So are we making an RPG?

ambrose-euanthe wrote:

Silent_eric wrote:

Let's see what I can do.
Ambrose, let's see what you have to say...
I agree. I do like 4th edition greatly. But the power based system is a bit more complex than I'd like anyway. Besides, I'm not going for a class based system like DnD uses.

My main point was to encourage you to be 'unconventional', and to push you away from the Vancian magic system which is quite development intensive and clumsy for the user, too. The 'skill points' system, with one for raw power (in each theme) and another for control (separated by theme or not) seems a good answer. It'll require some careful balancing, but that's a development issue.

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As for how deaths work, I'll tell you this, death is important. Although death will happen quite frequently, or rather, the possibility of death will occur frequently, clone systems won't be implemented.

That's fine. It's only fun if there's a challenge to overcome, and that means their has to be the chance of failing to overcome it too. Especially if the players are stupid.

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I'd like people to be attached to their characters. In fact, I want this to happen at character creation ideally. Of course, the frequency of deadly dangers is all up to the DM, not the system. To any DMs, having your party encounter a giant sentient pred shouldn't be done lightly. It should be a punishment for a bad decision, or an intentional well made encounter. And it's probably going to end in either a death in the party, or a narrow escape. But taking a page from 4th ed, there should be several safeguards between you and death. Namely, at least three rolls you can make to avoid death. Maybe Luck should be a stat. Goes towards Plot AC. XD

I think encounters with giant sentient predators are something most people are going to expect out of Felarya RPG. Non-combat encounters - i.e. we run away, or we negotiate our way out, or we sneak past - are all fine, but the system needs to be designed to make that kind of encounter easily possible. I.e. rather than the old D&D style with most encounters being the combat-type, there should be a spectrum of encounter types well-supported by the rules.

But I'm very positive about people's comments and your responses.

Yours,

Ambrose,

The backround of Felarya is unique enough that we don't have to rely on too many innovative mechanics to make the game 'unconventional.' I'm glad you like my working idea for magic though.

I agree with what you say on the second point.

I think that yes, those encounters will be expected. And they will exist. But just like people in Dungeons and Dragons expect to find the occasional dragon. But dragons aren't the focus, and they don't show up all the time. Combat shouldn't be a heavy focus. At most players can fight off a pack of Kensha beasts. Actually defeating a giant pred with brute force would be close to impossible for a normal character. It's not that the giant pred will be Tonorian power level, but characters are realistic power levels for the most part. Barring magic and stuff.

My... internet ate the post I was making. It was tl;dr anyway.

I approve of the luck stat and the three rolls mechanic.

Having separate power and control skills, Eric, is consistent with your idea of how magic works in Felarya. And I approve of it though I suggest you work in a discrete line separating wizard from non-wizard. For predator sense purposes.

I don't think that your ideas on the magic system will be restricting. After all, some people will play wizards and some won't, and those who play wizards will find the right balance eventually.

[heelfaceturn]And for Zion... you're right. Before I wasn't at all willing to flesh out or even let someone else think about fleshing out magic, and I was really vocal about it being a futile and unnecessary task, but now that there's an RPG in the works that'll need it as fleshed out as possible, I think I'd better stop being a squeaky wheel about it. [/heelfaceturn]

I'm in the "Giant Predator encounters should be rare" group. Why? Look on the map - while not all the Giant Predators, one cannot imagine there being a ton more in such a small area. The map is not to scale, either. Consider this, though: Say you do think they should be plentiful. Say you do think there should be an easy run-in with one. Tell me: How do you explain some half-dozen or more Giant Predators in a couple square kilometers of land? How are they supported with food, especially now that Humans are not the main food source and they'd pick the land bare in only a few months?

Furthermore, the "it's a theme of Felarya" is fine: I get that Vore should be a possibility in the RPG. But that every session should have at least one, or more likely go until all the NPCs were eaten at least once? That's overkill. I'll repeat myself: If I'm playing a RPG, I'm playing it because it's a RPG. If for some reason I wanted to get a vore kick filled, I'd just start up some PM / IRC channel and have at it for a wee bit. It sounds like some people are basically trying to add dice to Vore.

Here's a thought as well, Eric: You ever played Fallout 1 or Fallout 2? Perhaps something akin to their overworld map encounters could be used for the Felarya RPG?

Stabs wrote:

My... internet ate the post I was making. It was tl;dr anyway.

I approve of the luck stat and the three rolls mechanic.

Having separate power and control skills, Eric, is consistent with your idea of how magic works in Felarya. And I approve of it though I suggest you work in a discrete line separating wizard from non-wizard. For predator sense purposes.

I don't think that your ideas on the magic system will be restricting. After all, some people will play wizards and some won't, and those who play wizards will find the right balance eventually.

[heelfaceturn]And for Zion... you're right. Before I wasn't at all willing to flesh out or even let someone else think about fleshing out magic, and I was really vocal about it being a futile and unnecessary task, but now that there's an RPG in the works that'll need it as fleshed out as possible, I think I'd better stop being a squeaky wheel about it. [/heelfaceturn]

Pred sense would be easy. All you do is have a set dc for detecting prey size creatures. With each point in magical skills, the dc is decreased. Easy. So a powerful mage would be easier to detect than a fighter with all the magical skills of a piece of wood. Balancing that would take some work, but it's easy.

About the Pred-Sense: Which type would you be using? The "I have a hunch", the "Something must be near", or the "LOL NATURAL RADAR" version?

Basically, will it basically be used as a bonus to spot, listen, surprise, and so on, used as an even bigger bonus, or basically "Oh, there's a human two hundred meters north behind the big tree. They're being still to try to hide" that some people portray it as?

Specific backgrounds seem like far too much work. One of Felarya's charms, I think, is that there are so many worlds. Maybe we could make background groups/feats/flags, for cosmetically different but functionally similar worlds? I was thinking maybe we could split humans into:

-Provincians (Aren't even aware of a bigger world.)
-Earthlings (Were confined to one world.)
-Planewalkers (Regulars to other realities)

From there, we could split them according to a couple things, such as knowledge availability and knowledges available. Here, for example, we got an information age net, and thus anything we want to learn is available (except magic 'cuz it doesn't exist). It's not unfeasible to think that it's realistic for a fictional world with a net available to have also a huge didactic value for its worldwideweb.