Skies of Arcadia: The RPG

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not putting this in It's My Own Invention, because I don't think I have enough material to warrant a thread there.

However, I've been thinking about campaign settings and I think that this setting might have enough goodness in it to make an RPG out of it.

Central design precepts:

The entire world is made up of floating continents/countries/islands. Or more specifically:

The planet is about 90% water and raging storms. There are some landmasses and booty to be had on the surface and even underwater for ships that can make such a journey--unfortunately the surface of the world is very inhospitable due to constant hurricanes and storms and a lot of ships aren't equipped to go underwater. So most exploration is done in the Stratosphere. Where the floating continents/countries/islands are.

The world is divided up into broad cultural analogues much like most jRPGs are: We have an Ottoman Empire country, we have a New World country, we have a Western Europe country, we have an Antarctica country (though this one is still inhabited, unlike the games), we have a Far East country and we also have a Mesosphere 'Moon' People country. The countries are about roughly equal in political power; unfortunately, they don't reach very far because the population of the countries are still small relative to the size of the world.

The world, like all jRPG worlds, used to be covered by an ancient empire that had technology and all this bullshit. Then there was some disaster with the moons, the world went kablooey, everything ended up in the sky, yadda-yadda. The point is that civilization is just now starting to recover and the world is filled with unimaginable riches just waiting for the taking. Unfortunately, SUDDENLY MONSTERS, too. So you need to fight for the riches, too. And also fight monsters to get around the world to get to the riches. And fight other humans for the riches. But beyond all that, searching the world for treasure is extremely profitable. So much that the militaries of the world invest most of their time and effort into exploring. But there's so much for the taking right now that nearly any asshole with an airship and a pocketful of dreams can strike it rich. If they don't mind taking massive risks and risk getting shot down by monsters/pirates/militaries who want their loot.

Generally only way you can travel long-distance is by airship. This means that if your profession is adventurer and you want to be taken seriously you have an airship, because there's not a lot of shit to do around towns. Fortunately airships are pretty easy to get.

An airship is THE most valuable possession you have. A good warship is worth more than many cities. A wizard is more upset about losing their airship than their spellbook. That's how much it means to people, especially those in the adventuring class. It means even more to the political powers: airships are pretty much the only means of commerce and national defense. They are the lifeblood of the countries and fetishized by every culture. It is quite possible to defend territories without airships--you don't have a city without one. However, it's extremely difficult to project any kind of power without one. You can be a nice, isolationist territory without one but that's all you're going to be.

Airship-to-airship combat is done at distances done at pre-20th century naval battles. This is because all airships people give a damn about make heavy use of magical construction such as having magical cannons and hull plating and all that shit--unfortunately this shit is only effective at short range. Which means that you can still see people ramming the bow of their ships into others as an effective combat tactic and boarding people mid-battle.

There is one fundamental backing to the economy: moonstones. Moonstones, for those of you familiar with Star Trek, are pretty much Swiss-army knife material for replicators. Which means that they're used for pretty much anything--medicine, construction, weapons, ritual magic, you name it. They are a finite resource, however, so they have not completely subsumed traditional industry. No one knows how to make them or where they come from. Only that they tend to have corresponding colors (elements) towards the area of the world they pop up in and thus have associated effects where they're better at. For example, green moonstones are better at growing things so the American country is covered with lush forests and has giant animals and shit. Yellow moonstones are great for producing power and electricity, so that country is more mechanical. Furthermore, moonstones become more powerful when mixed with moonstones of other colors. Thus the countries are constantly exploring the world looking for moonstone crystals and constantly fighting for territory. Moonstones kick that much ass.

Because opposite-colored moonstones are so valuable, there should theoretically be constant, unending warfare between the states. And there is. Fortunately, the world is large enough and their populations are small enough so that by and large most people choose to get by through mundane exploration. The kind of shit where people raid dangerous ruins or areas of the country are left to adventurers and people with tricked-out warships. This means that when there is conflict (and there usually is) it tends to not be particularly destructive to civilians. Unless you happen to be unlucky enough to be sitting on something an airship wants and they defeated your local defense force.

