 8 to a 9 is 2 points, but a 17 to an 18 is 5), we can trade ability points in for BPs, 7 to be exact, and later use those, or we can use our starting BPs at one BP per 5 percentile points, for the first 100, after which the price starts to go up. I think we are fine with those abilities. We calculate our starting Reputation by averaging all 7 ability scores. Our reputation is 13, plus 1 for our Looks, plus 1 for our Charisma. A 15 Reputation gives us another 35 BPs! Our Fame starts at 0, plus 2 because of our looks. Next, we get to our "Priors and Particulars." The game gives us a handy chart to keep track of where we are:  We choose our nationality by rolling on the Place of Origin table. code:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooPBXfnIpYI&t=19s We roll our age: code:code:Next, Handedness. I guess this could be relevant in a gunslinger game. code:Next, height and weight. But we need to know if we are male or female first! code:code:code:Family and Social Class are next, and while we can skip this, it just doesn't feel right at this point, so over to chapter 6.5 we go... Circumstances of Birth? code:Status of Parents? code:Status of Siblings? code:code:code:code:code:code:code:Social Class? code:code:Whats my name? code:code:So zooming back to the character creation section, we determine our starting money, which we will take a -10 on because we are the oldest child of a lower lower class family. code:Why did we head out west? code:We get extra BPs if we take Quirks and Flaws, so lets do that too. If we roll, we get full BPs, otherwise we only get half. We get -5 points for each quirk beyond the first too, so we are going to go for two rolls. code:code:code:code:I didn't roll a flaw, so that’s good I guess. We are also supposed to create a backstory for each quirk and flaw, otherwise we only get half! Nice way to keep people from rolling a ton, but we will just say we did. (A Chiseler is apparently a person who is unfair in business and lies, cheats, or changes terms to take advantage of people) Next, we pick skills. We buy these with our BP and would improve them later with BP in-game. Skill checks are a percentile roll, trying to roll over the percentage, which starts at 100 minus the mastery die listed for the skill. Skills costs are reduced by the skill learning modifier of our Int, Wis, or Cha, if the skill matches up. Past the initial cost of the skill, to improve it further we just pay the cost again, cumulative with the original cost. A giant skill list like this really makes my eyelids start to sag, so I'm just going to throw all but about 70 points (I want to save some for Talents, next) into Accounting, Math (needed for Accounting), Reading Comprehension (needed for math), Art of Seduction, and Telegraph Operating. pre:Skill Name BP Cost/Tally Ability Mastery Skill % Accounting 2 // INT 1d8 95 Mathematics 5 //// INT 1d8 80 Reading Comp 3 //// INT 1d6 84 Seduction, Art 1 ///// CHA/LKS 1d6 75 Telegraph Op. 3 /// INT 1d8 83 There is a whole chapter later on explaining what each skill is and an example of each of the difficulty levels. Just looking at the average (+40%) for our skills: Accounting: Auditing a business' books Mathematics: Work a math problem with a reasonable time limit Reading Comprehension/Penmanship: Reading a novel; reading good penmanship in dim light; writing with average materials and lighting in a room with obvious background noise Seduction, Art of: Seducing a stranger or acquaintance Telegraph Operating: Working with familiar equipment The last step in creating a character is Talents. They are special abilities, like advantages or feats in other systems. John "Stumbles" Lewis here, judging by his skills and stuff so far is a man made tough through minor crime, but with a head for book learning, who has recently begun seducing his way into banks and stage coach offices and telegraphing out their financial records. His Talents will aid that idea. ASTUTE OBSERVATION (50 BP) Characters with this talent notice what's going on around them, and are quick to spot details that could be important. Where other characters only "see," he "observes." A character with this talent can spot a journalist by the imprints in his sleeves and the ink stains on his finger, a pugilist by his cauliflower ears, a miner by his calluses and upper body muscles, and so on. INHERITANCE (16 BP) Some characters were born with a silver spoon in their mouth . For each BP spent to purchase this talent (minimum 10 BP), the character receives an additional $10 of starting money. QUICK THINKING (10 BPJ Quick thinkers arrive at conclusions and understanding more effectively than most. This gives them an effective + 1 bonus on all Intelligence and Wisdom checks, Though it docs not affect their actual Ability Scores. We buy a couple guns….   ...and steal a horse because making a horse in this game is like making a character in most other games...  …and assume we spend the rest of our inheritance money on clothes and poo poo. pre:John "Stumbles" Lewis Strength: 14.84 Damage +2 Lift 240 Carry 84 Drag 600 Intelligence: 12.76 Accuracy +1 BP +1 Skill +1 Wisdom: 14.01 Speed +1 BP +6 Skill +3 Dexterity: 11.96 Speed +1 Accuracy +0 Constitution: 17.22 HP +6 Charisma: 12.03 BP +1 Skill +1 Comp 5 Rep +1 Looks: 13.50 Cha +1 Rep +1 Fame +2 Reputation: 15 Fame: 2 HP: 30 Cash: $21 Skill Name BP Cost/Tally Ability Mastery Skill % Accounting 2 // INT 1d8 95 Mathematics 5 //// INT 1d8 80 Reading Comp 3 //// INT 1d6 84 Seduction, Art 1 ///// CHA/LKS 1d6 75 Telegraph Op. 3 /// INT 1d8 83 Quirks Talents Clean Freak Astute Observation Chiseler Inheritance Quick Thinking Weapon Shots Damage Draw Reload Accuracy (5-40) S&W 44DA 6 D5+1 0 8 +8/+4/+2/+0/-2/-4/-6 Remington 2 D4/p +6 25/30 +8/+4/+4/+3/+3/+2/+1 quote:No matter how experienced in western or other RPGs you feel your group is, we can't stress enough that you should NOT try to include the Advanced Rules in your first game session. The result will inevitably be a game bogged down in minutia while you pore over the rules again and again. Stumbles is creeping out of the headquarters of the local telegraph office after yet another successful transmission, but the lawman that his been hot on his trail, Winson Paine, is there waiting for him. quote:Winson Paine: hp 21; Spd 4, Acc 2; Str 12/24, Int 12/48, Wis 10/64, Dex 13/65, Con 11/71, Cha 11/14; Lks 9/19, Rep 11 (Low), Fame 0; Weapons Colt Bisley .45 caliber 5 1/2" barrel revolver (draw 5, aim 4, d6+1 damage, 6 shots); Colt 1868 shotgun (draw 10, aim 4, d4 damage, 2 shots) on horse. In order of lowest to highest Wisdom, Stumbles and Winson declare their actions. Stumbles, with 14.01, beats Winson's 11.52, so Winson has to declare first. Winson knows that Stumbles is armed and dangerous, and has no lawful business at the telegraph office, so he is going to draw. Stumbles too, declares that he is drawing. We both roll a d10 for initiative, adding our base speed. code:We place the shot clock on the target silhouette's center of mass… wait, what?  Yeah. We do that, and roll to hit. +1 for our Int accuracy, +4 for being 10' away, and -4 for shooting from the hip. code:Stumbles gets to declare his next action here, which will be to walk to the left, turn to the right, cock, and fire again. Running is 3 counts for 5 feet, changing 1 facing is 1, cock and fire is 5, so Stumbles' next action will be at 22. We continue counting to 15, where we are shot back at. Stumbles ran to the left though, and Winson, being right handed, has to turn to shoot, delaying him until count 17. Same thing, center of mass again (we would use a different silhouette if we were shooting the side, but Stumbles has already turned by now).Winson is a little more dexterous than us and has a +2, +4 for the distance, -4 for hip shooting, -4 for a running target, and -2 for having to turn! code:Winson's next action is going to be to change facing (1), aim (4), cock and fire (5) at 27! Counting up again, we get to 22. Stumbles shoots again, at center of mass. code:We get to 27, and Winson has aimed, giving him a +4! code:code:Winson turns, cocks, and fires again, at 33. At 31, Stumbles (keeping true to his name) has limped over, and takes another shot. code:Tick tock, 33 rolls around, and Winson shoots without an aim bonus. code:I'm going to cut things off here. As you can see, the circle strafe method works pretty well, as long as you don't get hit in the leg. Winson gets 2 or 3 shots for every one of Stumbles', but he takes a huge penalty to hit. Stumbles would be wise to conserve ammo here, and wait for Winson to run out, in which case there would be a huge time penalty of 10 per shell loaded, or 100 for an entire cylinder. Stumbles could basically aim and fire with impunity. Winson, of course, if he wasn't the moderator of an internet forum, would be smart to do the same, locking the two of them into infinitely circling and reloading. Next time, we will run Stumbles through the Ranching and Frontier Justice subgames! Dagon fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 05:17
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Ars Magica: You're A Wizard, 'Arry Okay. Last time we'd rolled that we'd be making a House Guernicus magus. I will be making this character, a Companion character and a Grog character, using just the Core. I will then add books and make characters from them later, if I feel like it. So. Let's follow the steps from the book. 1. Pick a character concept. I've decided we are going to make a Wizard Cop. He is an investigator and doesn't trust people much. He drinks a lot. He's also male and...eh, we'll say...Spanish. He is a Moor. His birth name is Malik ibn Darras, and he goes by the wizarding name of Avendaras. pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras Guernicus. The book directs us to page 30. House Guernicus magi start with the free minor Virtue Hermetic Prestige, which is on page 43. Turning to page 43... quote:Because of something in your background, other magi look up to you even if you haven't earned that respect. Some envy you, and most will certainly expect more from you than from others. You gain a Reputation of level 3 within the Order. All right. Clearly Malik is renowned for his dogged investigatory style. pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic) I usually don't use this order, but sure, we can do this. We have 0 points of Virtues and Flaws. We can take up to ten points of Flaws and the same number of Virtues. We turn to the Virtues and Flaws Guidelines on page 37. Majors are 3 points, Minors are 1. quote:Magi Okay. So, let's look at the things we must take. The Gift, page 43. A Special Virtue, which has no cost. quote:You have the ability to work magic. See "The Gift" on page 36 for full details. Page 36 just tells us that all characters with the Gift can take Hermetic Virtues and Flaws if appropriate to their background. Anyone with the Gift can pick one supernatural ability that they can learn without the necessary Virtue; for Hermetic magi, this is Hermetic magic. Grogs can never have the Gift, but a Companion might if the group allows it. The book suggests this be allowed only for characters intended to become magi, and that the group should only allow it if they are absolutely certain they want to. Hermetic Magus is a Free Social Status. quote:You are a member of the Order of Hermes. All magi must take this as their Social Status, and only magi may take it. Noted. So, let's look at flaws. First, we need to take a Hermetic flaw. Our options:
Anyway, looking all this over, I think I am going to select Weak Scholar - our man doesn't trust other people's work much - and Weak Spontaneous Magic. He needs to put effort in to get results. pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic) Next Time: We finish up Flaws and Virtues, maybe Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 05:53
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Are you thinking of running Ars Magica again some time, Mors? Every time you post about it I get a bit nostalgic.
