Build a Better Mousetrap - Janna's PbP Design Thread

[Janna]

As a player or a GM, I really do like the more dice-based, game-y PbP systems; Raptor Jesus' AWMBI, Icelus' Nightmares Unnamed, Wraust's Dungeon of Pleasure, Ryu's Arena of Lust and my own sadly aborted Fear of the Dark. (I also like the looks of Siphon's Citadel of Corruption and Keylo's Witch's Chess but I haven't played in either of those games). I like the added structure that the extra rules bring to the PbP and the way that, with a well made system, it becomes easy for the GM to adjucate just about anything that the players might want to try and the players gain the freedom to build just about any kind of character or idea that comes into their heads.

When I took my brother's old copy of BESM 2nd edition and started stripping out the rules and filing off serial numbers to put together my own PbP system (that was eventually much more successfully updated for Nightmares Unnamed), that was the idea. Create something that was simple enough to be easily used for PbP and versatile enough that it wouldn't be boring. I helped Icelus tweak things around for Nightmares Unnamed based on the goals of that game and based on my own experiences when I was running Fear of the Dark and now I'd like to use this thread as a way to keep refining the game system.

To that end, I'd really like to hear from players who took part in Nightmares Unnamed or Fear of the Dark about how they thought the rules worked out and ways that you think the game could have been improved (other than "Finish the damn RP" maybe ). I'd also like feedback from anybody who has played in other PbP systems about things that you like and dislike about the games that you've played. Any ideas are good ideas and will help me to refine things and make them better.

At this point, I'm specifically looking to run a game myself again, at least not right away. I've got a few ideas but I think I'd like to tinker with the rules a bit more before I take another swing at running things.

You know what really chaps my hide?:

I've seen a few issues with the game myself already. At this point I'm just brainstorming and I don't have any clear solutions to everything yet so I'd really like to hear people's opinions about this stuff.

1.) Confusing Math.

The combat rules, in particular, were pretty much lifted right out of the original game system. So you get fun things like adding all your stats together and dividing by three and then subtracting two from the result before adding some other numbers to get your starting attack bonus. It's easy for me, but that's just because I'm familiar with the system already; for someone who's trying to learn just enough to RP tentacle raep on a message board this can be kind of annoying.

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

Since this is essentially the reason I'm not playing in AWMBI any more (and I'm absolutely not saying that there's anything wrong with the AWMBI system -- This is a universal concern with every game ever), I'm deeply embarassed that I didn't take more steps to correct this in my own system. It's something that happens way too easily in a point based character creation system; unless everything that you can spend points on is incredibly well balanced you can end up spending points on things that end up being point sinks and traps. To give an example from my system: You can buy the "Perceptive" trait for 2 points that gives you a +2 bonus to any dice rolls involving noticing stuff. Or, if you're smart, you can notice that perception ends up being used primarily to notice hidden things and search and just buy the Awareness skills for 1 point and get the same +2 bonus. It's even worse with some of the less used traits like "Smart" or some of the equipment that I made the mistake of trying to charge points to get.

3.) Combat Concerns

Tied in to the above problem, it's fairly easy to spend your points in a way that makes your character into what Wallpaper called a "trenchie", after a stereotypical character type from another game that she used to play; a person with minimal non-combat abilities who is just waiting, with katana half-drawn, for the first sign of trouble to leap out an hit enemies for a million-billion damage. These character make life hard on the GM because in order to have a challenging combat encounter for them you need to include enemies that are essentially invulnerable to non-combat focused characters.

Combat (and the sexy fun version) should move fairly quickly; but the last time that I talked to Icelus he was saying that there was a battle that had been going on for like 25 rounds. That's crazy. There's not usually enough interesting stuff to do to keep someone interested for that long.

4.) Dice as Sextoys and more problems

I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but I'd really like to hear what people think about the way that systems handle sex. My goal with the rules was to make the system work a lot like combat (and again I'm worried about the same kind of concerns) while still feeling different enough that "I attack" doesn't just get replaced with "I fuck". I wanted to (and still want to) avoid the instant helplessness and wall of orgasms as soon as a character ends up grabbed by a monster.

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

I don't personally like animal sex. Raptor Jesus, over in CoC isn't happy with his character being futa-ized. We've all got our own collection of little twitchy squick points that are hard to account for in advance. This isn't under system concerns, I guess, but more of a general PbP discussion thing; I'd like it if people talk in advance about things that might come up in a game before we things start.

Anyway, I'm going to try to keep posting here and coming up with solutions or ideas about how to make things work better. I'd really like to hear from other PbP players or GMs about what they've experienced doing PbP and any specific system ideas that they've come up with.

 

[Janna]

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

Oh and just so this isn't an impenetrable wall of obscure and pointless stuff, here's a link to the most recently used version of the game system.

