Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What are the general environmental conditions you might expect some fantasy adventurers to go through? I've already considered extreme heat and cold, as well as vacuums, but what would be a more comprehensive list? Zero-g? Extreme pressures? A deluge of cocks?

[Stahlseele]

Swamp?
Darkness in caves?
If not vacuum, under water maybe?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I don't see how a swamp is particularly different from wandering around in other terrain that slows you down? You might be more likely to get infected by some weird disease, but that's more a product of the wildlife than the actual environment itself.
I do have some darkness rules written up that I could expand upon for clarity. Underwater stuff is also pretty obvious. Wading through rivers though... that's less obvious.

[Orca]

Dunno what conditions exactly you've already considered AA, you haven't mentioned such a list here.

Anyway, acid pools and geysers are possible. Lava combines heat and possible poisonous gas and is an old standby. Getting lost is a possible issue in many odd environments. High winds can make cold or mountainous regions more dangerous.

[deaddmwalking]

Literally walking in clouds.

Crossing a fungal desert of poisonous spores.

Delving deep into the digestive track of a great wyrm.

Every terrain is some combination of how you move, how you see, and how you survive, but a swamp is more than damp forest - or at least it could be.

When the PCs are exploring a frozen ice cave and are ambushed at the bottom of a frozen waterfall, every step causing them to slide uncontrollably across the near friction less surface, it's not just 'a bit cold'.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh, sure, let me throw up a list. Who doesn't like lists?

• Being in cold conditions, also includes swimming in freezing liquids and moving around on ice/melted snow.
• Being in hot conditions, also includes swimming in boiling liquids. Both hot and cold have come in 4 Tiers.
• Fire, which also comes in 4 Tiers based on heat/color. This includes creatures catching on fire, fires spreading in an area, how to put it out, and guidelines on how long larger structures take to burn. Also includes smoke and lava rules, because I didn't know where else to put them.
• Acid/Poisonous gases. Haven't written it up yet, but will include swimming in acid and crawling through hazardous fumes. There are already rules for walking on gases/air.
• Suffocation, whether it's underwater or in a vacuum.
• Wading through calm/fast-moving water and failing to do so; also includes pressure damage the deeper you go. Deep enough water is specifically mentioned to be pitch black.

Winds are a good condition I've hinted at elsewhere in the system but haven't codified yet, thanks for that. I also have rules where hot enough water turns into steam... perhaps that could be adjusted to cover geysers as well?

[owlassociate]

Sinking in quicksand, tar pits, mud, molasses or other dense liquids. Rules for avalanches, mudslides and stuff like that might also be useful and should include rules for being buried alive (and escaping such a situation). I haven't seen it mentioned but I'm assuming you have rules for cover and visibility/concealment. Rules for high altitudes. Heavy precipitation like rain sleet, hail and snowstorms and the effects they have on abilities. Even rules for how very dry conditions make fire much more hazardous and easier to create could be welcome. There's also radiation if you want, but that might not be applicable to Pokemon.

[violence in the media]

I don't see how a swamp is particularly different from wandering around in other terrain that slows you down? You might be more likely to get infected by some weird disease, but that's more a product of the wildlife than the actual environment itself.
I do have some darkness rules written up that I could expand upon for clarity. Underwater stuff is also pretty obvious. Wading through rivers though... that's less obvious.

Wandering through a swamp and wandering through a desert or wandering around a mountain range are all things that will slow your travel time down, but for different reasons. Wading through rivers and swamps do have some similarities though.

Wading across a body of water where it is difficult or impossible to see the bottom means needing to be careful of sudden depth changes, tripping and entangling hazards, wildlife, soft and unstable ground, and retaining your possessions. If you're in a river, you also need to be mindful of the current, which will change at different points in the crossing. Some rivers will need you to tie people together to prevent someone from being swept away by the current if they slip and fall. If it's cold enough, you need to worry about hypothermia after (or even in) the river.

[Thaluikhain]

Oxygen and/or pressure differences.

Rev the oxygen content up and you've increased the flammability of things. Rev it really far up and things people don't consider flammable at all start to burn. Also, arthropod size is limited by oxygen content.

Rev the pressure down and you get altitude sickness at lesser altitudes, and could have places not that high up where humans just can't breathe.

[Trill]

Keep in mind though that high oxygen content is also harmful for you
https://science.howstuffworks.com/question4931.htm

[Thaluikhain]

True (and you get oxidation processes other than fire faster), it's just that things burning and/or being giant arthropods are more exciting, you're likely to want to lead with those.

You absolutely could do something with wanting not to breath the air too long with a bit more work, though.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Sinking in quicksand, tar pits, mud, molasses or other dense liquids. Rules for avalanches, mudslides and stuff like that might also be useful and should include rules for being buried alive (and escaping such a situation). I haven't seen it mentioned but I'm assuming you have rules for cover and visibility/concealment. Rules for high altitudes. Heavy precipitation like rain sleet, hail and snowstorms and the effects they have on abilities. Even rules for how very dry conditions make fire much more hazardous and easier to create could be welcome. There's also radiation if you want, but that might not be applicable to Pokemon.

