[Game] Larp (2.0 style)

[Judging__Eagle]

Me and a person with a lot of understanding into how larp's action and verbal economies work have been talking about ideas on "what" an ideal larp would look like.

"races"
-apperance, not power
-social commonalities, not strict racial stereotypes
-more intensive appearance in terms of makeup and costuming grants more benefits; either tangible, or intangible

"character benefit"
-pick one from a pool, your elf can be a bit better at melee, or magic; whatever

"leveling up"
-Players get an A, a B, and a C point every time that they come to an event
-A points can be spent at a rate of 1 each, to buy Starter Powers
-B points can be spent at a rate of 3 each, to buy Continual Powers
-C Points can be spent at a rate of 5 each to buy Advanced powers


"action economy"

I personally want to see some sort of economy where players have to spend actions to "power up" to use more advanced powers. Also, to not have artificial restrictions to ...

"verbal economy"


[more when i get back from work today]

[Prak]

-more intensive appearance in terms of makeup and costuming grants more benefits; either tangible, or intangible

While I think this is kind of cool, you'll wind up punishing people who, for one reason or another, can only manage to paint themselves green and wear tattered clothing to play an Orc. Maybe they can't afford more, maybe they don't know how to do more, but when you start rewarding the people who go beyond that, painting themselves green, getting Orc culture tattoos, wearing tusks, having tribal piercings, etc, then you're punishing the 9-5 retail slave who can't afford tusks, and can't dye their hair or get piercings because they'll get fired.

If the people who can do whatever they want start getting bonuses, the people who have to go back to the real world the next day are going to feel cheated.

Just a thought

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm, that's a good point.

I think it's things that you put on at the event, that should ever count. Not things that the player already has. They've basically acting like themselves the whole time.

A character who draws face paint over their face is doing quite a lot as it is.

If the Player has stuff; that's cool, but your purple hair isn't something you did 'for' the larp, above what you already do.

Also... you can probably wear more than tattered clothing with an orc. At least, in the game I'm seeing, orcs are naturally green, and aggressive, and most of them like violence.

The ones that aren't crazy raging guys are Adventurers, and even the Craziest Orcish Adventurer knows that he runs with a powerful band of warriors, so he would only call someone out for a good reason.

The player then will probably equip then with a cheap boffer longsword; and eventually upgrade over time. Some players are more keen on upgrades, and...

[Kaelik]

Alternatively, giving people with more cash better powers in your LARP is fucking retarded, and you should just accept that some people want to LARP, and not pay out the ass to be as good as Moneybags Jim, who is a fucking millionaire, and has all sorts of cool shit that nobody else can afford.

[Starmaker]

Players with more cash would be better equipped and moar popular as a result. Players in full a8 gear naturally attract more attention than people in bathrobes with broomsticks. That's an advantage you can't cancel out and one you shouldn't emphasize mechanically.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, mechanically, 'wearing' armour is going to have benefits.

If not, there's no point in doing so.

If anything, it's not the matter of player poverty or not. It's more of a matter that it's not "worth" it in game to get actually decent armour props.

The people who can't get armour props in game, will probably never even try to get them out of game. If armour is also "not so useful", in game, then that's a further barrier on players wanting to upgrade their in game equipment.

It's not about cost, it's about desire. Also, "prop" gear can be very cheap. A spray-painted silver shirt, that's what a "poor quality" chainmail prop can be. If the difference between a bad prop, and a great prop isn't too large, then players will have a reason get into the "armour" game if they wish.

Costume things are mostly going to be IG in terms of benefits.

In any case, the system I'm going for is a Base Three.

Everything will have 3 main parts.

Players get every event/game, the following:

Minor Powers

Every event, a character can learn a new Minor power. This is everything from "being able to prepare materials for crafting" to "able to use an attack type with a trivial cooldown" (1 second cooldown). Minor Powers are at-will abilities.

Moderate Powers

If you know any Moderate Powers, Get an other use of a Moderate Power per encounter, every 3 Events, learn a new Moderate power.

Major Powers

At the end of a season, every character gets one new Major power. If a character has a Major Power, they get an additional use of a Major Power per day.

====

Living and Dying

Weapons deal a "base" damage, or 1. Creatures/humans, only have 3 "Body". All attacks affect the same pool of "Body" equally. They all deal either an effect, or 1 point of damage.

