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Agrikk posted:It might be time to change the game, not the system.
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Apr 13, 2024 18:29
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Dameius posted:Rifts was my very first ttrpg that I played in elementary school and somehow I still wanted to play more ttrpgs. I don't have anything constructive to add, it's just so rare to see it mentioned and it holds a soft spot in my heart despite the many, many, many warts. IMO Rifts is a great idea for an RPG setting and a lesson about running games. The setting of post-apocalypse earth where you've got magic, psi powers, and demons but also supertech like mecha and cyborgs lets you play around with a lot of fun toys, do a lot of exploration, and just generally go wild with things. But the system has so many fundamental problems that it really just screams 'if you want to run this, use the setting in another ruleset entirely'. And when I say fundamental, I don't mean the power creep in later supplements or even the clunkiness and weird contradictions in the Palladium ruleset, I mean relaly basic like the MDC vs HP/SDC mechanics which make a bunch of stats and equipment in the books pointless, and preclude running a lot of 'players are not in full combat setup but have to deal with an enemy' scenarios.
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Apr 13, 2024 18:41
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Had a bit of an idea hit me today on a mechanic I'd like to use at some point...but I'll likely never flesh it out and maybe someone here will take it and run with it. I think I posted an idea about how to do group skill checks with those Star Wars/ Warhammer FRG 3e dice and it didn't get dumped on too bad here...so maybe this goes just as well  --- One of the little problems I've been chewing on for a while is how I'd make rituals interesting in a d20-ish game. I like the idea of rituals: big spells that should have big meaning in the world and on the game. But I feel like whenever I see them in rulebooks or in action they fall flat. Lots of reasons for that: lots of assumptions about d20 play tend to give rituals a short hand, high level spells tend to squat in to what I'd consider ritual turf, and lots of stories and settings don't have much use for them. But one other thing I see as an issue: casting a ritual doesn't feel interesting or distinct. It's just another role usually. Maybe a few rolls bundled up as an extended skill challenge, which I have plenty of issues with as a mechanic. And maybe there's some ritual cost, or the GM puts a component macguffin at the bottom of a dungeon, but overall the casting of a ritual doesn't stick out as a moment of play. It's just part of the big non-combat wall of stuff saggy skill checks. So this system is intended to make rituals stick out and feel like a unique moment for the players. purpose:
Other Stuff (pre-reqs, out of scope, etc):
The Big Idea: Rituals are ranked in difficulty, and assigned a Tarot Card hand that need to be met in order to cast. The players need to assemble that hand at the time of the ritual in order to cast it. The players have a few sources to pull their cards from though: they get a few environmental cards that are laid out by the GM and change slowly as the game progresses, they collect some earned cards from defeating major enemies or engaging in roleplay outside of the ritual, and then during the ritual they draw cards randomly. IF the group can't meet the ritual's success requirements, it fails- and the fail state will usually be something other than "nothing happens". To give the players a little more control at the time of casting, any player can opt to discard their drawn card, and have their PC take a unique condition based off the card, to draw a new one. Every player can do this once during a casting. Rituals: so aside from flavor description and what happens when the ritual is cast successfully, each ritual would include 2 details 1) The hand- this would be similar to a poker hand, growing in rarity/difficulty with the relative hardness of the ritual. A "basic" teleport spell to move the group 100 miles back to a known place might require a pair (2 wands/cups/etc) and a single major arcana to cast. A more advanced ritual to revive a dead character may require 1 card of each suit and a major arcana. An archmagus level ritual to open the portal for Asmodeus to step on to earth and conquer may require specifically Death, Heirophant, Hanged Man, Tower, and World cards specifically. Getting this hand (and for now, it's this hand specifically...maybe the rule could be that hand or a more valuable one like in poker) 2) Failure- if a ritual fails in this system, something happens. It might be to the players, or to the story. For teleportation, the ritual takes the group 1/2 the planned distance in a random direction. For revival, failure may destroy the body, or raise it as a zombie, or cause another life to be extinguished to revive this one. Failing the Asmodeus summing ritual? You better believe that sends the ritual leader to hell. The Players' Hand: Ok so the group knows they're going to want to use teleport in the near future to get back to their home base and rest up. They have some options to plan ahead before the ritual. Environmental Cards: environmental cards are 2 or 3 cards that the GM controls and are always available to the players for their ritual hand. These cards don't go away, but they should rotate based on something. The idea here is to sort of weave this system in to the background of the world, and to tailor it to the system and campaign you're running. Some ideas I had while chewing on this. -Moon Phase card: every time the players take downtime, this card changes. It just represents the slow changing of fate and magic over time. Here it might make sense for the card to change on a defined pattern, like the phase always goes sword-cup-pentacle-wand...and maybe every 4 cycles it is a random major arcana -Local Ley-Line card: this is a card that changes as the players move from