Base Stats and High-School Games

[Koumei]

Shouldn't the last house be the "secretly not human" house?

Because the idea for this is that everyone is (was) a human and this is some kind of genetic thing created by humans, I decided to go with your idea, but twist it a bit: they were human, but are not any more. And everyone knows it.

[Whatever]

Ah, gotcha. Well, surely the (mad) scientist in charge of testing out the new students to determine their powers wouldn't be foolish enough to try to activate their genetics in the middle of his sprawling lab, surrounded by experimental robots, irradiated spiders, vampire blood samples, and who even knows what else. Why, that could cause completely expected complications in the procedure!

[Koumei]

So here we have the options that characters get, based on their House, each year. Now, people can also have small per-session or per-story arc advancements - usually in the form of "You know one of those choices you had? You can also get another choice from it." or a partial Grade increase or, having shown a tendency towards X, gaining a static bonus to X. But these are the things they just get for existing - if you sleep through every class (and somehow still pass to the next year) and engage in no stories, you still get the yearly upgrade.

Magical Girl:
First Year:

• Transformation Power:
  • Enhanced Speed 1 or Enhanced Strength 1
  • One Sub-Power from the above choice
  • Increased Gym and Health
  • Elemental Blast
• Grade Boost for a specific Lore and a specific Activity
• Heightened Senses

Second Year:

• Resist an Element (same as Elemental Blast, Boosted when Transformed)
• When Transformed:
  • Improve Elemental Blast
  • Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 1 to 2 or take the other at 1
  • One Sub-Power from the above choice
• Entangling Attacks or Evasive Acrobatics

Third Year:

• Instant Transformation or Dazzling Transformation
• When Transformed:
  • Improve Elemental Blast
  • Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 or take the other at 1
  • One Sub-Power from the above choice
  • Elemental Control
  • Emotional Blast or Friendship Punch
• Fearless or Relentless

Fourth Year:

• Double-Transformation (when Transformed)
  • Flight (Fast or Graceful)
  • Hyper Attack
  • One Grade treated as S Rank
• Improve Elemental Blast (when Transformed)
• Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 or take the other at 1 (when Transformed)
• One Sub-Power from the above choice
• Improve Emotional Blast or Friendship Punch (when Transformed)
• Aura: Innocent Defence or Furious Pressure (when Transformed)

Weapon Master:
First Year:

• Conjure Weapon (select what it is)
• Piercing Attack, Shredding Attack or Pummelling Attack
• Enhanced Speed 1 or Enhanced Strength 1
  • All Sub-Powers
• Fast Healing 1

Second Year:

• Weapon Empowerment: Impossibly Large or Trapping or Unexpected
• Defensive Weapon Conjuring
• Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 1 to 2
  • All Sub-Powers
  • Enhanced Weapon Attack
• Fast Healing 2

Third Year:

• Athletic Assault or Evasive Athletics
• Weapon Empowerment: Energy Wreath or Unmaking
• Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 2 to 3
  • All Sub-Powers
• Instant Weapon Conjuring

Fourth Year:

• Fast Healing 3
• Weapon Empowerment: Burst Attack or Lockdown Attack or Barrier
• Upgrade Enhanced Speed or Strength from 3 to 4
  • All Sub-Powers
• Empty Heart

Chi Adept:
First Year:
Second Year:
Third Year:
Fourth Year:

Noble Lord/Lady:
First Year:
Second Year:
Third Year:
Fourth Year:

Soulbinders:
First Year:
Second Year:
Third Year:
Fourth Year:

Inhuman:
First Year:
Second Year:
Third Year:
Fourth Year:

[Whipstitch]

The tweaks Koumei has made to the inhuman house concept seem like a good start since it helps define the house based on what they do as opposed to what they physically are, but I'm still a tiny bit leery of the title. For example, I could easily see a vampire character whose power set falls more under the purview of Noble Lord than any generic "inhuman" power set we could come up with, and I think that should be embraced as a feature rather than a flaw. So how about making it a bit clearer that the members of the Inhuman house are called that because they're all straight up body modders of some sort and have the other houses call them freaks behind their backs?