So, 3 hits, and you're usually down. Barring gear, abilities, dodging on your own, etc.

The Seperate damage tracks that I'm thinking are:

Stamina: All attacks deal stamina damage, unless they state otherwise; a creature who has been beaten via normal attacks must lay prone for 10 min before they can get up

Body: This is 'lethal' damage; only special things can deal this. Body damage cannot be healed with Minor Abilities, and takes Moderate abilities to repair. Usually.

Life: This is "soul" damage, your Body score is left 1 less until the end of the event by the attack. This clears at the end of an event, or is a Major power is used.

=====


I'm seriously considering that even crafting can be done in 3 tiers.

The 1st is "resource processing or gathering". A smith working ingots, or an alchemist gathering herbs is the same, mechanically.

2nd is 'making' mundane things

3rd is making 'high end' things

[violence in the media]

Regarding the costuming issue, and the armor specifically, would you require characters to invest points in the ability to use armor and have the players provide some sort of prop?

Regarding the props, how much of a mechanical difference would you provide between someone using the aforementioned silver t-shirt and someone with a reasonably elaborate set of plate and mail?

[Judging__Eagle]

On props.

Every player can use any prop.

Also, "abilities" are a basic type.

If a player wants to use their type of ability in a different flavor, they need to either buy a minor power that lets them do so.

All "special" attacks will have a pre-req of some sort of 'other' ability.

So, you can use the Halt (1 foot pinned); Pinned (2 feet pinned); Bound (no leg movement) abilities; and depending if you got weapon skill, or hand strikes, or magic, or psychic, you don't have a delivery method.


Perhaps that's part of it.

A Character can have a basic ability; and other abilities can use that base ability as the 'source' of flavour, for a newly purchased power.

The action economy of the game is that:

A Character can either
>perform an active action
>they are on cooldown
>an action is defensive

Active actions are things that a Character does to affect the world.

When a Character is on cooldown, they cannot make any use of any activatable skills

Defensive Skills do not have a Cooldown, and can be used whenever desired, so long as all other pre-requisites for the skill are present.

1. A Character can Perform an Active Minor action, with a 1 second cooldown. When a Character uses 5 Minor actions in an encounter, they may then use their Moderate Powers
2. A Character can Perform a Moderate action, with a 5 second cooldown, if activated by the Character, and no cooldown if defensive.
3. Once performing moderate Actions, a Character may continue to Perform them, or Minor Actions, or a Major Action
4. A Major Action has a 10 second cooldown.

Some Abilities may be performed without being "ready", instead, they have their warm-up added to the end; as an extra long cooldown.

Minor -> 1 second cooldown (this is always the same)
Moderate -> 10 Second cooldown (5 Minors + the Moderate basic CD)
Major -> 20 Second cooldown (10 + 5 Moderate + 5 Minors)


Actions will have 3 main types:

Attack - Activated abilities
Defense - Defensive (and Activated?) abilities
Utility - Activated Abilities

Each type could be three groups of abilities, in three tiers.

I could see a potential for lots of small groupings; since minors are very common, while the moderates, and majors are more uncommon.


Resource Gathering, and economy

An economy where a player can get several 'gathering' minors abilities, creation minor ability, a creation moderate, and a creation major; could make a lot of different items. A Major Gatherer, would be able to collect really crazy things; like, say, the claws of a "something".

I think that a sense of 'scaling' the tiers; so that there is a distinct difference in feel, for a character who gets several minors, but no moderate, or majors, in a certain type of power.

Really, I'm thinking that this could all be about building lots of 3 rank matrixes, and a player will always roughly know what their abilities can do.



Lists of things I'm thinking about are:

AttacK

Minor_____________Moderate_________Major
Strike/Unarmed -> Body Strike -> Life Strike
Strike/Unarmed -> Body Penetrate -> Life Puncture
Pierce Strike -> Penetrate Strike -> Puncture Strike
Push Strike -> Shove Strike -> Throw Strike

>Abilities can sometimes be pre-reqs for -other- abilities, of the same tier.
>Being able to Pierce through a sheild's defenses, is worth more than basic strike.
>However, it's not worth a moderate power. So, it's just a Minor, with a pre-requisite of an other Minor.
>I think that splitting up low end powers into Minors with pre-requisites is an idea I might use; with Minors that have moderate, or major, powers as pre-requisites


So....

