Gaijin Activities Design Flowsheet

[PhoneLobster]

then you should presume that Social Combat not only continues to function in a battle scene, at least to some degree, but that the primary use of it is to influence the battle scene that will play out the moment one person decides he's losing the argument and punctuates his debate points with kicking you in the balls.

You know back in the day we had one or two, or three giant social combat threads but I don't recall anyone raising this and part of it is a interesting point my system needs to address.

If a social combat is clearly going in one direction against one side at that point I don't really want them slipping out to combat as a completely obvious choice. So social combat SHOULD have a direct effect on regular combat even if it hasn't ended. So I'm going to have to have social and regular combat damage essentially be the same thing, which is fine in my system so I'll do just that.

I don't mind people picking one or the other type of combat encounter fairly freely when some says "social attack!" but I'd rather not have them just flip the switch as an obvious choice when someone says "ahah! one more round of damage (of either encounter type) and you suckers are out!".

It has the added bonus that if someone surrenders in normal combat you presumably have some advantage in continuing with a bit of social combat to intimidate or otherwise crush them that way.

I like it.

As to social combat continuing during regular combat and visa versa though, it's something I've considered a number of times, but I still don't think that it is actually required or especially desirable.

[TavishArtair]

I suppose I will concede that the emphasis doesn't have to be "both must be capable of happening at the same time" but rather "the boundaries between the two should be sufficiently fluid." Especially since we're in a kung fu movie in Gaijin Activities, and people in kung fu stories have multiple page conversations while arrows fly across the battlefield... between the arrow being released and it actually hitting. So Yeah. Admittedly, other times, the katana is already cutting even when the bystander girl rushes out and says "NOOOOO!"

But yeah, if they don't somehow complement each other, then you need like... an entirely different social conflict paradigm than what I think Gaijin Activities wants, and social combat might be a misnomer at that point.

[PhoneLobster]

Especially since we're in a kung fu movie in Gaijin Activities, and people in kung fu stories have multiple page conversations while arrows fly across the battlefield...

But if you want kung fu movie social combat it's pretty close to a form of regular combat maneuver for almost exclusively regular combat benefit.

It's not really a separate encounter type at all. And when they do have purely social encounters relatively little is resolved, it is not as significant and powerful, or risky, and it could very well be handled with the whole traditional "one roll against arbitrary difficulty" kind of system.

The only variant potentially "social" encounter type from kung fu films that is as significant and complex as the actual Kung Fu, that I can think of right now... Is the thing where two masters lock eyes and estimate each others moves until one walks away as the estimated victor (which really is just combat resolution with a special "it was all a dream" proviso).

[Orion]

The party have snuck across Lion territory, fought their way through a Turtle fortification, and finally reached the abode of the reclusive Oracle of Wood. Can they convince her their need for the information they seek is for the good of the entire world? Or will they be forced to pay the customary supplicant's price?

The party have arrived at the court of a lesser Raven noble. Can they convince him to deploy troops to his eastern holdings on nothing but their word that an oni horde is coming?

The party has completed a difficult mission well, and have been given their next assignment. They feel their lord should grant them several Sky Dao to travel in. He is not sure they or their mission merit that kind of expense.

It seems pretty obvious to me that there are many times the players will want to get some kind of significant advantage out of an NPC which the GM might be loath to give away in magic tea party. In many of these situations, it would be useful to have a resolution mechanic to settle these disagreements which didn't end in major lords being mindslaved.

Now, my understanding of your system expressed in D&D terms:

I have 30 "social hp" and so does my opponent. We swing back and forth with "social longswords" dealing 1d8+cha damage, or whatever. Whoever gets reduced to zero social hp gets mindslaved.

Now, this system works pretty well for what you've indicated you think a social system *should* cover. But it doesn't do anything for the above-mentioned scenarios. Assuming we don't want to magic tea party them (I certainly don't) we have four possible options:

We can make a non-combat social system in which brokering a peace treaty or haggling for money is treated like lock-picking.