region to region in the game world, and represents the local magical powers. This feels like a place where trying to tie the "meaning" of tarot cards to the game world could be fun -Curse card: a special card the GM can use in more grim games or games that feature more magical antagonists. This card is a card the GM can swap in to the players' played cards to cause them to fail Earned Cards: earned cards are collected as another reward for the PCs as they play the game. This is intended to give them a pool of resources to use, and some stability/predictability in their ritual casting. This helps lightly link the ritual mechanics in to the rest of play. Earned cards could come from a few places, depending on the focus of the system. -Defeating elite enemies -Hitting quest milestones -Successful scrounge/forage actions while exploring -Resolving a disagreement or conflict with another PC The GM has to manage a bit of a balance here though- the players should have a few (2-3) cards in reserve at most, or else it'll make the actual ritual casting an afterthought. Casting the Ritual: So the players will have 2-3 environmental cards to call on, and maybe 2-3 earned cards they can spend. for a basic ritual, they might be able to just complete the casting based on those, if they don't mind spending their earned cards. But let's maybe assume they haven't earned any cards yet, and the environmental cards aren't enough on their own. All the PCs that participate in the ritual can draw a card from the full tarot deck (we're not going to try and manage all the environmental cards or earned cards being removed). Maybe wizards or characters that want to invest in feats can get a "ritual expert" feat and draw 2 cards and keep 1. Once all the players have cards, they can coordinate to try to play a hand that matches the needed hand for the ritual. If they can do that immediately, then they're all set. If not, they fail and the GM manages the ritual's particular failure mechanic. The players are afforded another point of action and control though- if their initial cards don't allow for a successful ritual. Each player may opt to discard their card and draw a new one. However, there is a consequence for this. The discard imparts a non-permanent but lasting consequence to the PC. This is one of the points I'd like to lean in on the meaning of the cards, to give this a bit of flavor. Some examples of what I'm getting at there: -Discarding a Wands card saps the character of willpower and energy for some time. For the next X hours (x equaling the value of the card, aces being 1 and face cards being 10), the suffers the fatigued condition or takes a -1 to will saving throws or etc etc -Discarding The Star leads the PC to experience faithlessness and insecurity. For the next day, any beneficial spells from a divine source that affect them cannot critically succeed, any and divine healing heals 1 less hitpoint per level of the spell. So anyways, that's been an idea kicking around in my head for 2-3 days. If I didn't post it here it'd probably just live on a google doc somewhere and never get used. No idea if some system already has something like this. If there is something out there, I'd bet even money it's Ars Magica . For myself, part of the inspiration came from reading some of the work Josh McCroo has been doing on his Tarot-centric dungeoncrawler His Majesty The Worm and simply thinking "oh, tarot cards! That'd be cool to use for rituals!" But also as I worked out the system I realized I was sort of hacking the original Huckster casting rules from Deadlands 1e.
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Apr 14, 2024 03:15
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That's extremely cool, I'd definitely be interested in the written up version if you do it.
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Apr 14, 2024 03:35
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So my options for tomorrow's session are to essentially let them have their downtime session after lots of leading them around by the nose, drop some hints that all is not well at their favorite home port, but mostly focus on the big picture and how they're going to salvage this ship. Have some correspondence and advance a couple back-burner plots in other locations. Maybe give them another bite at a mysterious object that they failed to identify last time they were here. Save the siege plot for when the ship is in port, so their coveted new cruiser is threatened. OR just yeet them straight into the next module and drop an ork invasion on their heads when they thought they were going to have downtime. I do kind of like the idea that they get back after a long but mostly uneventful voyage, already thinking about how they're going to replace their losses, who they're going to hire and how they're going to go back out and salvage that new ship, only to discover the port under attack and an Imperial captain determined to commandeer them and their ship in service of the realm. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 05:47
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Arglebargle III posted:So my options for tomorrow's session are to essentially let them have their downtime session after lots of leading them around by the nose, drop some hints that all is not well at their favorite home port, but mostly focus on the big picture and how they're going to salvage this ship. Have some correspondence and advance a couple back-burner plots in other locations. Maybe give them another bite at a mysterious object that they failed to identify last time they were here. Save the siege plot for when the ship is in port, so their coveted new cruiser is threatened. Split the difference. Give each of them just enough downtime to start setting things into motion and relax, then halfway through the session the orks invade and now they're all scattered and trying to preserve their subplots and gains while getting back together and repelling the bad guys - and then just when they're getting that under control, the Imperial captain shows up to commandeer them and their ship.
