Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Hm, I seem to be quite a popular topic to discuss on this thread.

1.) Confusing Math.

Often in AWMBI, if it makes perfect sense for some action to work, I don't even bother with math, or dice. Only if the character itself is capable enough to be successful at said action, and the action itself is not iffy to the point where it's pretty much a hit-or-miss, such as shooting a moving target, picking a lock while being chased, or anything of the kind.

Other than to determine stats and the like, the stats in All Flesh Must be Eaten's rule's just imply how skilled you are in that area, rather than determining a stat bonus, or an extra chance to hit. However, due to this, "leveling up" in AWMBI is nearly non-existent. Although many people, especially the ones who've taken a liking to D&D, dislike the vast inability to advance your character as quickly as they do in just about every other game, I took a liking to the fact that there really is a limit to a normal human's capability, and I could think realistically, just how fast/smart/strong they are based on that number I see on the sheet. While the numbers on an RPG's sheet are... Just numbers.

2.) "Hey look at me, I'm great at something that doesn't matter!"

As many people have said... Fairly hard to avoid, while maintaining a good amount of character depth, without making it into Diablo. However, given whatever circumstance, just about everyone will be wishing they had those stats they neglected to take when a challenge arises that calls upon skill or power in that area. Such as finding a lock, but not having enough skill to pick it, due to pouring all your points into weaponry. Or actually putting your points into those in-depth skills/traits, and happening across a monster that the GM forces you to fight.

I, personally, just like Janna, don't like that scenario, even though I am, in a way, a victim of my own crime. A way around this is to open up more options for what a player character can do, rather than just having one, simple solution. If you give a creature the intellectual ability to speak, have them in a hallway, or open area so that they can run, and perhaps have given them a weapon as well, you open the situation up to a variety of different solutions, that characters of many different skills and attributes can go through, even though the challenge is the same.

3.) Combat Concerns

I came across this situation before in AWMBI, and surprisingly, no one commented on anything when I myself, intervened with the battle, overruling the dice. Once the battle, and the dice, started to go in a way that annoyed me, I just looked at the stats for some help with the answer, "Who should be winning this battle?" And, when one character's stats said, "This one is faster, and stronger," I immediately made that turn go as if the faster person landed a hit, or managed a grapple. I'm sure that many people playing in AWMBI right now don't even know that I often never use dice, in favor of logic, or simply making my next post less annoying, and possibly adding more to the fun factor to the players, which, asides from fapping material, is the main objective, I believe.

4.) Dice as Sextoys and more problems

The wall of orgasms; this can be avoided by adding a little bit of realism to the system, and state that the average woman does not cum after 15 seconds upon penetration, without some kind of unholy stimulation coming from somewhere else, or a performance enhancing drug to speed the process. My main gripe with Citadel of Corruption, is that I don't feel that it respects the power of an orgasm enough. Shiva, or any of the other characters in the dungeon, would be penetrated, and it just seems like they're having orgasms just as easily as they shed hair, entirely taking away from the power, and the pure pleasure, of an orgasm.

Orgasms usually occur from prolonged stimulation, and build during any act that causes it, differing in rate from person to person. And if, during the act of rape/sex in your game, you tell the player that their character's pleasure continues to build, and build from the sex, that they explode in a powerful orgasm, then it helps to contribute meaning to the orgasm. Rather than it just being like, "The dick goes in, she orgasms," which is not truly satisfying, in my opinion, as the orgasm is hardly given any of the credit it deserves.

5.) "Oh no, not ________. Ewwwww!"

Having players in a one-on-one session with you, the GM, this can be really easy to deal with. However, if characters amass into a group, then this can be a big problem, which I've encountered a couple times during my time running AWMBI, such as when Wallpaper nearly threw-up when a centipede raped her character (>.<). In all honesty... This might be the greatest challenge, asides from making a great storyline. My only reccomendation is, when players sign up, they sign a list, similar to The Egg stating what they're cool with, and what they're not. And when groups come together, just pair their likes together, to send monsters at them that they can all agree on... Although that's more work for the GM, which you've stated you're trying to avoid... Although, that's the best thing I can think of.