We can use your social system, with the effect of reducing an enemy to 0 social points defined by DM fiat.

We can use your social system, with the effect of reducing an enemy to 0 social points defined by character abilities. The way this would work is that the PCs would declare a goal for their social combat, the specific emotion, opinion, or behavior they want to inspire. What goals they would be allowed to set would depend on what abilities they had and possibly by traits of the target as well. They would then play it out in your system.

Honestly I'd be pretty happy with that. Basically it's just your original proposal, but with the possibility of less significant results because I want the social system to be used for more trivial things than you feel it should be used for. But I'd like to point out that my original proposal is pretty similar to this:

Basically, upon re-thinking my original proposal, I was implying a separation of mechanics that simply didn't exist.

I had figured that accomplishing something significant against a serious social opponent would require a couple of moves of set-up, softening up, then the actual effect. Of course, that's how death works in physical combat anyway. So tying it together, my proposed social combat system would involve using set-up moves to make people receptive to various suggestions ranging from "give me a ride" to "become my slave" -- with some of the most commonly available suggestions being "flee this place" or "leave me alone"

Besides allowing the PCs to get something of value without getting everything a person has, it allows for mixed results where they get an item or favor but at the cost of taking on an opinion or obligation.

Now, as to the one-shot social encounters described previously -- very often, I feel, the players will want something pretty straightforward that can be accomplished in one round of social combat. "Let me through this door," for instance. Basically what I'm figuring is that after the initial volley of social attacks, the target is going to calculate his odds and realise that he can't hope to win, so he'll not continue social hostilities beyond readying an action to retaliate if the PCs push the issue.

Now, you might ask "why run the at all then" and you'd be onto something. Probably you don't have to, though you might if it doesn't feel satisfying without rolling some dice. But again, just because actuall having your 10th level fighter kill 100 orcs would be dreadfully boring doesn't mean the rules shouldn't cover it. The rules should, so that the players know what they should and shouldn't fear. It's acceptable for the Dm to handwave and say "you kill them." And similarly acceptable for the DM to handwave and say "you talk your way in" butthere should be guidelines in place which lay out what is and isn't a negligible social foe.

[PhoneLobster]

which the GM might be loath to give away in magic tea party.

Well first of all he shouldn't just be loathe to give things away for no reason at all. If he is being anything other than a dick then he is loathe to give them away for RP reasons (which is the whole reasoning behind the trigger for my own social combat system) or he is loathe to give them away for mechanical reasons (which isn't exactly changing just because you have a "roll to screw up the GMs game plan" ability).

I have 30 "social hp" and so does my opponent. We swing back and forth with "social longswords" dealing 1d8+cha damage, or whatever. Whoever gets reduced to zero social hp gets mindslaved.

People always get hung up on the mind slaved bit. I want to again make this clear.

You are "just" inflicting a major sweeping and general motivation on a character. Like him being your very good friend.

I accept the "mind slaved" line to a degree because the boundary between having some social influence over, and owning anything of his you care about or being able to throw his life away on a whim is incredibly subjective and hard to judge.

So while I can sit here and argue the ten different ways that being "very good friends" is different to zombie mind slave it's really just cosmetic since there are a hundred different ways in which it can be functionally the same.

I just want to be clear on a few tiny quibbles of difference.

A sweeping motivation requires further RP to actually exploit. Zombie mind slave only requires instructions.

A sweeping motivation is a mildly enforceable instruction that can be given to a player that lets them continue to control their character as long as they obey the new instruction.

And as one of a small set of motivations you can describe in some detail various limiting factors, such as say the kinds of events which can cause the state to come to an end. Like a "very good friend" catching you stabbing him repeatedly in the back with a sword.

But it doesn't do anything for the above-mentioned scenarios.

Largely I think because the mentioned scenarios are basically the cause of an indecisive player who isn't prepared to simply determine and commit to a course of action they feel would be appropriate for their character to take on his own judgement.