[Koumei]

That's a good idea, actually. I'll get onto that at some point.

I'm feeling optimistic about this project. And yeah, as you may have gathered about the notes I made about the teachers and so on, the standard document for this will have an assumed (or standard) setting, and for those who are cool with using that, or who want to make it their own thing but don't have enough time to go statting up every NPC, there will already be a cast they can use right off the bat.

And then later people could do conversion documents to make it 100% this or that anime, or to turn it into Harry Potter or Magical Diaries or whatever. I'll probably do a Schola conversion document for no reason other than to spite PL, run a game of it, note the fun people have, and change my sig to "Hahaha, PL is wrong about everything".

[PhoneLobster]

"Hahaha, PL is wrong about everything".

So you intend to "prove me wrong" that 40K is a piece of shit by gathering together a small collection of horrific 40K fan wankers, subjecting yourself to their company (never a good thing in any social group selected on the basis of being 40K fans), playing a 40K fan wank game with them, calling it fun and rubbing THAT in my face?

Why am i unimpressed.

40K is terrible. To the limited degree this "game" has, on my advice, moved away from 40k it has only improved for it, and I suspect gained more interest and responses than it would have.

I know. There is something wrong with you, you feel a dark need to suck the limp cock of games workshop no matter how it refuses you and insults you and beats you about the face for daring to like it. Do TRY to resist, it's bad for your health and everyone else's nausea.

[Grek]

PL, shut the fuck up. Nobody cares about your WH40K hateon.

[Koumei]

Well, most roleplayers I personally know and associate with have enough familiarity with 40k to enjoy games that take the piss. Same with plenty of people I associate with online. Sure, I think I'm the only one in the group miserable enough to consider the universe to be escapism, but whatever. Plenty of people would be all too happy to, against the wishes of GW, have fun with the setting - and these are the people who understand that the first step of that is to not use any official GW product (Dark Heresy et all do count).

And I'm just basing the assumption that you're super-wrong about everything off the fact that you either don't think this is going to be an actual game, or like games like fucking Risus. Either of which makes your opinions so invalid that it sends shockwaves back through time to make you wrong on every point you have ever posted in the past.

Alternatively I challenge you to go make something popular about BDSM nuns that shoot people in the face. Go do that and I'll gladly throw all 40k-based things I've ever done under a train and convert to your masterpiece.

[PhoneLobster]

.. enough familiarity with 40k to enjoy games that take...

Take the piss? Or slavishly wank over minor details and second rate unpopular factions in a fetishised high school setting?

And I'm just basing the assumption that you're super-wrong about everything off the fact that you either don't think this is going to be an actual game, or like games like fucking Risus.

Joke games interact very very nicely with rules lite systems. If you want to dismiss such rules because you can't handle them or because of personal preference that's your problem. In the mean time games that revolve around gags and highly unpredictable comedy story telling benefit strongly from a lighter touch.

If people have to learn a real system just to play a one of JOKE GAME with you then you have just cut off your entry point demographic to NEARLY ZERO. If you can tell people "It's really so easy that you can sit down and start playing without knowing ANYTHING" you have just created a MUCH more appealing JOKE GAME.

And your game IS a JOKE GAME because it is a game that exists purely as a JOKE commenting on stuff in the manner of a... JOKE. Parnaioa is a joke game, its a big joke, an elaborate joke, a brilliant multi-level interlaced joke. WITH VERY SIMPLE RULES AND MINIMAL ENTRY POINT DEMANDS.

Alternatively I challenge you to go make something popular about BDSM nuns

Why should I when I could read about Richard Rahl and his adventures with the seven different flavors of BDSM nuns that plague THAT stupid but unexpectedly popular fantasy universe. That cry's out for some serious making fun of.

