R'lyeh Piercing Copper Drill: Now with Material Writeup!(p4)

[JigokuBosatsu]

Yig is, at his core, a minor villain. Has never been anything more than that and never will be.

Not sure if this counts as Mythos canon or not, but:

When he rapes your mind, your mind will snap like a twig.

Also

Yig comes and you die, you all die.

At least that's what I first thought of when I saw Yig and GWARGAR in this thread.

[Username17]

So we have several levels of play, and several playable characters. I think that should be enough to puzzle out a set of game mechanics. First, let's consider the levels of play.

City in a Bottle

The players are individual humans or revolutionary hybrids. They fight Deep One guards, human traitors, and as a boss they might fight a monster, a golem-suit, or something special like a demon gate. Opponents:

Breakthrough to the Surface

The players have their own golem suits and have broken through to the surface. While they can still be caught unawares outside of their golem suits, they can reliably suit up to face real challenges. They are searching for answers as to what the heck is going on, and have to face off against rampaging monsters. As boss fights, they face giant monsters and fortifications. The answer to their questions is ultimately in one of the other bottles, right? Enemies include:

R'lyeh Rising

So the players now know about the four generals and possibly even the dread name of Cthulhu. The players are going to be cobbling together stuff to make super robots, but they also have to fight increasingly crazy shit. It is about this time that we have players fighting with real cobbled together crazy stuff like walking cities or something. Ideally, you'd have each of the players pushing around one of the four general's fortress robots by the end. Those things look like this:

Ultimately of course, R'lyeh does rise, and then you face something like this:

End Part I. Thereafter we go to space, but we already have the core needs of that taken care of with all the underwater and air combat.

The Characters

There are fundamentally two ways we could set up the heroes. The first is to make it so that everyone pilots a giant robot by the second act. The second is that everyone plays two characters, and only one of them is actually expected to get into a drillsuit and punch it out with a Cthonian. I'm going to assume we're going for the latter, because it allows for characters like this:

So we have warrior types who specialize in stealth, warriors who specialize in guts, warriors who specialize in reaction times, and so on. And then you have secondary characters who specialize in leadership, mechanics, scrounging, cooking, research, and so on.

Game System Requirements

We need at least a minimally functional social minigame, a making things minigame, and of course a combat minigame that scales from human size to very big and can at least do a half assed job with 3d combat.

The obvious selections would of course be game systems that are sold with the concept of having human adventures side by side with mech combat. That would include Mech Warrior, Dragon Mech, Framewerk, Palladium, and Iron Kingdoms. Unfortunately, all of those games suck. Mech Warrior is the best of a bad lot, but that's not much of an endorsement.

The second obvious choice would be to plug in a universal system. Either a point-based one like Champions or GURPS, or a vague system full of handwavium like BESM or FATE. Of those two, the latter makes more sense, because very large robots are going to be a point calculation nightmare that we don't actually want to do. Of the vague systems, FATE is probably the easiest to kludge together because it gives the players a mechanical incentive (the acquisition of Fate Points) for going along with Despair for their characters.

Now, FATE isn't a whole lot different from making shit up and putting down a homebrew system. So you might want to make a homebrewski instead. Here are the things that it would need:

• RNG +/- Modifiers With the amount of scaling you intend to do, Dice Pools of any kind would not work. It must be a system where you roll your RNG (either curved or not) and then add a bonus and compare it to a DC. Because d20 + 9000 vs. DC 9006 works, but "roll 9000 dice" does not. Note that this applies to damage rolls as well, you need a damage vs. soak wound system because you can't roll damage dice for a steam cannon that shoots driller scorpions.
  
  Abstract Stats You can have stats like "fitness", but stats like "strength" are going to go obsolete the very first time you end up in a steam drill.
  
  Fate/Edge/Karma/Whatever The players are going to want to be active participants in the Despair Economy. To get players involved with their characters, you want them to feel the Despair and the Gar. Players should make motivational speeches in character, and that means that they are going to want to have some sort of metagame currency.
  
  Three Dimensional Combat Combat needs to take place in three dimensions. That can be done with cartesian grids or colored chips under models, but it can also be done with abstract locations.
  
  Combined Attacks Since the game is going to have monsters the size of cities even in the first act, and it is going to be a soak system, it is absolutely required that you be able to combine attacks to build up to a bigger thing somehow.
  