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Feb 25, 2014 05:58
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Kellsterik posted:Are you thinking of running Ars Magica again some time, Mors? Every time you post about it I get a bit nostalgic. If I do, it's gonna be a while. Lately my life has been pretty hectic!
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Feb 25, 2014 06:00
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Jeezy creezy Weak Parens should probably be a major flaw.
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Feb 25, 2014 06:10
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Alumnus Post posted:If anyone ends up actually trying to use this to make a character, I would love to hear about it. It could probably be adapted to things like campaign settings, Grim Portents, or notable NPCs pretty easily, as well. I just used this method to roll up a Homestuck troll (because of reasons, shut up), and I poo poo you not the first card was the Ten of Pentacles.  Thanks for sharing! Edit: Hey, Alumnus Post, I'm gonna write up this character I made for my blog and talk about the generation method. I'd love to link to this thread, but it's not visible without a forums account. Want me to cite you in any way? inklesspen fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 06:59
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pre:John "Stumbles" Lewis Strength: 14.84 Damage +2 Lift 240 Carry 84 Drag 600 Intelligence: 12.76 Accuracy +1 BP +1 Skill +1 Wisdom: 14.01 Speed +1 BP +6 Skill +3 Dexterity: 11.96 Speed +1 Accuracy +0 Constitution: 17.22 HP +6 Charisma: 12.03 BP +1 Skill +1 Comp 5 Rep +1 Looks: 13.50 Cha +1 Rep +1 Fame +2 Reputation: 15 Fame: 2 HP: 30 Cash: $21 Skill Name BP Cost/Tally Ability Mastery Skill % Accounting 2 // INT 1d8 95 Mathematics 5 //// INT 1d8 80 Reading Comp 3 //// INT 1d6 84 Seduction, Art 1 ///// CHA/LKS 1d6 75 Telegraph Op. 3 /// INT 1d8 83 Quirks Talents Clean Freak Astute Observation Chiseler Inheritance Quick Thinking Weapon Shots Damage Draw Reload Accuracy (5-40) S&W 44DA 6 D5+1 0 8 +8/+4/+2/+0/-2/-4/-6 Remington 2 D4/p +6 25/30 +8/+4/+4/+3/+3/+2/+1 quote:Covering every facet of establishing and running a ranch is beyond the scope of this book, but a broad overview of the process can arm players with enough information to work out the basics. We are told that a Beeve (beef, cattle) requires 10 acres of land, 15 if it is scrubby, per animal per year. Each head also needs 30 gallons of water per day. Calves take 4 years to mature. So, a modest herd of 400 cattle, by the book, needs 4000-6000 acres (10 square miles) near a natural spring or stream. Those cattle might be worth $4-5 a head out in the ranchlands, but back at the railheads where they can be hauled back east, prices can be ten times that. Enter the cattle drive. For a months long cattle drive to succeed, we need real Cowboys, that is in game terms, someone with skill in Animal Herding, Riding, and Rope use. Stumbles has none of those. He is an accountant, though, and can probably plan this drive… Each "turn" of the cattle drive is one game day. In that day, we do the following: 1. Determine today's movement rate (or graze). 2. Make Animal Herding check for movement or grazing. If failed, check for stampede. 3. Send scout ahead to other hexes. 4. Record how movement or grazing affected Quality of Beef. 5. Roll 1d10 to check for severe weather. 6. Make Animal Herding check for river crossing, if applicable. Success=d3 cattle lost, failure=d12 cattle lost and chance for stampede. 7. Roll for random encounter, or act on scout information. 8. Roll for chance of finding water. 9. Record dehydration if applicable. 10. Make riding check for scout. Stumbles is put in charge of a 500-head drive. He hires 2 Cowboys at $30/month each, a Range Boss at $100/mo, a Range Cook at $40/mo, and 2 Wranglers for $25/mo each. Total expenses will be $250 per month- not much considering the possible profit involved, even with the expected 10-30% losses. Lets say the last person to take care of the herd had a 70 in Animal Husbandry. code:Plotting our course on the Official Cattle Drive Map, we can see that our route will be through (B=Bare, S=Sparse, A=Adequate, L=Lush, /=River crossing) AAAAAABSB/AAAAAAAABAA/BAAAASA/AABLA/AAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/LLAAAAAA or, 96 days if we make good time. These terrain types influence the quality of beef, and also the difficulty of our herding checks. Moving double-time will hurt our quality of beef badly and make the checks harder, but time is money. If we stop and graze, quality of beef will go up a decent amount. Stumbles' plan is to stop and graze in Lush territory, and move double time for one day if quality of beef is Exceptional, otherwise, move normal speed. At this point my give-a-fucks are at an all time low, and Stumbles wires himself a large sum of money from the ranching operation and skips out of town. The law catches up with him though, as we move to the Frontier Justice mini game!  In front of a jury of 12 peers and the judge, the player taking the part of the prosecutor explains his case. The other players vote on how much merit the case has; flimsy, circumstantial, or solid and credible. Stumbles was the only person working at the ranch office that day, but he covered his tracks well and there is nothing directly putting his finger on the telegraph button. The players decide it is circumstantial, a +2 value. code:code:The player representing the prosecutor and defense (in this case Stumbles representing himself) each take 6d6 to determine the jury's predisposition. A 6 meaning they are convinced of his guilt, a 1 of innocence. Each dice moves 1 towards guilt because of Stumbles' low reputation, again. code:pre:Juror 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 2 10 3 11 2 12 1 Luckily for Stumbles, this jury is pretty open to being moved. Most of them already want to see him hang, including the two contemplative types, but there are a decent number doubting his guilt, too. Juror 12 will be a wild card and could very well decide the case. Of course, Stumbles tries to tamper with the jury. He has no skill in Intimidation or Salesmanship, but can still try. He aims for Jurors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 12, since Contemplative types are harder to convince. He doesn't push his luck, though… too many failed attempts and the judge might dismiss them all. Jurors 2 and 4 are bribed and threatened enough to be convinced of Stumbles' innocence, but Juror 5 goes to the judge, increasing Judge Paine's severity by 1. Opening Arguments time! The Prosecutor is the Lawyer NPC given in the book, with Law at 40 and Oration at 44. Stumbles, knowing this day would come, scrounged up 6 BP over the course of his life of crime and bought the Law and Oration skills, at 97 and 92, respectively. We are heavily outmatched. The Prosecutor makes his speech, putting the legalities of the case into simple terms but playing it safe and not using any words that are too big, an Average Oration check: code:code:The Prosecution uses their points to move Jurors 2 and 9 each two spaces towards guilty. The Defense moves Juror 8 one space towards innocent. pre:Juror 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 2 10 3 11 2 12 1 code:code:code:The prosecution is far ahead here, and looks to seal the deal. He moves Jurors 2, 5, and 8 1 space (3 points), Jurors 4, 6, 9, and 12 2 spaces (7 points). pre:Juror 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 2 10 3 11 2 12 1 code:To lock up the case, the prosecutor moves Jurors 4, 5, and 8 all the way over. As we enter Jury Deliberations, though, our intimidation efforts pay off and Jurors 2 and 4 jump back to our side! pre:Juror 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 9 2 10 3 11 2 12 1 code:The legal minigame is neat! gently caress the rest of this game though. Dagon fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 16:43
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inklesspen posted:Hey, Alumnus Post, I'm gonna write up this character I made for my blog and talk about the generation method. I'd love to link to this thread, but it's not visible without a forums account. Want me to cite you in any way? Please do! Glad you think what I've come up with is useful (and actually makes sense). The method is my own, although I obviously don't lay claim to inventing anything else about it. And when it's done, I'd love to see what you've made. Is it for a PnP RPG, or just because you need a  for whatever purpose? You could probably post the completed character over here.
