Interest Check - Big Book of Madness Inspired Group Game?

Started by Ryven, September 22, 2016, 08:20:44 PM

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Ryven

Quote from: Amelita on September 27, 2016, 05:17:40 PM
Why do we need a system? The monsters will not be played characters, simple guidelines about spell casting and a reminder that the GM decides how much damage got dealt should be enough.
IMO

No need to make it complicated.

I'm fine with freeform, but I think the scope we were shooting for in the beginning became too narrow.  Perhaps we don't need a system but rather guidelines by which to form the characters and how they interact in the world, particularly with spell casting.

Quote from: AndyZ on September 27, 2016, 05:26:28 PM
Here's my suggestion if we do Freeform:

You have 1 element in which you are fantastic.  We'll call that A.

You have 1 element in which you are meh average.  We'll call that C.

Between B and D, you can either have all of them be meh average, or have one of them be good at the cost of the other.  If you're just as good at B as you are at A, you have absolutely no talent for the fourth element.

This is a good place to start.

Rel Mayer

I'm all about the freeform. We're all good enough RPers here to be able to go with the flow and do things without stepping on each other's feet.

I, too, am just looking for something simple and fun. Some baddassery. Some jokes. Some sexytime.


Aiden


Amelita

+1 to all three before me, even if I don't know what Aiden's gif means ::)

Also, I'd be going for main earthy, minor water girl methinks.


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Ryven

I've had some thoughts on a simple system to emulate the luck of the draw aspect regarding the 4 different mana types from the game.  I can elaborate more when i get home this evening

Ryven

Double post!  Woo!

Alright.  I've thought a lot about how to implement something that will give us structure without making it too restricting or require a lot of mechanics.

Mana Capacity - I like the idea of the limitation placed upon how much 'power' a mage can hold.  In terms of the card game, we were limited by the 6 card limit in our hands.  I'd like to mimic this in the RP with a rule that each character will have 6 slots for mana, and these slots will hold any of the four types (fire, water, earth, air).

This leads us into the way in which these mana slots are filled or refreshed when emptied.  A percentile method came to mind when I was thinking this through (probably because I had been reading through the Call of Cthulhu book recently), and I think a method employing D100 dice would work without being too cumbersome.

Let us say that a mage's potential power spans the entire D100.  The most powerful mages have reached their full potential and mechanically would use the entire span of the die to accumulate mana they needed efficiently where as a beginning student would only use, let's say, 60%.  Here's what I'm thinking by saying this.

If we say that each player gets 12 points for their character and each point represents a 5% chance.  They could distribute those 12 points between the four elements.

For example:

Fire: 6 (30%)
Water: 2 (10%)
Earth: 3 (15%)
Air: 1 (5%)

This would make up the 60% potential for a student mage.  However, that still leaves 40% unaccounted for.  I'll need to explain where I'm going with this for it to make sense.

When refreshing your mana slots, you'd roll 1D100 for each slot and would compare each roll to your character's percentile layout.  Of course, we'd have to set the percentages back to back so the die rolls would make sense.  See below:

[01 - 30] - Roll within to get Fire mana
[31 - 40] - Roll within to get Water mana
[41 - 55] - Roll within to get Earth mana
[56 - 60] - Roll within to get Air mana
[61 - 100] - Roll 1d4 -> 1=Fire, 2=Water, 3=Earth, 4=Air (This will represent the mage's inexperience as they haven't learned how to gather mana efficiently, so they basically grab what they can).

When gaining experience (which I think could be done freeform as long as it isn't abused), simply add a point to whichever element you wish to develop, and the table would change accordingly.  See below an example of gaining a point in Fire:

[01 - 35] - Roll within to get Fire mana
[36 - 45] - Roll within to get Water mana
[46 - 60] - Roll within to get Earth mana
[61 - 65] - Roll within to get Air mana
[66 - 100] - Roll 1d4 -> 1=Fire, 2=Water, 3=Earth, 4=Air

As you can see, the increase has taken from the 40% where you'd get a random element, now making it more likely that this character would get fire mana.