Medium or Long-distance travel by fleets of airships away from city centers are just not done. It's easy enough to do it with a lone ship or two; you'll generally find enough moonstones just by exploring. You probably will not find enough to fuel several. Unfortunately, the alternate fuel source can't really be manufactured away from a city center. So when countries hire mercenaries or authorize military expeditions to get moonstones or do long-range business, sending out one lone, lean badass is much preferred to sending out several smaller vessels.


So this is all well and good for a fantasy-airship combat simulator, but didn't Skies of Arcadia also have a lot of segments that are done on foot? Why yes. Yes, they did. How do we integrate it?

One: While airships kick ass, there is one persistent problem they have. There are a motherfuck of a lot of creatures that fly out on the open skies. And they want to rip open your airships and feast upon the juicy flesh of people inside and also the moonstones. Even with airships made out of steel, a murder of Stratofish are going to tear through your hull and kill everyone inside in about an hour. And since airships are generally A) slow compared to the stuff in the skies so outrunning them isn't an option and B) too clumsy to knock out these threats with their armament before they attach themselves to the ship you need to send assholes out to kill the monsters before they cause too much damage to the ship.

Thus, every ship carries personal combat asskickers on it. Which are your PCs. Of course, going outside the ship while it's still in flight hundreds of kilometers above the ground has some risks associated with it. Thus, most ships are shaped in such a way so that there is plenty of room to manuever about the surface area. To assist PCs in killing shit outside of the ship, reliable personal flight is also very common--however, since it's still unstable and has risks associated with it, ships are shaped a lot like galleys/sailing vessels so that people can attack from multiple angles. Some ships have multiple hulls to them and will let creatures pierce through them and attack them there. There is a risk of damage that way but sometimes it's the only way to kill people approaching your ship--for example your anti-gravity module for the bottom hull is damage and monsters are approaching from the underside.

While monsters by and large consume moonstones and other critters that eat them, the process humans use that turn moonstones into usuable material by-and-large makes them EXTREMELY desirable to unintelligent monsters. The bad news: this makes monsters frenzy and want to kill people. The good news: intelligent 'monsters' are able to resist the moonstone frenzy urge without too much trouble. What few of them there are.

Towns tend to avert these moonstone-hungering monster hordes by either converting an excess of moonstone to equipment as soon as possible or storing them deep beneath the surface. If you're lucky enough to live near a city capital it's very likely that the military very thoroughly exterminated all monster populations around the city so they're free to stock up on as much booty as they want. But for populations on the frontier it's a very real risk.

Two: There are like, ruins and everything out there, man. Ruins are not only goldmines to moonstones but they also have secret magical equipment and items. This is where adventurers make their money; through exploration and plundering.

And sure, you could just fly over the hidden temple and bombard it with grape shot until it's rubble and pick through the ruins. In fact, some ships do that. However, this is frowned upon for several reasons:

A) Moonstones are pretty fragile. They do not last well through cave-ins, let alone direct blasts with magical turrets.
B) The majority of dungeon are set up in such a way so that monsters can't leave the vicinity of the island as long as the seals are intact. You wouldn't want to be the dumbass who destroyed a seal and had hundreds of dragon zombies crush your ship and infect the landscape, would you? It's better to just send a couple of dumbasses in, scout around--and if they don't come back, just leave the site. Even if they are badass enough to take on all of the monsters in there, you do NOT want your ship to be the battlesite.
C) The really good stuff is hidden deep in the ruins. This is where all of the traps and badass monsters and shit reside. You're not getting in very far with a muggle crew.

Three: Having ass-kickers onboard gives you the edge in naval battles. Adventurers are known for inspiring other crewmembers, getting the most of out the magic cannons, making torpedoes more accurate, all that. Moreover, if a ship is outmatched in armament they can still try to send their adventurers to board the other ship, kick the ass of all of the muggles and take over. Keep in mind though that out on the open skies, all else being equal, you'd rather have a muggle crew with a whupass ship than a kickass crew with a civilian ship. But at least the latter stand a chance. This has the obvious side effect of more important vessels being stocked with asskickers.