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Feb 25, 2014 16:58
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MILLENIUM’S END Do you enjoy Tom Clancy novels? Did you think that the 90’s were the best decade ever? Do you like combat that goes in lots and lots (and lots) of gritty details? Then this might just be the game for you! (It’s not). Millennium’s End is a RPG that is all about “Modern Roleplaying in the Technothriller Genre”. We’re going to create a character for it.  The character sheet. Not pictured: 2 pages just for ammo accounting In Millennium’s End you play an operative (read: mercenary) working for Black Eagle Security & Investigations Corporation. It’s basically Blackwater  Step 1: The Concept  The first thing to do is to is to come up with a general concept for our character. Do we want to be a two-bit gumshoe? A hardened ex-SEALs member? A martial artist a-la Steven Segal? Someone else? Our guy is going to be an ex-DEA agent turned Black Eagle operative because, why not? We’ll be this guy:  There is lots and lots more “art” just like this in the book. More on that later Step 2: How much cash you got? This will become very important later on for skills… Roll 3d10 x $1000 + $5000 for starting cash. quote:Our dude rolled 7, 3 and 3 for a total of $18000 in his pocket Step 3: The Attributes There are 10 attributes in Millennium’s End. They are: Intelligence: Academic smarts. Sensibility: Your common sense Agility: Reflexes, balance, etc. Coordination: Hand-eye coordination, technical aptitude. Constitution: Health. Strength: Muscles. Personality: 1st impressions, social. Appearance: Prettyness. Bravado: Frontin’ Willpower: Self-control, rationality. To determine attributes we get to distribute 25 attribute points to the base attributes (in the table below). We must assign at least 1 attribute point and no more than 4. Each point is a 1d10x2 roll to add to the base attribute.  The base attributes table quote:Since our dude’s going to be an Ex-DEA agent, let’s assign points like this, I guess: Step 4: Secondary Attributes Using the values of our primary attributes we’d then figure out what our secondary attributes are using this table:  quote:Out guy’s secondary attributes are: We now have to define what our talent bases are. This is the base value for each group (Social, Academic, Physical, etc.) of skills. This is done using this table:  quote:Our ex-DEA agent has the following skill bases: We then have to define how many skill points we have to spend. To do this we have to multiply the number of years of education post high-school** by INTx2 and add that total to age of the character x 15 and add 300 to that.. The game says the average is 900 points but since you choose your age..? **To know how many years of education you spend $2500 per year of education you want to have post high-school quote:I’m just going to go ahead and spend as much as I can on education since it directly means more skill points. We had $18000 meaning we ca afford up to 7 years of education. We’re also going to go ahead and say our guy is 39 since, why not?** This gives us a total skill point pool of 7x(INTx2)+(39x15)+300 = 1809 skill points This is a ridiculous system… ** For every year over the age of 30 we need to subtract 1 point from both AGI and CON. Our new totals are 36 and 53 respectively. Step 6: Choosing Skills  The skill list Skills are % based from 1-100. Subskills may not exceed half the value of parent skills and skills costs as follows: 1-25 = 1 point 26-40 = 2 points 41-55 = 3 points You can’t raise a skill above 55 at chargen. Now, we could buy skills piecemeal but gently caress that noise. We can also buy skill packages. Skill packages look like this:  And this:  And also this:  Note that according to the game every single person in the 1st world knows how to: drive, swim, shoot a gun, be a mechanic and first aid… quote:I won’t spend all 1809 points our guy has but he’d likely buy packages like Advanced Education, Black Eagle Entry Training Course and Investigations Training (which contains things like Law and Police Science Normally we’d now buy equipment and start play. One thing of note about this system is combat. Much like Dagon’s Aces & Eights it uses transparent plastic overlays to determine hit location. For example: quote:Let’s say our guy is trying to shoot a bad guy holding a hostage at point blank range. Well, then you’d whip out the proper silhouette, like so: ~~**ArT SeCTioN**~~ As I said there’s a lot of incredible art in this book. Gems such as:  Or:  And:  As well as:  Even:  And finally:  ~Fin~
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Feb 25, 2014 18:43
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Let's gently caress Up GURPS 4th Edition Okay so last time we made an easy character. She was humanoid, at least. This time, let's get a little ridiculous. Last time we made a bird-lady. This time, we're making a bird. Not like, a bird person, or an anthro bird, or whatever. An actual bird. Specifically, this bird:  Okay good. So, we want this to be a little crazier, so we're gonna start with 200 points instead of 150. This is a powerful bird. Let's start with our stats.  Stats Like before, we start with everything at 10, like so: code:Now let's immediately spend those points on our stats. Now we have: code:Damage is 1d-4 for thrust, and 1d-3 for swing. We're not a strong bird. Will is equal to our IQ, so it's only 5. But we're gonna beef that up a bit. We're a determined bird, and we're spending 25 points on Will, bringing it up to 10. Perception is equal to our IQ as well, and we're not gonna boost it at all. We're a bird. We're distractable. HP is equal to our ST, so we have 5. Fragile. It's only 2 points each, so we'll beef it up to 15, costing 20 points. FP is equal to our HT, so we have 15. For reasons that'll become apparent later, I'm also boosting this by 10, giving us 25. At 3 points each, that's 30 points down. Basic Speed is our HT plus our DX, then divided by 4. So 28/4, or 7.00. That's really good, actually. Nice round number. And finally, our Basic Move is our Speed minus the decimal. Luckily, it's just 7. So, our final stats are: code:Now, onto: Advantages/Disadvantages Like last time, this will give us some stuff to play around with personality and setting-wise. So, let's see what we got. Beak - 0 points - Forgive me for taking this for free but last time it was a pain in the rear end because it cost 1 point and everything else was done in multiples of five and we're a bird okay get off my back. Like before, it gives us an attack that does thrust-1 damage. Talons - 5 points - Our little feets are sharp. This turns any damage we do by kicking into cutting or impaling damage, which gives a bit of a bonus. 150 points remaining. Flight - 40 points - Going full hog this time. We can glide, hover, whatever. The book says our default Move in flight is our Basic Move times 2. So now we can fly 14 tiles per turn instead of 7. 110 points remaining. Enhanced Move - 20 points - We can fly, and we can fly QUICK. This doubles our move in one area. In our case, air. Now instead of being able to move 14 tiles a turn, we can move 28. 90 points remaining. Magery - 55 points - WATCH OUT THIS BIRD KNOWS FUCKIN MAGIC. Okay so this is how this works. Magery comes in levels. Magery 0 costs 5 points, which enables us to use magic at all, and each level beyond that costs 10 more. So in this case, we have Magery 5. What this does is it gives us a bonus to any magic roll we do equal to our magery level. Since we have a low IQ, we really need the extra help if we want to cast any spells, and magery levels are a lot cheaper than IQ points. Even with a +5, it's gonna be a bit tough, though. This is also why we needed a lot of FP. 35 points remaining. Terror - 30 points - I'm taking this from another sourcebook, GURPS: Dragons. Because I can. We strike others with an irrational, supernatural fear, and anyone who lays eyes on us will have to roll a fright check, or else they'll flip the gently caress out. 5 points remaining. And now for our disadvantages: Bestial - -15 points - We're a bird, not a people. 20 points remaining. Cannot Speak - -15 points - Tweet. 35 points remaining. Severe Delusion - -15 points - WE, A BIRD, IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CREATURE IN EXISTENCE. EVERYTHING MUST BECOME BIRD OR BECOME DESTROY. 50 points remaining. Intolerant - -10 points - IF YOU ARE NOT BIRD PLEASE LEAVE. 60 points remaining. Megalomania - -10 points - RULER OF BIRD. 70 points remaining. Obsession - -10 points - I wasn't planning on taking this one since it's sorta summed up in our delusion, but the book says to take both, so I am. 80 points remaning. Skills Alright, we got all that sorted out. We probably won't have many skills, since we're not really capable of doing much, but let's see. code:Magic Now I'm delving into another sourcebook here. GURPS: Magic. It's not part of the basic set, but it might as well be if you're doing anything with magic. The main character book has some magic stuff, but the real fun stuff is in here. The way magic works is like any other skill. Specifically, all spells are Hard or Very Hard IQ skills. So we go back to that chart from before:  And now we know how many points we need to dump into a skill for it to work out for us. Since we only have an IQ of 5, all the points we dumped in Magery really help us out here. So, let's flesh out our bird a bit. We have the delusion that we are the most beautiful creature in the universe. Everything that is not Bird must become Bird. We can turn people, or anything really, into birds, but only for a short time, as long as we have the FP to maintain it. The way shapeshifting works in GURPS is that every hour in-universe, the shapeshiftee must roll against their IQ. If they fail, their IQ is reduced by a point. If their IQ drops below 6, they're stuck in that form forever. This way, our bird can change people into birds, and, with enough time, make them become bird. If they refuse, then they clearly must be destroyed. Both of these outcomes are equally preferable, as both of them result in a net beauty increase in the universe. Great. So, these are the spells we have. We have 64 points to spend on them. A lot of these spells require prerequisites, but a lot of them seem arbitrary, and in most cases it's best to ignore them unless they're SUPER high level spells. code:Equipment Gonna level with you, not much we can do here. If this character were ever used in a campaign (that'd be loving awesome) I suppose other people in the party would have to get poo poo like custom talon fittings or something if we ever wanted to do more than just default damage. Final Notes Okay, we got pretty much everything set. Our name is Bird. We were born in a MYSTERIOUS ENCHANTED WOOD, and we like to think we basically rule the place. Because we are best, most beautful creature around. Our final stats are: code:NO LISTEN TO ME fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 21:14
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NO LISTEN TO ME posted:Let's gently caress Up GURPS 4th Edition This is a good bird. I'd play this bird. Birds.
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Feb 25, 2014 21:53
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Sign me up for Bird.