If we wanted to add another (tiny) layer of mechanics, we could add sort of a 'critical' percentage within their chosen element.  See below:

[01 - 30]/(10%) - Roll within to get Fire mana -> This additional percentage would mean that if you roll within your Fire range, if you roll in the first 10% of it, the character would have gathered mana exceptionally well, giving them double mana for that slot.  For those who had played the card game, this will mimic the 2x cards.  This, however, is an optional thing, I think.


[31 - 40] - Roll within to get Water mana
[41 - 55] - Roll within to get Earth mana
[56 - 60] - Roll within to get Air mana
[61 - 100] - Roll 1d4 -> 1=Fire, 2=Water, 3=Earth, 4=Air

Now, how often do we do this or should we do this?  That's up for debate, but my initial thought is while in combat, you'd do it every round where a round is defined as some kind of amorphous amount of time.  That can be freeform as long as any players combating each other agree and anyone battling any NPCs we come up with don't abuse it.  For example, don't expect to cast 16 spells in a single round.  I should explain that, loosely, easy spells cost 1 mana, moderate spells cost 2, and difficult spells cost 3 mana.

Outside of combat, I think the system need not apply.  Feel free to RP out that you have X amount and types of mana (assuming you don't go above the character limit), but keep in mind, given the system, you will have a few random elements popping in here and there.

Now what do we do with this mana?

Spells, of course!  But I have intended much, much more.

Players can feel free to come up with spells that their mages might know, but I'd like to keep it within the scope of the game.  No more than 4 to start, and they should all be of the Easy difficulty. 

Direct adaptations from the game:

Growth - 1 Earth
- Roll 1D100 and add mana of the appropriate type to an empty slot your character has.

Ice - 1 Water
- Allow 1 nearby ally to use a single mana from one of your slots.

Incinerate - 1 Fire
Given that this destroys your own cards in the game, I don't think it can fit within the die system I explained above.

Telepathy - 1 Air
I don't know that this can be directly adapted.  The spell allows another player to take an action when it is not their turn within the card game, but I think something like this would work in an RP if it was shifted to something like a Speed spell instead.  It would, in essence, give more actions to a character without being misnamed.

This all in mind, I don't think there are limitations as far as what your spells can do.  Just keep them realistic within the confines of Easy, Moderate, and Difficult.  Don't expect to summon a tornado with an Easy air spell.

One thing I'd like to point out is that elements may not be combined to make spells.  It isn't standard in the game world, and I think it would be more interesting if perhaps one character was able to do it, but it was an incredibly unstable thing.  It would be a great way for a character to have a struggle because sometimes their casting just goes a little awry.

I think it will also be a good idea that raw mana can be used in combat for damage and defense.  Think of the Avatar series for this.  Expending mana of the appropriate type would let you throw fire, ice, or earth at your enemies, and in the same theme, spending appropriate mana could create ice or earth barriers to block attacks.  It needs to make sense, however, in both power and application.  Not that we'd have guns in this game, but don't expect a wind gust to stop a speeding bullet.  At the same time, if someone is using 3 fire mana at once to throw a fireball at you, don't think a 1 mana ice barrier will completely save you.  Have it be reasonable.

Other character things

Think your character would need more power in one element over another?  Don't want to be too confined to the randomness of the dice system?  Just want to add a little personality to your character's powers?

Go right ahead.  We'll have some kind of special powers, feats, or whatever we want to call it for your characters.

For example, maybe you want your character to be exceptionally good at Fire magic.  You could give him a special power that went something like "When refreshing your mana slots, you may choose to fill one with Fire mana instead of rolling."

Or perhaps your character is gifted with spells.  You could give them 1 extra spell when you create them with a special power that was passive.  This, again, is not really restricted, but limit these to 1 or 2 max, at least in the beginning.

This is all I have thought of for now, but please let me know what you all think thus far.

Amelita

I spaced out after paragraph one.

I will just keep an eye on this and if someone can translate the end result to Ames-speak I'll stay on board.


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Galactic Druid

If you want to keep it super simple, you could just do skill lebels, with a skill rated 1-5, to cast a spell, you need a skill level to match it for 50%, 1 above for 75, and 2 above for 100%, so a player with 5 skill can cast any spell of the element without fail. Additional skill points could be a very rare reward.