Four: If you're an asshole and manage to succeed in knocking down a town's anti-air defenses, you still need to subjugate the people below or at least be able to kill your way to the city defenses beneath the surface to get at the plunder/government/women. You can pound at a city all you want with your cannonz until they decide to just give up, but that might take days, even weeks.

[Caedrus]

I am going to go play this game on a Dreamcast now.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I am going to go play this game on a Dreamcast now.

Didn't this also come out on the Wii?

[Leress]

I am going to go play this game on a Dreamcast now.

Didn't this also come out on the Wii?

Actually it was the Gamecube. It was the "Enhanced" version of it.

[Caedrus]

I am going to go play this game on a Dreamcast now.

Didn't this also come out on the Wii?

Actually it was the Gamecube. It was the "Enhanced" version of it.

So are you saying I should play it on my Gamecube or my Dreamcast? Because I can go either way.

[Orca]

... all else being equal, you'd rather have a muggle crew with a whupass ship than a kickass crew with a civilian ship. But at least the latter stand a chance.

That's a tricky balance point to hit. The PCs are going to need some expendable resource - hero-only moonstones, edge/luck/action points, or whatever - which they can pull out in those situations, or else you're going to need a system with a lot of variance in the combat results. What system are you thinking of starting from?

What does personal combat mean in terms of tech? Rifles and bayonets, or cutlasses and one-shot pistols, or swords and shields?

If mixing moonstone colours is that big mojo, an alliance of 2-3 countries might well be able to crush the others and divide the world up into spheres of influence. Is there a reason they haven't, or is it just they haven't yet?

Just the questions which occurred to me as I read this.

[Gelare]

So are you saying I should play it on my Gamecube or my Dreamcast? Because I can go either way.

Personally, I recommend the Gamecube. Obviously the Dreamcast version is great, but the Gamecube version is that plus some junk - it didn't really lose anything in the port, and both versions were very highly received.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I recommend the Gamecube version if only because they decreased the amount of random encounters.

It's still very high, but it's not as brain-busting.

That's a tricky balance point to hit. The PCs are going to need some expendable resource - hero-only moonstones, edge/luck/action points, or whatever - which they can pull out in those situations, or else you're going to need a system with a lot of variance in the combat results. What system are you thinking of starting from?

What does personal combat mean in terms of tech? Rifles and bayonets, or cutlasses and one-shot pistols, or swords and shields?

If mixing moonstone colours is that big mojo, an alliance of 2-3 countries might well be able to crush the others and divide the world up into spheres of influence. Is there a reason they haven't, or is it just they haven't yet?

Just the questions which occurred to me as I read this.

1) It's pretty much going to work like any other encounter system. The game determines the PC's power level and the PCs magically only encounter people who are just the right challenge level. Sometimes they come across much stronger or weaker vessels (since fleeing by ship will be much easier in this game -- unfortunately the way the game is set up if you get boarded the fight is generally to the last man)


2) All of the above. Skies of Arcadia had people using one-shot pistols and cutlasses and shields and all that. Since most non-ship combat is done face-to-face pistols don't really give anything more than bows and arrows; you just see more pirates using them.

3) Yeah, I saw the problem with that already.

How about instead so that certain moonstone combinations produce a single moonstone color that's stronger. Countries stick to their corresponding moonstone color because the way their technology and magic are set up they get the most benefit out of matching moonstone colors. The Red country's ships and technology mainly run off of Red Moonstones and they prize these the most. For example:

Yellow + White = Big Yellow
White + Purple = Big White
Purple + Red = Big Purple
Red + Green = Big Red
Green + Blue = Big Green
Blue + Yellow= Big Blue

Thus Valua (the Yellow country) avoids trading moonstones with Yamafu (sp?) because it ends up benefitting the other country more than their own. Valua regularly conducts raids on the White country, however, and pays out the ass for White moonstones.

[Gelare]

Thus Valua (the Yellow country) avoids trading moonstones with Yamafu (sp?)

Yafutoma, if I remember correctly. They really go all out with their cultural stereotypes, don't they?

