[Solar System] Discouraged by crunch landscape preparation
Eero Tuovinen:
When uncertain, go simple, is my advice. "Going simple" might mean using something another person made with critical eye, ready to change things that don't work for you. It might also mean being minimalistic and only creating thebare necessities in crunch.
Do showcase your creative process on this in more detail, soon. I like your scenario set-up and wouldn't mind displaying my thinking on simple psionics rules and such.
CedricP:
Crashing on Midian.
Notes on the setting colors:
At the head of the theocracy is a prophet who preached in the wastelands again the cybernetic warlords and the corrupt church who supported them. The prophet was a hight powered psy user, he was close to the people and loved by many. But once he overthrow the warlords he experienced a psychic ascension and became a living god. As a living god he became very distant and some say cruel and inhuman. His cult now is in the hands of his priesthood, who are maybe ruling the solar kingdom in his place. Under the living god dicta, ancient technology, cybernetic and science were declared dangerous and heretical.
Most of the planets of the theocracy systems have been devastated by war and are post apocalyptic wastelands.
Spaceship technology have been preserved by the family of spacers who maintain those spaceships. Those penitent family are considered tainted by technology and must remain in space to avoid contaminating the faithful. They also hide themselves behind veils when they have to meet the faithful on board their spaceship.
The Immortals (inspired by the Immortals from 300 & the Jedi) are the psy-user elite of the Living God, many of them were his disciples. Today all psy-user must receive the communion of the Living God and join the Immortals or be declared heretics. By receiving the communion, a psy-user receive the true-love the Living God, but he/she loose a part of his individuality. This communion imbue the Immortals with the power to negate other pys user powers. They are addicted to the love of the Living God and need constant communion rituals to keep this holy state of mind. They all wear peaceful masks of the Living god visage. They are silent and fanatical, but they are also imbued by love and will heal the sick and sacrifice themselves to help those in need.
The Trolls inhabit the only non devastated world of the solar kingdom, a massive and savage forest moon. Since the Immortals of the living god could not scan or detect the soul or psychic presence of the trolls, the priesthood decreted that the primitive humanoids where soulless beasts.
They are now put to work as slaves and beasts of burden.
ABILITIES LANDSCAPE:
VIGOR (Endure)
* Athletics
* Aim (low tech)
* Brawl
* Intimidation
* Riding
* Survival
* Hardwork
INSTINCT (React)
* Animal ken
* Arts
* Barter
* Deceit
* Charm
* Sense danger
* Stealth
REASON (Resist)
* Aim (high tech)
* Craftwork
* Cooking
* First aid
* Speak
* Orientation
* Storytell
PRISON SHIP PERSONNEL:
GUARDMENS (normal guards of the theocracy, some are faithful some are not)
* Secret of speciality (guard weapons, interrogation, command)
* Secret of restraining
* Secret of discipline
* Secret of equipment (guard weapon)
* Key of duty
* Key of faith
PILOTS (penitent spacers family)
* Technology (R), Astro-navigation (R)
* Secret of spacers
* Secret of ship interface (cybernetic connection)
* Secret of technology maintenance
* Secret of equipment use
* Key of family
* Key of penitence
PRIESTHOOD
* Praying (V)
* Secret of communion (like blessing, but need to accept the faith)
* Secret of scribing
* Secret of speciality (preaching, counsel, prayer)
* Key of faith
IMMORTALS (elite psy users of Living God)
* Martial art (V), Praying (V)
* Secret of psychokinesis
* Secret of psy negation
* Secret of soul contact
* Secret of signature weapon
* Secret of synergy
* Secret of flying leap
* Secret of equipment (armor & weapon)
* Key of lost sense of self
* Key of communion (need to feel connected with the Living Good via communion)
* Key of faith
PRISON SHIP PRISONERS:
HARDENED CRIMINALS
* Secret of contacts
* Secret of speciality (personal weapon, criminal activity)
* Secret of sudden knife
* Secret of knife throwing
REVOLUTIONARY
* Secret of contacts
* Secret of speciality (oration, arts)
* Secret of inner meaning (Speak as writings)
* Secret of scribing
* Secret of explosive
* Key of revolutionary
WASTELANDER OUTLAWS
* Secret of speciality (riding, survival, begging, hunting, trapping)
* Secret of scavenging
* Secret of evaluate
* Key of survivor
UNSANCTIONED SCHOLARS
* Secret of science (Science (R))
* Secret of technology (Technology (R))
* Secret of scribing
* Secret of speciality (field of science, debate, surgery, research)
* Key of knowledge
* Key of the hippocratic oath (for medecin)
UNSANCTIONED GUILDMEN
* Secret of technology (Technology (R))
* Secret of scribing
* Secret of maintenance
* Secret of engineering (create tech equipment)
* Secret of equipment use
* Secret of speciality (weaponsmith, armorer, cyberware)
* Key of the craftsman
CYBORG (most of them are veterans from the cyborg warlords armies)
* Secret of cybernetic enhancement (as Secret of enhancement)
* Secret of enhanced sight
* Secret of hidden compartment
WITCHES (wild psy users)
* Secret of psychokinesis
TROLLS (primitive savage aliens)
* Secret of Mighty blow
* Secret of Knock-back
* Secret of psy blank
I need help on the Cyborg and Psy crunch and I need to think about how to deal with science and technology.