In RJ's case, considering AWMBI has QUITE a bit of futa in it, I was surprised to see he didn't want his character futa'd.

In a way... I view futas as guys, and Shiva, a character I role play with very often, and recreate in many games with character customization, I see as a beautiful woman. And when Siphon said she'd turn into a futa, a character I actually came to like very much, turned futa, that was a huge moral blow to my willingness to play.

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Often in AWMBI, if it makes perfect sense for some action to work, I don't even bother with math, or dice. Only if the character itself is capable enough to be successful at said action, and the action itself is not iffy to the point where it's pretty much a hit-or-miss, such as shooting a moving target, picking a lock while being chased, or anything of the kind.

Shhhh... don't let the players hear I do the same thing a lot: I kind of assume that most characters are competent at what they're doing and so when something shows up where they have skill or points or whatever I will usually just assume the succeed unless there's extenuating circumstances (someone working against them or trying to do something in the middle of a gunfight).

Other than to determine stats and the like, the stats in All Flesh Must be Eaten's rule's just imply how skilled you are in that area, rather than determining a stat bonus, or an extra chance to hit. However, due to this, "leveling up" in AWMBI is nearly non-existent. Although many people, especially the ones who've taken a liking to D&D, dislike the vast inability to advance your character as quickly as they do in just about every other game, I took a liking to the fact that there really is a limit to a normal human's capability, and I could think realistically, just how fast/smart/strong they are based on that number I see on the sheet. While the numbers on an RPG's sheet are... Just numbers.

That's the same with my system. Although it would be possible to gain more character points, I would normally only want to award any at the end of a game. Usually the types of things I like to run take place over a fairly short period of time and there isn't the need for Leveling Up. I'm less concerned with realism; I think it has it's place but if it makes for an fun game or an exciting story to shave off bits of the reality, I'm all for that.

I, personally, just like Janna, don't like that scenario, even though I am, in a way, a victim of my own crime. A way around this is to open up more options for what a player character can do, rather than just having one, simple solution. If you give a creature the intellectual ability to speak, have them in a hallway, or open area so that they can run, and perhaps have given them a weapon as well, you open the situation up to a variety of different solutions, that characters of many different skills and attributes can go through, even though the challenge is the same.

This is a really good idea and something I'm strongly considering for a modification. I know that in Nightmares Unnamed there were enemies that attacked non-Defense stats (I encountered one that would attack against my character's Spiritual stat instead of my combat defense) and that seemed to work out really well.

Letting people know up front that they will encounter enemies or challenges that can't be punched to death right up front might also help reduce the combat overbalancing.

I came across this situation before in AWMBI, and surprisingly, no one commented on anything when I myself, intervened with the battle, overruling the dice. Once the battle, and the dice, started to go in a way that annoyed me, I just looked at the stats for some help with the answer, "Who should be winning this battle?" And, when one character's stats said, "This one is faster, and stronger," I immediately made that turn go as if the faster person landed a hit, or managed a grapple. I'm sure that many people playing in AWMBI right now don't even know that I often never use dice, in favor of logic, or simply making my next post less annoying, and possibly adding more to the fun factor to the players, which, asides from fapping material, is the main objective, I believe.

Again, don't give away everything from the GM's bag of tricks Like I said before, the dice do a good job of keeping me honest so I don't like to dispense with them completely. That said, I know that in at least one Nightmares Unnamed fight someone's Jinxed trait came up three or four times in a row and that probably would have been something that I fudged away. Likewise, I don't like rounds where nothing happens so after about two in a row where every combatant misses or fails, I start giving "+drama" bonuses to keep things moving

Orgasms usually occur from prolonged stimulation, and build during any act that causes it, differing in rate from person to person. And if, during the act of rape/sex in your game, you tell the player that their character's pleasure continues to build, and build from the sex, that they explode in a powerful orgasm, then it helps to contribute meaning to the orgasm. Rather than it just being like, "The dick goes in, she orgasms," which is not truly satisfying, in my opinion, as the orgasm is hardly given any of the credit it deserves.

Did you get a chance to use the sex stuff in Nightmares Unnamed, RJ? How did you think it worked?

