Roll for Initiative

This idea has been scrambling about my brain for a while now. With all the other Felarya related things being made, computer arr-pee-gee and flash series to name two, what about a good ole’ fashioned pen and paper game? I’m an all round gamer, from video games to board games, (in fact, I just played a new board game called Twilight Imperium. The space nagas in that game are so OP. Seriously. But I digress.) and in fact, I think Felarya would make a good tile based board game, perhaps with shifting tiles or something to represent the instability of the land. But that would be a challenge for another day.

To the topic at hand, for anyone who doesn’t know, a pen and paper rpg is… well, just ask Wikipedia. I’ll wait.
…
Alright, done? Moving on. It shouldn’t be too hard to make a roleplaying game based in Felarya. In fact, it would be easy to convert a pre-existing system like Dungeons and Dragons D20 system, or World of Darkness’ D10 dot system. But personally, I’d prefer to make one pretty much from scratch. That’s where it gets more complicated. (Although, luckily still easier than making a computer game) I’d like to combine several aspects from the games I have played (Thank you Ridgeview High Gaming Club) to make one tailored to Felarya’s… unusual tastes. I’ve always liked DC Heroes’ character creation, I’d love to have something along those lines, perhaps with a bit of the Shadowrun’s setup too (But only a little bit, I hated how rigid it was)… Yeah, a set point value system, and different species would have different initial costs, just being a mage would take some points, feats would cost points too, as would increasing stats… And a Ten Again system would help you beat almost any odds...

But for now, before I get too far into thinking about this (Too late). I’d like to hear the opinion of all you guys and gals. Is this worth getting into? Then, depending on your answers, I’ll probably do it anyway.

Good idea, actually. It would be the fastest way to get people immersed into the game (faster than waiting for it to be made into a video game).

On a side note, I'm thinking that the Pred usually wins initiative rolls, right? They can detect stealth and all that.

Sounds like an exellent Idea ^^ I don't have much more of acomment then that XD sorry ^^:

Silent_eric wrote:

This idea has been scrambling about my brain for a while now. With all the other Felarya related things being made, computer arr-pee-gee and flash series to name two, what about a good ole’ fashioned pen and paper game? I’m an all round gamer, from video games to board games, (in fact, I just played a new board game called Twilight Imperium. The space nagas in that game are so OP. Seriously. But I digress.) and in fact, I think Felarya would make a good tile based board game, perhaps with shifting tiles or something to represent the instability of the land. But that would be a challenge for another day.

To the topic at hand, for anyone who doesn’t know, a pen and paper rpg is… well, just ask Wikipedia. I’ll wait.
…
Alright, done? Moving on. It shouldn’t be too hard to make a roleplaying game based in Felarya. In fact, it would be easy to convert a pre-existing system like Dungeons and Dragons D20 system, or World of Darkness’ D10 dot system. But personally, I’d prefer to make one pretty much from scratch. That’s where it gets more complicated. (Although, luckily still easier than making a computer game) I’d like to combine several aspects from the games I have played (Thank you Ridgeview High Gaming Club) to make one tailored to Felarya’s… unusual tastes. I’ve always liked DC Heroes’ character creation, I’d love to have something along those lines, perhaps with a bit of the Shadowrun’s setup too (But only a little bit, I hated how rigid it was)… Yeah, a set point value system, and different species would have different initial costs, just being a mage would take some points, feats would cost points too, as would increasing stats… And a Ten Again system would help you beat almost any odds...

But for now, before I get too far into thinking about this (Too late). I’d like to hear the opinion of all you guys and gals. Is this worth getting into? Then, depending on your answers, I’ll probably do it anyway.

I brought this up a while ago, No one was interested really, figures everyone wants in when someone else presents the idea

lami wrote:

I brought this up a while ago, No one was interested really, figures everyone wants in when someone else presents the idea

Been there, done that a few times myself.

lami wrote:

I brought this up a while ago, No one was interested really, figures everyone wants in when someone else presents the idea

Really? I didn't see, I honestly wouldn't have noticed this post either if Eric hadn't pointed it out to me ^^;

That's a great idea I think
Only problem would be.. well to play with others ^^;

Raveolution wrote:

I'm thinking that the Pred usually wins initiative rolls, right? They can detect stealth and all that.

Humans can be decidely quick witted. And preds don't always detect stealth, depends on the specie.

lami wrote:

I brought this up a while ago, No one was interested really, figures everyone wants in when someone else presents the idea

If by everyone you mean, eight out of one hundred and sixty one users. Personally, I think it's the poll. No one says no to a poll.