But then again. Why should I when BDSM nuns have such a marginal appeal. After all seriously it is NOT BDSM nuns that draw people into fucking 40K even. Indeed 40K fans for the most part HATE THE BDSM NUNS FACTION. They think it is stupid. They dislike it. They dislike players who play that faction. Those players are fucking creepy. They are so creepy that actually 40K players widely regard them as creepy, that is pretty damn creepy.

If you say "My new game is all about making fun of 40K" and then you add "And it's all about the Transvestite space marine faction everyone hates" you just LOST the majority of the GW fans that responded well to the FIRST bit of your pitch by adding the second bit.

I mean hell. I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you this, you know already, you admit already how bad GW material is, you even seem to have decided to try and tone it down for a change, but you somehow keep coming back to this compulsion of heaping steam GW fan wank shit all over the internet so that I an everyone else can step in the damn stuff, so what is your problem? Do you need a serious GW intervention? You SEEM to be addicted to something you hate. What is your problem?

[Josh_Kablack]

PL, you are completely missing the subgroup of 40k hangers on who are only there for the BDSM Nuns and sillyness and who by and large think that the best only worthwhile thing to come out of the Space Marine fans the setting caters to is the painting demos one of them occasionally posts.

People who are hardcore 40k fans who love Spess Marines, are just going to play Spess Marines in 40k or one of the official 40k RPGs and are not going to be that interested in oddball tongue-in-cheek homebrews.

[Koumei]

Take the piss?

Yes. They don't like the actual wargame, don't read the novels, and so on. My housemate is as much of a fan as "I like playing Dawn of War, that's a decent PC game". Others range from "Space Marine wank is really annoying, how can we screw around with it?" to "At least the elves aren't Tolkien elves. Well the craftworld ones are, but the dark eldar are at least a travelling band of ravers."

If you want to dismiss such rules because you can't handle them or because of personal preference that's your problem.

It's because they're shit. There is no rules mastery to reward - you just throw some random dice and see what happens, and at that point it's more fun to just bin the rules and actually play Magical Tea Party. Even considering the fact that "This is an anime game" and "This game has no system" online, where you can't personally choose your players, means you will be shooting yourself in the head. It's still better than just jamming a silly "Well maybe the dice will get in the way and make things work out differently" mechanic in an otherwise "Make it all up" game.

Seriously. Either include a real system, where people get to make choices that matter in character creation and these choices make Character A different from Character B, and where you are rewarded for learning the system, or just flat-out don't use a system at all and simply play "Word everything so that the most other players agree that sounds good".

just to play a one off

And see, if I ran one-off games I would totally do it systemless. But the point is that it could be a game everyone rocks up for on a Saturday, week after week, or that lasts for over ten thousand posts on RPoL or whatever.

And I don't want to tell people "You can play without knowing anything". People who don't know anything (and especially who don't want to or aren't capable of learning) are not the type of people I want in my games. And unlike you, I don't live in a farm where the only other players are sheep and "We prefer AD&D" idiots, so I totally can select my players ahead of time. And if running via the Internet, well, I never have a problem with "Not enough people", quite the reverse.

And your game IS a JOKE GAME because

Because you say it is, I get it. If you're going to actually play a campaign of it, it stops being a joke. Paranoia is a joke because any campaign lasts precisely one session. Games that allow for light-heartedness or are full of parodies aren't jokes. I'm pretty sure Disgaeagame, which is silly and light-hearted and has gone for over a year, is not a joke game.

Why should I when BDSM nuns have such a marginal appeal. After all seriously it is NOT BDSM nuns that draw people into fucking 40K even.

It was what drew me in. And sure, the minis look ugly, though not as ugly and manly as you make them out to be (are you perhaps thinking of your mum?), but I am literally telling you that my interest in it relies on the "All-women faction who set enemies on fire, then go back home for whippings all round, and implied military-grade lesbianism". So really, the Delmos of Aika work fine without even having religious connections.

Indeed 40K fans for the most part HATE THE BDSM NUNS FACTION.