From Nightmares Unnamed

 

[ToxicShock]

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

At least for me, I see an almost double edged sword towards GM liberty vs strict dice rolls. When it's dice, it almost has to be a million other numerical values and points on top of points to make sure there's no question of "what-ifs" in game, and the more walls and walls of text and figures you have to add up just to make a character tend to push some players away, while taking the other route of "some fudgings and improvs on the gm's part" kinda turn away some players too because they might not feel the system is fair.

Honestly, I don't pander towards either kind of game, I just treat them differently and like both of them. Either way has advantages and disadvantages, so to me, it's like whether I take my ice cream with some fudge topping or caramel topping (I love both)

For instance, I was a late joiner to Nightmares Unnamed. I kinda fudged a bit on the quality of my computer at the time, it froze up quite a bit, but it wasn't SO bad that I couldn't take my time to look through the stat pages. And I'm sorry I kinda lied to Ice, but I had him make me a single page with all the info on it just to make it easier on myself, and even then I didn't quite understand everything. It was all numbers and values and in the end, can probably run for a long time off that.

In terms of personal preferences towards the sexual activity, it's hard to dictate for a single person what can be applied to all. 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 the case of the egg and such, preferences were listed beforehand which I thought was awesome. The larger and more comprehensive that 'fetish-quiz' was at the beginning, the more I looked forward to the game, but in the end, that's still going to be a singular game, 1 on 1 with the GM because it's almost a personalized fantasy and you can't drag other people into your fantasy and hope they're just as willing.

I've been trying to work on a concept for an rp myself, but I wanted to make sure I had enough time for it, which it's coming to look like I do. But the other hangups I have are, a) RP-death, which is the last thing I want to have happen, but it seems like the successful rp rate here isn't very high and I can't wrap my head around why. and b) the one major hangup I've been having is I don't know how to work the system. I would know how to do it if I could choose one way or another, but the things you've shown above are exactly what I can't go between. I don't want to do a 1-1 gm-player and want to include multiple people, but that adds so many what-ifs, I either have to make a large complicated number system, or just say to everyone at the beginning "Fuck it, I'm just gonna play it however I feel" which players might not like. Either they'll get a feel of personal grudge because all actions are just as I deem them, or they'll view the game as hardly any fun, because at that point it's basically a visual novel without being visual, they've lost control of their character, and there's no real danger cuz I would let them get in trouble but never let them lose.

... I actually have no idea what my post above just accomplished, I think I've been teetering on a fence and I just jumped back and forth so many times between options, I'm practically a presidential candidate (OH-HO WAS THAT POLITICAL HUMOR? TOO GOOD SIR, TOO GOOD)

 

[Loli Defense Force]

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

A few things to note
1. Not everyone will enjoy your system
2. see 1

In the end, most likely you're going to have one or more players complain to you about some mechanic of the game that you think is properly implemented because they think it's wholly unfair, or they don't like the way you're doing things. That is both natural and fine. If possible, you can choose to bend things so it kinda works like how they want, or you can say no. Weigh your options and if what they want will simply break the system or make a "Trenchie" character, just say no.

3. Apocolypse type settings create trenchie characters

In Apoc type settings, the allure to create that combat ready character is even more tempting, as social and fun skills tend to be brushed aside as mostly useless. For example, in AWMBI you can easily get away with a non-rapable character with wtf in all combat skills. The problem will lie in the fact that your character will not be able to open a lock or in the case of meeting an npc, won't be able to negotiate properly. This holds even more true in Apoc settings, where to most players they see something like say... gambling, and go "Why the hell would I want that when I can have brawling?"

4. Let people know that you don't want trenchie characters, if you don't want them

If someone makes a trenchie in lets say, for example, AWMBI (a build that let's say... lets you shoot enemies really easily and if they grab you you just set them on fire *Coughcough*), let the player know, simply say "No, your character is too much of a trenchie, please remake or else I'll rape you.". If they deny it, point out why you think it's a trenchie, and if they're still an asshole about it and refuse completely to do anything, then screw them over somehow ("Oops, the succubus made a successful diplomacy check on you... you don't feel like fighting her anymore").

Of course, this is all coming from someone who's only GM'd a few times and has ran away screaming from GMing in more cases than one >_>

 

[Janna]

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

At least for me, I see an almost double edged sword towards GM liberty vs strict dice rolls. When it's dice, it almost has to be a million other numerical values and points on top of points to make sure there's no question of "what-ifs" in game, and the more walls and walls of text and figures you have to add up just to make a character tend to push some players away, while taking the other route of "some fudgings and improvs on the gm's part" kinda turn away some players too because they might not feel the system is fair.

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.

For instance, I was a late joiner to Nightmares Unnamed. I kinda fudged a bit on the quality of my computer at the time, it froze up quite a bit, but it wasn't SO bad that I couldn't take my time to look through the stat pages. And I'm sorry I kinda lied to Ice, but I had him make me a single page with all the info on it just to make it easier on myself, and even then I didn't quite understand everything. It was all numbers and values and in the end, can probably run for a long time off that.