Games that I'd like to see:


Combat
Magic
Psychic
Alchemy
Trade Skills
Rituals

Each of the systems will probably have a "starting" Minor, that allows a person to then specialize. While still not locked into one type of product type (a smith can make armour, or weapons; with their minors, or moderates).

Combat

would have 'strikes'
and 'blocks'

and each would be pre-reqs for other groups of minors.

Maybe sort of like an expanding tree?


Alchemy would have three parts.

Resource Collection

Collect Animal Parts-> Collect Special Parts-> Collect Rare Parts
Collect Plants > Special Plants > Rare Plants
Collect Minerals > Special Mineral > Rare Minerals

Processing
Process Mundane > Process Special > Process Rare

Crafting
Craft Minor > Craft Moderate > Craft Major

===========


I'll need to draw some charts, and flow charts for how a PC can get different powers.

Right now; I'm thinking that a character starts with 2 minor powers.

I'm thinking that splitting Minors into at-will; Moderates into per 24 hours; and Majors into 1/event might be a good way to split up, and prevent the use of Novaing.

I've had the issue of how to deal with an attack that is like an "assassinate" or a "suprise attack"; and the best way we determined was to have a cooldown long enough to take into the account the minimum time it would take to "warm up" to use a moderate, or major power.

So, a Minor 'sneak' attack is a 1 second cooldown; the Moderate, is a 10 second cooldown (5 + 5 Minors); and a Major would be a 20 second cooldown (10 + the 10 from a Moderate's CD).



For "crafting"; I'm thinking that the player gets "more" the more units of 10 minutes that they spend doing their gathering. The Players doing Gathering would "earn" their gathered resources, by acting as cast members; or helping with cast work, for as much time as it would take to perform the gathering task they wanted to perform.

Likewise with processing materials, and creating objects. The Player takes a Cast role, and eases NPC exhaustion; while both keeping a player occupied, but by also keeping other players occupied, while your NPCs can rest and recover.

[Judging__Eagle]

Right now, I'm thinking that I can Divide almost every aspect of the game into 3 main parts.


Magic
Sense
Use
Manipulate

Psychic
Self
Others
Spirit

Combat
Offense
Defense
-something: Skill, Training,

[Judging__Eagle]

Ok, I got my hands on Freemind, to better organize this project.

Right now, in HTML, the stuff looks like this:

nm, I can upload a jpeg... it's massive though

will upload in an hour when I'm happy with my 1st draft

hmm... well, here's a raw text upload for now

fucking raw text


Ok, I did the best thing I can, I made a Scribd Account, and put it up.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29952556/Third-Rule

Seriously, I'm really liking this so far.

I think that a rule where Constants block constants, Encounters block Encounters, and Dailies block Dailies is a good idea.

It's sort of all falling into place as I write it.

I'm still not sure if this is good or a pile of shit though.

[Parthenon]

How can you have the goal of "Appearance, not Power" at the same time as "More Power for more effort in Appearance"?

Please, go back and edit your posts to standardise the terminology. You vary between Standard/Continual/Advanced, Minor/Moderate/Major, and Constant/Encounter/Daily. Obviously they're all the same thing, but it would be so much easier to read if they had the same names. It would also help if you didn't say that Major actions had a 10 second countdown then in the next paragraph say that Major actions have a 20 second countdown.

Is this planned to be a class based system at all or would you pick all your abilities from a big list? And what sort of power level would a starting character have compared to a more experienced character- would a starting character begin with 2 Minor abilities and 1 Moderate compared to an experienced character most of the way through a season having 10 Minors, 3 Moderates and 1 Major, or do beginning characters only have the one Minor for the single A category point for attending that event?

---

Is this system supposed to be for short sessions or multi-day events? Some LARP systems are for 45 minute runs, others can be over three or so days.

And then how frequent are events? Is it a case of three or four events a year or is it fortnightly or what?

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually, the idea is that they are two different things.

Abilities will have a frequency, and a grade. Constant powers are things you can use all day long, Encounters are special attacks/effects, and Dailies are things that you don't want a player to either 1) do often, or 2) require a character to be on a cooldown without a warmup (assassinate type skills tend to need something like this).