I'm actually kind of surprised at how easy it was to write up some avalanche rules after defining shit colliding into other shit and how you can hold you breath. All I had to do was specify the avalanche-specific stuff and point to other sections for the more general hazards. Surprisingly enough, I don't really have cover or concealment rules yet. I was gonna get around to cover eventually, but I hadn't considered concealment outside of invisibility. Admittedly, I never played enough 3.5 to be familiar with the mechanic. Care to elaborate?

I'm still working on more conditions, but I felt comfortable enough to share a bit here.

[*]In mountainous terrain, large amounts of matter can suddenly find itself subject to the forces of gravity. Unfortunately, sometimes you are in the way when this happens. In this case, the rules from the Kinematics section determines how much Collision Damage these will inflict upon you and how quickly it moves. Avalanches and the like are generally Object Size 6-8 and Weight Class 7. (In that section it details that objects move at different Speed Tiers and gravity makes things accelerate at 1 Tier per round. Unless it's just started and hasn't dropped far, an avalanche is very likely to fucking kill you.)

[*]Avalanches typically range in noise from 100 to 130+ db, making them rather easy to hear.

[*]Avalanches and rockslides have two distinct areas: The bury zone (where the debris is falling) and the slide zone (the area the debris is spreading to encompass). Characters in the bury zone when the avalanche hits cannot react to it, are buried under its weight, and take full Collision Damage. Characters in the slide zone may spend an Interrupt Action to react to the avalanche as if it were any other object - those who fail their checks are also buried. (These actions are also detailed in Kinematics)

[*]See the Buried Alive section for these unfortunate circumstances. (It just says you have to pass a really high Athletics or Survival check to crawl your way out of whatever you're buried in, and you have to hold your breath while doing so or you start asphyxiating. If you happen to resist whatever you're buried in, then you have more time before you can't breathe... and vice versa.)

Also, radiation probably isn't applicable to Pokemon... unless you're releasing a Pokemon Uranium sourcebook.

EDIT: Oh, fuck it, I'll just throw up everything I've written. Here. Please bully my game.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Turns out it wasn't too hard to jot down some oxygen rules, too.

OXYGEN DIFFERENCES
[*]These rules are typically used for high altitudes, where there is little oxygen content, but sometimes Trainers find themselves in places with too much oxygen. Oxygen differences are split into 4 categories: Extremely High, High, Low, and Extremely Low. Creatures with the Breathless and Hardy 2 capabilities don’t care about any of this, but creatures with the Hardy 1 capability are treated as being 1 step more neutral (Extremely High becomes High, Low becomes normal, etc.).
[*]Extremely Low oxygen typically ranges from 5000-8000 meters above sea level. Creatures in this range experience 1 Mind Damage per day of exposure, on top of the effects of Low oxygen. There is not enough oxygen to breath above 8000 meters.
[*]Low oxygen typically ranges from 2000-5000 meters above sea level. Creatures in this range experience 1 Body Damage per day of exposure.
[*]High oxygen does not occur naturally, but can be generated by some Grass pokemon and through specific Moves. Poison effects that corrode Steel objects act 1 Tier higher and objects that are Weak to Fire are more easily set aflame. Bug-type Pokemon that live in these environments are 1 Size Category larger.
[*]Extremely High oxygen is even rarer. Non-Bug creatures in these environments experience 1 Body Damage per day of exposure. Poison effects corrode 2 Tiers higher now, and all objects that do not Resist Fire are more easily set aflame. Bug-type Pokemon that live in these environments are 2 Size Categories larger.

[OgreBattle]

Eevee's mutate easily so elemental aligned radiation causes them to turn into a new, stable form. So if you want to make something up about it... Pokemon just have really strong regenerative powers so cancer type radiation doesn't happen in their world.

There's also some kind of 'intelligent' part of their DNA, as humans can be cloned with memory and Mewtwo has 'memory' visions of Mew's life

[Foxwarrior]

Pokemon just have really strong regenerative powers so cancer type radiation doesn't happen in their world.

Doesn't that make the opposite of sense?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

It also doesn't really mention humans in that scenario. I don't have any problems with just saving radiation for later.
Genetic memory stuff, though? That's pretty cool.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I guess since owlassociate brought it up, what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of a concealment system? In my limited experience, it felt rather gamey even for 3rd edition.

[deaddmwalking]

In cops and robbers, I say I shot you and you say I didn't. An RPG tries to take the imaginative nature of that play and provide rules to provide a satisfactory reconciliation to the basic question of whether my preferred outcome or your preferred outcome was reached.