The player who want to play a troll want to take care of the trolls crunch, so I will leave this to him.
I was also thinking that maybe the cyborgs could serve as a portable power source (something like the Iron-man energy generator).
In general, I want to make most of the groups dependant on others:
* The spacers offer technology but need protection.
* The Immortals need the priests for their communion rite.
* The priest need protection and offer communion to the faithful.
* The cyborgs need maintenance and offer their energy source.
* The wild psy user offer powers but need protection from the Immortals.
d.anderson:
Wow! That's a lot to keep track of.
It looks like most of the Abilities are already represented in other Solar System material, so I only want to ask about two of them. Abilities are usually more 'means' than 'ends', so when you include Intimidation, I would suggest thinking about how important it is to have an Ability that is specifically about threatening people; you might use Brawl, Deceit, Charm, Speak, or even Storytell to intimidate someone; in particular, have a look at the comments on intimidation and convincing others at the beginning of the Abilities section in tWoN, to consider what your own approach will be to these kinds of conflicts.
What brings Orientation Ability out of Survival, for this setting?
As for Secrets, many of them are also already covered in SS or tWoN, but I wanted to ask questions or make suggestions about these (if they are already represented somewhere and I'm not familiar or remembering, very sorry):
Restraining: this looks like something specific, not just the normal outcome of conflicts that might restrain people. Are you thinking the Guards simply have superior leverage (based on training, equipment, or something else?), or maybe they create powerful Effects that curtail their target's freedoms?
Discipline is associated with Battle, in tWoN; what Ability are you thinking of using here?
Spacers and Ship Interface should probably have some non-obvious uses if spaceships and space aren't going to used in your game (the impression I got).
Tech Maintenance, Science, Technology, and Engineering can probably be busted down to one Secret, like 'Tech Heresies', or something, giving access to Science and Technology Abilities (and maybe a mix of the Background and Difficulty Secrets from SS).
I'm very interested to find out what your vision for Knife Throwing is, as well as the Explosive Secret.
There is a Maladorian Ability called Scrounging, and they have a Secret called Scavenging Grounds that is nice; is something like that what you were thinking for your Scavenging Secret?
The Engineering Secret might be represented by Quality Construction (in SS), or might just be the Secret of Creation (Technology) from tWoN.
Immortals, as you present them, make me want to get crunch-crazy, so I think I'll hold off. One thing I want to ask, though, is if you envision them being very similar to one another (in capability, in personality, even in appearance); if they are very similar, then you might want to condense the number of Secrets, Keys, and Abilities that are required to "really" be an Immortal.
CedricP:
Intimidation: I included it just because I was brainstorming about "jail fiction" themed abilities, but I had some doubts about it and your comment confirm them. I think I will remove it from the list.
Orientation: my thinking was that maybe someone who don't have a outdoor background could still know how to orient himself or maybe just to link some useful skills with Reason. But like you noted, I was also thinking about simply using survival.
Most of the secrets listed are just a note on my rough list.
Secret of restraining: I was brainstorming about "guards functions". Maybe they have special restraining equipment.
Discipline: I was thinking to write down a different secret from the one in tWoN.
Spacers: It was a note. I dont know yet what to do with it for crunch.
Knife throwing/Explosion: sorry nothing special here for now, I was just thinking about similar secrets from TSOY.
For scavenging I was thinking that maybe it could let someone "find" low rating equipments in the ship wreck and future ruins to be found.
Immortals: I agree, I should simplify them and make them uniform.