Karbo wrote:

That's a great idea I think
Only problem would be.. well to play with others ^^;

Using the IRC channel would be a good way to solve this problem.

Thing is, it's hard to work with such things. You have to choose between "Balance" and "Story". Worse, since D&D developers went with "Balance" for most of the beings, you'll have things NOT more powerful than something with better stats ingame.

For the majority of Pred's in D&D system, I figured that one might as well just go with Gargantuan creature rules for most, with Titan and Giant rules for a few, plus certain Devil / Demon rules for the hell beasties. They don't cover EVERYTHING, but they at least give you something to work off (Besides, 35HD (140-175HP average) is plenty enough for a creature, let alone 50+(200-250Hp average)).

Humans would be harder yet to do, as when calcing weapons things just get hard. Spells too. For example, the 1d4+1 "Magic Missile" causes roughly fist-sized holes in things in D&D storyline, yet a 10ft fall can be deadlier in D&D than one of such (And which would you rather do, jump 10ft down or take a fist-sized hole out of your stomach?)

Not to say it can't be done. Working over monstrous manual stuff and items would be the best area to start, though.

Malahite wrote:

Thing is, it's hard to work with such things. You have to choose between "Balance" and "Story". Worse, since D&D developers went with "Balance" for most of the beings, you'll have things NOT more powerful than something with better stats ingame.
Not to say it can't be done. Working over monstrous manual stuff and items would be the best area to start, though.

All that is very true. And it actually leads to my first question for you all.

I have the system in my head already. It's not the D20 system by a long shot. It'll be White Wolf's system with some stylistic changes, but DC Heroes character creation.

But I'm hitting a brick wall there. Should a Felarya game be balanced? I mean, it'll be possible to be a human or a neko or a naga, but should I penalize for being a more powerful creature (Something that would make the game more fair for humans), or should I be more realistic, and give larger creatures more points to distribute among their stats?

Opinions! Now!

Oh! I have an idea that should have both balance, and realisticness. That would be to have a template for each race. Now I know what you are going to say, "Templates? But that will lower the amount of diversity possible in the character creation! Surely there must be a better way!" Well no, short of coming up with some kinda complicated size formula to add bonuses to rolls to represent increased mass, there would be no other way to do it without forsaking either the realisticness, i.e. having nagas as strong as, or even weaker/dumber than humans, or the balance, i.e. if you don't want to die, then don't play a human. But this has the best of both worlds, and don't worry, there is still plenty of custimization availible.
I can tell you're not getting it. Examples will help here.

Pulling a random number out of my head, let's say that when making a character, you have 500 points to deck him or her out. Now, being a human would be free, so you'd still have 500 points. But if you wanted to be, say, a naga it would cost points, let's say 100. So a naga would have 400 points for creation to compensate for all the abilities a naga would enjoy, like the ability to eat the humans. But, being a giant naga, none of it's (physical) stats should be lower than a humans! And that would leave less points for elsewhere. On the other hand, should I award extra points for being a naga, why would anyone be a human when there is no benifit?

In comes the template. It would work like this, say you want to be a naga. Well, even the weakest naga would be at least on par with the strongest human. So I make a template with the minimum amount that a naga would have. In addition to the size advantage the naga would have, the 100 points would go towards the bare minimum template. And using the remaining 400 points, the naga could be customized from there! Make sense yet?

Points would be used to increase attributes (Strength, intelligence, charisma, etc), skills (climbing, struggling, jumping, swimming, swallowing, many skills would be race specific), advantages (Like say, allies or special abilities). And if you are running low on points, but still want/need more stuff, disadvantages would give you more in exchange for, well, a disablility. Like say, an irrational fear of nekos.

Let me know what you think. ^^ Or if you understand.

Makes perfect sense to me. Flexible and realistic.

Naturally, power level would vary from game to game, of course. It goes without saying that the preds in "Rin's Adventures" are probably more powerful than those in "On the Hunt". It'd be a simple task to simply alter the amount of points available to players, with or without the template.

I think the template idea helps balance things out nicely.

Still leaves room for development, so a good start.

However, if I may make a suggestion:

Make categories for what type of realm a character is from. For example, a character in a Magic / Tech heavy realm will likely have a poorer physical statline, but be much more knowledged in specific area's. This makes sense from a storyline standpoint, and still leaves room for customization if desired.