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Apr 14, 2024 06:03
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Ravenson posted:Split the difference. Give each of them just enough downtime to start setting things into motion and relax, then halfway through the session the orks invade and now they're all scattered and trying to preserve their subplots and gains while getting back together and repelling the bad guys - and then just when they're getting that under control, the Imperial captain shows up to commandeer them and their ship.
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Apr 14, 2024 06:38
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Agrikk posted:It might be time to change the game, not the system. I'm not the DM for this particular game, just a player. I'd personally be fully down for a wider scope and building an army, but I don't want to go against the rest of the group. The DM has been casting about for a new system for a while, as he's getting frustrated trying to meaningfully challenge us. Arglebargle III posted:So my options for tomorrow's session are to essentially let them have their downtime session after lots of leading them around by the nose, drop some hints that all is not well at their favorite home port, but mostly focus on the big picture and how they're going to salvage this ship. Have some correspondence and advance a couple back-burner plots in other locations. Maybe give them another bite at a mysterious object that they failed to identify last time they were here. Save the siege plot for when the ship is in port, so their coveted new cruiser is threatened. I'd end with a cliffhanger of orks being detected on long-range scans, so the players can get excited about the upcoming session. Also, how'd the big boss battle go? Deets, my man!
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Apr 14, 2024 06:41
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sebmojo posted:That's extremely cool, I'd definitely be interested in the written up version if you do it. Thanks I suppose next step is I need to either find someone who's worked out tarot deck hand probabilities for different sized hands, or try to refresh myself on probability math that I barely understood 20 years ago lol.
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Apr 14, 2024 14:36
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You know if we're doing downtime it occurs to me that everyone on the ship is an eligible bachelor and there's at least two people in their port city who would be eager to secure a marriage alliance with the player's dynasty. Plus there's religious arguments for the priest to have and science debates for the tech priest, and a growing army that would really like to poach the arch militant as an officer, even offer him a hug post. We could definitely do an episode building relationships and careers so that when the ork invasion lands it has more stakes and more NPCs whose fate matters. One an admirable and upright general who wants to marry his daughter to the rogue trader and use the support to overthrow the corrupt governor and become the new ruler of the planet. He's the obvious choice BUT! he secretly intends to secede from the Imperium and drag the dynasty into his secession. Technically they're not within Imperial borders but the dynasty assets are! The other a rogue trader desperately trying to claw her family out of debt. She's a decent person but she is hiding the fact that she's marrying the PC for money, and in fact her liabilities will be a huge drain on the dynasty. Her ship isn't that great either. Maybe we can do Sense and Sensibility and Sailors in Space Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 15:13
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Thanks This is the kind of thing that LLMs can be ok at, and has probably definitely been done a bunch.
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Apr 14, 2024 16:18
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Squidster posted:Also, how'd the big boss battle go? Deets, my man! Oh it went wrong immediately. The plan was that the rakshasa would reveal itself to be part of the cogitator core when they stepped forward to take the command rod from the captain's mummified hand. There was a clue that the captain was held down by the machines but actually died of hunger or thirst, with no obvious cause of death, that whoever was holding the rod could not be attacked by the boss. The cogitator pit was a trench in the bridge of the ship, because it's always cool to have a setpiece fight in an established location and then return to that location refurbished as a new area for the players. There's a command rod socket in the cogitator pit, and the idea is that the rakshasa will destroy it once the players have seen it and figured out what it is. There's another socket in the command throne at the other end of the bridge, so the players will have to fight their way down the bridge as the rakshasa reanimates the techpriest corpses and they try to play keepaway, with the main rule being that the rakshasa is not allowed to attack the player holding the command rod. Well, the techpriest steps forward and the rakshasa's music cue fires, the cogitator pit's ceiling rolls back to reveal they're back on the bridge, the rakshasa unfolds its arms from the cogitator and slaps the command rod out of the techpriest's hand and it goes flying, there's a crane that's looming over the pit... roll initiative and... the arch-militant goes first and shoots the crane.  