It's entirely OK for a GM to say that a lesser Raven noble just will accept your word (because you are so famous or he is a secret fan or something), or not. Arbitrarily. That's fairy tea party for you. The fact that the guy is even there and even has eastern holdings or troops he could deploy there is basically pure fairy tea party anyway.

So it is similarly OK for the GM to either fairy tea party that guys actions or specifically set him up as basically a social combat encounter in the same way that he arbitrarily could have set him up as a regular combat encounter by fairy tea partying his default degree of co-operation to "Kill them all!".

Assuming we don't want to magic tea party them (I certainly don't)

This I really don't understand. It's a type of event largely defined as an isolated single in character decision. It's OK not to have to roll a dice in order to make all such decisions, it's OK to just... decide.

Honestly I'd be pretty happy with that. Basically it's just your original proposal, but with the possibility of less significant results because I want the social system to be used for more trivial things than you feel it should be used for.

I hold to my arguments regarding the large set of potential goals and modifiers that will require and the issue of rewards vs risk and complexity costs that are raised.

something pretty straightforward that can be accomplished in one round of social combat. "Let me through this door," for instance.

The "get past the guard" encounter is commonly raised as one that is inappropriate to rule over as either negligible fairy tea party and also inappropriate to rule over as a deeply important life changing event.

I suspect people haven't put a lot of thought into the implications the whole encounter has for guards and other involved parties.

Why is the guard even set to guard duty if his social abilities make him a complete push over who cannot function as a guard?

How is letting you through not a concession of massive value in the order of his wealth, his job, or his life? His entire character is defined as "guy who doesn't let you through to some place so important it couldn't be tea partied". I'm assuming he is at the very least risking, if not guaranteeing, some pretty big consequences for letting you in anywhere he wouldn't have decided let to under his own volition.

If he is capable of instantly realizing he is socially outmatched and his very purpose as an armed check point guard who exists for the very reason of providing violent resistance to the breaching check points... If that is the case, why doesn't he just physically attack you rather than spontaneously surrendering or "readying a social attack and cowering with his tail between his legs"?

And isn't it fine, and indeed in keeping with the investments and kind of source materials this encounter comes from if once a big deal has been made of "making friends with check point guard number 5" that you might indeed meet him again and have him let you by, do you favors and otherwise become an ongoing contact?

And heck I could probably keep going.

Probably you don't have to, though you might if it doesn't feel satisfying without rolling some dice.

I can deal with that. You don't have to roll for everything. And instituting an "individual RP decision making roll" which this basically is. Is probably gratuitous.

But again, just because actuall having your 10th level fighter kill 100 orcs would be dreadfully boring doesn't mean the rules shouldn't cover it.

But rules don't need to cover whether the hundred orcs are present in the first place. Or if they are hostile. Or if you want to fight them.

Rolling instead of deciding those terms of the encounter and story events for the 100 orcs encounter is the same as rolling instead of deciding if the Raven Lord of western Territory feels like being trusting or feels like requiring social combat today.

And also having him flip back and forth with whether or not he trusts me on an issue by issue, one liner by one liner basis which neither meets my goals and decisions as a player NOR the goals or decisions of the opposing player, I'm not hip with that jive either.

[Orion]

The scenario I had in mind actually was the guard of, say, a royal ball or the meeting of an exclusive club -- someone who's actual function is to keep out the rabble who are too low-level to overpower the guard. But one could just as easily imagine it's Obi-Wan Jedi mind-tricking his way in. I don't imagine that yields permanent or sweeping alterations.

Now, onto the broader question of tea party or no tea party.

Look, first of all, try to remember that a lot of your players are going to be 14 year old boys. They don't always have the most highly developed social skills for negotiating a story as a group, and they aren't always comfortable with improvisational storytelling anyway.