I know that when I was running Fear of the Dark, I wished and wanted to beg players to ask questions. It should be an easy thing to either post a question or shoot the GM a PM. I like to think I pick up rules pretty easy but there are just so many questions that I'd like to know, especially if it might help me have more fun.

I've been trying to work on a concept for an rp myself, but I wanted to make sure I had enough time for it, which it's coming to look like I do. But the other hangups I have are, a) RP-death, which is the last thing I want to have happen, but it seems like the successful rp rate here isn't very high and I can't wrap my head around why.

I take full 100% responsibility for the failure of Fear of the Dark. It's true that I ended up being extremely busy in school but that wasn't the only reason it died. Basically, it came down to a problem where I wanted to run a game but I didn't want to really be a Game Master.

In my mind, I had this cool story with a bunch of events and characters about a group of mostly normal, if slightly exceptional, college students discovering weird things going on at their school and then trying to stop the world from being taken over by tentacled horror with smarts, guts and the occasional desperate fight.

In practice, because I didn't want to give proper guidance with character creation (because my default position with gaming stuff is to say 'Yeah, okay, whatever you want'), what I got was a game where within an hour of the game starting there were dead bodies bleeding out in the basement of a library and "normal" college kids gutting their classmates and blowing the head off of faculty.

It was exceptionally dumb because I had worked out a whole bunch of fear and horror mechanics to be used when the monsters started to appear and, if I'd been better at my job, I would have started applying those when characters started reenacting Kill Bill. Anyway, that's just another little pitfall that I know to avoid when I try to run a game again.

and b) the one major hangup I've been having is I don't know how to work the system. I would know how to do it if I could choose one way or another, but the things you've shown above are exactly what I can't go between. I don't want to do a 1-1 gm-player and want to include multiple people, but that adds so many what-ifs, I either have to make a large complicated number system, or just say to everyone at the beginning "Fuck it, I'm just gonna play it however I feel" which players might not like. Either they'll get a feel of personal grudge because all actions are just as I deem them, or they'll view the game as hardly any fun, because at that point it's basically a visual novel without being visual, they've lost control of their character, and there's no real danger cuz I would let them get in trouble but never let them lose.

Yeah, that can be rough. I think there has to be some risk of losing in any scenario and, one of the reasons that I like the dice based stuff, is that it helps me as GM stay honest. I don't play visual novels (HERESY!! Burn the witch!!) specifically because of that feeling; that you're just moving from room to room looking and thinking until you get finished reading the pre-planned text.

For an RPG, one of the things that I really want to make sure of when I do start a game is knowing where I'd like the game to be going. I do a rough "plot" - really more a series of event bubbles for things I'd like to have happen - and open it up to the players to get there however they'd like and adjusting things as they go based on their actions.

If there's a problem with that theory, it's that it can lead to a feeling, especially at the beginning, like you're flailing around helplessly clicking on everything in the world trying to find the next "Advance Plot" button. It's a lot easier when I'm playing D&D offline because it's simpler to discuss things with the other players and the DM.

I think one thing I would do if I was going to try again would be to have a somewhat more structured plot laid out, especially in the beginning. It would be nice if the player's started out with clear goals instead of throwing them into a situation and saying "React! Go!" That might be the best way to go for a message board based PbP.

... I actually have no idea what my post above just accomplished, I think I've been teetering on a fence and I just jumped back and forth so many times between options, I'm practically a presidential candidate (OH-HO WAS THAT POLITICAL HUMOR? TOO GOOD SIR, TOO GOOD)

I think it was really helpful and it made me thing more. And that's kinda what I'm looking for; people's ideas and brainstorming help.

 

[XSI]

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

I haven't played any of the latest forumgames here, but I used to run a lot of games in the chatrooms.(Which is basicly the same as a forum but a lot faster)
I'm not sure if you can still find the old dungeon of doors thread on here, but it also shows a good example of what kind of game I did as GM.

For one, it's great to have a lot of costumisation as player, and everything seems balanced quite well, everything available at character creation had a use in-game that was worth the cost.
However, this is annoying to the gm, as all those minor variations in characters mean I had to roll dice, as a record, I think it was around 125 dice for a single turn.
Too much dice.

Not mentioned in the thread, but at character creation I asked people to list what they really did not want, and while this did not effect the actual gameplay(The location and fights did not change), it did allow me to give warnings as for where not to go if they wanted to avoid something.

There was an actual map to play on, which is helpful for both GM and player as the world is consistent, there's no randomly appearing rooms and corridors, it's all there.(And sadly, not even 5% of the map was used before the game died)

Player-death...Was not there, instead, temporary game-overs existed, in which case a character would be unable to escape on his/her own and was to wait somewhere for help to arrive. While a character was like that, obvious hints would be given to everyone else playing to where the player is and how to help. This way there is a penalty for losing, but it is not too severe.