I have not encountered this. The only person I can think of who repeatedly states problems about them and the players is you. The reason nobody plays them is the minis have to be individually bought for a billion dollars each, with no customisation options, and until recently they had a 2-editions-old shitty codex that had one effective list you could use (that required the Inquisition Storm Troopers babysitting them) and that got replaced by a WD article that is even worse (and, for bonus points, can only be effective if there are paedophilespriests holding their hands). GW still like to write about them, from my understanding, and /tg/ is very... not obsessed, but they like them more than every other "Power Armour, Boltgun, Chainsword" army and at least appreciate porn of them.

Back when I played, the only responses to my playing Sisters were "Oh, I don't know how they play.", "Cool, never fought them before" and "Nice. That church-on-a-land-raider looks fucking awesome."

Seriously. It drew socially acceptable, pleasant comments from the kind of people who lurk in GW stores.

So far the only person who has all this hate for that aspect of the setting is you.

If you say "My new game is all about making fun of 40K" and then you add "And it's all about the Transvestite space marine faction everyone hates" you just LOST the majority of the GW fans that responded well to the FIRST bit of your pitch by adding the second bit.

Whereas if I instead added "And while you can be Commissars or whatever, a big focus is going to be the combat lesbians." it draws in even people who don't like 40k. Because see Count's quote in my sig.

so what is your problem? Do you need a serious GW intervention? You SEEM to be addicted to something you hate. What is your problem?

1. It's escapism. You put your troubles aside and imagine living in a much better world.
2. Bondage. Lesbians. The nunnery part is optional, but GW went with that. Why the obsession with that, you ask? Fucked if I know. Probably to do with giving up basically all pleasures that can be summed up as chemicals entering my system, all I have left is sex.
3. If you're going to have an interest, it generally helps that other people share it. Given all sci-fi is shit, and all post-apocalyptic stuff is shit, and fantasy is usually going to be terrible if it's just some dude's Tolkien clone, it's narrowing things down. So it's that (which a lot of people in the roleplaying and wargaming community, ie this one here, like) or "anime which is largely about knickers". Which is great in anime communities, but in a gaming community, you're looking at a smaller cross-over segment on the Venn diagram.

[Mask_De_H]

And then later people could do conversion documents to make it 100% this or that anime, or to turn it into Harry Potter or Magical Diaries or whatever. I'll probably do a Schola conversion document for no reason other than to spite PL, run a game of it, note the fun people have, and change my sig to "Hahaha, PL is wrong about everything".

I thought this was generally assumed, though? Or at least he needs to shut the fuck up sometimes.

Like now.

[PhoneLobster]

Indeed 40K fans for the most part HATE THE BDSM NUNS FACTION.

I have not encountered this.

I have encountered it in every 40K community I have been a part of or unpleasantly brushed up against. I mean sure no one tells the BDSM Nun fans but those guys are fucking creepy, OF COURSE no one tells them. And indeed, often they are widely avoided for talking to IN GENERAL because if you DO talk to them they will FUCKING GO ON ABOUT THEIR BDSM TRANSVESTITE SPACE MARINES and they will go on and on and on...

But hey you live on the other side of the continent, maybe it's different there, and maybe gravity runs backwards and water flows up hill in Adelaide. The lambs lie down with the tigers and so on and so on...

But the point is that it could be a game everyone rocks up for on a Saturday, week after week, or that lasts for over ten thousand posts on RPoL or whatever.

Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew.

Ew.

This game, on any level, even if it's nice wholesome fully approved anime sexy highschool dadaist bullshit or something does NOT deserve that sort of campaign commitment. Not in real life, I mean whatever bullshit you get of fetishist forums is your own problem and should you mire yourself in that forever you may well find a niche where the 10 or less twisted people on the planet prepared to dedicate time and effort to your project will actually gather.

But to suggest that you would do joke sexy highschool girl time for multiple sessions, and not just two or three as a brief run between REAL games but FOREVER as a FULL SCALE "we did this for five years" sorta campaign?