Many DMs, especially children, have an instinctive "no" response to attempts to get stuff from NPCs in a way which seems "unbalanced." I mean, if the players can get extra equipment or allies by 8asking* for them, what happens to CR and WBL? So I think it's helpful for the rules themselves to say, "you know, you really should let the players waltz into costumed balls, seduce enemy agents and win armies through silver-tongued lies. It's part of the genre."

Or to come at it another way, maybe I've been corrupted by too many computer RPGs, but part of what gives a campaign verisimilitude to me is the idea that I can imagine how I would have come at it with a different party and how it would have played out differently. And of course, when you publish modules, you actually are writing for a variety of parties, not just one.

So it seems to me that you want some parties to sneak and some to fight and some to talk. Some parties are hardcore enough to bust into the demon-king's palace and stab him in the face themselves, while others are too weak to do it alone, but are smooth-tongued enough to get ancient spirits or modern special forces to lead into the palace and take out the king's guards.

But if people want to play "face" characters, then there have to be rules saying, yes, if you are a bard you can get troops, if you are a barbarian you must fight alone. Otherwise there's no rubric for differentiating between persuasive and less persuasive characters. Now, if you don't *want* people to be able to invest resources into social solutions as opposed to combat solutions, then you don't need my system. Maybe you think it's not a decision people should make ahead of time -- they decide in play how persuasive or solitary they are.

To be honest, there's no reason you can't tea party this kind of thing. I'm not saying that it's a universally bad way of going about it. It's just not how I personally want to do it.

[Orion]

On another note entirely we seem to be heading towards what White Wolf seem to be getting at with their "personal horror" or, what I'd prefer to call *existential* horror... or existential comedy.

Every faction I've personally worked on has turned out to revolve around the way technology threatens our understanding of selfhood and identity, and I'm thinking that's a theme we should roll with.

Raven undermine the biological continuity of the self

Lion undermine our perception of ourself as rational, choice-making agents

Naga have the body-hopping thing and the singularities

This theme is the reason I strongly feel that kami need to be riding people around all hoodoo style. That strikes me as a good theme for the Carp, who can have armies of inspired zealots for their legions. But if you *really* want to stick with the autonomous paper cranes, I think we should invoke Descartes. Make the summoned spirits fearless and amiable, but lazy and distractible. Reason? They were programmed to feel at home in the internet and have no desire to live permanently in reality, so that they don't get out of hand. The result is that they perceive the internet to be the "real world" and reality to be "just a dream." Hence their willingness to go to their deaths, and lack of ethical qualms.

EDIT: I welcome suggestions on how to carry on this theme with the other factions.

[zeruslord]

Tiger really has horror built in with necromancy. Hevezda's uniformity could be swung into horror if the Hevezdans themselves accept or even desire it. Ox has some strong potential with the non-humans or possibly something with the insignificance of humanity compared with our creations.

It could be interesting to make it so that nobody thinks their particular personal horror bit is a big deal. It just cranks it up a level that these guys are so far gone they don't even see the problem with wearing a different body every day.

[Orion]

Hevezdan mechs can easily be made as creepy as you like. Make them animated by the souls of the lumpenproletariat.

Actually, we could get some awesome dark comedy out of the idea that one of the major disadvantages of the mechs is that they replace chunks of incoming sensory input with communist propaganda.

EDIT: Honestly tiger necromancy doesn't seem that horrible to me. Unless you have ideas?

[Orion]

So I get off school in exactly two weeks. Then I'll have summer break at home which will be the only time in a *long* time I'll have a good opportunity to playtest Gaijin Activities. So is it vaguely reasonable to try to get it playable by then?

Frank, I'm going to need some significant mechanical help from you before I can move forward. I've never played with the L5R mechanic and I don't yet understand how to write for it. It's got troubles with adding dice. D20, you add a +3 to both sides the game is exactly the same. Shadowrun, you add 3 dice to both sides and it does matter but not terribly much. This mechanic, adding 3 dice rolled to both sides has incredibly weird effects, and the closest equivalent to a d20's "canceling +3s" would be multiplying dice rolled and kept by X. And even that has some bizarre effects.