Malahite wrote:

Still leaves room for development, so a good start.
However, if I may make a suggestion:
Make categories for what type of realm a character is from. For example, a character in a Magic / Tech heavy realm will likely have a poorer physical statline, but be much more knowledged in specific area's. This makes sense from a storyline standpoint, and still leaves room for customization if desired.

That is a good idea. But it seems to me that something like that could be done on an individual basis by players, as opposed to a mandatory rule.

One thing I forgot to mention, humans won't have a template. This would actually be a incentive to play a human. I would say that humans are definatly the most varied, and in fact stylized race. Each single human usually specializes exclusivly in one aspect of society. Scientist, explorer, soldier, etc. And so humans are built from scratch and have the widest range in skills and equipment than any other race.

I'm also debating on whether humans, and possibly nekos and elves, should be the only races with classes.

Quote :

Still leaves room for development, so a good start.

However, if I may make a suggestion:

Make
categories for what type of realm a character is from. For example, a
character in a Magic / Tech heavy realm will likely have a poorer
physical statline, but be much more knowledged in specific area's. This
makes sense from a storyline standpoint, and still leaves room for
customization if desired.

A spot too confining for me. A character's skills and ability list should define their domain.

Quote :

I'm also debating on whether humans, and possibly nekos and elves, should be the only races with classes.

I would suggest making classes into templates. They cost points, but anyone can buy them.

You CAN have a naga mage, it just costs a buttload of points.

GREGOLE wrote:

Quote :

I'm also debating on whether humans, and possibly nekos and elves, should be the only races with classes.

I would suggest making classes into templates. They cost points, but anyone can buy them.
You CAN have a naga mage, it just costs a buttload of points.

Well magic is a whole other problem I haven't even started on. But I figured it as a feat or advantage any race could purchase. It wouldn't add a template persay as much as it would 'unlock' new abilities and rules for the player.

Classes would be more of a bonus for prey, another balance thing. And I guess I don't see a naga who can use magic a Mage unless she took formal training. A naga can still be a more powerful magician, but they aren't trained like a human Mage would be. Can you see where I'm trying to get with this? Anyone has the capacity to use magic, but mages are formally trained and have benefits for that reason.

Silent_eric wrote:

Malahite wrote:

Thing is, it's hard to work with such things. You have to choose between "Balance" and "Story". Worse, since D&D developers went with "Balance" for most of the beings, you'll have things NOT more powerful than something with better stats ingame.
Not to say it can't be done. Working over monstrous manual stuff and items would be the best area to start, though.

All that is very true. And it actually leads to my first question for you all.

I have the system in my head already. It's not the D20 system by a long shot. It'll be White Wolf's system with some stylistic changes, but DC Heroes character creation.

But I'm hitting a brick wall there. Should a Felarya game be balanced? I mean, it'll be possible to be a human or a neko or a naga, but should I penalize for being a more powerful creature (Something that would make the game more fair for humans), or should I be more realistic, and give larger creatures more points to distribute among their stats?

Opinions! Now!

Balanced. Like I said in another thread, what about making it so humans can hunt Crimson Maidens and Kiki can nosedive into Negav and bypass its defenses and scoop up a meal on the run?

No one should be secure in their own castle on Felarya...

Raveolution wrote:

Like I said in another thread, what about making it so humans can hunt Crimson Maidens and Kiki can nosedive into Negav and bypass its defenses and scoop up a meal on the run?
No one should be secure in their own castle on Felarya...

Well, things like that are totally up to the players and the person running the game. (Usually called a GM or game master, or DM or dungeon master, but for the purpose of the Felarya game, VM or Vore Master would be appropriate I'd say.) The fun thing about pen and paper roleplaying games is that you can do anything you want, to use a video game term, it's 'free roaming' or 'sandbox play.' So of course a human can hunt Crimson Maidens! If you have good enough stats, the right equipment, and most importantly, if you are lucky with your rolls you can even possibly win against them! And anyone playing a pred could try to do a Kessel Ru- er, a Negav Run, and once again, if you're lucky/skilled, you can even avoid being obliterated by the guards or more likely, the Isolon Eye.

I suppose I might as well explain something else today. Soo, let's see what else I have done so far. How about how the actual system will work? That should be good.