Many preferred outcomes are based on whether you DID or DID NOT see me. On one hand we have guards who are constantly spinning, looking every direction equally, never blinking, never slacking off and eliminating stealth and on the other hand we have ninjas running through hordes of enemies claiming that nobody can see them.

You may have seen a movie about that Robust stealth rules that are entirely based on character abilities may not need concealment rules - a sneaky character can cross a barren patch of open ground under flood-lights with thousands of alert sentries and numerous electronic surveillance systems while someone without those abilities can't.

However, that doesn't jive with most people's sense of verisimilitude. Even someone who is 'limits of mundane ability sneaky' shouldn't be able to sneak in impossible circumstances. Cover (and the concealment that it grants) allows people to justify that someone wasn't seen when you'd expect they could. Perhaps crawling close to the ground and taking advantage of a slight rise in elevation to conceal oneself behind is enough to justify sneaky character being sneaky.

In other cases - especially in combat - players will want to decide whether they could legitimately target an enemy or not. If you're both in impenetrable fog without supernatural senses, should you be able to determine where your enemy is? Knowing where they are should you be able to attack them as accurately as if you could see them perfectly? Is your attack more likely to swing harmlessly by? How about their attack against you?

Depriving a superior opponent of their ability to see you may give you a fighting chance

Concealment makes combat more difficult, which may end up favoring one side or another. It's not just environmental effects - if someone shoots you in the eye with a squirt gun everyone may have concealment from you - but everyone with goggles will be fine - should that be the same advantage as invisibility?

There are lots of situations where your ability to discern your opponent is limited - from you being completely blind to EVERYTHING, to being able to see everything except your opponent (Invisibility) to various shades between - you can see them but not well enough to fight to your best ability.

Concealment rules should facilitate stealth inside and outside of combat. Inside combat, having different levels of impact from concealment helps differentiate opponents with additional methods of perception.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Robust stealth rules that are entirely based on character abilities may not need concealment rules

I think I've gone for something like that? The stealth rules account for things like the onlooker being distracted or impaired by ambient conditions, as well as conditional modifiers and actions for the stealther. On top of that, I have rules for vision impairment written up that interact with fog, darkness, and all that. However, it still boils down to making a Stealth check vs someone's Perception check, which I think isn't what you're talking about. The closest I've got is that when someone's Perception beats your Stealth, they know your exact location unless you're behind Rough Terrain (cover, in this instance) or simply not visible.

EDIT: Nevermind, I apparently do have cover rules.
Anybody else get surprised by themselves like that?

[owlassociate]

I think it'd be useful for visibility to have a bit more of an effect than just a perception modifier. While it's easier to hide in shadows or fog, that concealment will still make you a more difficult target once you've been spotted. Could be as simple as a penalty to attacks against a partially concealed target but I think it's common enough situation to need representation. Makes combat a bit more tactical as well.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well, my cover "system" is really just a status, Covered. It gives you a bonus to avoiding all attacks and being spotted. Currently it's only given out when there's Rough Terrain (like a bush or something) in between you and someone else, but it wasn't that hard to adjust the fog rules to include it.

Basically, there are 3 levels of Blindness. In 'clearer' fogs, you're only Slightly Blinded, while in dense fogs, you're Blinded. This applies to creatures within the fog and those attacking into or through it. The creatures within the fog are also Covered, which also happens to explicitly allow you to try and become Hidden (another status, because apparently I love status effects). I guess the neat thing about making it just a status effect is that it's easy to call back to when writing new rules up?

[owlassociate]

In your system, would there be a mechanical difference in being covered by like a brick wall vs a bush vs fog or shadow? It seems like that should make a difference, especially for things like AoEs, but also because a brick wall just provides more absolute protection than bushes. It could even tie into the different pokemon types, so that, if you're in rough terrain [grass], you won't be covered against fire attacks but you'll have improved cover against other attacks. Maybe that's too granular though, and I could see that some type interactions might not be intuitive enough to have terrain.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well, a brick wall would just be Blocking Terrain, so it would just stop AoE attacks like a lot of other walls. That being said, you could still deal so much damage to the wall that you destroy it, turning it into Rough Terrain, but the person on the other side would still be protected from that first attack.
If you're in some grassy rough terrain, you're still Covered against Fire attacks, but it would be pathetically easy for them to just set the grass around you on fire, even if they missed... at which point you bust out the fire rules.

On another note, while a brick wall is Blocking Terrain and a bush is Rough Terrain, fog is neither and doesn't actually protect you from anything, even if it grants you cover like Rough Terrain might.
I hope that answers your question a bit better.

[owlassociate]

Is the Covered condition what would be used to represent something like 3/4 cover? I'm wondering if it's worth it to differentiate between Blocking terrain that completely obscures a target vs Blocking terrain where you can see the target but they're peeking around a corner/over a fence, so the size of the target is reduced.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Not really, it's just half cover. I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not sold on that really being worth it. I'd rather just expand Covered so it... covers peeking around walls and simulating Gears of War.