NaGaDeMon Day A -- From the Ashes

Well, I failed on Day 3 for a variety of reasons. So, rather than continue the numbering, I've begun the letters to indicate all work done after November 2012.

But the Axion system has still been percolating in my head, alongside other RPG needs.

With the latest Fate and Gumshoe entrants into the RPG arena, I'm quite happy to leave the 'story engine' RPGs to them. I'm still firmly looking at the 'physics engine' emulation arena, though comic book physics does sometimes give in to rubbery science.

Hero / Fuzion and DC Heroes are the ones that really seem to have given this action movie / comic book physics engine some thought, with the exponential progression of values. However, DC Heroes tied these to all attributes, some of which didn't necessarily apply strongly to real world measures and raised questions like: "Is Braniac 5 as smart as Superman is Strong?" and so on.

A further idea arises: should I follow the "every 5 points doubles the game value" of Hero, or the "every 1 point doubles the game value" of DC Heroes? I know that Mutants and Masterminds made some clever re-use of the DC Heroes AP tricks.

NaGaDeMon Day 03 -- Thoughts on Dice

I'm limiting myself to D6s. They're the easiest dice to procure locally (in the Philippines), and I've enjoyed systems that were based solely on them, so I know it's not impossible. I was briefly tempted by cards, but I'll do that some other time.

What resolution roll styles am I considering?

• 3d6 -- gives a nice bell curve, and very close to the Fuzion / Hero approach to things;
• 4d6* -- a modified 4d6 roll where all 6s are equal to 0 when totaling the value; gives a ridiculously curved 0 to 20 range of values;
• dFate -- evenly distributed +, 0, and - values on four six-sided dice;
• dBody -- similar to FATE dice, but 1 is -, 2 through 5 are 0, and 6 is +; tames the FATE die roll quite a bit, but is a lot more predictable; HERO gamers know this as rolling for Body

That's all I have for now, just bits and pieces staggering toward a goal.

NaGaDeMon Day 02 -- Ratings and Rankings

Ruminations

In many games there are non-numeric rankings of stats.

The classic Marvel Super-Heroes RPG has the following very descriptive FASERIP descriptors:

• Feeble
• Poor
• Typical
• Good
• Excellent
• Remarkable
• Incredible
• Amazing
• Monstrous
• Unearthly

And each of them had their corresponding numerical values and places on the brightly colored table used for action resolution.

From FATE, there's the "Ladder" or "Adjective Ladder" with the following (taken from the StrangeFateSRD):

• Terrible
• Poor
• Mediocre
• Average
• Fair
• Good
• Great
• Superb
• Fantastic
• Epic
• Legendary
• Mythic
• Divine

And each of them also have corresponding values. The importance of things like this: game flavor or color. It sets in the mind of the Players and Gamemasters exactly what the numerical values are supposed to mean in 'qualitative' terms rather than quantitative terms. Of course, the onus is then on the mechanics to ensure that they actually match the results quantitatively in the course of gameplay. There are game systems out there that say that if you're Rank 5 in something, you're among the best in the world, but seem to routinely fail at normal uses of the skill, or even against a rank amateur (1 or 2).

While this is somewhat useful, my concern is that having an upper end to this kind of thing can compress things at the upper end of the scale. Furthermore, having the same thing for Actions (attempts to do things that aren't automatic successes) vs. Effects (the end result, and how spectacular it was) can make things tricky, because they aren't necessarily meant to be on the same scale.

Action Items

• come up with a rudimentary, scalable ladder of descriptors
• check out existing mechanics to see what might best match the descriptors in play

NaGaDeMon: Day 01 -- Seriously?

Yeah, so there's this thing where you're supposed to put together a game (in my case, an RPG) in one month. So here I am. Working on an RPG with the working title of Axion.

Ultimately, I'm looking at finally kludging together my favorite bits of RPG rules from various sources and seeing how they hold together (hint: not well). What rules bits are these?

• Hero System: I really love this system, as it has become my fundamental basis for understanding things like 'game balance' and 'game effect' and 'game special effect'. I'd argue it became my first gateway into the concept of game design, given the different tweaks done on the various genres. It is a point-buy system, and I like the independence of all the various game stats and powers, and many of the core philosophies despite the bad taste in the mouth it gives to some people with 'all the math'. It's not really that complex (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all you do here -- no factorials, no exponents, no roots), but I suppose the amount of math rather than the difficulty puts people off.
• Marvel Super Heroes: I loved the random generation of characters, and the way that the Basic version of the rules explained things all 'in character'. I like the FASERIP stats and the text-based ranks of ability from Feeble to Unearthly and Beyond.
• DC Heroes: rounding out the obvious influence that superhero RPGs had on me, DC Heroes impressed me with their use of APs -- a device that somehow merged solid math (exponential jumps in ability) with a way to 'fudge' how big an effect was by using 'benchmarks' or ranges of effect.
• Fuzion: I really liked the concept of switches and dials, the ability to change the 'physics engine' of the system by tweaking key bits of it. I appreciated the attempt to merge HERO with Mekton, but it didn't really all gel that well. I also liked the ability to compress stats cleanly, making stat blocks for NPCs easier to reflect.
• FATE: now that I finally understand it better, based on my fave gateway drug RPG -- Marvel Heroic Roleplaying -- the concept of having Traits or Disadvantages that players (either the PC in question, or other players) or the GM will be able to invoke or compel is a great one. I liked the old HERO rules for randomly determining if a disad might come into play in a given game, but this is a nicer way that ensures that the so-called disads get triggered every so often.

It's a lot to tackle in the month, but what the heck -- I'm not getting any younger.