Instant-gameover, this was there very little, and the few places that it was there there were 2 ingame warnings and 1 ooc warning. Proceed at own risk.

Min-maxing...While it was possible to do, it would most likely mean that while a character could easily win regular fights, a lot of other effects would easily take down the character. Combat isn't everything, so min-maxing will not help.

I currently have a system ready to adapt to a game(Several actually), but no concepts or ideas on what the actual game will be about.

 

[Janna]

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

A few things to note
1. Not everyone will enjoy your system
2. see 1

But... But... It's so goood.

Seriously though, I know. I'm not omnisicient though and I'm committed to trying to make things work in ways that are fun for people while still staying true to what I, as the most important person in the whole universe, want.

I've learned what you're saying the hard way. I want to appeal to people but not at the expense of my own sanity or fun.

3. Apocolypse type settings create trenchie characters

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.

4. Let people know that you don't want trenchie characters, if you don't want them

Although I'm all about hidden modifiers and the potential to fudge rolls, I don't like the idea of having people eaten by Super Dragons in the game Probably, like I said, what I'd do is work all that out before starting the game and just let people know if their character isn't going to work for what I want to run instead of letting them in and then making them not have fun. I'd rather let them know they're not going to have fun up front

It's like you said, some people just aren't going to like my game. Better to try to identify a set of players that would instead of having people feel useless or ignored or raped to death and dropping the game.

 

[thetwo]

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

1.) Math should only be a problem in character creation. I personally don't find it too overwhelming, but I'm a math-oriented kind of person. I suppose if you're really worried about it, you could hide the numbers from the players entirely. Do something like "here are a list of main stats. Pick one to be very high, one to be slightly high, and one to be low. Here are a list of secondary stats and the primary stats that contribute to them." Then the GM does the math.

2.) This one is more difficult. Honestly, it's a matter of really spending time on this phase of designing character design to make everything pretty balanced.

3.) Trenchies are all but unavoidable. Are you going to tell me that I *can't* have a character who wears a trenchcoat and wields a katana, even though it's otherwise possible in the rules? There are three possible responses:

• Assume everyone will do this and do it for your monsters as well.
• Tweak monster stats to provide a fair fight for the PC's in each encounter.
• Design a system where there are few to any benefits to be had by min-maxing a character. AWMBI does reasonably well with this by making additional ranks prohibitively expensive, encouraging more balanced characters.

4.) This... is something that I have seen done poorly. It's the main reason I haven't played CoC, for example. Combat in that is... well half of it is "I do nothing because I had an orgasm". Doesn't seem right. AWMBI went for the opposite extreme, where you only have an orgasm when you lose. Honestly I'd expect something in the middle to be ideal, but I prefer AWMBI in this regard if that's too difficult to balance well.

5.) This one is difficult. I'd say list the possibly objectionable things out front and allow people to list one or two things they really don't want to see. Then if that is what the dice say, roll again. Of course, sometimes a group might together forbid just about everything, in which case you'll have to overrule this preference. In the end this one really comes down to "what the GM says, goes." Just stating in the rules what you're going to bring should help.

In general... I think I'd really almost go for a more "4e" style character sheet then the "3.5e" of AWMBI. If I were doing this myself, that is. It's... well, a little more player-friendly and trenchie-unfriendly, and still very customizable.

"Pick one ability from list one(weapons), two abilities from list two(special powers, once/encounter), two abilities from list three(special powers, once/day) and three abilities from list three(extra talents)" can still give you a lot of variation while being easier to balance and easier to roll.

The other option is to go the "pit" way. Every character is identical (or virtually identical) in terms of stats, and while there are still dice rolls to keep the GM honest, just about everything is GM discretion - no rules-lawyers saying "hey, that shouldn't be that way, the numbers don't work".

 

[Janna]

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

For one, it's great to have a lot of costumisation as player, and everything seems balanced quite well, everything available at character creation had a use in-game that was worth the cost.
However, this is annoying to the gm, as all those minor variations in characters mean I had to roll dice, as a record, I think it was around 125 dice for a single turn.
Too much dice.

That is an insane amount of dice It's one of the reasons I tried for simplicity as a primary design goal. Even with the simplicity it can be a little daunting, though. With Nightmares Unnnamed it looks like most of the combat encounters were 1 on 1 (or at one point for my character 1 on 3.) Usually that means between 6 and 12 total dice rolled.

Usually it works out that you roll 2d6 for a character's action and then 1d6 if the action succeeds and occasionally 1 extra die if they've used some special ability. And that's the whole turn.

With big group fights though, like the one in my Fear of the Dark game the number of dice can start stacking up quickly. I think RaptorJesus hit upon a good solution in AWMBI of limiting the "party" to 3 characters at a time; it wouldn't work for every game but that's one possible solution.