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Feb 25, 2014 22:40
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Another day another space game... This time it's Space Opera, a 1980 vintage game from Fantasy Games Unlimited or FGU. I have a love/hate relationship with FGU games. On the one hand they were interesting concepts, detailed, and full of cool maps and charts as pack ins in their cardboard boxes. On the other, they were insanely complex and riddled with typos and printing errors. Space Opera is one of the great examples of all of these factors. It tried to do what Traveller did, make a science fiction game that could handle Star Trek as easily as Star Wars...at the same time. It did. Only problem the baseline for 'easy' was somewhere up where Galactus could walk under the bar without stooping. It is a very very bad game. Contrarily, it was the system that taught me that even if the rules are poo poo, a good GM and good players can save anything. The Creation order for this one is:
[2]Determine Personal Characteristics (Stats) [3]Determine Planet of Birth [4]Select Character Race [5]Determine Secondary Characteristics [6]Determine Character Career Experience [7]Select and Improve Skills As with Universe this looks simple enough...you have no loving idea. Select Character Class This is one feature I do like. You are guaranteed to have the stats to make you viable for your character idea. How? By making the choice of the class affect the stats you receive. I am pretty down with this. Sadly it is one of the few good ideas... The available classes are Armsman (Soldier), Tech, Scientist: Research, Scientist: Medical, Scientist: Engineering, Astronaut. I am trying to make a bird bard here, so I'm going to go with Scientist: Research. The stat bonus from this are+35 to Intelligence, Intuition, GTA (General Technical Aptitude). NOTE: this is a lump sum which can be distributed among the listed stats. Not a bonus per stat.  Like Universe this is a game where you roll dice, add a modifier, and consult a table for your final stat score. Good thing? No multipliers. Bad thing? 14 stats...Physique, Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Empathy, Intelligence, Psionics, Intuition, Bravery, Leadership, GTA, MechA, ElecA (A = Aptitude) Determine Personal Characteristics (Stats) Okay let's roll them dice...50, 32, 61, 57, 21, 98, 73, 44, 01 (This is amazingly lucky and I'll explain why later), 84, 58, 47, 81, 33. Now we can arrange them in any order we like at least so arranged plus bonus points distributed gives me this... Physique 21, Strength 32, Constitution 47, Agility 58, Dexterity 61, Empathy 98, Intelligence 84(+12=96), Psionics 01, Intuition 81(+15=96), Bravery 21, Leadership 72, GTA 44(+8=52), MechA 47, ElecA 33 Consulting the chart gives us: Physique 11, Strength 12, Constitution 13, Agility 13, Dexterity 13, Empathy 18, Intelligence 18, Psionics 1, Intuition 16, Bravery 9, Leadership 15, GTA 13, MechA 11, ElecA 9 Determine Planet of Birth Dice rolling time! First up is Planetary Gravity Field I roll a 17+ on a d20 and that is... "Space Opera' posted:17-18 PC is a native of a planet with a gravity field of 1.2 to 1.4 G and is adapted to high gravity conditions. He has Physique -2 in size, but his body mass will be 110% of the normal value for his height. High gravity encourages heavier bone Structure and muscle development. Strength, Constitution, and Agility will be a minimum 11. There is a 100% chance that one of these three characteristics will be +1 (player choice) or a 50% chance that any two will be +1. Strength and Stamina would naturally be improved under such arduous conditions. Agility would also be a factor for 'natural selection', in that clumsy types would likely suffer from a fatal accident sooner or later, while coordinated persons would be better able to react quickly in a surface acceleration field significantly above the norm. Next is atmosphere. D20 roll is a 16 "Space Opera' posted:16-17 Moderately high pressure atmosphere: The PC lives in an atmosphere up to 2000mm pressure. His oxygen tolerance is 75mm to 550mm IPP in the lungs. Low pressure atmospheres are not particularly comfortable, and fatigue may set in quickly in low oxygen environments. and finally the fun one, Planetary Climate. This one is a d100 no less... "Space Opera' posted:96 Planetary Type 9: Terran Planet with Extreme Axial Tilt at Inner Edge of Stellar Ecosphere, with conditions as described in section 15.5. Anyone descended from colonists insane enough to choose to settle on such a planet probably has an 'unusual' psychological and cultural profile. The savage Seasonality produces such harsh conditions that any PC who is adapted to the planet will have +1 Constitution, with 75% chance of an additional +1, and a minimum Constitution score of 14. He will also enjoy a +2 on Constitution CRs involving desert survival, arctic cold, and related factors. Survival skills will be superbly turned to dealing with a variety of climatic conditions, with emergency techniques (taking shelter, finding water, reading the violently changing weather, etc,) honed to a fine edge; Unlike other Inner Ecosphere dwellers, the PC will be as adapted to frigid conditions as he is to heat, and can literally withstand the entire range of survivable temperature in which his racial type may live without undue hardship. ...  Okay then +1 to Constitution...again. Constitution of 15. Roll for the extra plus and fail. Select Character Race Easy. The avians are the only choice here. "Space Opera' posted:The Avians are descended from ground-dwelling birds. (Even in low gravity conditions, flyers do not attain sizes sufficient to make racial dominance on the planet a likely prospect.) A PC will qualify for Avian status upon choice. No characteristics modifiers or requirements need be considered. Determine Secondary Characteristics Let's get our height and weight... My Physique of 9 on the Humans, Humanoids, Transhumans Canines, and Avians Size Tablesays that the base height of a male avian is 175cm and that I weigh 55kg. However my High-G origins give me a 110% mass and my being an avian means I'm 5% lighter. So that means I'm 57.47kg. Carrying Capacity is next... "Space Opera' posted:Carrying Capacity (CC) is determined by adding a character’s Physique, Strength, and Constitution scores and dividing by 3. The result is then multiplied times his body mass/weight times his racial CC Factor. "Space Opera' posted:
Damage Factors! (a/k/a Hit points...) "Space Opera' posted:Damage factors or DF represents a PC’s ability to withstand physical injury. Initially, the DF is computed by adding Physique, Strength, Constitution, and PC body mass, then dividing that sum by 10. This result is then multiplied by the racial factor. Shock Resistance rating is equal to Constitution so it's 15 at least that's easy. It's used to determine poison resistance, CPR success and a bunch of other life-threatening checks. Next is Stamina Factor... "Space Opera' posted:The Stamina Factor or SF represents the PC’s energy levels and has a significant effect on his performance under stress and severe physical activity, The Stamina Factor is found by adding the Strength and Constitution scores of the PC, then multiplying the sum by the racial factor. Gravity will modify the SF. If a PC is working on a planet with a gravity field of more than 0.2G higher than the gravity field he is used to, he will require 1 week’s acclimatisation per 0.2G higher, or part thereof. In the meantime, his SF is reduced by 5% per 0.2G the gravity is higher than his natural gravity field. Note: 'natural' refers to the gravity in which he normally works, not necessarily the gravity of his home planet. Okay that's the Base statistics done. Next time skills! Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 23:32
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 Burning Wheel Unlike Call of Cthulhu, Burning Wheel's character creation system requires you to plan out ahead of time what kind of character you'd like to make, and is pretty hard to do randomly. Unfortunately, there are no bird races, but we can take the best of our options and make an Elf Bard. Most of Burning Wheel's character creation is done through what it calls "lifepaths". Each lifepath consists of a path name (usually of the career you pursued during that segment of your life), how long that lifepath took, how much resources it gives you at start, if it has a stat bonus, possible lifepath groups you can take afterwards, and a whole lot of skill, trait, and requirements stuff we'll get into later. First things first, we have to choose how many lifepaths our character will have. Normally, the DM does this, but I'll just set it at 5 - this will give us a relatively experienced character. The first lifepath that everyone must choose is their birth path - their childhood. Elves have 4 Settings (Wilderlands, Citadel, Etharch, Protector) - groups of lifepaths that flow into eachother. Each has a birth path, and we have to choose one of them to begin. I'll take the Wilderlands' Born Wilder Elf: pre:Born Wilder Elf 20 yrs Res 5 Stat: - Leads: Citadel Skills: 4 pts General, 2 pts: Sing, Elven Script Traits: Elven Common traits plus 1 pt: - Once we've noted all this information, we can move on to our second lifepath. Looking at Bards (which are in the Citadel lifepath), we'll need to take Song Singer, which we just so happen to have in the Wilderness setting. pre:Song Singer 45 yrs Res 10 Stat: +1 M Leads: Citadel, Protector Skills: 6 pts: Song of Songs*, Song of Soothing, Lament of the Westering Sun*, Oratory Traits: 1 pt: Vocal Before we take Bard, we have to switch settings. This is called a lead, and adds 1 year to the character's total age. pre:Wilderlands -> Citadel 1 yr pre:Bard 65 yrs Res 20 Stat: +1 M/P Leads: Wilderlands, Protector Skills: 11 pts: Song of Merriment*, Lament of Mourning*, Verse of Friendship*, Tract of Enmity*, Oratory, Conspicuous, Lyre, Flute Traits: 1 pt: - Requires: Song Singer Well, we've become a bard, but we have two more lifepaths to spend. You know what's cooler than a Bard? pre:Citadel -> Protector 1 yr pre:Soother 30 yrs Res 10 Stat: +1 M Leads: Wilderlands, Citadel Skills: 6 pts: Lyric of Healing*, Song of Soothing, Doom of Strength*, Foraging Traits: 1 pt: - pre:Sword Singer 30 yrs Res 10 Stat: +1 P Leads: Any Skills: 10 pts: Sword, Armor, Shield, Knives, Brawling, Song of the Sword Traits: 1 pt: Sword of the White Towers Requires: Second, Soldier Protector, Soother, Spouse or Spearbearer Adding up all the lifepath ages, we are a 192 year old Elf. Consulting the Elf stat chart, we see that Elves of age 161-225 have 10 Mental points and 17 Physical points to spend. With the bonuses from lifepaths, that's 13 Mental points (using the 1 point from Bard) and 18 Physical points. We need to distribute these points among our stats. There are two Mental stats (Perception and Will) and four Physical stats (Agility, Speed, Power, Forte). These stats will determine some other traits and the base values of our skills. All stats start at B0, and can be advanced 1 for 1 for a point, but no stat can go above 6 at character creation. Additionally, 5 points can be spent to upgrade the shade of a stat by 1 (from B to G, or G to W). (To briefly explain what these letters and numbers mean, the number in a stat/skill/other check is called the exponent, and indicates how many d6s are rolled when making the check; the letter represents the shade of the value (Black, Grey, and White), which determines the target number for the roll (Black is 4+, Grey is 3+, and White is 2+). A check gets a number of successes equal to the number of dice that rolled equal to or over the shade value.) We have plenty of Mental points to distribute, and the idea of having a grey shade stat is appealing to me (all derived skills will share the shade), so I spend 5 points to upgrade Will from black to grey. I distribute the remaining 8 points equally, so that Perception is B4 and Will is G4. Physical points are going to be stretched a little more thin, so our Elf won't be able to have a grey shade stat at start. Agility is nice for an elf (and can be used in combat), so I put a B6 in there, and give the rest Speed B5, Power B4, and Forte B3. Next Time: More Point Distribution
