Weakness ideas.

Nice break..back to work on more powers.

Anyone have some more ideas for weaknesses? I'm thinking of adding an assortment of psychological issues, a "somatic component" or movement based weakness.

I have also thought of having a a proximity limitation...basically if you are outside of a certain area or radius then you are powerless or at least greatly reduced in power. This is for those one city only heroes, or possibly "protector of the forest" ideals.

Terrain, light level, phase of the moon, weather or some other environnmental requirements might just make a decent weakness.

Also an advanced recharge item, like the green lantern....but that's basically already covered by the limited use weakness.

What else?

What's in a name? Part 2

So for humans and other living things I originally thought about how to describe their capability to absorb damage. This got me to thinking about what damage to a person means...mechanically.

A person is made of meat (effectively) and they can resist a certain amount of hurting through will power, musculature, and general durability. So I looked at some other systems names for this. The classic "Hit Points", "Wounds", "Damage capacity", others. I decided to be a bit off the wall and call mine Meat Value. Because really what is a person but meat. A person's total amount of meat needs to be chopped up before they die, unless a specific body part is destroyed. From Bob the trucker to Billy the Nerd there isn't too much variation in the world for actual meat volume in a person. The exception to this generalization or the muscular and the fat versus the anorexic.

So Brawn and Endurance go into the Hardness and Meat Value traits of a character.

I am thinking of changing this to be Damage Capacity or something similar, something more generic that can be better applied across the board to all parts of the game, not just meaty things. As would a car have meat value or metal value? Or just Damage Capacity?

Character Creation Clarified

Ok, so I started to try to drum up some interest by trying to get a PbP gamestest going yesterday. This may take a while. So in the interest of smoothing out some rough spots I will outline the process of character creation to everyone.

Step 1 - Get a character sheet or piece of paper, and a pencil (there will be some erasing)
Step 2 - Open up the Character Life Path link ---->
Step 3 - Decide which direction to build you character from. Do you want to build from birth to adult or decide on a job to start with and work backward from there? Both ways are explained in the document.
Step 4 - Start following the paths to get the numerical set up for your character.
Step 5 - Spend you bonus points - either on Bonus Traits or on increasing your attributes or skills. You can set aside a maximum of 10 bonus points to buy some power skills if you know you are making a super hero.
Step 6 - Breathe some life into them... add some details and write a story that follows their path. Here is also where you will write down the "Motivations" of the character which will come into play in the rewards section.
Step 7 - have the GM approve or disapprove the final character and then maybe Super powers can come into play.

Hopefully this is help out some of the folks looking into this system. I need to get back to work on building it more. Right now I have a framed house with some walls, no sheet rock or insulation yet, but the stick frame and roof are up.

Welcome

if you are here from TTW...great! Look to the right and you will see what is finished so far. No worries though, anything that isn't complete as of yet will be hashed out and fixed before being played with. I will be getting the equipment and junk up in the next day or so. Thanks see you all back on TTW or possibly even here for a while.


EDIT: Good lord spell checking before posting would be a good habit to get into.

Go-go gadget ???

So I have apower that will allow someone to make gadgets. This would be one of the "Batman" powers out there that covers many bases for a single price.

I am having trouble making this a semi-balanced power.

A character should be able to make a certain number of gadgets. Possibly even an unlimited number of them. But how to limit this in such a way to make it fair for others to play along side someone who has this power.

I want the power to be able to simulate almost any other power, but not quite as well. The bat grappling gun is cool and usefull, but not as cool as having the actual grapple shooting power of say Spiderman. A deathray by recurring villain Doctor Stupid should be deadly, and scary, but not like being hit by a Powerblast from Cyclops.

Prep time is one of the big limits I want to build into it. Say 1 day of work per rank in the power. The character can build a gizmo that simulates a single power, that gadget has a power rating equal to the character but no skilled uses or effects, anyone can use said gizmo.

Any help out there or other ideas on how to fix up this power?

Movement Modes

7 new powers are up in the Out of Sequence doc.

Movement mode- fly/swim/swing/etc.

The beginning of the rewards is up

Adjusted the powers a bit. I'm going with the "Power Blast" name as I just can't handle the lameness that is Damage Blast. There has to be some flavor built in, beside my bad humor in the examples.

Starting a new set of powers today F-(I dunno yet) but the first doc is over 20 pages long.

Set up an "Out of Sequence" power list for powers that get renamed or built out of order.

Going to hammer down some of the rewards material today some time.