Who is going to want to say "I spent every second Saturday for Three Years playing a remarkably elaborate game about BDSM 40k space nuns in fetish highschool."?

That's... ...who is going to DO that?

I mean even proper bondage fetishists are going to look down on you for that.

[Whipstitch]

You say that as if getting into table top gaming for the peer regard isn't a completely stupid idea on first principles.

[Koumei]

But hey you live on the other side of the continent, maybe it's different there, and maybe gravity runs backwards and water flows up hill in Adelaide.

I'm in Victoria. As in, the only non-shit state in this country. As someone who lives in the worst state, you should consider leaving it and discovering what real people are like. Hell, you're a country bumpkin of NSW, so I'm pretty sure you haven't met anybody in the last six months who does not unironically say "Oo-ar, oo-ar". Before mugging you, because it's NSW.

But to suggest that you would do joke sexy highschool girl time for multiple sessions, and not just two or three as a brief run between REAL games but FOREVER as a FULL SCALE "we did this for five years" sorta campaign?

Who is going to want to say "I spent every second Saturday for Three Years playing a remarkably elaborate game about BDSM 40k space nuns in fetish highschool."?

Do you actually want to put that to a vote?

Sure, it rates second place to just going to a BDSM club, or living on the same continent as my partner, but you take what you can get. I mean, people can enjoy titillation in their games without jerking it at the table or anything.

And in the 21st century (I know, you'll catch up eventually) friends just flat-out talk about the stuff they're into. People stopped caring about whether other people know of their desire to squish mashed potatoes between their toes while wearing alligator suits and bow ties or whatever.

Of course, if you have nothing useful to add to the conversation, when there are people who are interested in the project, you're more than welcome to fuck off.

[Prak]

And then later people could do conversion documents to make it 100% this or that anime, or to turn it into Harry Potter or Magical Diaries or whatever. I'll probably do a Schola conversion document for no reason other than to spite PL, run a game of it, note the fun people have, and change my sig to "Hahaha, PL is wrong about everything".

I thought this was generally assumed, though? Or at least he needs to shut the fuck up sometimes.

Like now.

+1. Especially after the lengthy condemnation of playing a campaign where bondage nuns are a not-insignificant feature, as if people would look down on it anymore than you saying "yes I spent ten years pretending to be an elf every saturday."

[PhoneLobster]

"Oo-ar, oo-ar". Before mugging you, because it's NSW.

Two things.

In this part of NSW you don't get mugged, you are beaten either for (often poorly attributed) racism or by a mob for drunken recreation, or most commonly, both at once, you are often NOT robbed in the process.

Secondly no one would say Oo-ar around here, if you said Oo-ar to them they wouldn't understand what the fuck you are referencing, it would go right over their heads. They would call you a filthy chinger arab who speaks a filthy japa-eur-asian wog language and then enjoy a drunken recreational mob beating of you.

And all things considered it could be worse. I could be in Queensland. Or Western Australia. Or the Northern Territory. Or South Australia.

... or Canberra.

[Kaelik]

As the person who most likes BDSM, I want to make super clear how much I agree with PL.

Who the fucking fuck wants that shit in their games? I want that shit in my sex, and I want my sex to have nothing to do with my games with friends who I do not want to have sex with.

If we are voting, I'm pretty sure the vote comes out elendy billion to one against five year bondage nun high school games.

[Whatever]

What the hell. She's not writing this as "bondage nun high school," it's just "generic anime tropes high school". If she wants to get a few people together to actually play a bondage nun variant of the game, how is that even a problem? It's better than you two running around playing Forum Sex Police.

[Kaelik]

What the hell. She's not writing this as "bondage nun high school," it's just "generic anime tropes high school". If she wants to get a few people together to actually play a bondage nun variant of the game, how is that even a problem? It's better than you two running around playing Forum Sex Police.

Please learn to read.

But to suggest that you would do joke sexy highschool girl time for multiple sessions, and not just two or three as a brief run between REAL games but FOREVER as a FULL SCALE "we did this for five years" sorta campaign?

