Bay 12 Games Forum

Character Generation on Navitas requires staff approval before play, but fairly open and none restrictive. You're encourage to create your own unique badass human or original super natural creatures. You can do this with the aid of Plug Ins. https://docs.google.com/document/d/17N3O6nIJWqqHMCEonrNYRLTrfjC0NlXrLGB7aUM292w (WiP)

There a host of 'standard' super natural creatures that are common in the world, and selectable as a race template in CG. And I'm hoping that creatures you create will also be added to the template for others to choose as well.

The Race Creation is an application process so that eh Staff can get a handle on what you are, and we work on a series of comprises to allow you to play the character you want.

The stats are made through a Point Buy System. Cores (skills) and combat actions are to be determined.

Equipment and personal belonging is pretty free form, as long as the character Background is sensible for those belongings.

Character Starting Wealth (covered in greater detail when describing the Econ System) is also background dependent, however wealthy characters don't have absolute control over their wealth and can be used by Staff for game events.

And then the player will need to submit a background for their character. This is to show they got a decent understanding of the game, and their background elements can then be formally integrated into the game in some ways.

After that there some questions to answer, such as character goals and loose outline of what sorta powers you want in the future. These questions, is so we can avoid disappointment and headache in the future. I dont expect you to stick with these goals, and will be little bit sad if you do. This is just to help with understanding the game and with Staff understanding what cha want to do, so we can facilitate that.

I know a lot of the posters here are generally Mudders so the combat system for Navitas is going to be different experience. First and foremost is that it is role play dependent. Without the combatants posing their actions and reactions, the combat system is utterly boring. Its primary purpose is to be a neutral arbiter, to offer grounding for your reactions and to provide balance between combat actions.

So you both, in general, mutually agree to enter combat. Then the turn order is set, and then the first person writes his pose with the actions he doing against his opponent. He inputs the combat action(s) and target(s)s then ends his turn. His opponent is prompted to select his defenses to see if they pass or fail and receive damage.

This is mutual story telling and about having a good time more so, then winning the combat. Ideally you get two players trying to tell a mutually good story and trying to win the combat instance. (And its very epic when this happens.)  The attacker describes in his pose; how and where he's trying to attack you. The defenders then gets to write his defense, and if they failed describe where they hit and how they effected him. And you do so while respecting the feedback of the combat system. You have this back and forth until its concluded.

System wise, the combat system is Skill focus (over stat focus or equipment focus) using your Cores. You're encourage to get a series of unique combat actions. The system can handle support roles quite effectively; such as healers and buffers.

There are stats and energy pools.

Stats:
Strength, Constitution (bodily toughness), Endurance (bodily stamina), (manual) Dexterity, Agility, Willpower (Mental Fortitude),  Finesses (magical dexterity).

Energy Pools:
Health, Navitas (Energy), Stamina, and Action Points. (Action Points are limiters for how many actions you can take during your turn.)

Combat Actions can have cost from any of the energy pools. They can effect any stat or energy pool. These effects can more traditional 'instant' effect, or take place over multiple turns (poison damage or continual healing).

The combat system doesn't recognize range, as its very awkward for mu*s to do this, so I've left that up for Role Playing context. Though inferred range is used in some instances.

Combat Actions can have pretty interesting interactions with each other. There Strong/Weak and Cancel/Ignore.
Strong and Weak are conditional crit hits or crit misses. There are the Combat Types (Melee Range ect ect) and the combat action Composition (damage type and what the combat action is composed out of). These elements are treated with logic gates to see if they're effect(s) are triggered. The trigger effect(s) can be as complex as the normal combat action effects. (Players dont have to worry about configuring this, Staff program in each combat actions. I'm just giving a lite techincal overview of its capabilities).

Cancel/Ignore are similar to the above but are automatic hit or misses.

Character themselves have a default Strong/Weak & Cancel/Ignore. So with some experimentation, you can discover what your opponent has an advantage or disadvantage over. If you happen to aquire an item of power, you can have some neat self discovery with this system as well.