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Feb 25, 2014 23:49
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I'd like to take a little break from going through Monsterhearts' mechanics and instead demonstrate how character creation works in the game. However, since Monsterhearts is largely about the social dynamics of the main characters, just creating one character kind of misses the point and fails to demonstrate the way in which the game interweaves the group together socially. As such, instead of just making one character, I'll be making a trio of characters. To this end, I'd like some input on what kinds of characters you'd like to see. I'm going to list the Skins (i.e. character archetypes) and their main social hangups, and based on those I'd like three characters to make a group out of. Each should be of a different skin and should also have a short concept, one sentence long at most. Chosen - Basically Buffy. They kill monsters. Their main hangup is that they strive to be independent and prove that they don't rely on anybody, often to a (self-)destructive degree. Fae - Fairies of old world legend. In the context of Monsterhearts they are outsiders who don't quite understand social norms. Also, promises are a big thing to them. Breaking a promise made to a Fae is, generally, a bad idea. Ghost - Dead people. Somehow they retain enough of their mortal selves to still work in the high school setting, but people just generally tend to ignore them and look right through them. Their teenage problems are loneliness, isolation and unresolved trauma. Ghoul - Hungry dead people. Each Ghoul has an unnaturally strong hunger that they must sate. While the most traditional form of hunger is hunger for living flesh, Ghouls can also hunger for something more abstract, like fear or chaos. Basically disturbed sociopaths, but a Ghoul can also have a softer edge. Infernal - Teenagers who hear the voice of Satan in their head and make Faustian bargains with said voice. This being a game about teenagers, these bargains are cast as a metaphor for addiction. When an Infernal is riding high on the powers given to them by their dark patron, they are extremely strong, but when their demonic sugar daddy cuts their supply they will find themselves with the worst case of cold turkey, which can only be resolved by doing their dark master's dirty work. Mortal - Bella. The Mortal is all about unrequited love and codependency. They start the game having to choose one of the other characters as their true love and get benefits when working towards gaining their love's attention. However, the Mortal is also one of the most destructive of the Skins, not in terms of being physically threatening but in terms of causing lots of turmoil for the entire group. And when said turmoil inevitably happens, the Mortal will be in the middle of it all crying because no one understands them. Queen - On the mundane side, the Queen is pretty much Cordelia from Buffy: the most popular kid in school with lots of clout and a gang of goons to do their dirty work for them. On the less mundane side, the Queen can be the leader of a dark cult, the leader of an alien hive mind, or even the source of an infectious disease that grants them control over all those who contract it. Vampire - Yeah, you should know this one already. Vampires in Monsterhearts are pretty much socially focused. They are all about playing people: drawing them close only to play with their feelings. They are also extremely withholding. You know how Edward was always telling Bella that they can't do it because he might lose control? Yeah, the Vampire has a move that basically represents that. Werewolf - Also pretty much a given: they turn into wolf-beasts and wreck stuff. They're not necessarily people bitten by other Werewolves, but that's definitely an option. They could even be people raised by wolves, or wolves who have somehow gained the ability to turn into humans. Socially speaking, they're fiercely loyal, but also fiercely protective, which at worst can turn into wanting to subjugate those they hold dear. Witch - Take a bit of the Craft and mix in some Carrie. The Witch uses sympathetic magic to play with the lives of those who slight them. They are basically book nerds given a vengeful streak: slight a Witch and they'll go full Carrie on you, hexing everyone and everything that gets between them and their vengeance. So, once I have three concepts I'll start going through the motions of making these characters and seeing what kind of bunch of misfits we end up with.
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Feb 26, 2014 00:22
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Chosen, trying to balance protecting the humans from the monsters and the monsters from the humans. Like a ranger, or a shaman. Might be a bully or anti-bully. I need to create some Twilight 2000 characters.
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Feb 26, 2014 00:50
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Ratpick posted:I'd like to take a little break from going through Monsterhearts' mechanics and instead demonstrate how character creation works in the game. However, since Monsterhearts is largely about the social dynamics of the main characters, just creating one character kind of misses the point and fails to demonstrate the way in which the game interweaves the group together socially. As such, instead of just making one character, I'll be making a trio of characters. Whatever concept you go with, you have to include a mortal. An infernal sold to demons by his parents, desperate for power on his own terms. Just to play with the expected character of the skin, a queen gangbanger. A ghoul whose existence is a byproduct of the devil's deal the infernal's parents made.
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Feb 26, 2014 00:52
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Ars Magica: Wait, I Get Points For That? So, last time we selected our Hermetic Flaws. Now let's look at Story Flaws, since we only get the one. Major Story flaws tend to be unmitigated bad things, while Minor Story flaws tend to actually be beneficial most of the time, just...also there for the GM to go 'and now it is story hook time.'
Not an easy pick! But...let's see, our man is fairly antisocial and is definitely someone who follows the Wizard Law. So...oh, let's go with Dependent. Malik has a little sister who means the world to him, though she thinks he's a weirdo. He does his best to protect her from danger, which she gets into fairly often. pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Dependent (-3) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic)
Hmmmmm. Well, let's see. I'll go with Minor Driven: Root out corruption and...oh, how about...Pessimistic. pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Dependent (-3) Driven: Root our corruption (-1) Pessimistic (-1) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic)
pre:Malik ibn Darras, Avendaras House: Guernicus Virtues (FREE) Hermetic Prestige (0) Flaws Weak Scholar (-1) Weak Spontaneous Magic (-1) Dependent (-3) Driven: Root our corruption (-1) Pessimistic (-1) Outsider (-3) Reputations Dogged Investigator 3 (Hermetic) Filthy Moor 2 (Local)
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Feb 26, 2014 01:41
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Rockopolis posted:Chosen, trying to balance protecting the humans from the monsters and the monsters from the humans. Like a ranger, or a shaman. Might be a bully or anti-bully. This is a really interesting concept for a Chosen, and I'm definitely going to go with this one. GimpInBlack posted:Whatever concept you go with, you have to include a mortal. I only needed three concepts and you gave me four, so on top of Rockopolis' Chosen I'm going to go with your first two. You're right, I'd be remiss if I didn't include a Mortal, and your idea for the Infernal is really solid. With that, let's make a Buffy!   Monsterhearts: Making A Chosen: We've already done the first step of creating a character in having picked the Chosen. Before we dive into it, let's read that melodramatic prose on the Chosen's trifold! quote:The world needs you. It needs someone brave enough to walk blindly into the darkness, and to shine a light for all the lost souls out there. They need a champion. They can’t do it alone. So, let's now get right to the next step: our Name, Look and Origin. The Chosen has the following given as choices for names: quote:Ajani, Ariel, Caleb, Dominic, Gabriel, Jackson, Morgan, Raidah, Susie, Victoria I like names with obvious symbolism behind them, so I'm going to go with Victoria. This already tells us one thing about our Chosen: it's a she. Now we get to choose her Look: quote:strong, stubborn, average, bitter, outcast, anxious From the first list, describing her general appearance, I'm picking strong. Protecting mortals from monsters and vice versa takes a lot of guts. From the second list, describing her eyes (the most important part of a teenage monster romance character's appearance) I pick unwavering eyes. Already an image is forming in my head of a strong-willed young woman who doesn't take poo poo from anybody, neither mortal nor monster. Next we pick her Origin: quote:destined, marked by trauma, marked by the supernatural, soul survivor, doing what’s necessary You know, as much as I like the Buffy angle of a chosen one saving our asses from the monsters, I'm going to say that Victoria is doing what’s necessary. She chose her own lot, which I find grants her a lot more agency than just being predestined to save the world. Next it's time to do her stats. As a Chosen, Victoria starts with Hot 1, Cold -1, Volatile 1, Dark -1, and she gets to add one to any one of those. What this means is that she's quite good at turning heads and manipulating people, quick to fight and flight, not particularly good at keeping her head straight and her emotions in check, and not particularly well in tune with the occult. To give a quick summary of what the stats do: Hot is the manipulation stat used for turning people on and manipulating them, Cold is the stat for keeping your cool and hurting people's feelings, Volatile is the stat for hurting people physically and running away from conflict, and Dark is the stat for being in tune with the supernatural. I'm going to be adding one to her Volatile. She's going to need it to do her job of killing monsters Next is picking her moves. As a Chosen she starts with none of her Skin moves, instead getting to pick two from a list. Now, to go with the protector angle, I'm going to pick the following two: quote:Growing Pains quote:Take the Blow The first one gives her a mechanical incentive to try to protect her friends: even if she fails and her friends get in trouble (which is going to be likely, with an Infernal and a Mortal in the group) she'll get to mark some sweet experience. The second actually gives her a way to protect people from harm. The logic in Monsterhearts system is that none of the basic moves (i.e. moves that anyone can do) are particularly heroic: there's no basic move for selflessly protecting someone by putting yourself in harm's way, because the characters of Monsterhearts are, generally speaking, selfish teenagers. That's why the only way to gain a means of protecting others from violence is either through picking an appropriate move for it from a Skin or growing up. (Which is an actual mechanical thing in Monsterhearts.) Oh, and in case you're wondering what the actual roll for moves is: it's 2d6+Stat. So, with her Volatile 2, Victoria is really good at Taking the Blow. And Lashing Out Physically, as well as Running Away, oddly. The final finishing touch for Victoria would be to do her backstory, but for that we'd actually need to know who the other characters are. As such, we'll just review her Sex Move and Darkest Self. Sex Move posted:When you have sex, heal all of your wounds, and cure all of your Conditions. If they disgust you, give them a String. If you disgust yourself, give them a String. So, getting cozy with another character is basically an insta-heal for Victoria, but it comes with the problem that