The crane was supposed to pick up the rakshasa and put it on a mechanical tiger body, but now the very first round of combat the crane is broken (he did like 80 damage, he's the combat specialist) and the rakshasa has to spend one of its actions tearing itself off its own socket so it can go level up into its final form. It's supposed to destroy the command rod socket, but its down an action and it whiffs, throwing its spear into the control console but not actually hitting the socket. So I rule that they'll have to fix the control console if they want to use it, thinking the rakshasa will succeed in blowing up the console next round with its rocket launcher. At this point the missionary is complaining that he can't do any damage to the armored machine demon beast, which is true, but the missionary is kitted out as a horde-destroying machine and not for anti-armor and declined to pick up the free meltagun I gave them last session so whatever, tough. The arch-militant's troopers and the mechanicus guys actually do pretty well landing melta shots on the rakshasa. It's not going fast but they managed to bring it down to half health before the combat ended. They decide to cut the cable from the rakshasa to the computer, which the techpriest warns them not to do and indeed it starts making free action subversion attacks on the techpriest's systems once it goes wireless... which all fail. The techpriest grabs the command rod and decides to fix the cogitator pit control panel instead of heading down the gauntlet for the command throne or fighting. I say sure and throw some murder-servitor mooks at them which our RT power fists to death pretty handily. Then the Rakshasa is up again and... totally whiffs both attacks on the control panel. Can't hit it with a rocket launcher. The techpriest actually gets the rod inserted and starts issuing commands which shut down the murder servitors, but don't shut down the rakshasa warform which he was mad about and started arguing with the computer about which was funny. In a last ditch effort the rakshasa jumps on the party and grapples everyone with its ten arms, but the techpriest manages to win his opposed strength test and keep the command rod in the machine and order it to shut off. So that was it, basically nothing went to plan but it was kind of climactic, at least climactic enough that getting their ship felt earned. They did at least consider throwing a melta grenade into the computer core to end the combat even if that meant they couldn't start the reactors until they got the ship back to port for repairs. So I think the rakshasa was threatening enough, even if it didn't really do enough even with three attacks. Oh also it nearly killed the arch-militant who survived due to a pretty clutch parry.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:44
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Ravenson posted:Split the difference. Give each of them just enough downtime to start setting things into motion and relax, then halfway through the session the orks invade and now they're all scattered and trying to preserve their subplots and gains while getting back together and repelling the bad guys - and then just when they're getting that under control, the Imperial captain shows up to commandeer them and their ship. Thanks. Due to some stuff that I completely forgot about, it wasn't until three hours into the session that we got into home port. The session ended with them planning a big party on board their own ship and thinking about competing great houses and politicking and showing off and launching ships, and so in the first 30 minutes next session the entire senior leadership of the planet will be enjoying crudites and mingling and viewing the loot and chained up aliens on display on the players' ship when the first ork invasion wave goes flying past them down onto the planet. I really like the idea of letting them have their party and then dropping the orks on them. The players really enjoyed last session and are excited for all the political intrigue that is going to get interrupted, which I guess is why I wrote so much. Things are going well. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 22:50
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Arglebargle III posted:I really like the idea of letting them have their party and then dropping the orks on them. The players really enjoyed last session and are excited for all the political intrigue that is going to get interrupted, which I guess is why I wrote so much. Things are going well. I know it's changing the plan at the last minute but if the players are excited for the political intrigue why cut it short for orks? You can make them a political threat rather than a military one -- orks themselves aren't canny political operators of course but if they're a distant rampaging threat rather than an immediate one then there are lots of ways to make that interesting. I bet there are plenty of rear end in a top hat nobles who are happy to sabotage the efforts to stop them or let their neighbors waste resources fighting orks while they focus on grabbing power. You can even get the PCs in on it, have some dude who they hate be the one organising the warfleet to stop them and be transparently doing it as a power grab.
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Apr 16, 2024 11:24
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I agree. Seems like the campaign has been going full throttle for a while. It seems like the players are looking for a change of pace so give them their political intrigue. You can keep the ork horde invasion in your pocket for the moment that interest in political machinations gets stale.
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Apr 16, 2024 16:14
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Agrikk posted:I agree. Orks just hosed up three systems in a line pointing at the player system. Orks did it in unpredictable intervals. That should give you tons intrigue for the players to chew on as all the local power brokers vie for position on who gets to be the one to take the credit for stopping the Orks here vs the ones who will have to pay the cost in material or life.
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Apr 16, 2024 19:02
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The politics don't stop even as the Orks invade, anyway. In addition to the drama over who commands the defense, where does the defense take place? Do you fall back to a more secure line that gives better odds, or do you defend an out of the way position that happens to be a major manufactory of a political ally? Who gets the defense contracts, where are the officers for the new planetary defense regiments going to come from? The Yellow Turban Rebellion didn't topple Han rule, but it gave rise to regional governors and military commanders that later became warlords in the Three Kingdoms period. The Ork threat doesn't need to be a threat, in the sense that it's an apocalyptic battle for the system, but it can be a threat to the status quo that sees political factions reshuffling.