But I still feel like I have to develop a mini supplement for all this crunch. I like less and less the idea of having to work on all this stuff.
I am thinking of removing all the special crunch, I think I will just say that "normal" people crashed on the planet. No cyborg, no psy, no crunchy background stuff, just folks. I don't know, I still feel overwhelmed by having to create the crunch and I am starting to wonder if I should drop the game. I think that the colorful bits (cyborg, psy, etc) just distract me from the situation that initially interested me.
Eero Tuovinen:
I like that scenario myself, it's quite compact and to the point by my standards. Seems like a good beginning. Let me throw out some random thoughts on the different aspects of it:
Overview
The Abilities are mostly good (although I agree about Intimidate, insofar as I don't really understand where it could be used). I wouldn't worry about having a definitive list for those in a bottom-up campaign, anyway; you can do some things by creating a careful Ability list, but those are too much trouble for our purposes here - so what you need Ability-wise is mostly the Abilities that will be hooked into other crunch, while the common sort of Abilities can be improvised by the players based on what they want their characters to be good at. It's easy enough to accept new Abilities during chargen, you just need to check that you can imagine how the Ability is to be used in play.
Other than that, you have a rather wide array of different concepts outlined here in great detail - I'm not surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the task of crunching up this many things for your first game. I suggest that you could take it a bit easier - no need to prune the fictional vision, but you don't need this much mechanical detail, really. Your outline resembles something one might create for publication, like the World of Near is. In this sort of pick-up campaign you can get by with creating stuff on the fly.
To iterate, the amount of crunch you really need to play the game is rather minimal, I don't think that you should tire yourself out in pre-developing material you don't even really know you're going to need. The game works perfectly well with around five Secrets already; those, Abilities, Pools and Keys are already plenty enough differentiation between player characters. Minimalism actually has benefits, too, as it gives the individual bits of crunch much more weight. I've played shorter campaigns with rather little explicit crunch, and my brother Markku routinely prefers much less crunch than I do myself.
An example minimalistic treatment
If you don't feel like doing a lot of predevelopment (which is perfectly reasonable if you're not planning to reuse the material later), here's what I'd throw together for an entirely passable treatment on the setting you've described:
Secret of Background (specify, choose Pool)
The character has a specific cultural background or occupation that is important enough to get mentioned. Each background is associated with a specific Pool of the player's choice - Vigor for being a wastelander, for instance. Whenever the character does something that resonates with the background, the player may activate this Secret to reroll any blank dice rolled into the Ability check. The player may also opt to narrate a short flashback to his character's past, in which case he gets to reroll '-' dice as well. The flashback should reveal us something either about the setting or the character. Cost: 2 points from the chosen Pool to reroll blanks, an additional point for a flashback.
This general Secret already satisfies the usual need for differentiating between characters. You don't have to annoy yourself with mastering a lot of different Secrets, really.
Secret of Equipment
Only technological tools can be equipment, primitive, archaic or improvised tools are handled by Effects created with a Survival (V) Ability. All pieces of equipment lose one level of quality for each scene where they are used. Otherwise use the SS or WoN equipment rules.
Secret of Maintenance
The character is facile with high-tech equipment and can usually keep it together through normal use. The player can pay Pool to prevent normal degradation of quality for any equipment he uses. Cost: 1 Reason per prevented degradation.
The equipment degradation is there to make continuous maintenance an issue. Perhaps have little boxes next to the equipment's name equal to its quality, so the player can just cross them off as the equipment degrades. Maintenance can be done with an appropriate Ability check, like explained in both SS and WoN.
Secret of Survivalism
Anybody can make an Ability check to construct shelter or make a wooden club or whatever. This character, however, has specific, solid experience in primitive living conditions; he does not pay Pool to create Effects out of any non-technological building, crafting or other constructive activities he might undertake. If no Ability check is made in relation to the work, the SG defines the value of the Effect on a 1-3 range, whatever seems likely.
This is the sort of thing you should push at the players once the game gets underway; nobody might have this at the start, unless somebody specifically wants to play a savage, but anybody might learn this with time. Character identities shift and former ship officers with their clean fingernails turn into Robinson Crusoe types.
Secret of Brutality
There's a big difference between being a brawler and being a killer. The player can spend Vigor to raise any Harm the character causes on a 1:1 ratio up to the Mortal level. The player describes how his character concretely injures the opponent, usually in a rather brutal manner.