There was an actual map to play on, which is helpful for both GM and player as the world is consistent, there's no randomly appearing rooms and corridors, it's all there.(And sadly, not even 5% of the map was used before the game died)

I have sucky art skills, unfortunately but I could probably throw together a functional map in Photoshop as long as people were reasonably understanding about things.

Player-death...Was not there, instead, temporary game-overs existed, in which case a character would be unable to escape on his/her own and was to wait somewhere for help to arrive. While a character was like that, obvious hints would be given to everyone else playing to where the player is and how to help. This way there is a penalty for losing, but it is not too severe.

I'm of two minds on this; I hate the idea of the instant loss or, from another game that I played, wanderig into a room and randomly hitting a monster 7+ levels higher than you. That said, I think that without some element of Game Over on the table, things can turn a little strange.

Probably, using the same example from before for my Sci Fi game, I would say that people could end up getting killed but that the player could continue to play in some way (Rescue a new character or something similar) if they wanted. I tried to make it reasonably difficult to die unless you were trying hard; players know their own Health at all times and can choose to run away from combat if things start turning bad.

Anyway, even more

sure to come soon.

 

[Janna]

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

Are you going to tell me that I *can't* have a character who wears a trenchcoat and wields a katana, even though it's otherwise possible in the rules?

I'll probably have a longer post a little later but let me answer this quick:

YES.

That is exactly my intent in the future when I run games. *nod nods*

 

[lurker]

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

Unfortunately, as I found with PoA, dice and basic stats can REALLY be a limitation to creativity, and I personally think that it was my system that caused people to fade away a bit, sadly ;^;

Personally, PBPs are kinda hit-or-miss. You either get something really successful (DtT, Waurst's game, Citidel of Curroption) or you get something that dies shortly after conception (DKX)

 

[XSI]

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

(quote on gameovers)
I'm of two minds on this; I hate the idea of the instant loss or, from another game that I played, wanderig into a room and randomly hitting a monster 7+ levels higher than you. That said, I think that without some element of Game Over on the table, things can turn a little strange.

Ok, I probably said it a bit weird, these game-overs only happen when the player wants them to happen, or they lose in a fight that's actually fair(Mostly this). As GM, I can say that if a fight did not go fair because I over/underestimated the character, there will be no penalty/reward, as for instant-loss things, those should be avoided when possible, it's just not fair to lose just because the GM says so.(Hence the warnings I mentioned)
Without risks rewards will feel useless, if there is no way to actually lose anything, people will just ask themselves if those rewards were actually earned, or just given to them.

I'll also mention that I originally went for simple with DoD, but things change after some time, and before I knew it I was at those insane amounts of dice.

 

[Janna]

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

1.) Math should only be a problem in character creation. I personally don't find it too overwhelming, but I'm a math-oriented kind of person. I suppose if you're really worried about it, you could hide the numbers from the players entirely. Do something like "here are a list of main stats. Pick one to be very high, one to be slightly high, and one to be low. Here are a list of secondary stats and the primary stats that contribute to them." Then the GM does the math.

*nods* Simplification might be a good thing; I wonder if it would be possible to allow for both full customization for players that wanted that and pre-built stuff for the players that just wanted to slightly tweak something and hop right in for the fun.

I don't neccesarily want to hide the numbers from the players; I do like a little bit of transparency in the games.

3.) Trenchies are all but unavoidable. Are you going to tell me that I *can't* have a character who wears a trenchcoat and wields a katana, even though it's otherwise possible in the rules? There are three possible responses:

I've already given my sarcastic and pat response to this one, but I'll open up a little more and go into detail. Like Loli was saying, some people are just not going to like my games. *shrugs* I consider my Combat Monster hate just one part of the reason that they may not.

Assume everyone will do this and do it for your monsters as well.

It seems like everyone doesn't do this though, looking both at my previous try with Fear of the Dark and at Nightmares Unnamed there are some people who don't optimize for combat. And if I have to frustrate one group of players, I'm going to choose to frustrate the ones who want to optimize for combat and use my RPGs as extremly slow PbP Diablo.

Tweak monster stats to provide a fair fight for the PC's in each encounter.

This would be more do-able but it can lead into a horrible Oblivion-style game where your level and skills don't actually matter because everything just rolls back and forth along as sliding scale to match up with whoever is facing them.

Design a system where there are few to any benefits to be had by min-maxing a character. AWMBI does reasonably well with this by making additional ranks prohibitively expensive, encouraging more balanced characters.

Hopefully, that's one of the things I'll be doing in here based on people's feedback. Modiftying and tweaking my design to be more well balanced and fun while still maintaining the simplicity.

Honestly I'd expect something in the middle to be ideal, but I prefer AWMBI in this regard if that's too difficult to balance well.

I totally agree with the quest for the middle. I know that some people had sexual encounters (God that sounds silly) in Nightmare's Unnamed and I'm hoping that they'll speak up and talk about how they liked it.

My own experience is that possibly I need to provide ways to speed up the initial arousal mechanic or just provide more character customization there.