The grade determines how powerful the effect is. A Constant Major, is going to be weaker than a Daily Major; but its effects will be seen more often in a game session.

I have how they are organized in the Scribd link, I'm still shuffling how the resources things will work; and I want to tweak how some things will work out in terms of encounter and daily powers. Mostly, in creating more of them. As well as nailing down what the different benefits will be from the different constant powers.

On appearance/power.

Players that go and actually play non-humans are spending a lot of time and resources out of game. Sometimes they spend hours building props and costumes, weeks assembling ensembles.

Honestly, that should be rewarded.

Some players want to play humans though, and will even then invest a lot of time and resources on their costume.

That should also be rewarded.

If not, the standard for the game drops over time. The people who are going to roleplay and get good costume will do so regardless, and should be rewarded. I'm not a fan of punishing players, but I am a fan of rewarding players who bring something to the game.

A very list of what a player could wear is broken down into:

-costume
-equipment
-character appearance/makeup

Only things that are put on for the game get you benefits. If you dye your hair, or wear studs in your ears already, you're not really "someone else" if you just put on green face paint.

If you get some prosthetic teeth, some leather armour, and equipment that fits what your character does (no imaginary pruning shears or bone saws; actual objects, or boffer objects), then that counts.

Wearing, or having, a better overall costume will get you 1 minor you qualify for if you have 1 in each. If you have more than 2, or a high quality version, that's 1 moderate. With a cap of 3 minor, and 1 moderate.

The abilities are all from a giant list. Everything is from a list.

Class systems are for the dogs, they're boring, and restrict people far too much.

Likewise, "species" in this game re going to be pretty free form. It should be noted that almost all larps have something known as "racials", key identifiers that players can use to identify creatures or other players they see in game. Players really want to play strange things, so the enforcement of racial requirements helps to keep the game's internal structure clear.

Orcs are a species of creature that I want to have "sharp teeth, or tusks; solid coloured skin, tend to be warlike, some have scars, or warpaint, or trophies". The Orc player can pick up the ranged, and magic abilities if they want, but that decision is not punished by the system itself.

The Elf will have "pointed ear prosthetics; normal or solid coloured skin; tend to wear well-crafted clothing, some elves do not though".

On powers, and gaining power.

I'm thinking that a hard cap of 5 major powers for a character; with retraining possible at a rate of 1 ability per event.

Starting characters are probably going to come in with 4 minor powers, and 1 moderate power. I was thinking about a base of 3 minors, but every species is going to have their own thing; and every creature learns a minor ability before they left home.


Anyway, trying to write down the list I have in mind-map format:
(seriously, discount every previous post; and look at the Scribd Link; the information is a lot better organized right now).

Body, Abilities, Resources - 3 or BAR-3

Body:

Characters start with 3 body

All attacks to a character all deal 1 point of damage; two-handed melee weapons deal 2 points.

Characters can take 3 types of damage

Stamina - Stamina damage is recovered at a rate of 1 every 30 minutes. A creature beaten down with Stamina damage can get up with 1 stamina after laying 10 minutes on the ground.

Unless otherwise stated, any attack always deals stamina damage.
Armour worn only protects against stamina damage.

Body - Body damage is lethal to a character. After 10 minutes laying on the ground, a creature beaten down with body damage is dead.

Life - Life damage is damaging to a character's life essence. If a creature takes life damage, they cannot recover the lost points until an effect that cures life damage is used. Otherwise, Life damage is like Body damage.

[Judging__Eagle]

Update:

I had some issue with my computer on Wednesday*. That I've only fixed today, not being at home during the day tends to delay getting things done at home. The work was done faster than the reciept was printed (the server there had crashed

I've been writing up more notes in my sketchbook; and using my posted PDF as my reference for what needs work.

I think that filling in the gaps can be done once the basic structure is completed.

Like, powers, or things that characters do, will many groups of 3 different important parts.

I'd add some more now, but I'm heading to bed.
*((I like how many words are interchangeable in many different languages. Words like "papa" and "mama" are in many languages, as well as a few variations. .))

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April 27 2010

Been delaying a bit due to being in my last two weeks of school, and working on final assignments.