My only reccomendation is, when players sign up, they sign a list, similar to The Egg stating what they're cool with, and what they're not. And when groups come together, just pair their likes together, to send monsters at them that they can all agree on... Although that's more work for the GM, which you've stated you're trying to avoid... Although, that's the best thing I can think of.

I'm not opposed to that kind of work for the GM; I'd much rather carefully select opponents than roll randomly or something like that anyway. Games, like the sex scenes, can lack the building tension to a climax, too Picking opponents and working to build the drama for the characters can be some of the most fun a GM gets to have instead of "Hmmm... I rolled a 6, I guess this room contains another tentacle trap."

In a way... I view futas as guys, and Shiva, a character I role play with very often, and recreate in many games with character customization, I see as a beautiful woman. And when Siphon said she'd turn into a futa, a character I actually came to like very much, turned futa, that was a huge moral blow to my willingness to play.

That's the kind of thing I would like to avoid for sure. It's again something that's handled best probably in pre-game work and communication between the GM and players.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Did you get a chance to use the sex stuff in Nightmares Unnamed, RJ? How did you think it worked?

I did indeed. And the last thing that he sent at her in the nightmare world, was a very sexually attractive Dryad. And I'm sure the inspiration behind this enemy was the fact that I made Shiva out to be very bi-curious, as the Dryad released a mind numbing pollen, that filled Shiva's mind with suggestive thoughts. It was then that Shiva, instead of fighting the enemy again, weapon or no, decided to have sex with the Dryad. And the numbers went just right, providing a very erotic, as well as fun experience for me, the player.

I actually recommend that system, more than the one I'm using.

 

[xivvix]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

While I don't have any experience running any PBP games (though I have given thought to doing so, and have even worked on my own system) Ill try to help out if I can.

1) As far as math goes, I'm not a fan of complicated systems. I originally wanted to play Jumpers because I saw it on the original forum and it seemed like fun, but then when it came time for me to make character on this forum, I almost gave up. I'm just not good with formulas and some of Silth's instructions weren't written very well. It took me a while, but I eventually figured it out. Of course, now I have to deal with the formulas each time Kaye levels up, but darent's awesome excel sheet has been a huge help for that.

My personal suggestion is to keep the math as simple as possible. Small numbers (1,2,3 out of 5) are more descriptive than large numbers (72,72.5,73 out of 100) of something's strength, and less complicated formulas will make it less of a pain to figure out combat sequences and such.

2) The only way I can think of to make sure that someone doesn't load up on unnecessary skills is to make sure those skills have a use, and make sure players understand what they are. For example, when I made Christie in AWMBI, I was thinking that she'd be using her repair and crafting skills during missions to help out some way (like fix some big machine, or hotwire a car) but that didn't end up being the case. Those skills turned out to be, at least from my perspective, more of "back at the safe house, fool around with things" skills that I just never got around to using.

I would suggest cutting out any skills that you, as GM, don't see yourself finding uses for that the players will find interesting. For example, it might be useful for a character to know how to sew to fix damaged clothes, but its not particularly interesting for that to be left to chance. Logic and roleplaying can handle something like that.

3) I think that all characters should be able to defend themselves somewhat, even without some kind of skill (all kids learn how to make a fist and swing it, just some are better at it than others), unless they have some drawback like coward that prevents them from thinking in that way. On the other hand, I'm in favor of putting limits on how strong a character can be when starting out, similar to Keylo's memory system (though obviously that will only work for certain stories).

One idea I was toying with for my PbP is having characters that want to start with high combat skills is to pick one weapon that they are proficient with (they might get smaller advantages with other weapons or in general), but not let them start with it. Let them find it sometime later, but for now they are only slightly stronger than the less combat oriented characters.

4) I liked the sex system that was in Nightmares Unnamed (though I didn't get much experience with it) as well as how it worked in Fear of the Dark. I agree with the comments earlier about using stimulation to build up to an orgasm. It makes for a more interesting scene, plus it gives a chance for the characters to fight back or give in. Something on the order of three to five turns of stimulation per orgasm seems to work well to me.