In general... I think I'd really almost go for a more "4e" style character sheet then the "3.5e" of AWMBI. If I were doing this myself, that is. It's... well, a little more player-friendly and trenchie-unfriendly, and still very customizable.

Careful, I think that saying you like 4e around here is dangerous

I love 4th edition D&D and in particular I enjoy the combat roles; the idea that each character has something to do in combat no matter what class they happen to pick. It's something I think could adapt pretty well to PbP and help to balance out the combat systems; a character might do less damage to enemies than another person but would be giving out bonuses to allies or throwing penalties on their foes or just aborbing a huge amount of punishment.

 

[Incubus]

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

I'll respond to this in general, rather than referring to the specific rules. Sorry for not actually reading them, but I shouldn't even be awake.

1.) Confusing Math & 3.) Combat Concerns

Trying to get a simple, intuitive combat system that doesn't take eons to run a fight is a nightmare. I've tried out many different styles of combat system, and to be honest, still have on idea which is best to use.

Possibly my biggest mistake was designing a realistic combat system. Combat occurred in the game between skilled martial artists, and true to the style, they spent a long amount of time dodging one another and failing to land a blow. The system was designed that it was hard to score a decent hit upon someone, because once one did, the fight would very rapidly get one sided. This meant that combat was a slow and tedious business.

If I were, hypothetically, to try again to run a game here, I would likely use a whitewolf based system, at least for combat. It's simple and effective; roll a number of dice based on your attribute and skill, keep the ones over a certain target number, remove dice if you're trying to do more complex manoeuvres, etc.

Don't be afraid to have a system that leaves a lot of the exact details of the outcome up to the GM. Sure, some people who want to understand every bit of every decision will like it less, but generally those people are rules lawyers who will jump down your throat for making even the tiniest mistake if it gives them an advantage.

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

Unavoidable. Heck, I appear to have done it myself in Witch's Chess, because I didn't make a trenchie, but that's a different concern. The best way to deal with this is to remove redundant skills from the game, reducing the options a player can spend points on, and build the content of the game with the player characters in mind; ensure that there are obstacles in the game that require the unique skills of each character.

Let me just repeat myself here, because this one is important for anyone who wants to GM anything; Design the content and challenges of the game to suit the player characters! Too many times I've seen GMs far too wrapped up in their own plans and stories who are basically just dragging a group of people through their novel. If you don't like to adjust for your players, go write a bloody book.

4.) Dice as Sextoys and more problems

It's definitely preferable to have players still have a chance to act somehow when under sexual attack. It ties slightly into my last paragraph about adjusting the game for the players; if a player wants to fight it, let them at least feel like they can, even if they can't beat it. And if they manage to successfully do something to the creature, have it actually affect things.

I remember a particularly bad experience where my character, a made focused on attacking the mind, was attacked by some mindless vine tentacle things. First fight, right off the bat she was largely useless. She was grabbed and they were rapidly destroying her armour, so she resorted to her one remaining trick, her ability to hit things with curses, and succeeded in cursing it with something that'd make it less physically strong. Now, perhaps the poor average strength made might have a chance to escape? Nope, the creature continued as if nothing had happened. Now, perhaps this was a result of bad dice rolls, and they do happen, but looking at it from the player's perspective, every power, every thing they have is completely useless against this enemy, being the first enemy they've fought in the game. Not a good incentive to play.

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

Rule of thumb; talk to your players and discuss their limits. Seems like common sense to me, and something I've always done.

A note on trenchies!

Or Combat Wombats, as I like to call them. Your best defence against them as a GM is the wonderful two letter word I like to call: "No"

If a game calls for average people, then as the GM, enforce this. Just because a US Marine Sniper is a person who does exist in the real world, does not mean it is a valid choice for a player character. Some people are skilled at writing a beautiful backstory and character with all the justifications for their obscene minmaxing and combat monster build; these are the hard ones because its so tempting to keep them and so hard to tell them all that work is to waste, BUT if you say in the beginning that you want ordinary people, enforce the rules. Often, these people can ruin the game for others, who feel useless next to them and curse themselves for following the guidelines at character creation instead of twinking out.

A note on rolled stats

Don't. Seriously, just don't. I don't think its come up, but as I'm giving general GMing advice, I figured I'd bring it up. I've almost joined Jumpers on at least 2 occassions, and stopped because of character creation; not because its confusing, or hard, but because I have to roll to determine my stats. Thus, all characters are not roughly equal.

Sure, it's more realistic. But it also results in problems similar to the trenchies. "I didn't both re-rolling my stats 900 times to get three 30s, so I'm ineffective to the group." This is less of a problem if re-rolling is limited somehow (such as only if your result is below blah number) which is difficult to enforce without a forum dice roller, but even then, all the players won't be equal and the different can be incredible. Always always ALWAYS use a system where one has a specified amount points to spend, rather than rolling dice.