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Apr 16, 2024 20:17
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Agrikk posted:I agree. The players earlier felt that the campaign had lacked direction and were expecting to progress further by this point. They also wanted to have this new ship without a lengthy period of waiting for it to be refitted. Launching a political struggle that gets interrupted and intensified by an ork attack will serve three goals: push the players to spend their extensive wealth rushing the cruiser into service (instead of whining at me about it), put the campaign on at least some sort of track by getting them into the first module of a three-part "big bad" campaign, and allow them to decide the fate of their favorite port planet Damaris. Ever since they started getting comfortable in this region of space I've been nudging them to invest more time and trust in this location, so that I can launch this module. Now with the players' exciting new cruiser laid up in dock and the local nobility courting the party's support*, I don't think there will come a better time to pull this trigger. It's true that the ork invasion isn't going to interrupt the politicking so much as catalyze it: there are three competing factions trying to dominate Damaris, each represented by characters the party have already been interacting with for quite a while. It's nominally part of the Imperium, but de facto outside of Imperial borders and influence. One of the twists of this module is that the Imperial navy has been ordered to abandon Damaris to its fate, throwing the political status of the planet into uncharted territory. The navy captain is torn between defending frontier citizens and following Admiralty orders and preserving her career, so she's hidden the orders and not done anything yet. Discovering the orders she kept secret is going to blow the simmering political tensions wide open as it becomes clear that the status quo is gone for good. So yes there's an ork invasion, but also how the interested parties maneuver within the constraint of not losing the planet to orks will decide the fate of this major location for good. *One of the players has already suggested that the planet may be up for grabs, and he's right. If they back the winning horse they can have a much firmer ally in power, install a puppet to be ruled from afar, or maybe even marry their way into inheriting the planet outright. So while I appreciate that letting them do politics is a good way forward, I don't think there will be a better moment to pull the trigger on this adventure. I should probably let them have their party in order to make sure they understand the political factions and the stakes before the ork attack though. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 23:36
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If your group feels aimless, it’s because they are reactive. There’s a fix. My group has been shuffling GMs for two years in our campaign, and we’ve had a few players retire characters because they felt their arcs were completed. I’ve been reading through the game masters handbook of proactive role-playing by Jonah and Tristan Fishel. The book points out that games like Blades are very easy to run because you know what the players objectives are, all you need to do is create opportunities and they will create adventures out of them. I really recommend the book! We spent 40 minutes after our session finding out what our characters want, and suggested tons and tons of adventures, new potential relationship relationships, and even new factions. Do characters still have specific, attainable/ failable goals that put them in conflict with the universe? Can you break those goals into steps? Skim the book, and have players come up with goals over group text before the next session, they’ll point you how to solve the ork situation.
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Apr 17, 2024 17:26
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If you are looking for ideas on what governments do in the face of an impending invasion, check out the Halo TV series. I’ve never played the video game but have become weirdly invested in the show. Without sharing spoilers, unstoppable bad guys are marching their way across the galaxy and humans are fleeing in front of them. While the main character is a go-getter with a past, there are space government forces looking for the super weapon to defeat bad guy even as parts of the government ignore facts in the face of status quo. Plus the planet invasion scenes are badass.
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Apr 17, 2024 18:45
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Agrikk posted:If you are looking for ideas on what governments do in the face of an impending invasion, check out the Halo TV series. Or skim watch Don't Look Up. Or go read about appeasement during the 30s.
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Apr 17, 2024 22:48
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:This system also assumes that the knowledge of rituals and how to cast them is pretty well known in the world. Just another side problem I see in making rituals a thing is gating them behind feats or waiting for the GM to hand out the quest reward so players can finally start using this mechanic PF2 is really bad about this. Not only are rituals all gated behind the Uncommon tag, but the relatively high DCs to cast them (which the rulebooks suggest could be reduced by situational plot devices) are effectively a way of adding an extra level of GM fiat on top of that. To be fair, this fits PF2's design philosophy of not, by default, giving the players forms of agency that can completely derail Adventure Path plots.
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Apr 18, 2024 00:59
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Agrikk posted:If you are looking for ideas on what governments do in the face of an impending invasion, check out the Halo TV series. It's clear that, unless you've got a great person in power (unlikely), that people in power will do everything they can to keep power in the short term, even if it's clear they'll lose it in the long term. Even if, in the short and long term, it means people die. If they can hold onto that power for a second longer, they'll do whatever it takes.