  Wound Charts It's not mech combat unless arms get blown off. 'Nuff said. You could also do that in an abstract "story consequences" way like FATE does, but that is a lot less satisfying.

-Username17

[Prak]

So basically, Take FATE, rip out it's vague dice system, stuff in a more solid dice system, and work from there.

That works, actually, because it gives characters some incentive to play non-mech pilots, namely, more fate points. I'm also considering opening things to more Gainax influences, allowing Magical Girls (Panty and Stocking), maybe "I have a cohort" types (FLCL), and so on. Perhaps Magical Girls tap into the Dreamlands for their power.

[Koumei]

If you are interested in magical girls in vague fuzzy point-buy games, I know a splat book that could be handy for ideas :3c

[Prak]

Koumei, is BESM hiring you to pimp that book?

[Koumei]

No, it's for old BESM after all. I just love Sailor Moon (the series. She's not my favourite character. I mean, Mercury, Jupiter and Neptune are so much mo... that's besides the point) that much.

At any rate, FATE is looking better as the base idea to go with, but a lot of the stuff I laid out for BESM can be ported over as general ideas for this. So "Being a Magical Girl" would be an actual career path/character option (probably at second tier, where "Is an Awesome Mecha Pilot" or "Is a Psychic Soldier" are other options, as opposed to the start), and "Has a cohort who is pretty skilled in ___ area but doesn't outshine players in the fighting aspect" would be one of the secondary ability choices.

[Prak]

Yeah, that makes sense. I've been leery about the magical girl, but if it's a higher tier option, that works better. The "I have a cohort" path is more Naota and Canti than Simon and Kamina, since the latter are of course mech pilots. Naota is essentially a summoner, I suppose.

[Vebyast]

We had a bit of a discussion about huge creatures a while ago. You might be able to pick that conversation up where it left off. Or you might not.

On a side note, it should be realized that a building-size mech fighting a city-size mech is pretty similar to a city-size mech fighting an island-size mech. In other words, we don't need completely different mechanics for man, building, city, island, and planet-size mechs. We only need a set of rules that allow mechs to interact with mechs that are within one size type. Then we make the different tiers feel different by tweaking their mechanics; use 3d differently, make mechs move faster and slower relative to their size and their combat ranges, give them different out-of-combat powers, and so on.

[Prak]

So, Packages:

Artisan- The artists and dreamers, more in touch with the Dreamlands, and generally possessed of good spacial reasoning and able to make sketches more reliably, freely, and cheaply than a photographer can take photographs.
Artisans possess a resistance to Despair (+Spirit to Despair Soak), Max skill in [skills], and the tools of their trade (chisels, pencils, paintbrushes, etc.)

Investigator- Those who are called upon when there is a mystery. Whether a man wants to make sure his wife isn’t cheating, the police are dropping the ball on a murder, or someone just needs to uncover long forgotten family secrets, the investigator has the skills and connections to do the job.
Investigators have Max skill in [skills], a revolver, and forensic tools based on those carried by Ichabod Crane in Burton's Sleepy Hollow.

Mechanic- Skilled with their hands and knowledgeable about mundane machines. Able to keep such machines in working order, and to build new ones, given time and materials. Both are a rationed commodity in the bottle cities. No one knows quite what, but the leaders of the cities know full well that bad things happen to those with too much time on their hands, and those who build machines simply too powerful.
Mechanics have Max skill in [skills], a toolbox full of wrenches, hammers, saws, etc, extra personal funds, and a mundane Device.

Saboteur- Those who, for one reason or another, seem to do little but cause trouble, and know how to do so quite well. Generally skilled in stealth, improvised weapons, explosives, prepared attacks and brawling.
Saboteurs start the game with a personal weapon of choice, a stash of Chemicals and Junk, Max skill in [skills], and Connections.

Scientist- Learned individuals who study the mysteries of the universe Whether life or earth sciences, it can be surprising how useful a knowledge of biology or strata can be.
Scientists have Max skill in [skills], an Assistant, and Equipment consistent with their field of study.

Soldier- Though trapped in bottles, humanity still finds a need for men trained to kill other men in increasingly creative and painful ways. Many Bottle cities are large enough to be closer to small countries than true cities, and contain boroughs, districts, quarters, and so on, which occasionally splinter into factions, with their police forces seeing themselves become militaries. This package thus covers both the common policeman who enforces the laws, and the soldier who enforces the city’s will.
Soldiers possess boosted HP, Max skill at [skills], and a weapon and body armour from their Bottle City's stores.