Who is going to want to say "I spent every second Saturday for Three Years playing a remarkably elaborate game about BDSM 40k space nuns in fetish highschool."?

Do you actually want to put that to a vote?

Oh look, it looks like she is in fact advocating playing exactly that for five years straight.

But sure, it's totally me being the sex police to vote that I wouldn't want to play in a game. How fucking dare I, when invited to vote on whether I would enjoy a specific game, vote no.

What kind of filthy [EDITED] face am I?

[Whipstitch]

Anyway, how about an Inhibited negative trait where you have social penalties when dealing with characters of sufficient attractiveness? Best comboed with Grumpy for maximum tsundere.

[Chamomile]

The actual mechanics of this game are almost wholly divorced from its fluff. The only piece of fluff that's made it into the mechanics so far is "murder school." The details of what kind of school (swap out "house" for "major" and we've got a college, swap out "house" for "clique" and we've got an American Sitcom school, put it in a castle and add a bunch of particle effects and it's a Harry Potter clone) aren't really hard-coded at all.

Koumei's made it clear she doesn't really want to take the fluff in the same direction as I would, so I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and waited for her to finish the hard part so I can redo the fluff myself. Can we please go back to discussing the actually interesting mechanics that this thread is supposed to be about anyways?

[Koumei]

I'll get back to doing mechanics-related stuff later today, after I collect my deliveries. In the meantime, there are arguments to be had, and above all else, that is what the Den is for.

As the person who most likes BDSM

Woah woah woah, you are not taking that title from me. You might like a broader range of things in the BDSM category, but the strength and intensity of my interest is, I assure you, greater than yours.

I want that shit in my sex, and I want my sex to have nothing to do with my games with friends who I do not want to have sex with.

These days, if I took that approach, I wouldn't roleplay. Sure, once I'm again allowed to mainline pixistix and chocolate and pour buckets of pain meds down my throat, things may change, but as it stands, it's too much to ask to "be interested in roleplaying" and "not mix sex stuff into roleplaying" at the same time.

That said, you are totally allowed to vote and give your opinion there. It's not going to be taken into consideration, but the invitation was made.

[Chamomile]

As the person who most likes BDSM

Woah woah woah, you are not taking that title from me. You might like a broader range of things in the BDSM category, but the strength and intensity of my interest is, I assure you, greater than yours.

We need some kind of competition that will allow us to objectively determine the local BDSM king/queen. This is a contest that cannot be solved by boasting alone.

[Kaelik]

Woah woah woah, you are not taking that title from me. You might like a broader range of things in the BDSM category, but the strength and intensity of my interest is, I assure you, greater than yours.

You underestimate the strength and intensity of my interests.

These days, if I took that approach, I wouldn't roleplay. Sure, once I'm again allowed to mainline pixistix and chocolate and pour buckets of pain meds down my throat, things may change, but as it stands, it's too much to ask to "be interested in roleplaying" and "not mix sex stuff into roleplaying" at the same time.

That said, you are totally allowed to vote and give your opinion there. It's not going to be taken into consideration, but the invitation was made.

I realize Koumei, that you specifically don't ever want to play in a roleplaying game without it being about sex. I've been in roleplaying games with you, and quit them, precisely because I didn't want to roleplay about sex, and I find your particular sex roleplaying to be childish and juvenile.

What I am saying is that where PL's argument is that the vast majority of people who are willing to play a roleplaying game with complex rules do not want that game to be about, or strongly influenced by your sexual proclivities, I agree with him.

If you want to make a joke sex game that is simple and easy to run, I have no reasons why you shouldn't do that. If you want to make a joke sex game with complex rules, knowing that you will never get 3 people to play it with you, I have no reasons why you shouldn't do that. But if the reason you are creating a game is to have a joke sex game to play with other people, and the game has complex rules, I think you are making an error of judgment, and you should reconsider either the complexity of the rules, or the sexy comedy nature of the game.