I love 4th edition D&D and in particular I enjoy the combat roles; the idea that each character has something to do in combat no matter what class they happen to pick. It's something I think could adapt pretty well to PbP and help to balance out the combat systems; a character might do less damage to enemies than another person but would be giving out bonuses to allies or throwing penalties on their foes or just aborbing a huge amount of punishment.

*shudder* Off topic, but... *shudder*

Sure, 4th ed is a wonderful game. Everyone has something to do, and the players work together like a well oiled team. It's just... it's not a roleplaying game, it's a skirmish game. The game mechanics not only encourage but expect a certain amount of metagaming as you work out how to chain your powers for optimum effect. And yes, in theory you could work this out in character, but realistically what are the odds of you clicking together and realising the combinations for your various magics/powers.

Not to mention fighters make no sense :3 How the hell do you "mark" something and force them to fight you or take penalties without magic? No justification I can think of works on things such as unintelligent/mindless creatures. By the way if you can, don't answer this. I don't really care.

 

[Janna]

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

Hey specific stuff, finally:

In Nightmares Unnamed (and Fear of the Dark if it had gone that far) the Medical skill worked like this:

Medical: Medical is rolled with Mind. Once per scene, you can roll a Medical check against a target number of 14. If you succeed, you can heal either yourself or one ally of 5 points of damage. The target recovers an extra 5 Health for each point that the check beats the target number.

So, the player would roll 2d6+Mind+Medical add up the numbers and once per scene heal a bunch of damage. Coupled with the low cost of the Medical skill this made it ridiculously easy for people to heal up almost instantly like they were crazy regenerating supermen.

A character like Kaci would be rolling 2d6+13 to heal with an average roll of 20. That means that once per scene she could be reasonably sure of healing 30 points of Health and would occasionally heal 50 (or up to 110 on a critical success).

The average health of all the characters in the game was 70 (70.9090etc if you want to be exact). So 30 points is a pretty huge heal, especially when you consider that characters naturally recover some Health on their own.

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.

Characters would still be able to bounce back from injury, just not quite as quickly.

EDIT: Technically, Kaci would be rolling 2d6+16 for 45 average Health.

 

[Janna]

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

*shudder* Off topic, but... *shudder*

Sure, 4th ed is a wonderful game.[/i]

Oh please, please, please take this somewhere else if anybody wants to defend 4e or champion 3.5 or whatever. I don't care at all I was just talking in the specifics of how combat works mechanically.

 

[Incubus]

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

acters naturally recover some Health on their own.

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.

Be sure to include a minimum success in that still, otherwise someone without any training can still always heal someone, just for less. And consider including a second, lower threshold that if you fail to reach, you actually do more damage. Anyone with actual training has little fear actually hitting this except perhaps on a botch, but it prevents every player from being an effective healer, allowing those who do become healers to not feel like their points were wasted for the sake of being slightly better at something everyone can do.

Oh please, please, please take this somewhere else if anybody wants to defend 4e or champion 3.5 or whatever. I don't care at all I was just talking in the specifics of how combat works mechanically.

You're the one who brought it up as an ideal system. I was pointing out why it shouldn't be used as an example of a good system for a roleplaying game. And having a go at silly fighters, but that was less important.

 

[thetwo]

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

I've already given my sarcastic and pat response to this one, but I'll open up a little more and go into detail. Like Loli was saying, some people are just not going to like my games. *shrugs* I consider my Combat Monster hate just one part of the reason that they may not.

Hopefully, that's one of the things I'll be doing in here based on people's feedback. Modiftying and tweaking my design to be more well balanced and fun while still maintaining the simplicity.

Ah, that second part makes me feel a little better then the big "YES" you posted earlier. Making a system where a min-maxed character is impossible or worth less then a balanced character is fine. I don't like arbitrary "okay, you followed the rules but I'm afraid you're too effective" things, though.

Careful, I think that saying you like 4e around here is dangerous

I love 4th edition D&D and in particular I enjoy the combat roles; the idea that each character has something to do in combat no matter what class they happen to pick. It's something I think could adapt pretty well to PbP and help to balance out the combat systems; a character might do less damage to enemies than another person but would be giving out bonuses to allies or throwing penalties on their foes or just aborbing a huge amount of punishment.

Heh, honestly I don't like 4th edition, not for its intended purpose. But for a PbP game where you're striving for simplicity and want everyone to be effective without allowing munchkins it's probably the best (as a rough sort of direction, I mean).

 

[Rule 34]

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

I have sucky art skills, unfortunately but I could probably throw together a functional map in Photoshop as long as people were reasonably understanding about things.

You must be registered to see the links

might be able to help you out. I once constructed a hyuge dungeon map with their Random Cave Map Creator. Just had to photoshop them together on a big background after editing in room divisions, starting points etc.

 

[Keylo]

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

I'll respond to the original concerns in general using what I learned from my one and only real experience hosting a PbP/playing in a few then...