if she feels bad about it afterwards they'll gain a degree of control over her. Darkest Self posted:None of your friends can help. They’re not strong like you are. You need to chase down the biggest threat imaginable, immediately and alone. Any challenges or dangers that you encounter must be faced head on, even if they might kill you. You escape your Darkest Self when someone comes to your rescue or you wake up in the hospital, whichever comes first. A Skin's Darkest Self is basically that Skin at their most primal and monstrous. A character's Darkest Self can be triggered by certain moves, usually through the player's own volition, although the MC can force it upon the player as a hard move. Each Darkest Self comes with a script that the player must follow when they are in their Darkest Self (there's actually no way to mechanically force the player to do any of the stuff implied by their Darkest Self, but in my experience most players play their Darkest Selves to the hilt simply because it's a game-given right to play their characters at the most villainous), and each also comes with an Escape Clause. In Victoria's case, when she becomes her Darkest Self, she becomes intent on proving her worth, even if it kills her. In fact, the only way to escape her Darkest Self is to either end up hospitalized or to have someone save her. Now, to go through all that again: quote:Victoria The Chosen After the break: we'll make ourselves a kid whose parents sold them to demons and who now has demons in their head! However, here's a question: what sort of gender dynamic should I go for in this group? I was originally thinking of doing girl Chosen, girl Infernal and boy Mortal, mainly because I wanted to mess with the traditional dynamic of casting women as the weak damsels in distress and dudes being the actually proactive characters, but I'm not dead set on this division yet. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 01:49
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Do that, but throw that Queen as a male in there too 
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Feb 26, 2014 01:51
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Tollymain posted:Do that, but throw that Queen as a male in there too Alright. Making characters for Monsterhearts isn't all that time-consuming, so I guess I could do a fourth one. Also, I really liked GimpInBlack's idea of casting the Queen as a gang-banger. Anyway, going in alphabetical order, next we've got the Infernal! Making an Infernal: Let's start with that delightful purple prose again, shall we? quote:At first, it seemed innocent. It gave you things, made you feel good about yourself. You came to it with your problems, and it fixed them. When you asked how you could return the favour, it told you to be patient - that all debts would be settled in due time. That was the first time you heard it mention debts. For the record, the Infernal's piece is my other favorite, right after the Ghost's. Ghosty ghost. You're dead. Once again, we start with our Name, Look and Origin. For the sake of brevity, I've bolded all my choices. quote:Baron, Cain, Chloe, Damien, Logan, Mark, Mika, Omar, Ophelia, Poe, Yoanna quote:distant, quiet, anxious, tense, frantic, vicious quote:bartered soul, last-chancer, returned, emissary, legion, lackey, chosen Ophelia's parents bargained her to a mysterious demonic benefactor. Having grown up an orphan, she's learned to fend for herself. She has a quiet demeanor that barely conceals the fact that she strives for one thing: to be free of the bargain she is bound to and to have power on her own terms. The Infernal starts with Hot -1, Cold -1, Volatile 1 and Dark 1. She's not exactly a charmer, and is also quite impulsive. Like with Victoria, I'll pump up her Volatile to 2, because it makes sense given that she really craves power. Moves! The Infernal starts with Soul Debt and gets to choose one more! quote:Soul Debt Well, let's first create our Dark Power. quote:Your Dark Power Googling a suitably demonic name I decide to steer away from the stock Judeo-Christian ones and decide to go with Bushyasta, a Zoroastrian demon. We'll give her the title "The Poisoner," even though it doesn't quite match up to the original demon (who was a demon of sloth). Next we'll pick a couple of bargains that we have with Bushyasta. In case you were wondering how we were going to be giving our Dark Power strings, here's your answer: quote:The Power Flows Through You quote:Numbing It Out So, Ophelia's got access to quite a lot of power, but at a cost: every time she uses one of her bargains, she gives Bushyasta a String. When Bushyasta holds 5 Strings on her, it's Darkest Self time! Ophelia still gets to pick one move from her Skin, and I've got the perfect one in mind given that there's a Chosen in the group: quote:Can’t Save Myself Once again, this move encourages Ophelia to actually get into too much trouble for her to reckon with, and if one of her friends (say, Victoria) were to save her, they'd gain experience but Ophelia would gain some leverage on them. This also works wonders with Victoria's move, although the two can't trigger at the same time. With that in mind, let's take a look at Ophelia's Sex Move and Darkest Self. Sex Move posted:When you have sex, the dark power loses a String on you and gains a String on whoever you had sex with. So, by having sex Ophelia can alleviate some of the burden imposed on her by her Dark Power, but at the cost of giving Bushyasta a piece of their soul. Darkest Self posted:You can’t get what you need, anymore. The world has left you cold and alone, shivering in the wake of your own addictions. The dark power will make some open-ended demands of you, and it’ll promise you some lucrative (and perhaps volatile) things in return. Every demand you fulfill brings you a little closer to feeling whole again, to rekindling the fire in your heart. Whenever you fulfill those demands, remove a String it holds on you. You escape your Darkest Self when the dark power has no more Strings on you, or when you agree to an even worse bargain with an even more dangerous dark power. So, when Ophelia finally hits 5 Strings, Bushyasta cuts off her supply of cool powers and Ophelia will have to do Bushyasta's bidding, with Bushyasta losing one String on Ophelia for every demand that Ophelia fulfills. To recap: quote:Ophelia the Infernal Next time we'll get to make the emo boy who has an unrequited crush on one of the other characters. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 02:27
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Ratpick posted:Next time we'll get to make the emo boy who has an unrequited crush on one of the other characters. Make his crush the gangbanger, because heteronormativity is anathema to Monsterhearts.
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Feb 26, 2014 02:33
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GimpInBlack posted:Make his crush the gangbanger, because heteronormativity is anathema to Monsterhearts. Look, we won't be doing these characters' relationships until they've been all created, and besides the Mortal always declares their backstory last. (Although to be honest, I'll probably do just as you said, for the exact reasons outlined.) Next up we've got our not!Bella in line! Making a Mortal: The Mortal is relatively straightforward compared to the Infernal. Once again, purple prose ahoy! (It's better if you read it in a really melodramatic voice.) quote:None of them would understand. What you have here, in this dark and secret place, it’s beautiful. They’d warn you that this sort of beauty is dangerous, like a raging fire. Well some things are worth getting burned for.  Once again, Name, Look and Origin! quote:Anne, Carla, Deirdre, James, Jonathan, Leena, Patrick, Robin, Shen, Timothy, Wendy quote:quiet, desperate, awkward, beautiful, displaced quote:new kid in town, kid next door, your barista, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s boyfriend, nobody Robin's the new kid in town. Not content to be just another preppy from an unadorned middle class environment, Robin is an emo kid from an unadorned middle class environment. His biggest peeves include sellouts, conformists and people who don't understand that he's totally deep. As a Mortal, Robin starts with Hot 1, Cold -1, Volatile -1 and Dark 1. Since all games with a Mortal in them eventually devolve into a series of romantic misadventures, we'll just speed things up by bumping his Hot to 2.  As a Mortal, Robin starts with the True Love move and gets to pick two more. quote:True Love Carry forward is a straight up +1 to your rolls. That said, with his Hot 2, Robin will be rolling a total of 2d6+3 on attempts to turn his true love on. We can already see that this is leading into great things. For his two other moves, I'm once again picking a couple that work perfectly with the party dynamic: quote:Sympathy is My Weapon quote:Down the Rabbit Hole With both a Chosen and an Infernal in the group, Robin is invariably going to get involved in something completely out of his league. Furthermore, odds are he'll get hurt in the process. These moves simply give his player a mechanical incentive to do so. Finally we get to the fun part: Sex Moves and Darkest Selves. Remember when I said that the Mortal almost automatically leads to everything burning down in glorious flames? Here's why: Sex Move posted:When you have sex with someone, trigger their Darkest Self. Darkest Self posted:Nobody understands you, or even wants to. They’d rather you disappear. Well, you’re not going to disappear. You’re going to make life a living hell for them. You’ll betray the wicked to the judges, the weak to the executioners. You’ll pit humans and supernaturals against one another, until everyone looks like monsters. Only seeing the pain that you’re causing your lover will let you escape your Darkest Self. Monsterhearts, ladies and gentlemen. To recap: quote:Robin the Mortal Next up we have our Queen, the last of our bunch, after which we finally get to the part where it all comes together: the characters' backstories. e: I just realized that Robin's Darkest Self really works amazingly well with Victoria's concept: Robin being willing to pit monsters and mortals against each other in his Darkest Self sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would draw in Victoria to the game. I hadn't even thought of that. This group is coming together incredibly well conceptually, even though some of it is admittedly due to me intentionally picking moves for them that work so well together. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 03:01
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 Shuffle Up and Draw! Let's Make a Character for Deadlands Classic To get more points to get Edges and more skills, we need to pick some Hindrances. Hindrances are worth points, from 1-5, and while we can take as many as we want, only 10pts worth will be counted. Since this is 90s design, the Hindrances are either mechanical penalties, or role-playing ones. Some examples: Ailin': You suffer from an illness, disease or condition. This one comes in three degrees, with the more serious giving more points. Minor just gives you the occasional cough or condition that puts a penalty to persuasion and sneak attempts. Chronic is more serious, and adds a possibility of a penalty to all tasks per session. Fatal adds to that the possibility of killing off your character. Big 'Un: Hello, fatty. This comes in two stripes (minor and major, or as the book calls it, Husky and Obese), and both decrease your pace and Nimbleness. But because you got more weight, you can also increase your Size, which helps prevent Wounds. Small silver lining. Doubting Thomas: Supernatural? Magic? PAH, I say, PAH! Even if you see the dead walk, or your buddy blast a giant worm with magic, you'll still try to explain everything plausibly. Enemy: Someone doesn't like you. This comes in degrees, which determines how threatening your Enemy is. Could be a comedy relief baddie with a grudge, could be a bigbad with his own posse - or dark powers. You and the GM should talk this over to see how much your Enemy can mess with you. So let's pick some Hindrances for our Preacher.