GAR Packages
As characters gain more Fighting Spirit and unlock the mysteries of the universe through the Dream Energy that runs through their bodies, they can pick up more advanced packages.
Spark- Sparks are lightning rods for Inspiration Particles and Dream Energy, driving them to fits of mad creation. Often originally Scientists, they leave behind theoretical studies for the infinitely more exciting world of practical applications, building and creating. They can use Eldritech without the expenditure of EP, and may spend EP to create devices that are on par with Eldritech. Such devices cost 1 EP per GAR, and take 1 day of downtime per GAR to craft. GAR 3+

Magical Girl- There are those who are born great, and there are those who have greatness thrust upon them. Magical Girls are those who have greatness thrust upon them because they were born to have it. Commonly they have found a power device in their early adventures and figured out how to unlock the power within, allowing them to initiate a clothes shedding transformation that gives them powers and weapons. They can also, however, simply discover they are not actually human, as they thought, but rather celestine beings, sent to earth to atone for their sins or tempt others to sin. Or maybe you just died and came back through the strength of your Fighting Spirit. The Magical Girl gains use of Spells, especially the Transformation spell. It is possible, at least theoretically, for males to be Magical Girls. GAR 2+, Transformational Artifact

Dampfengeler- Occasionally, one will, in their early adventures, stumble across a mysterious artifact that does not seem to unlock transformation powers, at least in themselves. They will, soon thereafter, stumble across large, metal humanoid figures, Dampfengels, and find that the first artifact glows, hums, vibrates, pulses, or otherwise reacts to the presence of the Dampfengel, itself reacting in some small, but noticeable way to the presence of the "key." Typically, these devices are small, palm sized drills, though rarely they are other items conducive to Dream Energy. The character almost without fail climbs into the cockpit, inserts their key, and finds themselves in control of a powerful robotic armour, steam pouring from copious small stacks along the back and power and strength emanating from it's very form. Dampfengels run on EP and Fighting Spirit. Though activating one requires very little EP, merely 1/GAR, more EP can be spent to activate special attacks or otherwise enhance the Dampfengel in combat. Amongst those who know of the Dampfengels, it is rumoured that it is possible for them to combine, allowing two pilots to combine their Fighting Spirit and power a single, larger, more powerful mechanical being. GAR 2+, Fighting Spirit Artifact, Dampfengel

Summoner- Whether you found a dark tome detailing the rituals that call dark and powerful creatures to you and place them under your power, or got whacked in the head by a crazy woman with a guitar, because she thinks you're a pervert, this arouses her, and that's her form of flirting, you have the ability to call something to your presence and make it fight for you. Each GAR of Summoner allows you a choice, you can improve a previously gained summon, or you can learn the secrets necessary to summon a new being. GAR 2+, Summoning Tome or Mystic Event

Gunslinger Extraordinaire- Welp, you didn't find a Core Drill. No books have fallen in your lap, and strange women continue to refuse to hit you with strange instruments. You never found a pretty piece of jewelry that lets you change clothes in a disconcerting, yet distracting and empowering way. You haven't even felt particularly inspired as of late. But you have your gun, and when all the world's against you, and the chips are down, you know you can trust your old pistol (or rifle, or shotgun) more than anyone else in the world. In fact, you've been able to defeat terrifying monsters and punch holes in Dampfengels with little more than your determination that they're not going to take you down with out earning it first, to the astonishment of onlookers. More, with every passing day, you feel like your gun is becoming a part of you, like it's your soul. It's weird.
Gunslingers can channel EP into bullets, allowing them to better injure eldritch beings and damage Eldritch Devices. If they lose their gun, the will soon find it once again, as they intuitively know it's direction relative to them and fate intervenes to guide it back to their hands. Each GAR allows them to summon the weapon to their hand at greater distances, starting with the ability to draw it from where it is holstered on their body as a "Not An Action." Finally, they can use Eldritch Weapons without expenditure of EP, their gun seemingly melding with the weapon, making it instantly familiar, and their body taps into their latent stores of Dream Energy to allow greater feats of acrobatics.

[cthulhu]

Irishman is very setting dependent, it does not carry over to a non-Earth or even non-English setting, which seems unnecessarily limiting. What do they call the "Irishmen" in Raptured New York, or wherever? And it's also a quick gag that'll get old fast, whereas Saboteur never stops looking cool at the top of your character sheet.