Rewards

Ok since rewards is becoming a nice topic I'll C&P the discussion over to a new thread to keep thing separate.

---------
jeffd said...
Another question: What's the reward system look like?Your reward system will, more than anything else, determine how your game is played. Players will do what they get rewarded for. D&D rewards killing things and taking their stuff, which is why D&D is almost always some form of a dungeon crawl. White Wolf's RPGs reward exploring & resolving plots created by the Storyteller. Both are very typical structures, used by lots of RPGs. There are lots of other reward systems out there though - some reward the players for introducing their own complications and then overcoming them, etc.
March 8, 2009 1:54 PM
Greyen said...
Very true, I can't argue with that.
March 8, 2009 1:54 PM
Greyen said...
As for rewards there will be 2 systems one for RP..a karmic reward thing I'll get into in the next day or two and another for action somewhat like the Storyteller system.Mainly the exp will be spent like storyteller system. As for Karmic rewards they will be used somewhat like force points in the starwars games. If you do something that reifroces your character's main motivations you get points which youc an spend to boost yourself for a turn/action. If you do something that is against your main motivations then the GM can use them agaisnt you.-sorry a little drunk, typing skills already bad, made wrse by alcohol.
March 8, 2009 1:58 PM
jeffd said...
The thing to think about with the reward system - what do you want the players to do? Not the characters, the players.
March 8, 2009 3:39 PM

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To which I say, that I want a few things in a game.

1. Have fun - Mind you this does not need to be joyous social party, but something enjoyable. I've played in some really mind bending games that have had me and some of the other players so deep into it that tears have come (Jaime's 3 player Vamp game was memorable for this). Others have left me with nightmares or at a minimu have had me up thinking (Jim's Werewolf, and one of my PbP's are good for this). Some of the fun also comes in good old fashioned hack and slash (Turbo Dungeon D&D here in Belgium). So fun comes in many flaovrs.

2. To make players/GM think and be challenged - Its a boring game if there is no challenge for the GM or for the players. Which is a sign of good players and GM if they can challenge each other with out making it personal or something more than a game.

3. To learn - One of the most important things about any game, in my mind, is to put yourself into another person's shoes and act as they would. This can really build some excellent life skills in some ways by forcing a person to think about things in ways they would have not in their everyday activities.

Caveat--All of this can be taken too far, Real Life comes first.

So what do you think?

Break- RL news

FYI- I have been approved to go to Officer Candidate School. Dunno when yet but there will most likely be a 4 month break in my access to the board. Officail notification for when has not been published yet but hopefully in the next few days it will be.

Whats in a name?

If you scroll down in the Powers list you will find a long series of powers that are all variations of the basic Energy Blast. Now I am trying to build it so a blast of cosmic ray and a spray of ice shards, or a fire blast, or a laser or an acidic glob are all based around the same set of ideas/rules.

Now should all of these be called "Energy Blast, xxxxx" or Something else?

Maybe "Damage Blast"? (sounds dumb to me but maybe it will grow on me.)
Maybe "Power Blast"? (This may be the best as its general wording is good)
Maybe something I haven't thought of yet....

Any words of wisdom from my miniscule number advisors out there? There are at the time of posting this 4 people who visit this site (one of which may be me).

More Powers! Fun ones too!

Alrighty then..8 more powers up today as well as some work on the system itself.

Elemental Control type powers as well as the first few direct damage Energy Blast forms.

Lets See-
Direct - hose/beam
Direct - basic
Direct -AoE
Direct - MIRV
Direct - PBAoE
Direct - Shotgun/Spray
Direct + DoT
Direct - Homing (trades accuracy bonuses for damage)
Direct - Sniper
Direct + incapacitate
Direct + other side effect (confuse/etc)
Direct + knockback
AOEDoT (will include PBAoE DoT)
-----done----
Any kinds of direct damage energy/elemental blast forms that I'm missing from the list above?

To -Do list

Examining this as a serious undertaking I have built my self a large to-Do list.

These things will be created in time. Not neccessarily in order either. But so far I estimate that I have over 60 pages of material finished with about another 100 to go.

Then there will be fluff....maybe.

To-Do dist is on the right

Alright, back on track.

Some System Basics are up. More advanced and indepth stuff to come.

This should outline much of how the system works. Its really basic.

I have noticed that there is a ton of editing that I need to do. But I need to get all of this stuff written before I go and edit too much as I have found out editing will bog down progress and the urge to finish this project.

Still here still working . Works been crazy lately, not much time to do much beyond some minor edits and a few more powers.

With luck work will slow down over the next few days.