1.) Confusing Math.

The combat rules, in particular, were pretty much lifted right out of the original game system. So you get fun things like adding all your stats together and dividing by three and then subtracting two from the result before adding some other numbers to get your starting attack bonus. It's easy for me, but that's just because I'm familiar with the system already; for someone who's trying to learn just enough to RP tentacle raep on a message board this can be kind of annoying.

The thing is, math and dice are two of the things which separate a PbP game from a standard roleplay. While I do agree that this can be horribly frustrating for the player (and the GM at times when he has to manually edit each person's character sheet after each level up), I generally don't have a real problem with this and have accepted it as a part of PbP games.

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

Since this is essentially the reason I'm not playing in AWMBI any more (and I'm absolutely not saying that there's anything wrong with the AWMBI system -- This is a universal concern with every game ever), I'm deeply embarassed that I didn't take more steps to correct this in my own system. It's something that happens way too easily in a point based character creation system; unless everything that you can spend points on is incredibly well balanced you can end up spending points on things that end up being point sinks and traps. To give an example from my system: You can buy the "Perceptive" trait for 2 points that gives you a +2 bonus to any dice rolls involving noticing stuff. Or, if you're smart, you can notice that perception ends up being used primarily to notice hidden things and search and just buy the Awareness skills for 1 point and get the same +2 bonus. It's even worse with some of the less used traits like "Smart" or some of the equipment that I made the mistake of trying to charge points to get.

As stated in a previous response, this is pretty much unavoidable if you want variety. Narrowing the skills down does help in preventing "useless" characters, but narrowing them too much results in a lack of variety. The trick is to find the delicate balance between "too many" and "too few". Unfortunately, I don't believe everyone has yet to find the perfect balance yet. Easiest thing to do though? As GM, design situations in accordance to the characters. If there's too many combat types? Give them situations where they can't just muscle their way out of. If there are too many general purpose/non-combative types?... Self explanatory.

3.) Combat Concerns

Tied in to the above problem, it's fairly easy to spend your points in a way that makes your character into what Wallpaper called a "trenchie", after a stereotypical character type from another game that she used to play; a person with minimal non-combat abilities who is just waiting, with katana half-drawn, for the first sign of trouble to leap out an hit enemies for a million-billion damage. These character make life hard on the GM because in order to have a challenging combat encounter for them you need to include enemies that are essentially invulnerable to non-combat focused characters.

Combat (and the sexy fun version) should move fairly quickly; but the last time that I talked to Icelus he was saying that there was a battle that had been going on for like 25 rounds. That's crazy. There's not usually enough interesting stuff to do to keep someone interested for that long.

Same as above, design combat/situations in accordance with the characters. If people want to whore ZOMG TRENCHCOATS WITH KATANAS, (I myself am guilty of that), give them something they can't overcome with just brute force. I have also found that the "gimmick" system, in which some fights can become easier/only beatable with certain tricks can be helpful in dealing with people who just want to use "uber stats/skills" to tank through everything. This includes of course, tricks that can not be accessed without certain non-combat specific skills.

As for rounds...I have found myself, once again struggling to find the delicate balance for battles. Battles shouldn't last for 25 rounds, but they also shouldn't end in less than two turns. Trial and error for the most part I suppose.

4.) Dice as Sextoys and more problems

I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but I'd really like to hear what people think about the way that systems handle sex. My goal with the rules was to make the system work a lot like combat (and again I'm worried about the same kind of concerns) while still feeling different enough that "I attack" doesn't just get replaced with "I fuck". I wanted to (and still want to) avoid the instant helplessness and wall of orgasms as soon as a character ends up grabbed by a monster.

I will admit, that this is a major issue in most games, especially when sex is a main form of "attack" against the player characters. In every erotic PbP game to date, being grappled generally meant you were stuck and doomed to be raped, some more so than others. One option is, to of course, make it easy to escape grapple/lessen the effects of sex. But that causes the game to deviate from the original purpose...which. Not really sure how to respond here, except for that its another balancing issue which has yet to be solved.

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

I don't personally like animal sex. Raptor Jesus, over in CoC isn't happy with his character being futa-ized. We've all got our own collection of little twitchy squick points that are hard to account for in advance. This isn't under system concerns, I guess, but more of a general PbP discussion thing; I'd like it if people talk in advance about things that might come up in a game before we things start.

I found it easier to have a "survey" done in advance, in which you find out what people are comfortable and what they're not. Then, in accordance to their preferences, create monsters that are within their "field of comfort". For example, while I may not mind animals as a gm, if my player has stated they don't like animals, I will abstain from using animal monsters, and instead send something that we are both comfortable. In short, tentacle monsters. This way, everyone is happy and no one is disgusted. Splitting characters into separate threads also helps. That way if one player likes something another player doesn't, the player who likes it can still have it, but the other player isn't affected. In short, ask your players in advance.