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Apr 18, 2024 02:22
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They're probably going to back the general who wants to launch a coup and secede, because they have met before and like him, and are already profitably smuggling arms to the planet. Putting him in power would mean even more lucrative military contracts as he takes the planet out of nominal Imperial rule. Also they just don't like the planetary governor. I think I'll have a motives and goals chat with them after this module though because they've made very little progress on their characters' goals even though I've been dropping rumors and hints. They're just in the wrong part of the map. Three of the four players have had solid leads for weeks or months and have taken no action. After acquiring a light cruiser and a couple colonies they've kind of arrived as notable space adventurers and can focus on their own goals. Thanks for the advice! Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Apr 18, 2024 |
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Apr 18, 2024 13:14
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Dameius posted:Or skim watch Don't Look Up. Or go read about appeasement during the 30s. Shin Godzilla has really funny examples of this as well and just rips
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Apr 19, 2024 00:08
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Silver2195 posted:PF2 is really bad about this. Not only are rituals all gated behind the Uncommon tag, but the relatively high DCs to cast them (which the rulebooks suggest could be reduced by situational plot devices) are effectively a way of adding an extra level of GM fiat on top of that. To be fair, this fits PF2's design philosophy of not, by default, giving the players forms of agency that can completely derail Adventure Path plots. I'm pretty much only playing PF2 right now and it's definitely a big reason I decided I decided to make rituals a system I wanted to play with. And yeah- I think they have a uniquely frustrating approach to adventure and adventure path design :-/
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Apr 19, 2024 00:50
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Ok I tried to refresh my handle of probability and combinatorics, and I've realized I am not going to be able to do this on my own. Also I just don't trust AI on this, I'm not finding a lot posts that seem to lay out this case, so I suspect copilot or whatever will just go find poker hand probabilities and send them back to me. I might search fiver for someone who might pull together some probabilities. Basically I want to make sure I'm coming up with a system that has reasonable success chances. A basic ritual should probably be able to succeed 65% of the time or more, the next level more around 50%, and so on downward in ~15% increments.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:22
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Ok I tried to refresh my handle of probability and combinatorics, and I've realized I am not going to be able to do this on my own. Also I just don't trust AI on this, I'm not finding a lot posts that seem to lay out this case, so I suspect copilot or whatever will just go find poker hand probabilities and send them back to me. If you're doing 15% increments, then maybe a simple d6? First ritual succeeds if you roll a 4 or lower, second if 3 or lower, third if 2 or lower, etc?
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Apr 19, 2024 03:36
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Cantorsdust posted:If you're doing 15% increments, then maybe a simple d6? First ritual succeeds if you roll a 4 or lower, second if 3 or lower, third if 2 or lower, etc? That'd be the most direct way for sure- and in part I'm picking ~15% increments because I feel like that tends to be a good increment in DCs for a lot of F20 games. But I'm trying to do this with tarot cards and hands based on a few reasons that can be sort of summarized as "I want this to feel different from the usual dice rolling for combat and skill checks"
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Apr 19, 2024 03:42
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:That'd be the most direct way for sure- and in part I'm picking ~15% increments because I feel like that tends to be a good increment in DCs for a lot of F20 games. Oh, I didn't get the context. Assuming a Tarot deck of 78 cards with the major and minor arcanas: 71.8% = chance of drawing a minor arcana and not a major 51.3% = chance of drawing a numbered minor arcana 28.2% = chance of drawing a major arcana. One option might be a ritual success depends on how many minor arcana draws in a row you must get (calculated with replacement, percentages would be lower without replacement): Level 1, 1 draw, 71.8% Level 2, 2 draws, 0.718^2 = 51.6% Level 3, 3 draws, 0.718^3 = 37.0% Level 4, 4 draws, 0.718^4 = 26.6% It's not perfect but close. If you want probabilities decreasing by half you could choose sequential draws looking for either a numbered minor arcana or the opposite--a major or a minor face card. I'll play around with this more later. One more thought before I go to sleep: The probabilities probably aren't too bad to calculate if you limit yourself to simple binary categories and use binomial distributions. There's probably a lot you could do there with just major/minor + minor face vs minor numbered. You could imagine a ritual being run as drawing a [level] card spread. If all of the cards are minor arcana, it proceeds without issue, but if one of the cards is a major, it develops a complication or failure based on the theme of the major. Probabilities for [level] card spreads being all minors (ie drawn without replacement): Level 1: 56/78 0.718 Level 2: (56/78)*(55/77) 0.513 Level 3: (56/78)*(55/77)*(54/76) 0.364 Level 4: (56/78)*(55/77)*(54/76)*(53/75) 0.257 Cantorsdust fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 03:52