You could let players either start with, say, 8 points to allocate, or take an idea from an elemental system I'm working on, and say the stronger a student is with one element, the weaker they start with the opposing one. So fire and water would oppose, as would air and earth. A slider might look like this;

1 2 3 4 5
5 4 3 2 1

1 2 3 4 5
5 4 3 2 1

The character in the above example would be great with fire, weak with water, and okay with the other elements...
A/As last updated 11/27 - Halfway past busy season!

Angie

Allow me to explain Ryven's current system, with my good friend, Black Mage!

Ready, Black Mage? Ready!

Our buddy Black Mage gets 12 points to put into 4 elements of magic. He has to put 1 into each element anyway, and he decides he wants to be something of a generalist and distribute his points evenly! So he has 3 Fire, 3 Water, 3 Air, and 3 Earth. What do these points mean? Why, these points mean a 5% chance to gain a certain element of Mana in each round of combat. Let's say he gets in a sparing match with a buddy. Both Mages have to "Draw" magic in order to cast a spell, so at the beginning of the round, each of them rolls a 100 sided die.

Black Mage's sheet looks like this: Since each point in the 4 elements translates to a 5% chance of drawing, 3 points in each element translate to this:

1-15: Gain 1 Fire mana
16-30: Gain 1 Water Mana
31-45: Gain 1 Air Mana
46-60: Gain 1 Earth Mana
61-100: Wild Magic! (Roll a 4 sided die, rolling a 1 gets you 1 Fire, rolling 2 gets you Water, 3 gets Air and 4 gets Earth)

Black Mage rolls a 42, getting himself 1 Air Mana. He adds this to his pool, and looks down at his sheet. He has an Air spell, Windcutter, which uses 1 Air Mana and deals some damage, hooray! He casts this spell, damages his opponent, and waits for his opponent to strike back.

Next round comes up, Black Mage rolls, and gets 73! Wild Magic! He rolls a 4 sider, and gets a 1, giving him Fire magic. Black Mage decided to play up the generalist thing and took one spell from each element, each one doing damage because that's all he wants to do-fry bad guys. He throws a fireball and does damage.

The battle continues, each Mage drawing magic each round and continuing until one of them gives up or a teacher catches them blasting each other in the halls and puts a stop to that nonsense.

So Black Mage had one spell of every element, but what if he didn't? What if he didn't have Windcutter, or for some reason, didn't want to use that spell that round? The Air mana he drew in the first round would go into his pool, ready to be used later. If he couldn't, or didn't use it, it would just sit there. And because of the random nature, well, it might be smart for each mage to learn at least a couple spells of each element, if only so you don't have mana that sits there uselessly.

Black Mage and myself hope this little example of play was useful to you! Say goodnight, Black Mage! Goodnight, Black Mage!
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Ryven

That is, actually, exactly how I had mechanically intended it to work except you'd roll 1D100 for each empty slot.  If combat began with combatants having all slots filled, they would not need to roll and thus start casting immediately.

I think I mentioned that raw mana could be spent for damage or defense directly because I think using one of your spells to describe yourself doing damage is just window dressing that takes up a slot for something more useful like a spell that allows you to fly.  For instance, if you have 2 fire mana but no fire spells, you could just use those two mana to strike at your enemy with fire damage, describing how you do so in your post (do you throw a fireball?  Do you use a firepunch?  Do you breathe fire?).

Amelita

Mkay. I'm going to go ahead and withdraw my interest. I was all over a Book of Madness theme, but I don't feel like dealing with a system.
Have tons of fun you guys :)

<3


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Ryven

Quote from: Amelita on September 29, 2016, 12:31:53 PM
Mkay. I'm going to go ahead and withdraw my interest. I was all over a Book of Madness theme, but I don't feel like dealing with a system.
Have tons of fun you guys :)

<3

I honestly don't think it will come to fruition with the amount of discrepancy in opinion everyone has about it.  I would love something with a simple system to run off of for some things but not for others, but everyone has different ideas of what they're looking for.

Bibliophilia

-peers around.-  Well, hell....I was all excited and then I get here to the end and it's all fallen apart!