All of that is to say, that it matters greatly what we set as a reasonable number of dice to roll or keep for beginning characters, and I have trouble figuring out how advancement would work. Without knowing that I'm finding it hard to stat out abilities.

[TavishArtair]

To be honest I have difficulty knowing precisely what to say at this point either, because there were certain discussions of what was going to be done with the combat system and which dice of who that you are rolling that didn't quite seem to arrive at any kind of conclusion by which I could really even comment.

[Orion]

Then let's focus on setting information. What do we need to get down in order for the game to playable/testable?

-- A map
-- Write-ups for the leaders of the major factions, as well as a couple of intermediate bosses more likely for starting characters to interact with.
-- An idea of each faction's agenda, broadly
-- one or two cities for each faction, with their socioeconomic/politicla circumstances
-- an idea of how people live

Now, as for the map:

Do the 7 clans control well-bounded, contiguous regions? If so we can probably use feng shui and geomancy to figure out who should live where.

However, I wonder is we want to divide them up like kingdoms in that way. If they were ever really divisions of a zaibatsu, it seems their facility locations would be more intermingled so as to provide crucial services to the whole empire. I think we can work with this. Say that back during the age of telecommunications people didn't travel very much, even the nobility. Shipping was cheap and reliable and the province of the Ox Clan. Human travel tended to be done in Sky Dao with hired pilots from a Plot's Guild or possibly pre-progammed routes.

So while we'll need a pretty map for marketing, large-scale geography shouldn't be too directly relevant to PCs. Travel is safe and fast if you have access to the fliers. Overland travel is time consuming and dangerous even to nearby settlements.

Since the Shadow Crash major geographical alterations have happened in the shadow-scourged lands, and now people are cut off from their. With telecommunications weakened and travel resources scarce, most smaller facilities have been forced to reinvent political society fighting and trading with only other immediately nearby facilities that can be reached without crossing a shadowlands. These de facto nations tend to contain palaces and forts nominally owned by several different clans, which is the source of a lot of tension and politics.

[PhoneLobster]

Your list is wrong.

You really need...
Appropriate mechanics to resolve encounters.
A bunch of materials like NPCs, Items and Environments for encounters.
Perhaps some over arching "adventure" plot line to link those encounters.
Either pregenerated PCs or appropriate PC generation rules.

The other stuff on the list is nice to have, but it isn't what you need for a basic test run or a "get started" game session.

[Orion]

And how am I going to write that adventure without a substantial fraction of the abovementioned material done?

But you're right, the list was wrong. Here's the real thing I need to get straight before I can fill out the other stuff: what is there to adventure *about*?

What are the valuable resources? Are conflicts between clans over resources, people, or ideology? Once I know what the motives for adventure are I should be able to derive the rest.

[Orion]

So I was looking over my notes for this game the other day and realized, frig, this game is going to have 35 power lists on it, plus any other special lists like Shadow or other crap that gets tacked on. That's... a lot of powers. Since as far as I know I'm the only one currently working on this, I didn't feel like writing the hundreds of powers I would need if individual lists were in any way long. So here's the deal: each power list contains exactly 5 powers. This means that we need to write 35 X 5 = 175 powers, which is more than aWoD is currently scheduled for. Of course, aWoD isn't supposed to have maneuver-based tactical combat like Gaijin activities, but whatever. Combat is important, but it's not the entire game, and one selectable power can give a package of several maneuvers.

To make life, really simple, each of the five powers on one power list is associated with one of the five elements. So then we crank through, procedurally generating content within narrow boxings that give lots of prompting.

So let's work on our Shugendo spells.

(Incidentally, does anyone think we would lose crucial flavor by rnaming our skills Martial, Technical, Social, Rings, and Pattern?)

Water is the element of storage. Every Water spell will store things in some way. By default, these spells only effect inanimate objects, as the pattern is specifically designed not to accept living tissue unless an override is given.