[MGuy]

I like the idea. Skies was one of my favorite RPGs. I'd definitely like to see any rules you have/make that cover ship to ship combat. My one concern is that the world in the game was a bit small (IIRC). Are you planning on expanding the setting?

[Caedrus]

I recommend the Gamecube version if only because they decreased the amount of random encounters.

It's still very high, but it's not as brain-busting.

Curse you, random encounters!

[Lago PARANOIA]

Assumptions:

All machinery has a fixed output for moonstones you put in. Putting a higher-grade moonstone into a burned-out engine doesn't work better than a lower-grade one. If you want a greater benny out of higher-grade moonstones you find you need to upgrade your machinery. While more advanced machinery can be run off of lower-grade moonstones the process is extremely inefficient; you actually end up spending more energy units this way than just finding or refining a better-quality moonstone.

There is no way of producing moonstones short of waiting for it to fall from the six moons. Refining moonstones can only be done with other moonstones. While the moons regularly replenish the moonstones on the planet, the amount of energy available on the planet is more-or-less fixed. This puts a hard limit on population and forces people to constantly hunt for moonstones.

Sending ships out to look for moonstones nets more energy than trying to farm it, due to the population thing.

The population of the world is very small considering how large the planet is--this is due to peoples' dependence on moonstones, a finite resource, and also because most of the 'world' is open sky. However, there was a civilization-shattering disaster hundreds of years back so while the cap to the planet's population is low (probably around a billion) the current population is even lower (probably around a hundred million).

Even though most of the world is sky, there are still more places to 'land' than in our world. About half of the 'sky' you can land on, as opposed to a third in our real world. However landmasses are also much smaller in this world--probably the biggest continent is the size of Spain. The old civilization covered almost all of the world and there are new ruins with moonstone things being discovered all of the damn time.

The world is easily habitable with basic knowledge. While some airspaces (like the ones around the Green and Blue moons) are so friendly to life that you can get by with just a spear, even normally inhospitable climates like the Purple country are easy to get by in as long as you have moonstones available.

If you stick to the trade routes and don't use anything too fancy, travel is safe and easy whether you're a wanted pirate or a civilian in a simple aircraft. Once civilization is set up, communication is also quick and easy. People can know what's going on halfway around the world within days.

Long-range teleportation does exist. However, long-range teleportation only works with small amounts of people and goods. This is great for generals and nobles and spies, not particularly useful for actual warfare or exploration.

Creation spells do exist. However, they're just not that efficient compared to what moonstones can do. A skilled engineer and five assistants can produce more machinery in a year than a high-level wizard working nonstop. All told, muggles are still very important for the economy. Moonstone crafting, farming, and production is just better than what can be done with magic.

Since skilled labor is so useful, everyone in this world is educated and trained to some degree, whether they're in the oppressive nation of Valua or the mystical jungles of Ixa'taka. Almost everyone has a trade beyond 'unskilled laborer', is literate, and has a basic scientific education. The economy still does have unskilled laborers but because the economy is extremely chaotic and fungible a lower- or middle-class worker doing the job of a janitor or miner is considered temporary. While many nations still use (or recently used) slavery or feudalism, the need to have as many educated slaves and serfs to keep up in the arms race as possible is causing these social systems to crack apart at the seams; sometimes it works out and you lurch from a feudalist to a socialist economy like in Rolana. Other times the elite are able to install a totalitarian government just in time like in Valua.

[MGuy]

I read in another thread you were having a hard time coming up with reasons behind airship travel and you'd given this project up. If you're still working on it might I ask if you have any mechanics for ship to ship battles. If I remember the game correctly (which I had bought it when it first came out for Dreamcast) Ship to Ship battles were pretty important. Also IIRC weapons were powered by moonstones as well and I was wwondering how that might work out.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you're still working on it might I ask if you have any mechanics for ship to ship battles. If I remember the game correctly (which I had bought it when it first came out for Dreamcast) Ship to Ship battles were pretty important. Also IIRC weapons were powered by moonstones as well and I was wwondering how that might work out.

I don't have any mechanics for anything right now. All I have are design goals. I can come up with a list of them for ship-to-ship combat however.

