Hey /tg/, so I've been working on a system for a while now and it's gone through so many iterations and changes in the past year so I'm looking for some opinions and fresh advice. It's a lot to explain so I'm just going to give general explanations for key features and if you have specific questions, feel free to ask.
(I'm going to start by explaining the lore so that the scope and scenarios that are presenting in games makes sense.)
The current lore for the world that the game is built into is that some cataclysmic event triggers a mass evolution in the planet Earth and all types of flora and fauna evolve/mutate at accelerated rates. Humanity says, "Nope, screw this, I'm out." and retreats to fallout shelters, bunkers, caves, pretty much any place where they can hide while the chaos surges on.
After about 80-100 years after the tides of evolution seem to stagnate, humanity has reverted to tribal groups for most with only few settlements reaching positions of high culture. The natural world is impossibly dangerous at every turn with most predators enjoying the additions to their food chain while humanity continues to hold their ground thanks to members of their community who stumble unwittingly into a method of triggering evolution in themselves.
Ancient buildings and technology litters areas where cities once were. Finding rusted weapons or decayed clothing is common. While spoken language has remained somewhat consistent (different colonies may have developed different words or dialects but the whole of speech is still understood) written language become almost entirely butchered with some colonies lacking the concept entirely. Reading "ancient" language is like trying to decipher a toddler's terrible handwriting and spelling x1000.
Hunting parties are considered some of the most dangerous groups to join but the prestige and materials earned off of a successful hunt keeps the profession with a steady supply of volunteers. Aside from assisting in population control, these hunting groups train some of the most powerful individuals a colony has to offer and provides groups with food sources/materials that can't normally be grown in agricultural facilities.
In more civilized settlements, expeditionary groups form often in order to search for relics from an ancient age, study the creatures in the wilds, or for personal glory. The expeditions are often in direct competition with each other and act closer to nomadic tribes or gangs depending on their group. Thanks to these groups, more and more colonies are being discovered and tribal systems that are too weak to explore themselves are able to establish contact with other humans through the expeditions.
Having one or two recruiters in an expedition is a must as you are in direct competition with other expeditions so having more manpower (and disposable troops) is a must when competing with rivals.
The creatures that inherited this new world are animals that have grown larger, smarter, and more aggressive in most cases. While the exact types of evolution vary from species to species, one feature to take note of is differences in their species' history compared to similar species.
Domesticated dogs grew alongside humans for most of their life so when the evolution began, household canines started to adopt more human features (such as a bipedal stance, limited thumb movement, communication skills, and minor tool use) while wild wolves grew large and brutish (closer to a gorilla/worgen than the sleek canine form they had before).
Trees have grown massive and cluttered with some of the smaller trees closer to full grown redwoods than saplings. Some vegetation has gained limited mobility, the ability to use some senses, or have a sense of self preservation.
Weather patterns and other strange phenomena have been sighted such as violent earthquakes that throw large rocks into the air at the fault lines, strange lightweight glass falling from the sky leaving visible cracks in the skyline, tidal waves of frost crossing over tundras as if they were the waves of an ocean over seaweed.
That's pretty much covers the bases for the lore.
If anyone is lurking, I'm going to move onto gameplay. If nothing comes up I'll just end thread to save time.
The system was originally meant to be a way I could play a high-speed, action-based game with friends and was built around the mentality that it could be used to run sessions of Monster Hunter, RWBY, or Dark Souls (with some small tweaks). Over time though, I wanted to have something that was more my own so I built this world to house the system.
With this in mind, many of the mechanics are built around an idea of accelerating the flow of gameplay, simplifying rolls, and making user customization key.
Character creation actually begins at Level 0 and the level cap is set at 5. The reason for this is that many stats scale directly off of your current level and it was difficult to come up with meaningful differences in levels for larger level ranges.
Character stats start pretty low with scores of -2 to 3 being your range at level zero. Level 5 stats can potentially reach 12 through min-maxing but about 7-9 is the average for your best stats.
The stats are split up as:
>Spirit:
Acts as the main stat for rolls dealing with willpower or most things dealing with an evolution in your character. It also scales into a barrier that a character can learn to project that acts like a pseudo-health bar.
>Fortitude:
It's the basic measurement of how hardy your body is. It scales directly into your HP and can be used to see whether that fall that you took broke all of your bones or just a few.
>Knowledge:
Deals with your accuracy for ranged weapons, perception, and comes into play for a type of blood magic called "Arcanes". It mixes Wis and Int for all intents and purposes.
>Strength:
It's your bread and butter beat-em-up stat. Hit harder with increasingly large objects until it dies.
>Speed:
Affects anything that would be related to Dex. Affects base move speed, number of actions, and your ability to dodge.