Alright. What I'm thinking for the system will be d10. I still don't know if any other dice will be used, but for now it's all ten sided. I like ten sided dice, x in ten chances are always useful, not to mention that with two tensiders, a x in 100 chance can be used. I wouldn't mind a random encounter table like that. But anyway, the actual game play will be done by rolling a certain number of 10 sided dice based on your stats. (Just how stats will determine the number of dice you get, I haven't decided yet) After rolling all your dice, you add up the numbers and check it against the Target Number. The Target Number is different depending on the difficulty of the action. More on that in a bit. Now, should you roll a ten on one or more of your dice, you get to roll again and add the new number and the ten to your total. There is no limit to this. Therefore, even if you have three dice to roll, you can still get over 30 if you are lucky. This luck element helps characters beat the odds so to say. If you roll high enough over the Target Number, it's considered a Critical or Exceptional Success. Basically, you've done so well at what you are trying to do that you get a bonus, decided by the VM. It could be anything from more damage from an attack, to getting lucky and and finding a cave that the pred chasing you won't fit in. On the other hand, if you roll all 1s and 2s on a roll, even if it puts you over the target number, you fail. In fact, you critically/dramatically fail. Once again, this is decided by the VM, but instead of a bonus, you get potentially disasterous happenstance. Your weapon breaks, jams, or drops from your hand. The bush you were looking through happens to have had a sleeping fairy in it. You choke on the human you were eating. Anything like that.

Target numbers are determined by the VM by considering how difficult an action is. Conditional modifiers are considered by him as well, such as if it's dark and you don't have any kind of night vision. A number is chosen, but not necessarily revealed to the players, and the player then rolls and checks against it. If it is equal or above, it's a success! If it's below, you fail, at least for now. And Dramatic failures and Exceptional Successes are detailed above. Now, let me through out some examples. for Target numbers

A naga putting a squirming neko in her mouth: Really Easy. 1-5 TN
A human shooting at a giant Dridder across a clearing: Fairly Easy 5-10 TN
A fairy shrinking a human: Easy-ish 10-15 TN
A human noticing that the tree up ahead is actually a dryad: Moderate 15-20 TN
Escaping the giant naga chasing after you: Moderately difficult 20-30
Avoid being seduced by Vivian: Difficult 30-40
A neko convincing Crisis not to eat her: Really Difficult 40-50
Escaping a stomach barehanded: Almost impossible 50-70
Human swimming across the Topazial Sea while avoiding all predators: Heroic 70-100
Becoming a Guardian: Priceless

Planet of Origin is also going to likely give benefits or penalties to certain scenario's. For example, a bunch of something from a world that would find something like Vivian repulsive would have a much easier time than your average schmuck from a Excess-Heavy world. Something from a desert planet would have much more trouble safely navigating a jungle. People from 'Feral' worlds would be much more benefited in combat.

Stuff like that.

Malahite wrote:

Planet of Origin is also going to likely give benefits or penalties to certain scenario's. For example, a bunch of something from a world that would find something like Vivian repulsive would have a much easier time than your average schmuck from a Excess-Heavy world. Something from a desert planet would have much more trouble safely navigating a jungle. People from 'Feral' worlds would be much more benefited in combat.
Stuff like that.

You are absolutely right! That's something I had not thought of specificly. That is something that could also be represented by character creation and skill choice. But to further represent the diversity of such a dimensionly unstable world as Felaria, I think I might make 'origin' advantages available to purchase at character creation. Things like, Felaryan native, Desert Dweller, City Dweller, Artic Dweller, Jungle Dweller, and so on. Each would have advantages and disadvantages. As for someone from a feral, combat oriented society, skill choice would easily show this by taking high abilities in brawling, weaponry, gunmanship, etc. And for people from an excess heavy world, what you don't take is just as indicative of a chsracter as what you do. Low willpower would go far towards having a character susceptable to, ahem, 'Earthly Delights.'

Felarya Da Board Game XD So Kinda like D&D With Felarya?

ConnorKCM wrote:

Felarya Da Board Game XD So Kinda like D&D With Felarya?

Well, this definately isn't a board game. Although a board game for Felarya would be totally awesome. I'm thinking hexagonal tile based system where the point is to try to build the biggest city without incurring the guardian's wrath. I'm seeing it as very Carcassone-like. It'd be fun, but for now, yes. I'm making a game comparable to D&D.

And I've had a good many ideas since my last post! I'll have to post them later, but let's just say that playtesting is very close!

Good news, in collaboration with Eric, the Human character sheet is done!

Spoiler: