BAR-d6, so far

[Judging__Eagle]

So far, the break down of powers is looking to be between Active, Reactive, and Non-Combat abilities.

All of these three are part of the overall "Abilities" section, and emcompass the overall list of abilities a character can have.

The Current "tree" or "mind map" has been giving me trouble to convert in a a list, but here's one attempt at it anyway.


A Character

A Character has three main parts:

Body - Their physical corpus. What represents their location in space. Their genetic background. As well as their collected memories and knowledge.

Abilities - What a character is capable of. Affecting the world willfully, reacting to the willfulness of the world, and interacting with elements of the world.

Resources - What things a character has at their disposal. From a book, to a doomsday device, to a new cassette tape.

Actions

I'm... not entire sure, or set in how I will have actions organized, but here is a current model:

Players have "pools" of dice, in their three main types of abilities.

These individual dice are rolled to see if an action is more, or less, successful than is needed to perform a task. Each dice provides a "Hit" on a 4+. Creatures may trade in dice at a rate of 3 Dice per 1 guaranteed Hit [Is that a good trade rate?]

Each dice also represents 1 second worth of action. A character committed to a "large" action can potentially become interrupted, or have their own actions interfered with.


Turn Order:

Initiative - Creatures roll a single dice pool of their choosing. The total value of the dice rolled is that creatures initiative value. An experienced [anything] will tend to get the drop on a less [experienced] anything.

Initiative Order - Creatures are arranged in order of highest to lowest values. Creatures with lower values are said to be acting slower; while faster acting Creatures are able to react or ignore slower action Creatures.

Creatures with the lowest Imitative value go first. However any Creature with a Higher Value may choose to act before they do.

Bidding - Each creature bids an amount of Dice equal to the size of the action they wish to take.

--Movement - The generally accepted rule is that 1 4-foot square takes about 1 steamboat/second to move into for the average 6~ foot tall humanoid. Basically, every creature can (usually) move 1/3 of it's height per second.

--Active Abilities - Each 1d6 spent in using an Active ability costs 1 second. In addition to other costs.

-- Reactive Abilities - Each 1d6 spent in a Reactive ability increases the Cooldown on a creature by 1 second. In addition to other costs.


Acting

Once the Creature with the lowest Imitative score performs their actions, the amount of time they spent performing their actions is how much time the next creature can act before the previous creature in the initiative order can interrupt them.

If the slowest person only bids 1 second at a time, then everyone else is also on a 1 second schedule, unless a 'faster' Creature decides to take on a more time intensive action.

[honestly, not sure how this will work out, but it's something I'd like to try out]

Abilities
You can do things

Active - Use equipment offensively, change or affect a target.

Reactive - Use equipment defensively, react to a change imposed on a Creature.

Non-Combat - Gathering, Processing, Crafting


How Abilities Sub-divide

All abilities come in three Schedules; and in three grades of Power.

Schedules:

Continual - These are the "power sources". Swordery, Sorcery, Surgery. The ability to use a sword; fire a blast out of your finger tips or special item, repair things, block with a weapon or shield, etc. are all in here.

Encounter - These are the "laundry list" type of powers. Things that everyone should have, regardless of their power source. A mechanic who swings a rusty wrench should be able to deal special ability damage, even if their overall weapon damage is not as good as a someone who took the Martial or Mental offense powers. Likewise, a person with a sword should not be cut off from power just b/c they use a weapon. A sword can seriously break limbs with a single strike. In the hands of a transhuman like many Player Characters, a sword strike can easily chop off limbs on mundane targets.

Daily - Big stuff. Nova damage of any kind. Many of these abilities have a front-cost, meaning that ambushes, or waiting till several actions have occured will happen before a Daily is used. Buffs tend to be Dailies.

Subdivisions:

Active splits into:

Active
-Martial
--Minor - Moderate - Major
--Physique student - ~ adept - ~ master
--Unarmed student - ~ adept - ~ master
--Technique student - ~ adept - ~ master
-Mental
--Minor - Moderate - Major
--Mago - Mage - Magus
--Sensitive - Medium - Psychic
--Seer - Cleric - Prophet
-Intent
--Minor - Moderate - Major
--Tinker - Smith - Mechanic
--Medic - Doktorr - Chirurgeon
--Healer - Mystic - Thaumaturge
-Note: Intent is double edged. A Healer may harm, a Mechanic may Sabotage, and a Doktorr can deliver death. However only via use of their skill. They are potentially good at killing, but are not going to be great at combat.

Reactive

There 'is' content for Reactive. However it needs to be re-ordered again, to better fit with my most current model of how to divy up power types and gradiants.

Grades: Every one of the above schedules has all three of the following Grades of power.

Minor [Tiers: up to 45 Minors per Tier (Mortal/Mythic/Epic/Divine)]
- Cost 1d6 to activate
- 1 Sec Cooldown
- +1d6 To related Pool
- Minor abilities are not going to have a large effect. A sword swing or parry. The ability to kill someone who is unconscious and not get PTSD or go into sympathetic shock.
- Minor abilities usually affect Stamina, dealing, or repairing Stamina-based damage.
- Minors are gained at a rate of 1/session, however, they do not have to be spent on an ability until a character chooses. Usually at a dramatic moment.

Examples:

[Technique Student] -Wield Concrealable, 1H melee weapon, and non-strength based "aimed" weapons (everything from a light rifle, to a crossbow, to throwing weapons).

[Mago] - With a warm up time of 5d6, you may fire a ranged attack out to as far as you can see (if using a piece of Equipment), or throwing distance if unarmed.

[Healer] - You may repair damage to Organic targets at a rate of 1 Hit Point per Successful Hit you accomplish.

Moderate [Tiers: up to 15 Moderates per Tier (Mortal/Mythic/Epic/Divine)]
- Cost 2d6 to activate
- 3 Sec Cooldown
- +3d6 To related Pool
- Moderate Abilities are things that are for more focused characters. Anyone who studies may know how to shoot a blast of fire from nearby energy pockets, but only a trained character will be able to deliver special effects with their elemental effects, or sword strikes. As well as being able to harvest Magical grade resources, like Harpy feathers, or Demon Dung.
- Moderate abilities only affect Body, dealing, or repairing Body-based damage
- Moderates are gained at a rate of 1/3 sessions, however, they do not have to be spent on an ability until a character chooses. Usually at a dramatic moment.

Major - [Tiers: up to 5 Majors per Tier (Mortal/Mythic/Epic/Divine)]
- Cost 3d6 to activate
- 6 Sec Cooldown
- +6d6 To related Pool
- Major abilities are things like blocking attacks, even with a tiny shield; wielding a two-handed weapon in one hand, being able to contact greater powers for extra information, being able to gather, process or craft Mythical items.
- Major abilities only affect Life, dealing, or repairing Life-based damage
- Majors are gained at a rate of 1/9 sessions, however, they do not have to be spent on an ability until a character chooses. Usually at a dramatic moment.


==========

That's just a summary of abilities so far. Playtesting just the combat system has been interesting so far.

[Judging__Eagle]

Statistics and Attributes

I'm not really using stats in my own system. Players can write in any strength that a species can have, since that only affects carry capability, and things that are 'jobs' related to strength. Damage, and combat are not related to any strength stat at all.

Using D&D stats to determine Skill bonuses, and skill points, might be a good idea, however, that's all that stats will do.

I very much prefer Stats to be "flavour", not how capable a character is, or isn't.

I've always liked the way that D&D had it's skill system set up, with a good list of skills that could cover almost any non-combat thing a character could do.

Which is sort of what BAR is. It's the combat, magic, HP, and other special powers systems, put into a single system that everyone buys from at the same cost for powers of the same power level.


Combat, Damage, Recovery

Combat is resolved by Creatures investing dice from a pool to perform an action. Larger actions require more time, and more dice, and usually have a larger cooldown.

Weapons all deal the same amount of damage (1 Hit Point of damage); all basic Creatures have a value of 3 Hit Points.

Right now, the fact that Creatures have a 'bidding' system, where they bid dice/time towards performing an action, means that if you have more than one person on a target, a target can go down quickly if it's not rolling with a large amount of dice at the same time.

I'm considering a "base" round of 6 seconds, 10 per minute; just like a D&D combat round. Also, I'm considering people who have sufficiently large dice pools to be able to simply trade in their dice pool in order to purchase guaranteed successes (3 dice = 1 success). So, even with a 6 second round, a character can take more effective actions as they go higher in level, and dice rolling can be handwaved for trivial actions on a character sheet.

A Technique Master has a potetial Dice Pool of 6-10, that's fine with me, they have 3 guaranteed successes every round, and potentially have up to 6 successes if they are carrying a second weapon.

Currently, Technique gets TWF, concealables, 1H weapons, any "aimed" weapons. While Physique gets 1H weapons, two-handed weapons, any str-based ranged weapon (from bow to support weapon). They both will have the same amount of dice in their respective pools. The main balancing points are as follows: 2WF gets 'extra' dice for the same action (or a parry) that the Total Pool used, basically double the amount of 1 Hit Point damage attacks. While 2HW instead can use weapons that deal 2 Hit Points of damage (all 2H Physique weapons deal 2 pts of damage... making bows and crossbows sort of inverted for damage :/).

So, a higher end character will always have the option for a single extra swing, but the odds are only 50/50 it will succeed, and even then it can still be dodged or soaked.

[Judging__Eagle]

Body
What is everybody?

I'm basically using Frank's Kitchensink Fantasy write up, with some modifications to help outline and explain why the 13 global species are global. As well as outline where all of the "regional" species live.

I'm currently thinking that "where ever the non-people version of a Species exists" is how I'll plunk down the different regional Species.

So Balu are all kinds of bears, from Grizzly to Polar, and Doc probably is a character of some kind or an other. Baloo, the pilot probably works as a magical air-ship pilot, and Baloo, the Jungle Bear lives in India. They're all the same species, just different races/breeds within the species.

However, there will potentially be overlaps in population.

Yuan-Ti live in places with big stone structures, or snake worship; but Ophidians are/were the original species that the ancient Dopplegangers and Dopplgeganger descended had babies with, creating Yuan-Ti. So, India, Egypt, central America, and other parts of the world where snakes are prevalent or highly regarded/recognized, will be areas where a mix of Snake people would exist.

Right now, there's not a whole globe set in stone, but going over the collected classical and ancient history books, and looking up each non-intelligent version of a sapient species, is working out pretty well for adding a lot of content to almost any region that I look at.

[Orion]

Judging Eagle,

there are large parts of this thread that looks potentially interesting; I for one thing the core idea of using earth's geohistory as a fantasy setting is awesome, and I'm sure others on this board agree.

Nobody has commented on this post, or on your previous posts, because this is a complete failure to communicate. We seriously can't tell, at all, what you're trying to say or what is going on.

Here are a list of changes that would make these posts readable to me. I suspect if you implemented them, you might get some actual feedback.

--Please don't make up phrases that have meaning only to you and use them without explanation: what is a tree? what is a mind map? I have no idea. Also: what is a steamboat second?

--Please don't use words in completely novel ways without a good reason: why are "memories and knowledge" part of the "body"?.

--When listing examples, please choose them carefully. (Your "resources section goes "from a book to a doomsday device, to a casette tape". The first two define a space for resources to live in from minor and informational up to game-defining and deadly. The casette adds nothing, and seems interchangeable with the book. If you're adding a third example, add something that tells us something we didn't know, like contacts, pets, status, or whatever.)

--please pay attention to the order your present information. You mention "pools of dice in their three main types of abilities" long before we hear about the types.

--please use English words and grammar in a relatively standard way. I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist, but I wince at "unnecessary scare quotes" and at the use of "dice" as a singular noun. (Also unnecessary scare brackets around "experienced" in the initiative writeup).

--please make sure every sentence conveys information. the entire "initiative order" heading is redundant or common-sense, and while some of it may technically need to be said, it could with careful writing be merged with other rules text. On the other hand,

--please DO define game terms. I think I know what Cooldown is and how it works, but I don't think it says that anywhere.

--please don't contradict yourself. You first say that a 6-foot human moves 1 4-foot square per second, then that the standard moverate is 1/3 height per second.

--please don't use the same word to mean totally different things. Please don't use similar words when it's confusing. Why is your example Balu named Baloo, and why is your other example Balu also Baloo?

If you change all this, I still won't completely understand what you're talking about, but I'll be willing to read your rules and ask thoughtful questions about them. I think you're currently so deep in the incomprehensibility hole that no one is willing to meet you halfway.

[Judging__Eagle]

Baloo from Tailspin isn't the, nevermind, Baloo from Tailspin is a higher level version of the Baloo from The Jungle Book.

Some of the other issues are me forgetting things; speed is supposed to be 2/3 of total height, not 1/3.

Memories/Knowledge are part of "body" since your brain stores them. I'm referring to a character's memories/knowledge, not the concept of memories or knowledge.

Resources gets the following 3 (9) tiers.

Mundane (Primitive, Standard, Exceptional)
Magical (Masterwork, Imbued, Enchanted)
Mythical (Personnel, Regional, Global)

Divided between

Organic
Composite
Inorganic

and

Gathered
Processed
Crafted

Which is as much detail as I want for tangible resources. Things like "status" are a part of Body, not resources. Non-transferable, or more difficult to transfer than simply handing over to an other Creature, 'things' are a part of Body, more than they are part of Resources. Things like "reputation", "rank", etc. are counted as things that affect a Creature's "history".

The idea to separate tangible and intangible "things" that a character could "have" is something that has come about more recently. Partly it was b/c I want "Resources" to cover items, while "Body" describes the Character in terms of their species, background, memories, motivations, position in society, etc., but doesn't describe what they own.

I'll answer the rest of the issues when I'm back again tonight.

======


Edits:

Mind Maps are how the planning process of this project is going on. I'm... really not very good at creating structured systems unless I know all of the elements I'm trying to organize ahead of time.

they look sort of like this:

I posted some screen captures back in.... june or july to my photobucket account to show some of the concept artists for this project. The above picture is of an out of date version, but I hope it helps explain how I'm planning on separating this projects various elements.

I'm currently at the stage where generating and play testing low level characters to see how turn order works (or doesn't) is the next thing I need to work on.