We had a good thread two days ago, let's discuss again. I want to run a game that feels like the Souls series (counting bloodborne in), in a different setting from the existing one but still coherent with the lore. I need the system to be lethal but fair and I want death to be a part of the learning process (in the beginning at least)
Here are a few idea to begin:
How could we use covenants?
Does RuneQuest give enough mechanics to play like a souls game?
If not, what mechanics from what system could we borrow? Or what system could we use instead?
Any idea for the setting?
>>44187740
>death to be part of the learning process
Well the question there is how do you make it so that death isn't something trivial? It needs to still "sting" to be a learning experience. In the Souls games dying lowers max HP; in Bloodborne that doesn't happen but you're still at risk of losing all your accrued blood-souls-currency. How could you translate that to tabletop?
I would suggest a "party pool" of the aforementioned currency to draw on, to reinforce the idea of group play instead of FromSoft singleplayer emphasis. If the healer dying is just as bad as the tank dying, both know they need to fucking do their jobs to keep each other alive. (And yes, I've been in games where herp derp I'm not going to carry out my combat role in combat happened so sometimes it is necessary to encourage proper combat behaviour)
Covenants.. honestly, they don't do that much in-game beyond giving you access to special items so I don't know how much you'd want them to do in this.
>>44187857
In the Souls' series the main currency is Souls, which is used to power oneself up. Someone in the last thread brought out that death could mean going back to Step 1 as all the souls leave your dead body.
Also, covenants could be mainly for RP
>OP mentions my Thread
>INEXPLICABLE JOY
I feel like Bloodborne could be run with a very modified Ravenloft/that pf conversion it has, i think I have ir around somewhere.
I'd suggest for either setting a "Sanity/Hollowing" mechanic, upon wich you suffer minor stat drain/max hp los/decreased saves(frenzy saving throws?) until you consume a rare ítem (Humanity, in ds! Stone of Ephemeral eyes if DeS and maybe visiting the Hunters Dream for BB)
I think we can just modify/homebrew some stuff and run it mostly on a more exploration-fighting system. I only used PF DnD and Legend of the Five Rings before so idk.
Runequest could work.
You could buy stat points with souls, instead if improving your skills through experience rolls.
Improving your stats in runequest increases how much damage you do and your base skills.
Death = losing all your hard earned souls
I can't think of a better system that simulates parrying
>>44187857
In-setting, the loss of the will to live, the loss of Humanity and as a result of either/or the loss of your humanity (the real world kind) and sanity would drive you to hollowing, whereupon you become increasingly mindless and grotesque.
Theoretically you could apply this using something not unlike the sanity system some games have.
A lot of people who follow Song of Swords do so because they think it would make an excellent basis for a Dark Souls game.
+A Weapon List nearly matching the basic weapons in Dark Souls
+Weapon qualities can be easily homebrewed to fit any Dark Souls unique
+Realistic Combat allows for competitive 'PVP' combat
+Characters suffer realistic wounds through combat
+Combat allows for a representation of many fighting styles and tactics
-Having multiple players fighting multiple enemies in the same bout where they can target each other is complicated and needs a degree of learned micromanaging but isn't so bad once you've got the process down.
-Ranged combat is much different from melee combat and isn't modeled in a very competitive way, instead you have very few options to defend yourself aside from being really fucking far away
>>44187740
Might be worth looking into GURPS. I know, I know, GURPS for everything, memes, yada yada, but the gritty heroicism fits. You're not special, and fighting people above your level will get you killed, but you can succeed if you try hard and fight smart. Plus, statting out Hollowing with a self-only affliction might work. Gimme a bit and I'll work one out for you, if you want.
>www mediafire com/view/rcj9g4cntaced85/Soulhunters.pdf
I'm surprised this system is not seen around more frequently. It is very rule-light and could be easily adapted togheter with other rpgs.
As for the worldbuilding, that's all up to the DM. I was thinking of an adventure that starts with the players not remembering their death, finding themselves in a city shrouded by fog, with no people but a ferry-man, that can carry them to other places.
>>44188391
I don't know RuneQuest but GURPS would be my go to for this also.
>>44187740
Burning wheel? A Combat system that is complex, chaotic and deadly but still contains a decent amount of strategy (if the GM role plays the enemies well)
>>44188603
and the system for artha could be used for humanity and the system for grief/greed for turning hollow.
>>44188438
Was suggested in the thread I made 2 days ago, still havent looked muchs into it cause exams every day.
Also, how would we implement stamina and stamina regen? I feel like we need the Mask of the Father /s
>>44188391
>>44188552
If you do go with GURPS, the following is what I'd use for Hollowing:
Afliction [64]
Grants Extra Life (Copy, backed up at chapels/bonfires/lanterns/wherever you spend souls, memories kept but not stats) [+200%]
Grants -1 Max HP (Accessability: Only When Max HP is greater than 1/2 original Max HP [-10%]) [+1.5%]
Self Only [+0%]
Reflexive [+40%]
Trigger (Only When Killed) [-15%]
Duration: Permanent (Accessability: Only for Extra Life [-10%]) [+270%]
Duration: Permanent (Dispelled by becoming human or whatever; Accessability: Only for Max HP Reduction [-10%]) [+135%]
A book about Dark Souls was published in french. "Dark Souls: Par delà-là mort", it covers everything from the development of the game to the setting, the music, the mechanics, etc...
I found somewhere in there that in the beginning of the dev process the importance of water was the main thing of the game before Myazaki changed his mind and choose to focus on Dark and Light. You can still see the things they left in the game that were probably linked to that (Firelink shrine ankle deep water, New Londo).
It could be interesting to use the water theme instead of the fire, a fountain would serve as a bonfire, the water that save and the one that bring death, again I'm just throwing ideas. On the other side, if I keep the fire and light dark theme, I could still be playing in another "cycle" after Lordran and Drangleic. And change cycle each time they get to the end instead of going in NG+. (If my player are really into it, I don't doubt they'll ask for more)
Stats increase, aside from giving raw damage/power, could be used to unlock weapons/staves/chimes. Depending the system, this could ba a good way to make the party spend their souls toward a personal goal.
>>44189333
Should be 74, man, not 64. You missed the 10 point base.
Effects similar to SAN loss in some other games are a must for whenever you die, and underneath a certain humanity perhaps you'd have to save v. hollowing, where hollowing results in immediate, permanent loss of your character and that character's re-use as an unintelligent enemy which appears later near where it was killed before hollowing.
Character creation should be somewhat minimal, allowing for the quick creation of new characters when you inevitably all die repeatedly and have to roll new characters to fight your previous, hollowed characters.
>>44189881
Man, I'm really curious how a water-themed Dark Souls would have gone. Would the soul have been changed into some water thing, or would it be the force that snuffs out fiery souls? Would the lore be anything even remotely like what Dark Souls ended up having? I can't even begin to imagine.
Was the book only published in French, or were there other language versions, or books in other languages with the same information? I'd really like to read more about this.
Perhaps classes could have set stats? That way chargen is little more than a series of yes/no.
Plus, it would be more game like, as it is the way you level that defines your character, not the class.
>>44190179
There's little to no information about the water thing on internet (And I've searched long enough to know it). The two author did a incredible job of searching and reading traduction of books, articles, and so on from the devs. Unfortunately it's only in french at "Third Edition" and I've never seen them publish something in english.
From what I understand, souls would still be there like in Demon Souls. There's a reason that New Londo is flooded. In Bloodborne, large volume of water serve as a "bulwark guarding sleep". It also make me think that Blightown is full of water but that this water is poisonous and give illnesses, the opposite of the clear water we see in the chapel of firelink. There's so much things linked to water, and we'll probably never have answers...
>>44190407
Underwater Souls level?
Putting that in the campaing for sure
>>44188438
Soulhunters is less an RPG than it is a description of an RPG that could exist. Risus has more rules than Soulhunters.
>>44189881
>I could still be playing in another "cycle" after Lordran and Drangleic.
If you want to do something REALLY fun, we could come up with a setting that is set in a cycle we haven't seen yet: one where Dark itself is dominant.
See, there is actually some serious ambiguity when it comes to what the overall cycle actually means. Two mutually exclusive options exist:
Option 1: The cycle is the perpetual linking of the fires, a ritual that has been repeated again and again through history. As the fires fade, the curse returns and undead roam the land until one of them becomes a vessel for powerful souls and links the fires. If the fires are allowed to fade completely, the Dark will rise to prominence and the fires will be lost forever, never to return. This requires that the Chosen Undead/True Monarchs, given the choice of whether to Link the Fires or not, have ALWAYS chosen to extend the age of fire up until now.
Option 2: It doesn't actually matter what choice is made, because everything always returns back to the beginning. Every age of fire closes as the fires begin to fade and Dark grows more powerful, and the Chosen Undead gets the choice to keep the fires going or let them go out. But if the fires go out, it isn't forever. Every age of dark ends with true humanity discovering the embers of Fire, and has to make the choice of burying them and extending the age of Dark or embracing them and starting a new Age of Fire. This would mean that there have been multiple ages of fire/ages of dark, but the timescale is so vast that it doesn't really matter in the long run.
So you could flip and reverse everything, setting the game at the end of an Age of Dark, with Fire slowly returning back to the world. The players then choose whether to fight the Fire or support it.
>>44192190
What would an Age of Dark even look like? Considering there's no fire, nothing even changes. The Dark Soul would probably have pulled itself back together for the age to arrive, as it was trying to do with Manus?
So there would only be one incredibly powerful being of pure dark?
>>44193134
That's the thing, we don't know! We have a blank check to come up with something really cool here.
Manus was an immensely powerful collection of dark soul, but Gwyn was likewise an immensely powerful collection of his type of soul too. The shards of Manus would be important in an age of dark, but I don't see why they would have to all group back together.
Somewhere, the Old Chaos is also still a thing. So that's dangerous.
Remember that there is a difference between Dark and the unchanging mists of the archtimes when dragons ruled. The grey was timeless, but Dark and Fire both heralded change.
I imagine that civilization as we know it is a product of Fire, since Fire is used to shape things (blacksmithing and whatnot). Dark is more about personal power than external tools, but all of that shit lef over from previous ages of fire is still around. The denizens of Dark know about these tools and still use the ones that are in usable condition, but most of them consider such tools to basically be alien and don't really understand how they were made.
The groups that harbor the ancient knowledge of using fire and fire-made tools would be viewed much the same way as hex magic users are viewed in DS2.
>>44193527
Humanity is linked to the abyss, see what happen in darkroot garden when the dark soul (who is divided between the humans as humanities) begin to get back together? The abyss begin to grow and consume/corrupt everything it touches. At the end, I believe that it would all look like the boss room of the 4 kings. An endless plane of dark... With a pigmy in the center or just a undefined amount of humans/hollows
>>44193796
Maybe, but in all honestly the Abyss itself is a giant ??? when it comes to the rest of the setting. The Oolacile abyss was created by a huge concentration of Dark, but the 4 Kings created their own link to it using the power bequeathed to them by Gwyn, which is anything but Dark.
The serpents, like Kaathe and Frampt, are also said to live in the Abyss. So it can't be entirely empty.
Though there is that theory that by the time of DS2 all of the serpents have been killed, indicated by the headless snakes and images seen in the Shrine of Winter. Which, if true, has some interesting implications because the Abyss does not make a reappearance in DS2 even though shards of Manus are around and Hexes are being used. Even the Old Dark Chasm isn't anything like the Abyss.
A case could be made that the Abyss had more to do with the serpents interfering in our domain that it had to do with Dark itself, which is why the Abyss is an unknown phenomenon by the time of Vendrick.
I was playing around with the sorcery crafting system in GURPS to find balanced pricing for all the enchanted rings in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls as GURPS items. price values are raw production costs, so real price is approximately double. It is scaled for TL3, which is about Dark Souls technology level.
Thr Dark Age could be powered by weird chaos magics, with ebon wizards ruling monster kingdoms and humanity naked and enslaved by slime and black vapours. The few survivng artifacts from the age of Fyre would be considered alien and poisonous by monsters. A forged sword or piece of armor would be an illegal treasure, but one day a human slave with white bulging eyes sees a glinting ember in the darkness...
http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/resources/RuneQuest%20Essentials.pdf
I took a look at RuneQuest and it seems to be what I was looking for.
Combat style fitting each weapon type, weapon size take into account for parying, special action when someone has the upper hand (counter, backstab, etc)
For the skills now... What I can think of is to discard everything unrelated to combat (crafting, dancing, etc) and from there I have 3 option:
-Make it so basics skills are, well, so basic all PC has them at the beginning but still need to learn or get the other from another way.
-Make some skills a passive ability from a starting class: endurance for the warrior, evade for the thief, etc
-Get the skill on a ring or equipment that the pc can wear to obtain the effect
The characteristics range from 3 to 18, this seems enough to buy a stats and see the difference in combat
-Strength will stay that way
-Condition will be the vigor
-Size serves also in the DMG modifier, I personnaly would not mind keeping it and let my PC modify it with their souls, if it doesn't modify their size but rather take the place of the endurance from DS2 who was the hp/sta/def/poise stats. Let's just call it endurence
-Dexterity overlaps with intelligence for the reaction time and number of action point. I feel like this on could stay that way and be more oriented towards weapon handling and reflexes
-Intelligence will be Adaptability, it give the general agility of the player
-Power, I was at first going to give it the role of attunement but seeing there's no real "magic int/knowledge" it will take the role of the two.
-Charisma will replace the faith stats, we have no use for it (and seeing how a lot of the npc react to our faith, this may not be a bad idea)
Attributes:
-Action point (attack speed) DEX + ADP
-Damage modifier (raw/strength damage) STR + VIG
(DEX won't influence damage directly but it will unlock the use of fine weapons)
-Experience modifier (ranking with the faith) FTH
cont.
-Healing rate (resistance to affliction) CON
-Movement: basic for everyone, can change and be impaired depending on equipment
-Luck point (attunement slots)
-Magic points: I have no use for it since there will be a limited number of use per spell and some items can regen that
It look like I'll get a homebrew of my own soon enough, I like seeing all of it take place in the plan I made earlier
>>44195016
Pretty much. Humans will never entirely disappear (much like how Dark never completely disappeared during the Age of Fire) but most of the world will lose its reason. Hollows are a transitional state to the true form of mankind, but that true form doesn't seem to have much need for intelligence or sanity.
At multiple points in Dark Souls, ordinary people (sometimes through nothing more than extraordinary desires or circumstances) become warped into unique and powerful monsters. I think that might hint heavily at the true nature of man, instances where the limitation enforced on us by Gwyn cracks.
Would you rather have a common pool of souls for the party or an individual pool?
>>44198054
I think the only fair answer is a split between the
two. Internalized souls and External souls.
Internalized souls can only be spent to advance your character's stats. Indeed, they automatically do so. They are the representation of you accumulating power as you absorb the strength of enemies.
External souls are basically those souls you carry around in your inventory, and act like items. They can be sacrificed to be transformed into Internalized souls, traded as currency, or used up to make unique gear.
In this way, Internalized souls represent the advancement of the character itself and external souls fill the role of treasure, which can be allocated among the group as fairly (or unfairly) as possible. Dying between levels means that you risk losing your unspent Internalized souls, but if the party is will to let you use up some of the souls they are carrying you can catch up. If the entire party TPKs, though, there is no one to defend your bodies from being looted for souls by hollows, and that's how you risk losing external souls. Which you might now have to go and track down if it was something unique.
This way you have risks and penalties for individual people dying, but this doesn't totally screw over the whole group. A TPK provides a different and greater risk, and makes the remaining players choose whether they want to die on this hill with the rest of you or retreat with the loot for the good of the team.
>>44187954
Maybe just tasks to regain humanity? Make it more like the lore than the game in that you need to rediscover the will to live.
>>44187740
Use Wraith World.