Secondly, the mechanic in Skies of Arcadia where you could freely swap between 6 moonstone attributes is just not going to fly. There's absolutely no point in having a color/elemental wheel if you can freely switch between whatever color/element you want; it just wastes time.

[Parthenon]

I've been playing through the game again, just got past Dangral Island. This game is amazing.

---

I agree, freely swapping is just not going to work. Especially if enemies can also swap. I can't even see how that would work in the game. Probably some hideously complex rock paper scissors where everyone just ends up picking Silver because it is weakest to the fewest things.

But, on the other hand, how about each character having an inherent moonstone, probably based on where they were raised, and be able to use one other moonstone. For example, a Valuan automatically is Yellow, but if using a Blue sword can temporarily swap to Blue. With this idea weapons are made from one moonstone but can't be changed.

This way instead of being able to switch between all six moons, each PC only has access to two moons. It means that a party of four can take on all six attributes and each PC isn't limited to one tactic or is only good against one group of enemies.

Another idea is that changing elements requires a whole round or other such irritatingly long time. And that each person requires a large enough moonstone to do so. So, to have four PCs all be Blue then you need four processed Blue moonstones.

---

The other thing I was wondering was how you were thinking of doing magic.
How many different types of magic can each PC learn? Being able to use all types of magic is equivalent to being able to freely switch between types so is a bad idea. But if you can switch elements with items in any way and then learn magic then you can learn all types. Obviously if you are limiting the elements then you also want to limit which magic each PC can learn.

But, is magic like D&D magic where you have a lot of specific spells or like the Arcadian magic where each moon has very limited attack spells with one or two utility spells?

[Username17]

But, on the other hand, how about each character having an inherent moonstone, probably based on where they were raised, and be able to use one other moonstone. For example, a Valuan automatically is Yellow, but if using a Blue sword can temporarily swap to Blue. With this idea weapons are made from one moonstone but can't be changed.

Wouldn't people just golf-bag weapons at that point?

-Username17

[Parthenon]

True, but having only one element or having all six elements is shitty, so I think they should have at least two elements to choose between.

In the game the party needs moonstones that change their elements. With a Blue moonstone they can change their weapon into a Blue weapon and can change the same weapon into Red, Green or whatever at will. They end up with all six elements freely accessible, and all four party members can use the same moonstone at once. This is obviously too powerful, and would be worse than golf-bag weapons.

By doing something like having an inherent element and an instrumental element and switch between them then they can have a limited magic at any single point. As long as you make the weapon expensive enough that dropping them around is silly and bulky enough that it takes up a whole turn swapping weapons then it will be a lot better than the source material and nearly reasonable.

Or, just drop the idea of inherent elements and just take a turn swapping weapons.

[MGuy]

Well I would think that moonstone weapons, moonstone aligned people and monsters, etc would be part of the project since that was an integral part of the game. I wouldn't miss them over much if they were removed but I'd have to think there were more uses for moonstones beyond making ships fly.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Hey, I'm definitely for the idea of using Moonstones for the item-crafting minigame but one of the defining attributes about a successful elemental wheel system is that people can't freely swap between elements.

Even in Skies of Arcadia the moonstone-swapping was nothing more than a minor inconvenience--you look at your enemies' elements at the start of a battle, switch your weapons to the proper element, then fire and forget. Then you swap back to 'inferior' elements if you want to grind magic.



Anyway, design principles for airships and airship battles.

1) The first one is that the idea of ships being able to stand firm and blast away should not happen. In the game the ships move around constantly, edging for a tactical advantage. So to support this:

All ships should have weak positions of some sort. It should be impossible for a ship to be able to adequately defend all of their sides, either through armor plating or with guns. You need to MOVE, both so a ship doesn't get at your weak point and so you can fire at the weak point of an enemy.

2) People should make their decisions of what to do several moves in advance of what happens. This means that you decide three rounds in advance that you're going to try to fire a cannon and you can't change your mind--after you make that decision you can either cancel it or go through with it anyway but swapping is a non-starter.