So those Hindrances give us 10 points to work with, so let's get some Edges. First off, let's pick the obvious one for a Blessed:
So that's 6 pts spent, so let's get some more skills. We'll buy Knowledge:Latin at 2 pts, for some ceremonies/reading really old religious books, etc, and Horse Ridin' at 2, because it's a Western. That's our points spent, so here's our charsheet. pre: Deftness: 1d8
-Shootin': Shotgun 3
Nimbleness: 4d6
-Climbin' 1 (FREE)
-Dodge 2
-Fightin': Brawlin' 3
-Sneak 2 (1 pt)
Quickness: 3d6
Strength: 2d8
Vigor: 2d8
Cognition: 1d8
-Scrutinize 2
-Search 3 (1 pt FREE)
Knowledge: 3d8
-Area Knowledge: Home County 2 (FREE)
-Medicine: General 2
-Professional:Theology 2
Mien: 3d10
-Persuasion 3
-Tale-Tellin' 3
Smarts: 2d12
Spirit: 3d12
-Faith 5
-Guts 4
Grit: 0
Pace: 12
Size: 6
Wind: 20
Hindrances:
[*]Heroic
[*]Obligation (Deliver a sermon on Sundays)
[*]Clueless
[*]Squeamish
Edges:
[*]Arcane Background:Blessed
[*]Brave
[*]Gift of Gab
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Feb 26, 2014 03:09
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 So, lets stick with a musically inclined bird-lady. Obviously it would be easy enough to stat up a Free Spirit who just looks like a giant bird-person, but lets stick with the Dead Inside since they're the intended PC type. We'll go with a wannabe musician who sold her soul in exchange for musical ability. Let's call her...Sandra. Step 1: Personality For personality we'll go with "Creative" Step 2: Backstory Sandra was a teenage runaway. After getting some decent gigs with her friends and their garage band, she decided that she was ready for the big times. Her homelife was rough and her parents wanted her to buckle down and get a "real job" after graduating from high school. She ended up running away at 17 and trying to turn her music into a career and get "discovered". Unfortunately things didn't go well as it turns out that she lacked any significant talent. Her Virtue is Hope (uncharitably described as overconfidence) and her Vice is Avarice. Step 3: Soul Loss Eventually, she was found by an unscrupulous Magi who offered her a deal...true musical ability in exchange for her soul. Obviously she never believed in the soul or magic...but she figured this would be some kind of record deal or lesson. This means that the Magi is still out there with her soul...if he hasn't used it all up already. Step 4: Discovery It didn't take long for Sandra to realize just how intense her transformation was. Suddenly songs and music just popped into her head and out of her mouth or fingers. However, she felt like poo poo all the time and despite her newfound abilities she could never bring herself to try to do anything with them. It took her a while, but when her newfound second-sight showed her brightly colored birds no-one else seemed to notice slipping in and out of a rainbow portal in the sky. She leaped from the roof of a nearby building, fell through the Gate and into the Spirit World. Step 5: Qualities Sandra's got 4 Quality Ranks. Two of them will go towards her music...Expert [+4] Unnatural Musical Talent. So far we haven't dealt with the "bird" part of things, but as a Dead Inside she gets some supernatural abilities and it's possible to take them as Qualities to improve your abilities with them. So Sandra will have Good [+2] Change Self. This allows partial or complete shapechanging, with avian shapes being just a personal preference. One Quality left, so we'll give her Good [+2] Runaway to represent the tricks and skills she picked up on the streets. Her weakness will be Poor [-2] Stubborn, which fits her backstory. Step 5: Type Sandra is an Average [0] Dead Inside. This gives her access to a few supernatural powers, but the only ones she can use reliably are Change Self (thanks to her Quality), Healing, Luck, Second Sight, Soultaking, Supercharging and Ward. Step 6: Soul Points Just a single one. Step 7: Miscellany Not much goes here since her backstory is fairly complete and her Qualities are self-explanatory. 
oriongates fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 03:25
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Since I'm on a roll now, let's get right to making our gangbanger Queen! Monsterhearts: Making a Queen: First of all, here's what the book has to say about male Queens: quote:The title “Queen” is used in a gender-nonspecific way. It’s fine to make a male Queen. Alright then. Once again with the puff prose: quote:You’re one of the special ones. A sovereign beauty. You deserve more than the rest of this wretched world does. You deserve the will and worship of those around you. Let's get right to it. Name, Look and Origin. quote:Burton, Brittany, Cordelia, Drake, Jacqueline, Kimball, Raymond, Reyes, Varun, Veronica quote:stunning, domineering, icy, stuck up quote:most popular kid in school, most dangerous person around, occult leader, firstborn of the hive mind, source of the infection Burton is a teenage gangbanger and highschool drop-out. Ever since his parents died under mysterious circumstances Burton's been leading a life of crime, leading a gang of young thugs into a life of crime. While he's not completely aware of the supernatural, he's seen enough weird poo poo during his life to know that there's something dangerous out there. As a Queen Burton starts with Hot 1, Cold 1, Volatile -1 and Dark -1. He's not going to be all that imposing in a fair physical conflict, but he'll do fine as long as he's got his gang with him. Since the group already has its fair share of Hot and Volatile characters, we'll pump his Cold to 2. Burton is going to be really cool and collected, and knows exactly which buttons to push to hurt people's feelings. Burton starts with the Clique move and gets to pick one more. quote:The Clique Of those the first one seems the most sensible, although the second one could make sense as well. For the moment we'll assume that Burton's clique is basically just a heavily armed gang. For his other move, this one seems a perfect fit: quote:The Shield Whether he's defending against the monster of the week or trying to turn down Robin's advances, Burton will be better off when surrounded by his gang. A note about gangs: all characters (with the exception of the Mortal) can take a gang as an advance. The Queen is the only Skin that actually starts with one. Monsterhearts deals with Skins very abstractly: you can Manipulate your gang to help you do things (as per the Manipulate an NPC move). If they help you do something, you add 1 to your rolls. If your gang helps you deal harm against someone, you add 1 harm. That's it. So, even with his Volatile -1, should his gang help him out in a firefight he'd be rolling as if his Volatile was 0, and he'd add 1 to any harm dealt this way. Harm comes in four varieties: 1 harm is a punch, 2 harm is a knife, 3 is a gun, harm 4 is being hit by a truck. Player characters can take 4 harm before they die. (Or not. Players still get to make a few hard choices before dying if they don't feel like dying yet.) As for Burton's Sex Move and Darkest Self: Sex Move posted:When you have sex with someone, they gain the Condition one of them. While the Condition remains, they count as part of your gang. So, if Robin were to succeed in his plan to bed Burton, it'd bring Robin close enough to Burton for Burton to make use of Robin as if he were a part of his gang. Oh, and of course this'll also happen: Darkest Self posted:They’ve failed you. This is all their fault, and there’s no reason why you should have to suffer the consequences of their idiocy. You need to make an example out of each of them, a cruel and unwavering example. You escape your Darkest Self when you relinquish part of your power over to someone more deserving, or when you destroy an innocent person in order to prove your might. Yeah. Any way, here's the finalized version of Burton: quote:Burton the Queen Next time we'll finally find out how this band of misfits actually fits together.
