Inspired by SeriousConcentrate and Tarran, I've decided to request feedback on the RTD I'm planning. The somewhat poorly-worded basics are as follows:
High fantasy gone to hell. The whole world's divided up into warring provinces controlled by warlords, and there's far too much magic running around. As a result of that and continued escalation, there's entire provinces that have been turned into vampires, regions where demons openly rule, formerly-inhabited sections that are now a mass of writhing carnivorous plants, and other such madness.
This also makes character creation rather... interesting. In addition to being able to play as more unusual races or afflictions, you can play as a Tainted, which is a mortal infused (some might say infested) with demonic power. This gives you a bonus when you overshoot, but overshooting too much or more than once in a row tends to give you hideous mutations and generally move you closer to transforming completely into a slavering horror. Which I'm sure many players wouldn't mind, except then you have to make rolls to not feast on your former comrades on the spot and other such unpleasantness.
Any time you roll a 5 or 6, you get a Skill Point in whatever you were doing. "Whatever you were doing" is rather more specific than "using a sword" or "athletics," however; "Butchering Peasants" or "Rooftop Travel" are more likely.
Skill points don't do anything on their own, but can be combined to form special moves. This is up to the player; there are no predefined "recipes." Special moves can be as simple as a +1 bonus to your attack roll or somewhat more elaborate, like tripping or stunning, but in general +/-1 is the intended power. You can combine multiple special moves to get a higher-tier special move, for a +/-2 or equivalent bonus.
Do note that since special moves are a result of your actions, it pays to describe things somewhat clearly, since it's a lot easier to get what you want if you've got well-described parts. Coming in low and then impaling someone through the throat with your spear, for instance, is likely to have a lot more potential than just stabbing someone. Hopefully this will make combat (and everything) fairly flavorful, since everyone will be describing it a little better than "Attack Spearman 2." "Gut Spearman 2" is much better.
Special moves can only be used once every so often. I'm not totally certain of the recharge rate; it might range anywhere from once every time you rest and recover to simply being available every fight.
Magic is a difficult and very personal art that begins with Concepts. Concepts are fashioned out of skill points in the same way special moves are, but rather than being a usable power, Concepts merely represent your personal codification of a certain, well, concept, be it Love, Chaos, Fire, or Battle.
Concepts are then combined into spells, but unlike with skill points this doesn't consume the concept (I think, still tinkering with this). This means that the more Concepts you amass, the more spells you (theoretically) know because the more combinations are possible. As with special moves, both Concepts and their resulting spells are up to the player; you want a healing spell, you figure out what makes up healing and what actions personify said components.
Note that this makes spellcasters rather eccentric, since they tend to spend most of their time lighting fires or hugging children in an attempt to better understand the underlying principles of their craft. It also means there's no clear line between arcane-ish and divine-ish casters; some manipulate fire and ice, others wield piety and virtue, and some combine fire and hate.
Comments are welcome, but there's also a few more specific issues I'm having trouble ironing out.
For one thing, currently the only way to progress is to amass more or larger once-per-whenever bonuses. I'm thinking I'd probably like some sort of innate statistics beyond HP (and possibly a way to increase HP, for that matter), but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it. One thought would be Attack and Defense values that increase more commonly than 1/3 of the time, possibly even every time you roll at all.
As for what they'd do, I'm thinking something like adding Attacker's Attack / Defender's Defense to the damage done on a hit, so if someone with 4 Attack hits someone with 2 Defense, they get 2 extra damage. If someone with 2 Attack hits someone with 4 Defense, they deal an extra 0.5 damage. Including division with every strike might get a little complicated, but I'm not sure what else I'd do with it. Acting as some sort of damage cap has also occurred to me, but I'm not really sure how that would work. I'd also prefer if fighting enemies with higher values increased your own values faster, but again I'm not sure how to do that without it being too complex.
Any idea when it'll be available
SOON!
TMThe Concepts system is a little bit confusing. You might want to either make it easier to understand or simplify it. I'd recommend the former as this sounds interesting as-is.
Another problem with the Concepts system is that I see the beginning being extremely slow and limiting for spellcasters.
I'm still not entirely sure how it's going to work myself, but fundamentally it'll be exactly like special moves but with an extra step. Instead of going Stab Guy -> Special Stab Guy Move, it'll go Light Fire -> Fire -> Fire Spell. Note that Light Fire -> Fire might be an actionless one-to-one conversion, in which case it'd work almost exactly the same.
And yes, getting started would be rather difficult... I'll have to think on that, though it's not entirely unintended.
Anyway, I'll be sure to play a Tainted for the lulz.
I expect this to be a common sentiment.
Author
Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 702220 times)