Orchestra- Cyberpunk Action
aryus:
Looks pretty good from what I've read so far. Cyberpunk is always a fun genre.
I was wondering about the dice mechanic and whether you have considered different dice rather than having the player halve dice results beyond the first two dice. For example, the first two dice would be d12 and any others added would be d6. Might speed up play a bit, especially for anyone who is poor at math.
Hope this helps.
bosky:
I'm going to try to do more than skim through the rulebook so I can give you some feedback sometime soon. Looks good from what I've seen and seems nice and crunchy. At a first pass I like the pop culture references in the Maneuvers (it reminds me of the skill names in Guild Wars) and the idea of moves that take 2+ people is great and really unique.
Kyles Games:
Quote from: aryus on September 14, 2011, 10:22:41 AM
Looks pretty good from what I've read so far. Cyberpunk is always a fun genre.
I was wondering about the dice mechanic and whether you have considered different dice rather than having the player halve dice results beyond the first two dice. For example, the first two dice would be d12 and any others added would be d6. Might speed up play a bit, especially for anyone who is poor at math.
Hope this helps.
I contemplated the different dice, but one of the things I wanted to do was make it easy to play with limited numbers. There's a dice roller at anydice.com/program/a37/ that handles everything but modifiers (you can choose to roll 1-5 dice using the Orchestra method), and it'll work on smartphones (tested with Android's standard browser).
Quote from: bosky on September 14, 2011, 10:45:01 AM
I'm going to try to do more than skim through the rulebook so I can give you some feedback sometime soon. Looks good from what I've seen and seems nice and crunchy. At a first pass I like the pop culture references in the Maneuvers (it reminds me of the skill names in Guild Wars) and the idea of moves that take 2+ people is great and really unique.
Thanks. That's part of the idea of Orchestra as a name- not only does it require cooperation but it also requires diverse characters. Maneuvers and Masteries attempt to provide a little lightening up of the text (hence the informal names), as well as a more diverse set of characters.
Unrelatedly, I'm an identical twin, and that's where the "Two of You!" name comes from because I used to know a guy who'd shout "There's two of you!" whenever he saw us (alone or together).
bosky:
Quote from: Kyles Games on September 14, 2011, 10:58:55 AM
Thanks. That's part of the idea of Orchestra as a name- not only does it require cooperation but it also requires diverse characters. Maneuvers and Masteries attempt to provide a little lightening up of the text (hence the informal names), as well as a more diverse set of characters.
Unrelatedly, I'm an identical twin, and that's where the "Two of You!" name comes from because I used to know a guy who'd shout "There's two of you!" whenever he saw us (alone or together).
Hah kind of funny about the origin of "There's Two of You!". Also the more I read of it the more I get a vaguely Judge Dredd feel, which is good news to me because the whole idea of large locked down cities with wild wastelands outside is super appealing.
Definitely detailed though. I just finished reading through the weapon section and there certainly is a lot of realism going on there, but also a lot of custom rules (like around Shotguns) that might be tough to manage during play.
Do you have any idea on when you'll make a pass at formatting/typesetting the doc?
Kyles Games:
I'm shifting development over to a wiki (so that I don't need to update stuff to get new feedback, it's just possible as part of the writing process), and once that's done I'll start up Scribus and start working. I've started working on some prototype typesettings but I hate them all. I may end up going like a hybrid of Corporation and Eclipse Phase in terms of the typesetting- background image, white center for two-column text, so on so forth, but with a different image (propaganda poster background) for each chapter. I've been using mock-ups made in Minecraft as a source for the propaganda posters, so it takes me a while (but it's a lot better than trying without).
Yeah, there's a lot of house rules on the Weapons section. I'm planning to make a lot of that into a chart, and any "final" release will have a quick reference chart (and there will be a quick reference section on the wiki).
The really funny thing about the setting is that I'm very limited in my inspirations- there's Firefly there, some Eclipse Phase, Shadowrun, Matrix, Equilibrium, etc, but people always say it reminds them of things I've heard of but never really read/watched. I was listening to a lot of heavy metal while writing it, so there's definitely a little extra misanthropy in it. Since, however, I've been listening to mind.in.a.box, which influences the theme a lot more (since they're a cyberpunk techno band).
I'm hoping to get it worked on a lot more soon (unfortunately, my professors wish I'd be working on my papers due next week). I'm hoping to get work done on my transhuman zombie survival game next, then a quick break from the over-the-top with a gritty "Biblepunk" game set in a realistic Christ era Palestine (interesting note: that's how they called it back then, Israel as a name of a country is more recent). I will then return to over the top with my more long-term but less worked on action-movie/Jagged Alliance/Just Cause-alike 1-800-Regime-Change. This should keep me writing new games for most of my college career. Oh yeah, and each has their own rule systems.
Green Dawn (the transhuman zombie game) will use a 2d20 (low roll preferred) system, with the final target numbers for a character being determined via a set of "templates" representing character background, current body, condition, and advancement during play (quick character creation due to mixing templates for the majority of it)
The Biblepunk game will use a hybrid of dice and a point pool (each player gets a number of "shekels" for various actions which are more likely to resolve conflicts than the dice, shekels replenish each session), and it'll be short and sweet. It may not actually come in any specific chronological order, but it'll be short and sweet.
1-800-Regime-Change is going to use a simple d100 system, but will have intrigue in its character creation system, which will rely on a sort of sliding scale point-based system (deficit spending allowed, but it temporarily prevents future growth, expensive purchases require deficit spending or the player will have to save up points which are increasingly harder to earn). 1-800-Regime-Change is actually going to be interesting because player character death (heroic sacrifices) not only grant bonus points for the next character, but allow a more efficient and planned allocation of points (basically you can make the same character with minimal "stagnation").
GMH:2098 (basically think The Island meets even more dystopian stuff, akin to SLA Industries without some of the more over the top stuff, focusing more on the ethics of genetic modification of humans to create servants and superhumans) may follow 1-800-Regime-Change, but I'm thinking about canning it and putting in its more radical elements into an alternate setting for Orchestra or 1-800-Regime-Change.
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