On a somewhat related note, let me crosspost some discussion here.
I've been tossing around
Perplexicon ideas in my head, and one's bubbling close to the surface. I wanted to bounce a few ideas off people to see if they're terrible or not.
1) Game structure
The idea was to have a shorter and more focused game, and the best solution I could come up for this was a team based game. I had discussed it a bit in Pit of Magic, but the gist is that we'd have two teams of four, with each side having a "base" on opposite ends of the map. In the middle there would be six "capture points" spread around the map, indestructible and immobile. A player that was already close to it could spend an entire turn to capture it. The first team to capture five out of six wins.
Each team would give a slightly different version of the book, with very approximately half of the words in both books, and the other half split between the two teams. They'd be balanced so that each team got useful but different words without giving one side an advantage over the other. (Nothing major; one side gets copper and axe, the other side gets iron and flail. Both sides get sword, steel, and control, for example.)
The game would start with five turns for each team to test words and suit up with team damage turned off so they'd have a smattering of gear and word knowledge to head out the door with. I might even give out a few basic word meanings so that basic gear could be created without too much testing required. At the least, the books would be separated into labeled sections (Elements, Forms, Targeting, whatever) to speed testing up a bit.
2) Death and Stats
I might borrow the +/- system that a few other similar games have used instead of point-based like the classic Perplexicon. The idea was to have the same stats as in Pit (str dex spd end will pot pool) and let each player place two + wherever they like, and be able to get up to three more + to spend by placing an equal number of - (so at most 5 + and 3 -) with a maximum of ++ or --.
How would pool work? My thought was to have pool always be full every turn, and to have the stat simply limit the maximum number of words usable in a turn, like so:
-- 1
- 2
= 3
+ 4
++ 5I'm curious as to how people think this would work, since it would limit spells to five words at maximum as well as make the Overdrive effect (see: Pit of Magic or Tribulations) obsolete.
I gave everyone a bit of power to start with because death would no longer give souls to the killer; the killed player would just spend the next turn respawning in base. This prevents any snowballing effect giving one team a huge advantage over the other with a big point stack building up, but still penalize players for dying via time lost. I might consider letting people gain power from a low number of kills (two or so), though.
Players could also spend an action in their base to be healed or rid themselves of transformation effects they don't like.
3) Magic
Magic would by and large work like what you're used to, with a few changes. The biggest change is that spells without a form would work differently. For example, if a player said "Repair iron" in classic versions, they'd probably get a chuck of iron that could repair other iron. What this would change is that this spell would instead repair any iron in front of them, without creating any physical objects. "Repair Iron Ring" would give a ring that could be used to repair iron as normal, since the magic has a form to be bound to. "FireForward Iron" would also still shoot a chunk of iron forward, since the magic's bound to the targeting vector.
Bodily transformations would work differently too. Instead of using a transformation to turn your body entirely into another element, it would instead infuse the target with the essence of that element. If you did "RightArm Iron", you'd be resistant to slashing attacks as well as gain a nasty punch. If you infused your legs with rubber, you could jump higher and not take fall damage. If you infused your entire body with fire, you'd be resistant to fire attacks and cause burns on anyone who touched you. All that said, you'd still be fleshy on the inside in all those cases, so turning to metal is no longer a great way to make yourself resistant to bleeding and pain. That said, the infusion magic would affect control, so a steel-infused arm would need to be affected with steel control instead of flesh control.
Going with the "magic with/without form is different" theme, if you tried to infuse your arms with swords, you'd instead get arms that were actual swords; forms would cause true transformations. It still wouldn't get around the previous rule if you wanted to turn yourself into a steel bear, for example; it'd still be a steel-infused bear instead of a true steel bear.
Thoughts? Criticisms? Taking ideas and running with them?
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 699480 times)