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Cantorsdust posted:Oh, I didn't get the context. Assuming a Tarot deck of 78 cards with the major and minor arcanas: Thanks! would be interested to see what you suggest edit- Actually looking at your suggestions I think that could fit pretty well in the design I'm considering (although I have to admit having played a bunch of Balatro recently, the idea of using poker hands remains appealing to me). I like the idea of the players going around drawing cards from the deck one at a time. If they all draw minor arcana up to the ritual level (a basic ritual maybe is 2 cards, intermediate is 3, etc) then the ritual is a success. If they get a major, then yeah it goes wrong. Only problem with this approach is that I want a couple cards to be drawn even on a basic ritual because I want to make sure most of the players get involved every time. BUT if I allow for wildcards or substitutions (example- the wizard and cleric get a feat to always draw 2 cards and can choose which to use, the group can "earn" cards from defeating enemies and a player can opt to use one of those cards over what they drew as long as the group agrees, etc etc), then that might balance out some of the diminishing chances of drawing 3-4-5-6 cards. Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 04:03
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I don't know anything about Tarot, but if I were to be making a ritual system out of a deck of standard playing cards where players had to play a certain combination of cards in order to get a specific effect, I would do something like this: Each ritual has a certain number of card slots, representing complexity. Longer or more involved rituals require more cards to be played. Each slot has a specific requirement. This requirement is either a rank or a suit. Easier rituals have more general requirements ("any red card" and "A-6" both have about a 50% chance of being met) and difficult rituals have harder requirements ("any spade" is 25%, "3 or 4" is 15%, etc.) Players may play any card to that slot that matches the requirement. This system has three strengths. First, by letting players pick cards to fill broad requirements, they get to have a little pattern-matching puzzle that also involves a bit of foresight, since they might want to think about what cards to save for later in order to make sure they can land a future ritual. Second, the math is much easier to fudge. For any given slot, the probability that the players will have a matching card is [1 - (odds)^(hand size)]. If players are playing to multiple slots, the odds for each subsequent slot treat the hand size as one lower than the previous. In order to get the total odds, just multiply all of the slot numbers together. (This very much does not cover all factors and makes basic assumptions like an even distribution of requirements.) Third, this gives you two sliders to mess with in order to set difficulty. You can make a table that maps a slot's difficulty onto its success chance for each hand size for easy reference, then pick combinations that work out to the right number. Do you want something with a 2/3 success rate? Maybe it takes one card out of their hand of five, but that slot has a 20% success chance, or maybe it takes all five, but those slots all have a 75% chance. The downside of this is that this doesn't really map onto an actual tarot deck, unless you remove the Major Arcana, and if you're not using the Major Arcana, then what's the point of using a tarot deck? This also isn't exactly like making poker hands, since the requirements are a lot looser, but I think it hits the same beat of picking cards from a hand to meet a requirement while also keeping the math much easier to predict.
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Apr 19, 2024 04:34
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There's two ways I can see approaching major arcana in this: 1) major arcana are all unique special snowflakes, throwing a wrench in more complex hand design because they eat up 20% of the deck and can't be used for pairs, flushes, etc etc etc 2) treat major arcana as a weird 5th suit where the rank order is defined on a table somewhere. EX Fool = 1 World =2 ... ... ... Hierophant = 13 Death = 14 Or whatever. I suspect there's probably some tarot instruction guide that does rankings like that out there. This does allow for more poker/etc options, but it does make the tarot deck feel a lot more like an oversized playing card deck, which is a little disappointing.
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Apr 19, 2024 04:51
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Completely spitballing here, but the Major Arcana could be straight-up wildcards, except they could be spent outside a ritual to have a specific positive effect, or perhaps using them in a ritual would have a specific negative effect. Wildcards in a hand-building thing are very powerful, especially if they’re a full fifth of the deck, so figuring out what the relative power level of a guaranteed contribution towards a successful ritual is and how to create 14 unique positive/negative effects of similar power would be a pretty big challenge.
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Apr 19, 2024 05:04
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I was actually thinking sort of the opposite — you draw until you get x minor arcana (where x varies with the difficulty of the ritual effects you’re seeking) or you draw a major arcana. The major arcana then defines what goes wrong with your ritual. Or, you could say that a major arcana counts as 1 or more successes, meaning that rituals almost always will succeed, but also creates an unpleasant side effect whose strength is proportionate with how many successes it had to count for. Trying for four successes but drawing Justice after only one minor arcana might mean your ritual to create a magic item goes off fine, but it stole magic residuum from the King’s vault, his divinators have descriptions of your party, and a whole bunch of wanted posters are being printed up right now. Much more entertaining than, “Your ritual failed.”