3) However, to prevent people from making their decisions completely blind Winds of Fate comes to the rescue. But there's a twist--at the start of each around you roll your ENEMIES' WoF and they roll yours. You roll the WoF for four rounds (or so) in advance. But you don't get exact knowledge of what they're going to be using; you just have a vague idea of how powerful their moves are going to be. For example, you make a WoF roll for your enemy and you get two greens, a yellow, and a red. This means that the enemy has two phases where they're limited to weaker rolls on the WoF scale and for the red you know they have access to a stronger one.

3) Airship combat is set up in such a way so that usually when you fight a new enemy you're fighting blind but you still have some vague idea of what the enemy can do--for example, Valuan ships favor electrical attacks and heavy cannons, Yafutoman ships favor torpedos and manueverability attacks, so-on. But the particulars are unknown until at least a few rounds of fighting.

Players are thus encouraged to swap around their armament often, especially once they get some reknown. Otherwise enemies will know in advance what to expect. Which is not a good thing.

4) Battles are easy to escape from if you don't want to fight. Chasing down and destroying an airship that doesn't want to fight is an affair that can take hours, even days.

5) The gangbang tactic for taking out enemies in most RPGs is a bad idea in this game--if at all possible, you do NOT want to ignore airships who are fighting you. The thing in D&D where goblins all swarm past the fighter, sucking up the AoOs, and then continue to wail on the cleric even as the fighter and rogue desperately try to get their attention does not happen in this game, because the goblins would be torn to ribbons.

[mean_liar]

2) People should make their decisions of what to do several moves in advance of what happens. This means that you decide three rounds in advance that you're going to try to fire a cannon and you can't change your mind--after you make that decision you can either cancel it or go through with it anyway but swapping is a non-starter.

Broadside and Boarding Parties did this, and it was awesome. Blind-play mechanics are tricky to balance in that you want more than just a few options to choose from in any given situation, but in implementation I find it to be one of the best tactical combat mechanisms.

[Gelare]

2) People should make their decisions of what to do several moves in advance of what happens. This means that you decide three rounds in advance that you're going to try to fire a cannon and you can't change your mind--after you make that decision you can either cancel it or go through with it anyway but swapping is a non-starter.

See also Mouseguard. You choose your actions three at a time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

6) The other design criteria I have is that players should all be encouraged to stay in one ship.

The reason for this is obvious; the game should also have people fighting fighting on decks and in the hallways of ships and a system where you have two PCs on one deck that is fighting off pirates while the other two are off in their own ship doing their own separate thing. Just... no.

Unfortunately, there's a huge conceptual snag in on this. If it's advantageous for players to try to grab several airships and assign a PC to each one then they will. So obviously there has to be some incentive for PCs to all stay in the same airship--the obvious idea is synergy bonuses and not giving too much of a benefit for the action economy. I think the way to do this to have ship effectiveness drop off sharply when ships functions (manuevering, cannons, magical support, repairs, etc.) when they're run by muggles.

So this requires a re-examination of the above criteria, where a badass ship powered by muggles is better than a weaksauce ship powered by PCs. I think the easiest way to do it is to just have it so that muggles could run ships but they don't; which means that nations try to have their best ships staffed by named NPCs rather than have their best NPCs assigned to mediocre ships and their muggles assigned to the best ones for average power.


So there's two ways we can go from here. We can do it so that every great airship captain also can kick ass in personal combat one way or another and asskickers are great airship captains. This does seem a bit silly but the game does in fact heavily buy into this trope--all of the named NPCs who pilot airships competently can kick ass hand-to-hand when the situation calls for it.

The other way we can do it would be to keep two separate tracts of advancement: you have your Personal Ass-Kicker level and your Airship Captain level and you advance those tracts differently. They can be almost completely separate from each other or we can have them bleed over into each other; for example, while someone with a medium PAK and ACK levels will always beat someone with just a good ACK level in airship combat but the medium person will always lose to someone with a high ACK level but no PAK levels. Or we could have them be completely independent of each other so we can have the trope of 'cowardly fatass who gets knocked over by a stiff breeze is nonetheless best airship captain in Rolana'.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Never played SoA, but it sounds awesome from the description.