Keep posting. I'm curious.
Going back to how I wanted to make a faster pace combat, it's reflected most in what I call the Weapon DT or Damage Threshold.
All weapons have a stat block set up that are comprised of 3 things: The DT, the flat, and the scaling.
Example:
>Weapon: DT + Flat + Scaling
>Short Sword: 10 + 4 + A*
The DT represents your target roll on an attack as well as base damage, if your attack doesn't have enough force or discipline behind it then it counts as a miss or the attack wasn't strong enough to pierce a beast's hide. If it is higher than the first number, then it counts as a hit.
The Flat Damage is added to your roll only if you pass the Damage Threshold. In other words, the DT represents how easy/hard it is to strike a damaging blow with the weapon while the Flat represents how mortal the wound is. In this case, rolling a 9 would mean a miss, but an 11 would be a hit with a bonus 4 damage from the Flat.
Lastly is the scaling. Most ranged weapons scale with level, but are treated as though they scale with KNO. Melee weapons though, allow you to pick between STR, SPD, or FORT as your scaling. Basically, the value you pick is added to the Flat Damage. Additionally, half of the value selected is subtracted from the attack's DT. This represents how someone may use brute force to achieve their attacks as opposed to precision. The Scalings are denoted as A through E to represent how many stats you may put into this. You only pick one to affect the DT however. Some weapons have something like "A2+B" which means one stat is added to damage twice and another once.
Another feature for all weapons is that each has its own special rule that affects how the weapon is to be used or what type of play style benefits it the most.
For most, when someone picks their favorite weapon in a game it is because it does something special or helps them do cool things in a certain way so what the special rules do is help push that mentality a little further as well as mimicing a "class role" since a class system doesn't exist in the game.
Things like maces and similar blunt weapons can stun targets or knock them prone, smaller swords give bonuses to certain rolls involving shields or parries, knives can be used to assist in climbing obstacles, etc.
Ranged weapons also have special rules but while the melee weapons are small tweaks, ranged weapons have massive utility based effects. Things like pistols can shift around and make extra attacks multiple times in a type of run-n-gun, sniper rifles can achieve ludicrous levels of burst damage if the wielder spends time lining a shot, shotguns can eviscerate targets in point blank and get all sorts of interactions with melee attacks. Of course to balance this out, it's a pain in the ass to find functioning ranged weapons in a society of dirt and ruins.
The player characters are exceedingly frail in this game compared to the damage output of most weapons (as it should be). But to combat this, there are numerous ways to avoid damage or turn lethal damage into a few days of bed rest.
On each player's turn, they are allowed to spend some of their actions to Declare Dodge, Parry, or Block. The tradeoff of this is that they may miss out on an extra attack or movement, but the chances of living to next turn without taking mission ending damage go up.
Declare Dodge has you make a roll when you would take damage and you add your dodge bonus to the roll. The result of your roll is subtracted from the damage taken and depending on your success you may even be able to shift away for free.
Declare Parry is the riskiest but also the most rewarding. You spend points as though you were making an attack of your choosing and when you are attacked you make a roll directly against their roll. No BS involved other than some modifiers on weapons. Results vary from negating the attack, making a counter attack, reducing the damage, or ending up disarmed.
Declare Block can only be done if you have a weapon (or shield) that allows you to do so. You add a few modifiers to a roll and that becomes the pool of damage that you can soak up with your block. If any allies are near you, you can block for them and if the damage taken exceeds your pool, you block is broken and you may be thrown off balance because of it.
Next up is more of the magicky type things that can go on.
In the midst of all of the chaos of evolution, humanity was not forgotten. The only problem is that very few even know that humans can achieve another step of evolution, let alone how to do so.
A human being's spirit can evolve when placed under extreme circumstances, with death being the most common case but acts of extreme passion are also possible. If the spirit is tested in such a way, then it can Awaken. Once Awoken, the soul grants an enormous boost in power for a small window of time before leveling out at an enhanced state. In this state, your character now can project a barrier around them to soak up damage (at the risk of going into shock should it break), manipulate materials together to perform a type of elemental blood-magic called an Arcane, and finally they are granted a secret Aspect that acts as a unique quality about the person that they can manipulate.
This Aspect is directly related to what emotions where affecting you during the moment of Awakening. They are categorized in the 5 stages of grief as Denial/Isolation, Anger/Hate, Fear /Barganing, Sadness/Regret, and Acceptance/Selflessness. Depending on what caused the Awakening and how you roleplayed your character during the ordeal, the GM will secretly assign your character one of these along with an Aspect.
Anyone following along? I know that the change in pace and tone kinda changes around this point because it goes from a kinda-natural setting to ZOMG SUPERPOWERS MAH ANIMES, but when handled right it actually fits in very well.
>>44441428
I'm following along. Could you describe a character concept that fits your game well?
>>44441456
I'd love to. An NPC that I have acting as a recruiter/mentor in an expedition that my players joined had found a movie poster of some western movie with some cowboys on it and liked the style so he asked someone if they could turn some hides into chaps, a hat, etc. Anyways, he managed to construct a cheap potato-gun type pistol out of some pipes with the help of a guy whose Aspect let's him combine objects together, kinda like alchemy. He uses the potato-gun alongside Arcanes to load up the components into the gun and fire out blasts of elemental energy or other affects. His Aspect is kinda complicated but what he can do is set a flag in a point in time for a person that he touches and in 6 seconds they return to that point in time without any knowledge of what happened during those 6 seconds. Basically if he thinks he is going to die, he hits his panic button and in 6 seconds he returns to the state that he was in when he used his Aspect. It's kinda like reloading a save file, but only for one person and you have no memory of what happens since you made the save file and loaded it. It has it's drawbacks though, I'll get to that now so that Aspects are better explained.
Denial/Isolation is linked to a longing to understand or connect with the world or other people. People who Awaken through denial instinctually want to connect or communicate in some way. Telepathy, future sight, combining objects, location divining are all examples of possible aspects.
Anger/Hate is linked to a desire to conflict or cause harm. Animalistic body mutations, feral instincts, super strength, a berserker rage, fire breathing are examples of Aspects linked to this.
Fear/Bargaining is all about avoiding things or escaping. Super speed, rewinding time, invisibility, teleportation, wing mutations are examples.
Sadness/Regret is about corruption and manipulation. They deal with directly controlling others or creating abhorrent mutations. Mind control, alien-like body mutations, raising the dead, skinwalking are examples of Aspects.
Acceptance/Selflessness instinctively wishes to protect or heal. Stress manipulation, regeneration, heiromancy, shockwave generation, etc.
Each time you use an Aspect, the qualities linked to the Aspect start to swallow you a little more. There is a type of insanity system to it that can cause your character to lose sight of themselves through dependency on their Aspect.
Someone with Denial will start to doubt their own abilities or its validity so they will use their Aspect to confirm suspicions.
Super strength makes causes the user to feel angrier meaning they spend that frustration by using super strength.
Turning invisible makes causes them to feel more and more nervous until they are too afraid to turn visible.
Growing into a monstrosity makes you depressed because you feel that everyone hates you, so may as well go for broke and consume the living to get back at them.
Using your healing powers gives you a sense of euphoria and over time you become addicted to your own ability as if it were pain medication.
>>44441456
If you want another example of something that I could see more as a player character, then lets say that I'm trying to build a hyper-tank type character who will be the CC for our group.
I would start my build with FORT as my focus (so that I have higher HP and I'm less likely to snap a femur when a territorial dear monstrosity attempts to gore me and throws me into a tree), STR as my secondary (so that I can wear heavier armor and have a fallback stat if I get a weapon with 2 stat scalings), and probably KNO (there are some decent options in the Arcanes in terms of CC if I want to put my time into it).
If I wanted to be more of a tanky, fighter type character I would go for a sword and shield combo so that I could get bonuses when I'm trying to parry or block but I'm supposed to be the CC. Instead, I'll go for some sort of hammer type weapon (maybe some rebar ripped out of the ground with a chunk of concrete stuck to it) that way I can try and give things concussions or cave in armor. In addition to my "hammer" I'll attempt to fashion together some kind of shield so that I can Declare Blocks and try to soak up damage for my allies. If I ever got lucky enough to find someone who can build one, I would try and get a crossbow because their special rule allows me to get a few options to slow down enemies by either taking away some of their actions or trying to knock targets prone.
Any armor I would have or build would come from thick hides, bones, and scales of beasts we hunt (or find dead).
I'm kind of taking a risk here by putting points into the Arcane skill (as long as I'm not Awakened, the points do nothing and there is always the potential that I die without getting a chance to Awaken) but I figure the risk is worth it because if I can learn how to manipulate Earth Arcanes then I can empower myself to cause seismic shocks with my attacks or clear debris by destroying rubble to clear a way for my group.
>>44439843
this would have been a lot easier to parse through if you put titles for each section.
>>44440510
>Domesticated dogs grew alongside humans for most of their life so when the evolution began, household canines started to adopt more human features
you lost me
>>44441428
....so it's not really evolution. The magic is simply using the will of the creature as a catalyst for change and growth. A beast changes according to the way their mind thinks, and a human changes according to the way their mind thinks.