5) I think asking the players what they are comfortable with (and letting them know what you are comfortable with) before the game starts is a great idea.

 

[DeMatt]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Whee... I'm going to add my two cents' worth.

For what it's worth, I'm totally in favor of some fudging and blurriness with the game system. That's why the version I use has (or was originally intended to have) a lot of empty space and things that didn't matter so much.

You're right in that the more rules that you add to a game, the more rules you need to add on top of those rules to make sure it works. Basically the idea with my system was supposed to be if a player comes up with something they want to do, the GM figures out what attribute it might be based on and rolls. I was... skeptical... about Icelus' decision to show every single dice roll and modifier; one of the best tools in the GM's arsenal is the ability to apply hidden bonuses or penalties based on information that the players don't have yet.

This decision, whether to show dice rolls or merely to show results, affects more than knowledge. It's also one way for the players to extend their trust in the GM.

By showing the dice rolls, modifiers and all, the GM effectively "shows his work", allowing the players to follow along and verify for themselves that the GM is not arbitrarily deciding things. My own experience with D&D stopped at 3e... in there, the players performed rolls for their own characters openly, and the GM did the rolls for NPCs secretly. In a forum-based situation, this might change such that the GM shows all the players' rolls, but only the final result of the NPCs' rolls. During Dark Conception I showed all the combat rolls, as I felt, being new to GM'ing, I needed to allow that much more information out so that the players wouldn't be concerned that I was deliberately forcing encounters to proceed in a given fashion.

Whether you OUGHT to be able to fudge situations should be designed into the game system beforehand. Such a system would almost certainly include fewer numeric statistics, as you're considering bypassing them at least occasionally.

 

[Host]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

To shamelessly plug, I believe Slave Hunt is the answer to pretty much every problem here. You’ll be hearing about it a lot in this post…

1.) Confusing Math.

Solution: Don’t use confusing math. Not as hard as it sounds… though admittedly not as easy either. Slave Hunt does it simply – standard roll + bonus for just about every roll, and utterly no math needed apart from basic counting in character creation.

2.) "Hey look at me, I'm great at something that doesn't matter!"

3.) Combat Concerns

Solution to both: Don’t give the option of making such characters. People don’t need to customise their character to the extent of being able to place every skill point, and Slave Hunt solves this brilliantly – your stats are decided almost entirely by your species + your class, both of which must be chosen from preset templates. As you said yourself, it's something that happens way too easily in a point based character creation system; the simple answer is thusly to not use a point based character creation system. As long as the GM does not create any unbalanced templates or combinations of templates, the game will be spectacularly balanced for each character. You won’t get an ineffective character if every character template is capable in some form of ‘combat’. If there is a skill that’s overpowered, make it so that none of the templates have much of it (or suffer heavy penalties to offset it). Dodge chance and pleasure chance in Slave Hunt, for instance, are overpowered stats, but they are offset because it’s far more difficult to get a large amount of either than their respective opposites (physical hit chance/pleasure chance). The level of customisation in Slave Hunt is small enough that min/maxing characters don’t really get that much of an advantage over others (assuming they all choose races in the same rareness category). Furthermore, the characters are capable of three kinds of combat, and maxing one at the cost of the others still leaves a character vulnerable.

The time taken by a battle is just a case of experimentation. Tweak things till it’s to your liking.

4.) Dice as Sextoys and more problems

Sex should definitely be stated out; the only other option I can see is for it to be done entirely through RP. The level of complexity and strategy for this is up to you – it could be ‘I fuck’, it could be ‘I change positions, use X on area’. Same with normal combat really – ‘I attack’ vs ‘I make aimed shot at head with primary weapon, make aimed shot at body with secondary weapon’. As for how it should go, again I’ll state: Slave Hunt gets it right. What I would promote, in general, would be 1.) not having an orgasm per attack, 2.) an inevitable weakening as time passes, either because the rolls get harder to avoid or because your orgasmeter keeps building up (and should reset after the inevitable), 3.) a number of climaxes before being taken out (as opposed to one and then combat’s over, you loose).

5.) "Oh no, not ________. Ewwwww!"