Raconteur? Amusing the band the Raconteurs are known as the Saboteurs around here.

[Prak]

Raconteur means, basically, a skillful storyteller. That... doesn't work, like, at all.

[Prak]

The Skills
Skills are divided into three categories, Body, Mind and Spirit, depending on what attribute usually gets added to them. I say usually because while 99.9% of the time you'll roll 2d6+Athletics+Body, there are those times when your Fighting Spirit drives you to jump impossible heights, and you'll roll 2d6+Athletics+Spirit, or GAR, or something, or you were able to calculate angles and can jump better through the incredible power of SCIENCE! rolling 2d6+Athletics+Mind.
The maximum Training you can have in a skill is (2*GAR)+Highest Ability (Body, Mind or Spirit).

Body Skills

• Athletics (run, climb, jump)
• Brawling (unarmed combat, and combat with body-oriented objects-fists, feet, heads, etc.)
• Drive (anything. Ships, land vehicles, mounts, dampfengels*)
• Larceny (stealing shit. Especially off of other people)
• Shooting (ranged combat)
• Stealth (sneaking around like some goddamned sneak)
• Survival (figuring out which mushrooms are edible)
• Throwing (muscle powered ranged combat, other than bows, of course. Yes, this means that kicking a ball or the like uses Throwing.)
• Whacking (Armed Melee combat)

Mind Skills

• Artisan (making things, whether art, craft or machine)
• Medicine (healing people, performing surgery, diagnosing)
• Operations (operating machinery you don't drive. Quite important for mining equipment, and other devices found in the Bottle Cities)
• Perception (Seeing things, hearing things, taste, smell, etc. Using your senses to learn about the world. Can be used to see the invisible.)
• Research (looking things up in books, finding books, managing knowledge)
• Rigging (cobbling things together into other things)
• Sabotage (disabling things. And people. And buildings. And if you're really good, ideas. If you're amazing, you can break the unbreakable.)

Spirit Skills

• Animal Whispering (talk to animals, get them to do what you want.)
• Call Friend (You can reach out to friends across vast distances. Having this skill gives you a sort of long range communication ability with friends. A successful roll can bring them to your location, if they desire to go.)
• Fighting Spirit (Push yourself to go on, even in the face of despair. Resist Despair, power many special abilities, touch the untouchable)
• Inspiration (Drive people to new heights, make them evolve beyond the person they were a minute before!)
• Intimidation (Scare people, generally to get them to do what you want)
• Machine Whispering (You talk to machines, what do you want?)
• People Whispering (talk to people, get them to do what you want. Gentle, loving strokes of the hair optional)

Need more Spirit skills, probably at least one more Mind skill as well.

[Josh_Kablack]

Mind could use a Perception / Investigation / Search : whichever you want to call a "get a clue"skill

Spirit maybe gets an "inspiration" skill - or maybe that's part of intimidation. Maybe also a "self whisperer" or "focus" skill that gives you another way to roll against Despair

[Username17]

If you're going to have it based on CoC in any way, then you can have outright magical abilities fit into Spirit. There are quite a few canonical magical abilities.



-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

The Skills
Skills are divided into three categories, Body, Mind and Spirit, depending on what attribute usually gets added to them. I say usually because while 99.9% of the time you'll roll 2d6+Athletics+Body, there are those times when your Fighting Spirit drives you to jump impossible heights, and you'll roll 2d6+Athletics+Spirit, or GAR, or something, or you were able to calculate angles and can jump better through the incredible power of SCIENCE! rolling 2d6+Athletics+Mind.
The maximum Training you can have in a skill is (2*GAR)+Highest Ability (Body, Mind or Spirit).

Body Skills

• Athletics (run, climb, jump)
• Brawling (unarmed combat, and combat with body-oriented objects-fists, feet, heads, etc.)
• Drive (anything. Ships, land vehicles, mounts, dampfengels*)
• Larceny (stealing shit. Especially off of other people)
• Shooting (ranged combat)
• Stealth (sneaking around like some goddamned sneak)
• Survival (figuring out which mushrooms are edible)
• Whacking (Armed Melee combat)

Mind Skills

• Artisan (making things, whether art, craft or machine)
• Medicine (healing people, performing surgery, diagnosing)
• Operations (operating machinery you don't drive. Quite important for mining equipment, and other devices found in the Bottle Cities)
• Research (looking things up in books, finding books, managing knowledge)
• Rigging (cobbling things together into other things)
• Sabotage (disabling things. And people. And buildings. And if you're really good, ideas.)