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Apr 19, 2024 05:19
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Also, just to give some sense of what I'm imagining for rituals here, as that might help people think through how the mechanics could work. Teleportation Description: the group spends 15 minutes making incantations and ritually creating a connection between an anchoring talisman from their target location and their current location. This ritual must be performed outdoors, and only the active willing participants will be teleported. Their anchoring talisman is left behind. Difficulty Level: teleporting 50 miles is a basic difficulty ritual (65% success rate or better) and increases in level (-15% success rate) for every 50 miles beyond that Failure: If the group fails in the ritual casting, the GM rolls a D12, and uses that as a clock direction from their target destination. The GM then draws a path along that direction for 1/2 the distance of the initial teleport ritual. The PCs are transported there*, or an appropriate nearby point of interest (within 5-10 miles). Other notes: An individual may only participate in one teleportation ritual a week Exorcism Description: After defeating a spirit or demon, the group gathers the target's body and/or fetishes and soaks them in lavender and oil for 30 minutes. The ground where the spirit/demon was defeated is marked with the runes of Invantenese using red salt, and then burned. Finally, the weapon used to defeat the spirit or demon is buried in to the ground, no less than 1 foot deep. Difficulty Level: This is a basic ritual for a spirit or demon of level 1-5, intermediate for levels 6-10, advanced for 11-15, and archmagus for levels 16-20 Failure: A small portion of the demon or spirit escapes the ritual, but has to find a living anchor to survive. Pick a random spell or power the spirit possessed, and pick a random living entity in the vicinity (1 mile radius). That entity now possesses that power/spell, and a deep dislike of the PCs if they meet them. Restore Life Description: Bringing a corpse in good condition to an appropriate holy space, the ritualists submerge the body in holy water for 5 days, along with their 3 most important possessions. Hymns to the godesses of death and birth must be sung every hour, and offerings to every major star made each night. Difficulty Level: This is an advanced ritual for a body that has recently (2 weeks) passed and is generally whole. A archmagus level ritual can be attempted for bodies that passed within the past year, or were largely destroyed in or after death. There is surely no ritual to bring back anyone who has been dead for more than 1 year, all the priests agree. Failure: The GM picks or rolls from the table below
Another big part of this effort is going through and giving rituals interesting failure conditions- meaning something more than "it doesn't work" or "it backfires to the point you wish you hadn't even cast it" As I type some of these out, I also realize this system could benefit from scaling failures. Like in exorcism- each trump card could mean another creature is affected by the escaping spirit. Or for Restore Life, multiple failures cause a few NPCs to die, and the players take a HP hit, and the restored character comes back w/ a curse...
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Apr 19, 2024 05:34
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Why not low levels the majors are played after a failure to modify the fail state to be more advantageous and then at the higher levels they learn the deep lore and can cast super charged rituals made entirely of the majors. This gives the majors a constant reason to be circulating between the deck and the players as well as give players a tactical component in the rituals, especially if they can only have so many cards on them at a time. Do they save minors to try and force a success or hold on to the majors to blunt the failures? Or the majors could be played on top of the rituals as spell augments for basically the same mechanical benefit with the deck. Or you could do both. You could also have the majors be consumed as a single use spell scroll basically at lower levels to give them a thematically appropriate to the card higher level spell to add another action into the economy that they can balance against.
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Apr 19, 2024 08:26
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This is maybe a bit more work, but what if you did something a little more thematic to tarot card reading for the major arcana? For minor arcana, orientation doesn't matter, a five of cups has the same meaning if it is upside down or right side up. But the major arcana meaning is inverted if the card is inverted. So you deal a card from the top of the deck to one player and they turn it over left > right in front of everybody, so that the way they are looking at it determines the orientation. If the card is right side up, it is a positive influence on the ritual (wild card). If it is inverted, it has a negative effect. So at a low level, it takes up one of the available slots in the hand size limit. At a higher level of negative effect, each inverted card makes the failure worse. The teleport spell is off by 5 miles > 10 miles > 15 miles. If you really want to put time and effort into it, you can have the major arcana affect the spells thematically instead. A few examples off the top of my head: Magician - Always a positive effect, regardless of ritual cast. The Tower - Positive effect: For teleportation, negates negative effects of other major arcana. Negative effects: Will point teleportation target to the next closest 3+ story structure The Lovers - Resurrection spell Positive: The target's lover/partner can be used to provide another hand slot (so 6 total slots instead of just 5). Negative resurrection: Target's lover/partner receives the curse/dies in exchange Death - Resurrection spell Positive: Bonus max HP or +1 to multiple resistances. Negative resurrection: Complete failure, target remains dead, cannot be resurrected, and if you want to really ramp it up, someone else also dies. (Attempting to defy Death at an amateur level comes with a higher cost due to your hubris) The Devil - Exorcism Positive: Target receives a low level demonic boon (dark vision, can read/speak abyssal/infernal, some basic lv1 cantrip regardless of class) with no side effects. Negative exorcism: Something like a fae pact, where the target knows they would not be here if not for demonic intervention, and must change their alignment to evil and choose a new evil deity.
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Apr 19, 2024 16:25
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(Obligatory "Death means transformation, not literal death" post)
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Apr 19, 2024 17:05
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CzarChasm posted:The Tower - Positive effect Frankly I'd never have the Tower have overtly positive effects. Maybe its negatives could happen in such a way that it still ends up being positive but the Tower is the disaster card for a reason.
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Apr 19, 2024 18:22
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