Two solutions: get consensus on things, hopefully at the start, or, if the story permits it, you can have the players choosing which monster to attack from all the monsters in an area, or moving on if nothing’s good. Again, Slave Hunt’s method.


Further extra stuff: Perma-death should be possible and should happen if the dice gods decree it or the characters run into the room labelled ‘gas chamber’. If it’s possible to make an OP combat character using your system, and you don’t want said characters, your system is broken and needs to be fixed. Don’t fudge results much if at all. Showing rolls and results of rolls is good and should be done – not unknown modifiers, of course, just total results.

One of the things I was vaguely kicking around in my head was the idea of implementing almost a "Character Class" system; where everybody is going to get some combat abilities, some skill stuff and some miscellaneous points. It would reduce the customization, unfortunately, but might alleviate some of the problems with the divide between a group of character's combat ability.

Let's say, as a random example, that I was planning a sci-fi game where the characters were a team sent out to some out of the way colony that had dropped out of communication with the Earth Alliance or whatever. I know, as GM, that there's going to be alien monsters to combat and captured colonists to rescue and mechanical stuff to repair. Would it make sense for me to lay out say four or five pre-built sets of character points and give people a set of extra points to customize their individual characters around? That way I could be certain of both an upper and a lower cap on damage and pulse rifle shootiness and make sure that even Steroid Marine #7 also knows a little about, say, driving Power Loaders or setting up sentry guns.

…I missed this till after I wrote everything. Basically, this sums up what you should do.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

1) For math, it depends more on what you're more comfortable with than anything else. I recommend coming up with a base number. D&D 3rd and 3.5 use 20. All Flesh Must Be Eaten uses 10. Jumpers and CoC use 50. Do you want big numbers that result in more insignificant discrepancies between the stats of a character and an enemy, or do you want the slightest difference between stats to be very meaningful? For example, if you use base 100, a character with 30 Willpower vs a character with 50 Willpower is fairly significant, while under base 10 the difference between a character with a 3 vs a character with 5 isn't so big, even though it's the same ratio.

2) Shrink skills. The fewer skills you have, the better. For instance, why have two skills for computer repair and car mechanics when you can combine them into engineering? It might not make sense in real life terms, but it makes the game more streamlined and cuts back on useless skills. On the other hand, having many weapons skills for the combat types makes for interesting variety, and maintains a sense of reality. How many skills should also reflect the base number you choose, if you choose your system to have a base number of 10, you shouldn't have 50 skills, for instance.

3) I like what xivvix said, about picking one weapon they're mainly proficient with. Even if they've never been in a fight, everyone I've ever met has some type of preferred weapon, which they talk about using. Mine's a rifle, my friend likes broadswords, and my gf likes shotguns. Might not really be that good with it, but it's what we'd pick if a bunch of weapons were on a table and we had to fight it out with someone. Think like a favored weapon, which a character gets a moral bonus when using.

4) I agree, make it take more than one round to orgasm. But on the same note, don't make the enemies orgasm based on the characters. It's just more realistic to have the two not just synced up.

 

[ToxicShock]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

I was wondering if any of you had an opinion on mid-game system changes? Another hang-up of mine is trial things. I wouldn't want to put a trial on system. The main thing being, I wouldn't want to start something and have people make their characters, customizable sheets, start up introductions, create the thread and maps, and then make mechanic changes. I don't know why, I think it's partly because I see it as an inconvenience for people involved. Of course, we all obviously realize that new games and new systems will have hang-ups, so it's not uncommon at all that a game may have problems, but do you view it, in the eyes of a player, as annoying/frustrating/troublesome?

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

I'm going to kind of mass reply since I don't want to repeat myself too terribly much (also given the length of my replies, I don't want anybody going blind on a giant wall of words).

1.) Math Suggestions

There's really only one bit of fiddly math that happens during character creation. During actual gameplay, there's nothing more complicated than "Roll 2d6 and add some numbers off your sheet".

One of the fundamental things about the system as it stands is that I have a goal of keeping the 2d6 roll meaningful for all characters; so you don't generally see bonuses much higher than 2d6+9 except in highly specialized cases (like Kaci's medical skill mentioned earlier).