Secret of Mighty Blow recolored, essentially. You don't really need more violent crunch, differences in actual fighting Abilities should be sufficient.
Secret of Restraint
The character has experience in police work and can incapasitate others in ways that do not involve crushing their skull, probably using some sort of simple tools like handcuffs or whatnot. The player gets to create an appropriate Effect when the character restrains a prisoner; the prisoner has to overcome the Effect value with an Ability check to escape the restraint. The restraint holds as long as the character pays for the Effect's upkeep.
This is mostly a thematic addition for those prison guards - not really that necessary, it was just easy to write so I did it here. It would be entirely feasible to just decide that anybody can do the above with an appropriate Ability; as the SS rules say, the SG can allow directly using Effects when appropriate, and it certainly is when you're specifically representing restraints with the Effect. Still, having a separate Secret implies that others can't do it, making the expertise of the prison guard character a bit more striking.
Secret of Psychic Form
Most people's minds are fluid, conforming to any pressures with little resistance. To be a psychic you need a rigid, psychically solid mind. Characters with this Secret get to develop the Psychic (I) Ability, which can be used to communicate with other minds and mess with them (essentially like strong hypnosis in extent; memory modification and such only with penalty dice); use Resist (R) or Psychic (I) to resist if necessary. Cost: 2 Instinct per scene when messing with other minds; communication is free.
Secret of Telekinesis
Some psychics can generate physical forces with their minds. This isn't really something you can normally develop without disciplined study with explicit aid from other psychics, who need to shape your psychic form to the correct mindset for this. Still, no doubt useful. Requirement: Secret of Psychic Form Cost: 2 Vigor per scene.
Secret of Pyrokinesis
Lighting things on fire is actually easy, but it requires a powerful mind to get it going. Causes horrid injuries when turned against people, resisted with Endure (V). Requirement: Secret of Telekinesis Cost: 1 Vigor per scene, or 2 for non-flammable things like melting metals.
I have this pet manner of approach to psionic powers where I cost them per scene: it's expensive to get the power going, but once the psionic guy blows up and goes ape on you, he's not going to stop until the scene's done with.
Secret of Immortal Discipline
The character is one of these crypto-fascist jedis. The Psionic (I) Ability is associated with Reason as well, and the character can spend Reason to activate any psionic powers. However, the character only refreshes half of any of his Pools unless the refresh scene involves a Communion. Requirement: Secret of Psychic Form
Secret of Psionic Nullification
The Living God taketh away. The character can overwhelm another mind with the power of the Living God, stripping them of psionic crunch, Reason Pool, Reason Abilities or associated Secrets by scouring their mind. The power can remove an Ability check's worth of Advances, and it always removes psionic crunch first. The target regains all but one of the removed Advances as a free Advances. Can be resisted normally, and the same character can only be affected once per scene. The target takes a penalty die to any further actions in the scene due to the highly traumatic process that leaves lesser men drooling vegetables. Cost: 2 Reason. Requirement: Secret of Immortal Discipline
Just blocking psychic powers seemed like a pretty boring ability - seems like something any psychic should be able to try. Mental castration is much more fun! Of course the Immortals practice the lesser sorts of psionics, too.
Secret of Criminal Mind
Characters who actually do not conform to the ruling world-view, whether out of ideology or criminal pathology, have an advantage against people who can't imagine life outside the orthodoxy: the player can spend Pool (as per their own Pool caps) as penalty dice for any orthodox opponents in social conflicts or other situations where they can surprise the opponent by thinking outside the box.
Secret of Cybernetics
As per earlier discussion, I'd say. I've balanced the above with the idea that cybernetics lift Pool caps; makes some combinations pretty scary.
Secret of Trollhood
Trolls are immune to psionic powers, they simply don't register in the psychic landscape for good or ill. Furthermore, they're very strong and can spend Vigor for bonus dice up to the Ability rating on any Vigor-based Ability checks, as well as spending one point of Vigor on any other Ability check where their great bulk is of use. Obviously trolls tend to take circumstance penalties in social situations with humans, being the ugly brutes they are.
Furthermore
How does the above strike you as a starting point? The above Secrets and a bunch of Abilities and Keys (which are relatively simple to create on the spot for the most part, to tell the truth) should easily be enough to get characters created. A given character won't have more than a couple of Secrets at chargen, after all. After the characters are created you can develop more detail for any facets of the setting that you actually need; I'd love more crunch for the spacers, for instance, but it's not actually necessary for starting to play.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page