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Feb 26, 2014 03:39
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Your Backstory This is where it all comes together. Having made our four characters, now it's time to find out how these characters are linked together. This is also the source of our precious Strings, the social currency which characters in Monsterhearts use to manipulate each other. Once again, our characters are: Victoria, the Chosen Ophelia, the Infernal Robin, the Mortal Burton, the Queen There's only one rule about players declaring their backstories: the Mortal always goes last if there's one in the group. As such, we'll start with Burton. quote:Name three NPCs who are members of your gang. Gain a String on each. Burton's player names Avon, Denise and Walton as three members of his gang. There are probably more members in his gang, but these three are ones that have been named and established. The MC may ask Burton leading questions about who these three are and what purpose they serve to Burton. For the second one, Burton thinks that if he'd find anyone threatening it'd be Ophelia: Ophelia's past implies that she's also lead a rough life on the streets, and the two have probably butted heads before. Burton gives Ophelia a String, and takes two Strings on Ophelia. Next we move on to Victoria: quote:You have two friends who you can rely on for monsterslaying support. Take a String on each. Victoria's player doesn't think it would make sense for her to rely on Ophelia for help in killing monsters, so she picks Robin and Burton. Even though Robin is the new kid in town he's already made a friend in Victoria, and Victoria's previously helped Burton's gang out of some monster-related poo poo, so she can rely on Burton to help her should poo poo hit the fan. For the second one Victoria asks the MC to give the big bad a name. The MC gives one of those grins that only MCs who are up to no good can muster and gives it the name Bushyasta, which just happens to be Ophelia's dark power. The MC is here working on one of their Agendas: Make the PCs’ lives not boring. The fact that Ophelia's dark power wants Victoria dead is definitely going to lead to interesting play. Next we move on to Ophelia: quote:You owe debts. Give away 3 Strings, divided any way you like between the dark power and the other characters. Ophelia likes to live dangerously, so she decides to give her one of her 3 Strings straight to her dark power, Bushyasta. The two other Strings she gives to Victoria. Victoria's saved Ophelia more than once already when Ophelia let loose with her power and tried to take on some monsters she couldn't beat by herself. This also puts Ophelia in an interesting place, as she feels that she owes Victoria for saving her life, but Bushyasta may put her at odds with Victoria since Bushyasta wants her dead. Ophelia looks at the other part of her backstory and decides to take a String on Victoria. While Victoria has saved Ophelia, Ophelia still thinks Victoria foolish for thinking that she can save Ophelia from the embrace of her dark power. Finally, we get to Robin. quote:The Mortal always declares their backstory last. Declare one person to be your lover. Give them three Strings on you. Take one String on them. Robin declares Burton to be his lover. The gangbangers hard and edgy attitude has earned Burton his fancy. Taking into account how entwined the two are with Victoria and Ophelia, Robin will probably end up following Burton into stuff that's way over his head. So, here are the strings held by each of our central characters: Victoria posted:Strings Held: Ophelia posted:Strings Held: Robin posted:Strings Held: Burton posted:Strings Held: Finally, there's also Bushyasta whose strings the MC is keeping track of: Bushyasta posted:Strings Held: So now that we've got these Strings, what can we actually do with them? Well, these things, exactly: You can spend a String on another PC to:
You can spend a String on an NPC to:
How about those Strings held by Bushyasta? The MC's got their own list of things they can do with these Strings. The MC can spend NPC Strings on someone to:
Some of the things on this list are actually things that the MC can do to PCs without Strings, but the important thing here is that the Strings give a context to those things. When the MC wants to force their hand as Bushyasta and make Ophelia do her bidding, they'll narrate the action (i.e. Bushyasta whispering dark promises into Ophelia's ear if she does this one favor for her) and then offer Ophelia experience for doing her bidding (for an obvious example: bringing Bushyasta Victoria as a sacrifice). Anyway, that's it for this group. I might keep these guys around for the sake of my Fatal & Friends write-up. e: Also, I can't believe I forgot one of the most important uses of Strings: highlighted stats. At the beginning of each game, each PC gets two of their Stats highlighted. The first time they use that Stat in a scene, they get to mark experience. One of the highlighted Stats is chosen by the MC, and the other by the player whose character holds the most Strings on that character. If you want to play fair, you'll highlight one of your friend's character's better stats. However, sometimes doing just the opposite can lead into a more fun game. Let's say that a few games in Burton still holds the most Strings on Robin. The game thus far has been leading into an epic confrontation with Victoria, Burton and Robin facing Bushyasta and also having to butt heads with Ophelia. Burton's player knows that Robin has a low Volatile, but he'd really like to see Robin get violent during the epic confrontation. Similarly, let's say that the relationship between Victoria and Ophelia starts to pick up some romantic undertones: Victoria thinks that Ophelia could be saved and Ophelia actually wants to be free of Bushyasta's control. Even though the two are still at odds, Ophelia is starting to develop feelings for Victoria, even though at the same time Ophelia resents herself for developing those feelings, because she wants to be free and strong, without nobody pulling her strings. If Victoria's player were still the one holding the most Strings on Ophelia, they could choose to highlight Ophelia's Hot, simply to see whether this will lead to Ophelia to pursue their romance. Strings are fun. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 04:32
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 Last Stand I need a break from gigantic Burning Wheel skill lists, so let's make a character in a much different system. Eschewing more traditional means of character creation, Last Stand uses a draft mechanic to communally generate agents. No character is generated in a vacuum; the choices your party makes will affect the choices that you can make. Four characters would take up way too much space, so I'll omit the other 3 players. There are two types of cards in the game - Bio-Armors, which determine the specific alien suit that each player has equipped, and Armory Cards, which are abilities that can be used in the course of the game. A character (at the start) is composed entirely of these cards: the combination of the Bio-Armor and Armory cards determines the stats. Armory Cards have to be chosen first. The Armory Deck is shuffled, and seven cards are dealt to each player. Each player examines the cards that they have, choose one, and add it to their character pile. My hand is:        I pick Throw Caution to the Wind, cause I wanna make a proactive fighter. My next hand is:       Of these, Last Ditch Effort sounds the best - it'll let me do a crapload of damage, provided that I can gain the tokens. The third hand is:      Toxin Filtration System could be really useful to gain tokens, which I need for my other attacks, so I'll take that. Fourth hand is:     Sniper Rifle would be a useful card. But - THROWING CARS. I pick Throw A Car At It. Back to my original hand, I get: On one hand, the damage over time from Bladed Arms could be really nice. On the other hand, a Social Challenge card could help my stats and my ability to deal with social situations (not everything can be a fight, you know!) I'll choose The Escape Clause to give my stats a boost. For the last hand, I get: I do love stats - I'll pick Controlled Explosion. I discard the lone last card. That's all my armory cards. I get handed a random pair of Bio-Armors, which are:   Pill Bug goes with my heavy attack style, and will let me control how enemies move me. With all my cards selected, I calculate my stats and get Disruptor 6, Leader 7, Tactician 5, and Operative 4 (stats start at a base of 1). Relatively good stats all around - I'll be able to take a lot of punishment from varied kinds of attacks. Once stats are calculated, we're ready to play! Over time, I may gain more powers from Slotting and Bio-Armor creation, but these 7 cards are the essentials of my character's mechanics. My final card spread:
Asymmetrikon fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 06:10
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Alumnus Post posted:Alright motherfuckers, I hope you like enormous I'm going to codify, write rules for, and generally steal the crap out of this when I go back and revise my incomplete "crazy occult apocalypse" January contest game. This is almost exactly what I wanted out of the character generation system for Eschatography that I could never figure out. Where were you last month? e: Oh, I can make use the Major Arcana-themed setting elements as seed material. You may have just kept me from consigning that game to the incomplete draft room. Mimir fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 09:00
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posts, because here comes...
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 Adeptus Evangelion 2.5: Let's Make A hosed-Up Teen! Using a homebrew mod that uses the Dark Heresy system to recreate the setting of Neon Genesis Evangelion, we're going to make the perfect Pop Idol. For this we'll need the Dark Heresy Core Rulebook and Adeptus Evangelion 2.5. Let's see, our idol will be a young girl named Mimi Hayes. Step 1: Background This replaces the Homeworld from DH and essentially is your background life experience. The Neo-Spartan has been trained from a young age in combat and piloting. The Prodigy is fresh blood. Some regular joe who was found to have a natural talent for piloting. The Manufactured is someone cloned or created in a lab for piloting. The Impact Survivor was around when catastrophe hit. You're not a pilot, you're a survivor. Considering the concept I've given earlier, we'll go with the Manufactured. quote:Manufactured Skills Deceive and the characteristic associated with it (Fellowship) will be important for living their double life. quote:Manufactured Traits Immediately, I already know the first Positive trait I want. quote:Replaceable - Some Manufactured lines are considered genetically stable enough and important enough to be batch grown. Thus, if one copy should fall in the war with the Angels, another can take its place. Manufactured with this trait begin play with 1d5+3 backup bodies (including the one in use). However, this precludes being able to burn fate to survive and the character may never burn to survive for any reason, though they may choose to burn Fate to activate other abilities (such as Ghost in the Machine). Whenever the Manufactured dies, has a significant physical penalty permanently applied (such as blindness or limb loss), betrays Nerv, or would be removed from play for other reasons a GM might feel are appropriate, a clone in perfect physical health replaces the character. Any and all Assets and Drawbacks taken by the character are assumed to apply to all clones equally. Because it calls for it, I roll a 1d5 which you might be wondering what that is but that dice roll is called for occasionally in the game. Unless for some strange reason you have an actual 1d5 you just roll a 1d10 and divide by 2. Doing this, I rolled a 5. So this gives us 8 backup bodies, the maximum amount. Then we give them their second positive trait: quote:Implanted Memories - Nerv can’t simply wait around for Manufactured to learn naturally so they did the next best thing: implanting the memories of someone who did. Choose any two skills that are not Dodge, and gain the Talented talent for them both. The Talented talent comes from the Dark Heresy core rulebook and gives us +10 to our Characteristic when using that skill. This will go into Deceive and Disguise for the use of our alter ego. Now to pick Negative traits: quote:Gullible - The speed at which Manufactured are brought to maturity sometimes means they fail to gain certain social capabilities, specifically an inability to notice ulterior motives. Barter, Blather, Charm, and Deceive Tests made against the character are at a +20 bonus I think Gullible works well because, despite the fact we're good at lying, being easily trusting helps give her a charming, naive personality. Mental Conditioning represents the organization she works for's control of her, being used to make sure she doesn't leak information to the media. At the end of the Background page it lists Starting Wounds and Fate Points, but that won't be relevant until Step 3. Next time: Ruining a Teen's Life! Step 2: Drawbacks and Assets Sweet and Awful fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Feb 26, 2014 |
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Feb 26, 2014 09:36
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Mimir posted:I'm going to codify, write rules for, and generally steal the crap out of this when I go back and revise my incomplete "crazy occult apocalypse" January contest game. This is almost exactly what I wanted out of the character generation system for Eschatography that I could never figure out. Where were you last month? I think I was burying myself in the Book of Thoth until I figured out what the gently caress was going on with Crowley's mother-goddamning impossible writing.  Seriously, even the artist for his deck called him out on how unbelievably dense he is. The megapost I wrote doesn't even touch on half the factors he wanted put into those cards, much less the interpretations involved, or anything about his weird religion-cum-lifestyle-cum-philosophy. Andrew Hussie wishes he could do Homestuck half so complicated and interconnected.  I saw the January contest thread...but about a week ago. You're welcome to the idea and the methods involved, as long as you give credit. Shoot me an email at staurn@gmail.com if you're looking for collaboration or advisory - I'd love to be part of it!
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Feb 26, 2014 15:08
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