Mostly it's a game about small numbers. The difference between a Physical Stat of 4 and of 5 feels significant and the difference between a 4 and an 8 is extreme.

2.) Skills and Abilities

There are a few suggestions to shrink the skill list. In the last game Nightmares Unnamed there were 9 skills, cut down from 12 skills in the original version for Fear of the Dark. Generally I would want to keep that number low and take out skills that aren't going to be useful in the game in question, possibly replacing them with skills that are.

For example, going back to the Sci Fi game, you might want to bring back a seperate Computers skill differentiated from the Technical skill. In a Fantasy Game you might want to add in Arcana or Religion to be used for different kinds of challenges.

The traits are where I think I will almost certainly be doing some cutting; the three traits per attribute that give a +2 bonus to specific uses can probably be culled down a little. The idea with those traits originally was to give people ways to specialize their characters at a lower cost than actually increasing their Physical/Mental/Spiritual attributes. Those were the ones I noticed being less useful; I'm thinking that the more feat-style traits like "Fast Metabolism" and "Surprise Attack" seem like better way to model that kind of thing (and again, tweak the available traits based on the game that I'd want to run).

3.) Combat Stuff

It sounds like a lot of people are on board with the template idea. That makes things a lot simpler for me to balance and that would be very good. The training rules would still allow some customization of a character who might want to be good with Broadswords or Shotguns or whatever but using the templates would also enable me to raise the cost of that across the board without worrying that it would mean non-combat focused types would just end up further behind.

And now specific stuff:

Something on the order of three to five turns of stimulation per orgasm seems to work well to me.

That seemed to be a little shorter than what I was experiencing with Morgan's "fights" in N.U.; it was probably more like 5 to 7 rounds in most cases before she'd be in danger of orgasm but she was fairly well built for sex stuff. I imagine a character with lower a Physical stat would have faster times. I wonder if any of the players felt like the erotic stuff was dragging on too long

To shamelessly plug, I believe Slave Hunt is the answer to pretty much every problem here.

I don't know what that is

I agree, make it take more than one round to orgasm. But on the same note, don't make the enemies orgasm based on the characters. It's just more realistic to have the two not just synced up.

The enemies don't; the characters can make the same kind of sexy attacks and have a good shot at getting the enemy off before they do. (Some enemies, like some players, are better or worse at erotic stuff so you raep him right back young lady.)

I was wondering if any of you had an opinion on mid-game system changes?

As long as you let people know up front that there could be changes, I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Sometimes unexpected quirks can pop up during play and one thing might turn out to be drastically overpowered or pathetically weak; you're only really likely to get complaints if you change one of those I'd be hesitant to just completely strip a character of an ability after the game has started -- that's never going to be fun no matter what you replace it with.

 

[thetwo]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Templates are a good start, but you really either need to give people either the ability to choose like 3 different ones or allow a significant amount of customization within templates, to allow for enough variety. I mean, some things wouldn't have a serious impact on play - like, choosing which gun you wanted to use with a particular template, or which utility skill (assuming they were all equally useful).

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Templates, I think are better if the characters and their respective backgrounds themselves are part of the template, else, you'll be making a character that suits you, similar to the way Shiva suits me, and you'll be forced to pick from a list of templates, which, in all likelihood, won't suit the character you want at all. If I was going to join a game with templates laid out, made to prevent min-maxing, then I'd much rather have the character story, and background laid out as well. Else, I'd find that by not being able to make the character I want, skills, habits, pros-cons, and traits included, very difficult to actually think of a character description, and background that was at least semi-interesting, or added depth to the character in one case or another.

While this does prevent people who don't care for depth, or an interesting story, nor character, from just making some ridiculous, unreal character, with all these skills and powers, it limits the people who would like to "merge" with their characters, and immerse themselves into the game. And say that the templates become part of character creation, and the people that try to make OP characters cannot do so, and are forced into picking a balanced character, then what? Does that make them better role players? Or will make them more in depth with the story progression? As a GM, I can say that those certain people that are simply not willing to go in depth with role playing, cannot be worked with, templates or not. And only serve to be a headache when the GM tries to involve emotion, complexion, or difficult decisions.