Combat Equipment and Transformation are handle with the same sub system (call the Alteration System). They can alter every facet of the character and individual combat actions. As an example, a universal combat action could be 'Physical' (which generically encompasses melee hand to hand fighting). Then you equip your Sword, and that exchanges the Composition of 'Physical' from Blunt to Sharp. (This is a pretty mundane example, but you could have a transformation, into, say Werewolf, which changes your Physical attack to have sharp damage, and give you a universal Weakness to Silver.)

The Alts have a series of triggers with different effects as well. Such as a damage threshold to disengage the Alteration. A chance to kill you automatically per round. A chance to fail to engage due to a skill roll.  These aren't all the triggers but some of the more colorful ones.

The last bit of the combat system is the none combat skill contest system (Arbiter System). This handles none combat  player vs. player contests, or skill contests from more traditional table top RPGs. It can also handle ad hoc skill contests to. This system is largely supplemental.

But yea. The combat system is fairly expansive, and bows to RP context more often then telling player's no. To gain new combat actions or alts, the players write an application and pays XP for them. Staff then programs in the request and gives them to the player. There generally a conversation between the Staff and player to work out the details of the action. Balance of the combat action is left up to staff.

So one of the key design goals of Navitas is how to disseminate information to characters individually and do so over time so they aren't overwhelmed and just ignore the information.

So instead of having a expansive wiki covering the game, I've decided to use an IC Knowledge System. The Knowledge System is a database of small digestible Factoids.

The Factoids are no larger then two paragraphs and describe some element of the game's universe. Players will have Knowledge Cores (skills), and will gain new Factoids every week. Each Factoid has an Obscure Rating. The Obscurity Rating, is pretty much what it says on the tin. How obscure the Factoid is. Its variable though. So for one Knowledge Core, a particular factoid would be more obscure, but for another, it fairly common knowledge.

As an example.

Orange County Transportation Authority
The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) is a civil service providing cheap public transportation, via bus routs all over orange county for a flat fair. Bulk of the routes run during the day, but some run late into the evening.
City Life:15  Burrows Life:90

City Life and Burrows Life are example of a Knowledge Core, and the number is Obscurity Rating. So for the Burrows Life knowledge, knowing about the OCTA is far more obscure then if you had the City Life Knowledge Core.

Now, this system also lets me retroactively insert new information into the game. Such as, if we had a Bruce Wayne Character who is a celebrity due to his immense wealth, I can inset factoid about the character when they're approved. And Characters can know about Bruce Wayne without ever having to talk to the player. I can use this system to also retroactively insert information for game events, like Tiny Plots.

The Rumor System uses bulk of the Knowledge System infrastructure, which is why they're grouped together. During play, players can submit Rumors about Characters. These rumors don't have to be accurate. They're staff approved. (To prevent to many duplicate rumors or erroneous submissions.) This system can also be used for game events, like Tiny Plots.

The Rumor System is meant to help give reasons for characters to meet each other. Hopefully it'll also stop that awkward, and tired 'meeting for the first time' rp. Which if you play on Role Play enforce or intensive places, can get pretty repetitive and boring. These rumors are handed out once a week, and more or less random. These rumor expire after a while. Characters can elect to keep some of these rumors. This forms a pseudo reputation system.

Monsters of the Week, is pretty much what it says on the tin. They're a game ran event that are meant to be completed in 1-4 scenes ran weekly. Generally these are one off monsters to try and defeat, but not always. If you've watch shows, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Friday the 13th the TV series, it can also be a mysterious that needs to be solved.

These are suppose to be quick game events.

Navita's chief inspiration is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, but its not its only inspiration. Its other inspiration is Warehouse 13 and SCP Wiki.

There will be a series of unique items that give characters  various abilities. They're meant to be be a source of conflict for characters. And they should be stolen and taken from each other, as often as possible. New Items of Power (IoP), will be introduce to the game on a semi regular basis, while old (or unbalance) IoP will be cycled out of the game. I have a few IoP planned that'll take a few RL years before they can be effectively used.

There three IC Organizations meant to handle IoP. The Warehouse, The Library (More or less the Library from the Liberian tv movie series) and SCP.