Spirit Skills

• Animal Whispering (talk to animals, get them to do what you want.)
• Intimidation
• Machine Whispering (You talk to machines, what do you want?)
• People Whispering (talk to people, get them to do what you want. Gentle, loving strokes of the hair optional)

Need more Spirit skills, probably at least one more Mind skill as well.

So how do you do the impossible? For example, seeing the invisible, touching the untouchable, and breaking the unbreakable? These are by far the most important skills.


Also, what represents 'prying open your third eye'? A combination of high Despair and high Gar?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Image of a guy losing 1d8 SAN

-Username17

This dude looks like he is about to drop a really dope rhyme.

[Koumei]

Image of a guy losing 1d8 SAN

-Username17

This dude looks like he is about to drop a really dope rhyme.

Probably this one

[Prak]

So how do you do the impossible? For example, seeing the invisible, touching the untouchable, and breaking the unbreakable? These are by far the most important skills.


Also, what represents 'prying open your third eye'? A combination of high Despair and high Gar?

High Sabotage rolls allow one to break anything, including the unbreakable.
High Whacking rolls could conceivably allow one to touch the untouchable.
The "See Shit" skill will, with high rolls, allow one to See the Invisible. I'm debating whether characters should be able to add their GAR to skill rolls. They'll already have points based on GAR, and their Ability score.

[hyzmarca]

The impossible shouldn't be something that you can just do with high skill rolls. Overcoming the bounds of reality should require an expenditure of GAR. It isn't a matter of being so skilled that you can do anything. It's a matter of being so awesomely hot-blooded that the laws of physics and magic both spread their legs for you.

[OgreBattle]

Isn't this kinda like putting Conan in a Lovecraft novel?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Isn't this kinda like putting Conan in a Lovecraft novel?

Why the hell not? Conan is set in the same universe as Lovecraft novels.

[OgreBattle]

Isn't this kinda like putting Conan in a Lovecraft novel?

Why the hell not? Conan is set in the same universe as Lovecraft novels.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. The authors were friends and shared ideas. Conan overcomes unspeakable horrors with sheer GAR.

spoiler: Cthulu is Crom, he is disappointed modern man is made up entirely of pussies. The Aesir who drove a boat into his head was gutsy though.

[Prak]

The impossible shouldn't be something that you can just do with high skill rolls. Overcoming the bounds of reality should require an expenditure of GAR. It isn't a matter of being so skilled that you can do anything. It's a matter of being so awesomely hot-blooded that the laws of physics and magic both spread their legs for you.

Hrm, you have a point. Though, understand that virtually every npc in the setting is going to be GAR 1, if that, and that max skill training is (2*GAR)+their higest stat mod, and human average is, like 4. So the chief of Giha village is like GAR 1, and his Sabotage training is like, 1. His Whacking is maybe 3 (out of a possible 7 or so), because he may be a local badass, but I doubt he's actually particularly trained with his sword. His Perception is similarly likely to be fairly low, though good enough to definitely mean something, and he does mention he sees Simon's little treasures, so lets say his Perception is 5, impressive when 99% of his village has a max training of 4 (0 GAR+4 in highest stat).
Lets say he's going to try and break open a Gunman's foot with his sword (Breaking the Unbreakable for his GAR, certainly). He's rolling 2d6+3 Skill+5 Body. I figure "High" is something like double to three times the RNG...

...and you have a very good point. Because I just realized that the way I have things set up, you can get what I would consider to be a high roll at GAR 1 by being slightly above average, and really good at Perception/Sabotage/Whacking.

So either the definition of a high roll needs to be redefined for this system, or skills need to be reworked to have lower numbers, or doing the impossible needs to cost GAR/EP/Something. And all three probably need to happen anyway.

[Dean]

Image of a guy losing 1d8 SAN

-Username17

This dude looks like he is about to drop a really dope rhyme.

Yo man, that was funny as fuck.

[ishy]

You could also increase their despair to do crazy, impossible, off the wall things.
That they go crazy from what disbelieving what they are doing themselves or the consuming of the mind or whatever.

Though that might not fit if they have to use it too often.

Well.... hello there citizen