Of course, it would make a lot more sense, if your game was like Slave hunt, in that it doesn't involve too much of a story line, similar to Slave Maker. So there's no real need for character development, or background, as it's mostly irrelevant to the game itself, which does not focus so much on story, as it does the sexy slaves.

I'm thinking that since that goes beyond simple First Aid (the initial point of the skill check), I want to reduce the amount healed down to maybe 2 points per point of success. So with a roll of 20, you'd be looking at a healing of 12 points. At that point, I'd also be able to throw in an extra trait to allow for bonus healing to represent better medical training.

Also, I meant to ask about this before... Kaci pretty much has a lot of points poured into medical training... And if the health bonus is, based on the average of 70, that low... Then getting medical without pouring that many points into Mental and Medical almost seems worthless, as you can only use it once per encounter (Or scene, however those are measured >.>).

However, rather than have it at a base of 5, and add bonuses to whatever equipment the person has, why not base the multiplier on what the doctor has available to use? Such as, rather than have that multiplier for a successful heal be set to 5, or 2, have so if the doctor has every tool he/she needs to heal someone at their disposal, they have that multiplier at 5, or 7. And if they have nothing, but their hands, have it at 1, or 2?

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Templates, I think are better if the characters and their respective backgrounds themselves are part of the template, else, you'll be making a character that suits you, similar to the way Shiva suits me, and you'll be forced to pick from a list of templates, which, in all likelihood, won't suit the character you want at all.

Golly that's a long sentence You're right though, templates would only really work for a game where the temlates were intended to represent something specific.

I'd be much more likely to use templates for a game where everybody was supposed to be, say, a member of a top secret espionage agency and therefore might be expected to have a certain amount of shared background. Even then you'd need multiple templates to reflect the "Kick in the Front Door In Riot Armor" agents from the "Infiltrate the Terroist Cell by Assuming Identity" agent and the "Track Bad Guys with Spy Sattelites and Cell Phone Towers" agent.

If I was going to run another game like Nightmares Unnamed or Fear of the Dark where the characters were just "Anybody", I'd be more likely to try and control things with caps of some kind. Can't spend more than X points on these attributes type stuff.

Also, I meant to ask about this before... Kaci pretty much has a lot of points poured into medical training... And if the health bonus is, based on the average of 70, that low... Then getting medical without pouring that many points into Mental and Medical almost seems worthless, as you can only use it once per encounter (Or scene, however those are measured >.>).

Kaci actually only has 3 points in Medical (not all that much). My concern is that having a character able to fairly easily restore their allies to full health means that it becomes more difficult to wear down characters and requires the GM to design enemies that are "All or Nothing" type opponents; either they're going to kill you or you'll be totally fine 5 minutes after the fight ends.

I've never particularly liked the idea, from D&D and most console RPGs that I play, that immediately after a big battle the characters just sit down for a few hours to heal before opening the next door and moving on. I think it's more interesting and more fun usually to have enemies that can slowly wear down the characters through a series of encounters instead of just one big fight/rest/one big fight/rest.

However, rather than have it at a base of 5, and add bonuses to whatever equipment the person has, why not base the multiplier on what the doctor has available to use? Such as, rather than have that multiplier for a successful heal be set to 5, or 2, have so if the doctor has every tool he/she needs to heal someone at their disposal, they have that multiplier at 5, or 7. And if they have nothing, but their hands, have it at 1, or 2?

That's definitely another option that I'll think about; I'd like to have more equipment that is actually useful beyond just lots of weapons. And like I said in the previous post, I'd probably add in some kind of trait that would improve the base healing a bit.

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Templates are a good start, but you really either need to give people either the ability to choose like 3 different ones or allow a significant amount of customization within templates, to allow for enough variety.

Oh definitely. My initial thought with the templates is that they would spend say 30 of your base character points for you, leaving 10 points of customization.