The IoPs will be scaled in such a fashion, where IoP meant for lower 'level' characters wont interest higher 'level' characters, and high 'level' IoP will be dangerous and or unusable to lower 'level ' characters from wanting them. This is an attempt to keep the contest for IoP on a more level playing field.

The number of active IoP will be kept in a ratio of active players. I'm thinking a 1:3 ratio, IoP to Players.

The Economy System is totally stolen from d20 Modern, Wealth System. (And its under a OGL.)
Though some of its assumptions are changed. This isn't a very detail econ system, as you'll find on some Muds. This is a very abstracted and overall a simplified system.

When I was working on the Items of Power, I discover that it was perfectly reasonable that some characters would want to to hire NPC Guards or Private Eyes, to protect their IoP, or to hirer Mercenary Extraction Teams or Thieves to steal IoP from other players.

So players can buy items or services without a direct need for Staff. (Which reduces staff paperwork.) And characters can use this system to bargain between themselves.

These services include but not limited to, private ambulances, or private doctors. 

It includes the ability to make purchase from various black markets.

And includes the allowance for characters to go into debt.

It doesn't really support any sort of character crafting, but characters can hold jobs and get hired by other characters. If there a real call for this, I'll add it in later on.

Its pretty much, and equipment and personal belonging buying system.

As I said earlier, one of the design goals of Navitas was how to disseminate information to characters individually. I've also played on fair amount of high action text games, from muds to mushes. Something that sorta bugged me, was that if my combat session included marring the environment or destroying it, no one else knew. And worse off, this applies to places with a sense of a continuity, is that an RP can happen there soon after and they cant react to the fight that just happen there.

A recent and very silly offender to this, was on Bleach the Beginning Mush; there was this Ice Cream Parlor, that for some reason because a high traffic RP room. And a lot of combat happen in this room, and nearly every instance of combat, the ice cream parlor was totalled. The windows were destroyed, the display cases wrecked, and generally the store employees would be described as running off. Yet, the next day, or even next hour, the same thing would happen. And this mush was meant to have a sense of continuity. So the fight that happen previous should impact future RPs there.

So I made each room, hold a set of different descriptions of 'Destroyed Levels'.  Characters can select these levels, and the rooms description would change. Then with a timer, would over time, go back to the default descriptions. Characters can leave notes to give better context for what happen. With conjunction of +finger profiles for rooms and the rumor system, characters, can if they want to, figure out who did the fighting in the room. This system will also be used for IC law enforcement (police as an example) to find out what happened.

This system also has the capability to store alternative description sets. So for game events, I can switch out descriptions for entire areas. There also a few other effects I can do with these system too.

So Navitas is a Role Play enforced mush, and characters gain XP from either submitting logs or reviewing logs.

Navitas will employ Mercutio's Scene System to have an in mush logging system which then I'll be adding an anonymous peer log reviewing. (As in players will grade each other logs). Essentially, you role play, submit your log to be reviewed then other players review said log. The grades are then averaged and that turn into XP for the characters inside the log. The reviews are only anonymous to other players. Staff can see how each player is reviewing, and who they are reviewing. Their grades can then be weighted, or muted. These modifications can be done on a per character they review or universally for each review they do. Reviewers will also be paid in XP as well, which will respect word count. I've been looking into making a small smart phone app to review logs remotely, but thats a future addition.

I don't know. Character Things. The game doesn't have a pre set goal, or an end goal for characters. They're meant to set up their own goals, and try to achieve them. Its pretty open ended.

Eventually, I expect players to form Factions, and to inherent places of authorities in the games more formal factions as they grow in power and knowledge of the game world. Since the game is focus on Player Vs. Player, something I'm trying to do, to stop Older/Stronger Players from harassing new players is to change how they relate to each other.

One way you can change this, is to maker older/stronger players be in a position of authority over new players. So Older Players use New Players as tools. And thus give newer players direction and structure.

There are some things that I hope some characters will try to do. Like, learn Necromancy, or try to discover immortality, or other more insane things. I'm fairly open to letting players shape the world. A TP that I have planned out, for about 2 years after the game opens has the distinct possibility to make the game start over.