Bay 12 Games Forum

Before I forget, Splatoon RTD. To summarize the original game, players are half squid, half human kids that alternate between the two species as they use colorful ink-based weapons to color more turf in an arena that the other team. You are slowed in the enemy's ink, and are harmed if you get hit by their weapons, but so are they. As a squid, you move faster in your own ink, camouflaged from the enemy, and regenerate your own ink-based ammunition, but cannot shoot. Other team-based variants exist, as well as a "single-player" campaign against the dreaded Octarians that could shift well into a cooperative game mode.

Quote from: OceanSoul on July 14, 2017, 07:15:39 pm

Shoot at imp with smoking barrel if I would not be attacked, or dodge if I myself am attacked.

The dodge happens automatically when you are attacked. If you yourself attacked/casted (or will attack/cast) that turn, you get a -5 to dodge that turn. Is this why you don't want to attack if you were going to be attacked?

Pretty much.

Literal dungeon masters in training using their skills to build a fortress to defend agains dummy heroes sent by their academy to test and train them. Takes place in a High-ish Fantasy setting where technology is advancing and dungeoneering is a dying art.

So..you're working with Pavellius on the game?

Deck-based Perplexicon is... interesting, to say the least.  Hmm.  I think it would be far too luck based, because a good three-card combo when your opponent has nothing wins the game instantly.  "Break held flesh", bam.  Limiting cards to weak things would help that, but also makes the game much lower power in general.  I kinda wanna try running an IRC game like that, though.

I, personally, don't generally like focus actions in P--the game is better when chaos is the norm.  Being able to trade time for reliablity just breaks the spirit in my opinion.  I feel similarly about getting bonuses with theme words.  People tend to theme anyway, and it's relatively boring play, I'd rather not encourage it.  Beyond that, keeping track of what words which people tend to use is a lot of bookkeeping.

I do like the idea of upgrading hexes, or feeding resources from one hex into others.  Summoning wood to burn, in order to produce fire words, is a clever and interesting idea.  Alternatively, burning a forest to get a whole glut of fire words, but changing production from animals and wood to ash and coal.

"Break held Flesh" seems like it would just cause notable tears and such in whatever body part you held. Plus, there's the roll for it's potency, and you'd have to actually reach melee range and hold on to the body itself, with contested rolls against whoever you're holding, possibly requiring you to get past armor or such. Quite a physical detriment, good chance of being lethal if untreated. I'd say it's balanced.

In that last scenario you mentioned, with the forest burning down, chances are that the total amount of ash and coal words harvestable would be limited to some degree. Once that's all harvested, it's basically plain, possibly haunted land. Oh, Piece, you may want to consider letting a gang destroy/disrupt a Hex rather than claiming it for themselves.

Lastly, I have put a lot of consideration into a card-based Perplexicon, though I would likely have to remove or tone back the Perplex part. It'd be more of a Dexicon, though there wouldn't be a lexicon, either. So never mind the name. Anyway, new players would get a varied deck of cards, each card consisting of one or more words/aspects. To cast a spell, use an amount of cards in your hand, and their aspects make up the spell, and potency is rolled on a d6. Cards with just one word would be named the word itself, and some cards would have multiple aspects and/or an amount of effects, such as "If used with Forward or Sphere, add the other aspect to the spell", "+1 potency to spell if you discard another card in your hand", or "You may add Poison to your spell; if you do, you take a minor wound". Stuff like that. Innately strong aspects, such as Dragon, might have cards with hindering effects, such as "When cast, discard two cards from your hand; if you don't or cannot, this card's aspect becomes Lizard" or "-1 potency to roll". Depending on what your character does/what happens to them, they can get cards based off of it. Additionally, there may be ways to take cards from people/NPCs you defeat, buy/trade them with PC/NPCs, or simply find them in the arena.

Of course, I wouldn't have the skill/confidence to run it for a while.

If you're going to keep calling it a Deck, you may as well consider making the actual words cards in a deck. For the most part, this would mean that you only have assess to 7 or so words, likely overlapping, in the beginning of a battle, and would either regain them at a specific rate (1 per turn, maybe spending an action out of combat to gain an extra that turn) or through a specific action (You draw back up to 7, or draw 4 or so cards unless/until you reach 7, if you cast no magic in a turn). This would provide another balancing factor, as not only would rarer, more powerful cards in your deck be harder to find, but so would the combos. Then again, this would provide a moderate factor of luck to battles, which could end up being unfair/removing skill from battles to some degree. Then again, this is an RTD we're talking about, so it might not matter too much.

Have you considered words/cards that aren't simply concepts usable in spells? For example, one called "Focus" might be usable to strengthen the next magic spell the user casts, maybe in exchange for taking up a turn. There's also the idea of multi-concept words, such as a combination Dragon-fragile word, that could bind weaker words into more usable units and, in this case, provide a debuff to a more powerful word to balance it out? Lastly, is there any way to have a choice in hat words are makable, or otherwise affecting the word output of hexes? For example, forging advanced chemistry sets so that an alchemical hex can better produce its words (Acidic, Vial, and Poison, for example), or maybe allow the production of a new, stronger word (Maybe Transmutation, Fusion, or Homunculus). Ways of upgrading a Hex might be through purchases via currency and/or words (Providing Glass and Pipe words for the alchemic hex), the constant supply of words as a more continual price (Providing an amount of Gold or Wood words on a daily basis, maybe), through a mission of some sort (Steal the secrets from a rival alchemic workshop), or simply via having certain other hexes (That second alchemical hex you got is working with the first one now, and they've figured out more efficient methods).

Lastly, does the mage itself gain any benefit or effect from using the same word/combination of words over an amount of time? If my mage that starter with Wind, Bird, and Spiral, for example, was able to get and use a continuous supply of Wind words, would they get any better at it? If they often used Bird words with Fire words they obtained to summon, well, Firebirds, would they get any better at that? If they often used Spiral, Confusion, or Illusion words to confuse their enemies, would they get better at that?

I'm sorry for any and all inconveniences, but when I said "not in" in my first and only post, I meant it. The post as a whole was just a small joke. I didn't want to be part of this, I just wanted to point out how the thread had my attention.