Also, having bounced ideas around in my head a little more last night, I was thinking that possibly each template would give you some special discount. A fighter template would have 10 free points still, but might be able to buy combat training at a discount, a skill type character template would get extra skill points or something like that and so on.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Might be just me, but 10 out of a total of 40 sounds like tweaking more than customization...

 

[DeMatt]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Might be just me, but 10 out of a total of 40 sounds like tweaking more than customization...

But makes sense, given the right setup. Two soldiers who've been through Basic together and been assigned to the same unit are unlikely to have very different skill levels, after all.

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Might be just me, but 10 out of a total of 40 sounds like tweaking more than customization...

What does that mean?

 

[Incubus]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

What does that mean?

Means he believes its more towards minor editing than proper customisation.

 

[Mamono Assault Force]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Hehehe, I'm not complaining, by any means... But that does lead to a more narrow field of exactly what kind of character you want, which would help, again, if the character templates came with the characters themselves... Background and all...

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Hehehe, I'm not complaining, by any means... But that does lead to a more narrow field of exactly what kind of character you want, which would help, again, if the character templates came with the characters themselves... Background and all...

I'm going to try and work tomorrow on a set of examples (since I actually do have some ideas already and this discussion is just helping me flesh them out more). I'll try to get them posted by tomorrow night and get feedback.

It's harder for me to visualize things when it's all theory and random brainstorming.

 

[Janna]

Re: Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

Okay, as promised here's some template examples. We're pretending, for the sake of context, that I'm writing up a science fiction game of some kind and the "fighter" type characters are usually represented by Earth Alliance Marines. The game wouldn't just have marines either; I was again just brainstorming with myself a little an figured that you'd also have multiple templates for Officers, Specialists (medics, techs, spies), Colonists and Psionics (because I like having some kind of crazy magic powers floating around somewhere in every game).

So, the way I'm thinking you'd decide "Yeah, I'd like to be a high-damage tough guy/girl," and then look at the Marine templates and pick one of them based on what kind of Marine character that you like. Each one has 10 extra points for customization.

Marine
Physical 8, Mental 4, Spiritual 6
CV 6, DV 4
Health 70, Energy 50, Arousal 54

Assault Training (+5 damage with Assault Rifle) (1pt)

Athletics +2, Resistance +2, Technical +2

Security Clearance 1 (1 pt)
· Grants access to most Earth Alliance facilities
Assault Rifle 10 pts (2 pts)
Body Armor 5 pts (2 pts)

Heavy Weapons Marine
Physical 8, Mental 3, Spiritual 5
CV 5, DV 3
Health 85, Energy 40, Arousal 48

Toughness +20 Health (2 pts)

Athletics +2, Resistance +2

Security Clearance 1 (1pt)
· Grants access to most Earth Alliance facilities
Heavy Machine Gun 15 pts (4pts)
· Autofire - The heavy machine gun deals +2 damage for every point that the attack roll beats an enemy's defense
Body Armor 5 pts (2 pts)

Marine Scout
Physical 6, Mental 5, Spiritual 6
CV 4, DV 4
Health 60, Energy 55, Arousal 51

Awareness +2, Athletics +2, Stealth +2, Resistance +2

Security Clearance 1 (1pt)
· Grants access to most Earth Alliance facilities
Assault Rifle 10 pts (2 pts)
Body Armor 5 pts (2 pts)
Multi-Spectrum Scanning Goggles (2 pt)
· Negates darkness, concealment penalties without giving away position
· Friend or Foe scanning - tracks allies movement within 30' on HUD

Alternatively, I was also looking at the idea of more custom characters, that use the same set of skills and abilities as above but have 20 points left to buy abilities. Their basic attributes all start a lot lower and they'd also be more work for the players.

Custom Marine
Physical 5, Mental 2, Spiritual 3
CV 1, DV 1
Health 40, Energy 25, Arousal 30

Custom Heavy Weapons Marine
Physical 5, Mental 1, Spiritual 3
CV 1, DV 1
Health 40, Energy 20, Arousal 27

Custom Marine Scout
Physical 3, Mental 3, Spiritual 3
CV 1, DV 1
Health 30, Energy 30, Arousal 27

Comments or questions or feedback would be really nice.