Water/Water: The spell of pure storage is Draw Under, which shoots a black beam that disintegrates a person (or object) and throws him into the Pattern.

The remaining four Water spells are tempered by other elements.

Water/Wood (Retrieval) gives us Shallow Pool, which lets you stick a touched object in hammer space and bring it back later.

Water/Fire (tk) gives us Vortex, which sucks objects in a spherical area through a portal to the Pattern.

Water/Metal (force fields) gives us Hungry Mist, a vertical wall that stores gases, bullets, and in high level versions words and people who pass through it.

and finally Water/Earth (Stabilization [basically any selective control of an area, rather than target change to an object) gives us Scour, which stores all gases and liquids in the area except oxygen, neutralizing tear gas and allowing water breathing.

---

There, now just 20 more spells to write but cranking through the list. I'll put up my half-finished list tomorrow night.

Let's get some Onmyoudo on.

Water in Onmyoudo is the element of Input. It governs putting information into the Rings, and analyzing it.

pure Input is Detection: scanning an area to see if it contains a specified substance

Water/Earth (Networking) gives us Blood Brothers, a spell which temporarily lets you and your nearby companions communicate telepathically.

Water/Fire (Display) gives Mind Probe, where you forcibly upload your opponent's thoughts and then display them publicly or privately.

Water/Wood (Spirits) gives Possession, where you upload someone's network key and give his body to a spirit.

Water/Metal (Archives) gives Identify, which gives you all recorded ifnormation about an object, person, or substance of which you have a sample.

---

Finally, let's do a Martial Art

Water martial arts are about movement and misdirection.

Water/Water: true knowledge of water leads to Eternal Breath, which provides immunity to drowning and inhaled poison.

Water/Fire: Temper's Style. Part of a cycle with Blacksmith Style, Gardener Style, Woodcutter Style, and Engineer Style, this style contains several attacks which are super-effective against another element, in this case Fire.

Water/Earth: Lilypad style combines Water's deceptiveness with Earth's stability to produce a defense which lets your enemy move past you, a one-use palmed-weapon trick, and a feint which hinders your opponents ability to attack you or others

Water/Metal: Riverbed Style: combining water's momentum with metal's focus, this style gives a finishing move for unbalanced opponents, a tripping attack that prevents escape, and giant frog.

Water/Wood: Whitewater Style combining the mobility of water with the relentlessness of Wood, this style grants Fast Movement overland and in combat, a speedy dodge which works best with open space, and a whirlpool strikes that attacks multiple opponents.

---

Too lazy to do anything with Gijutsu or Onmyoudo tonight. More tomorrow, and hopefully you see where I'm going with this.

[TavishArtair]

I do think you lose a bit of flavor by using those skill names. The English words you use, if you use English, should have an... appropriate feel. Throughout the game, even. They should sound like you would imagine Miyamoto Musashi or Sun Tzu would talk like if they did have a command of English. This isn't that they should sound like broken English, but...

Regarding power creation, I had a mental stall because I was not sure of the system mechanics that people would be using, so I was not sure how to annotate things in a useful way. I tried obliquely throwing some ideas out to skip across the water of the discussion, but none of those took, nor served to clarify anything below the ripples. It only seemed to kick up more mud.

So, without an ability to see through the murk, I stopped. I would certainly be interested in doing power creation and such, but... bleh? No frame to lay the plaster and paint on.

[TavishArtair]

This still has not received much attention or love. Understandable. aWoD started up. However, I really liked this idea, and while I am mainlining other projects now, I thought this should be revisited. The most apparent missing element in this game design is a resolution mechanic.

Using Roll and Keep and adding is alright. However, we wanted someone's "chi strength" to matter, being both a weakness and strength. And we were undecided in how to resolve this. So, having played some more games since then, and thought about it, an idea came to me while (predictably) in the shower. Eureka and all that.

Weapons of the Gods uses a derived score, Chi Modifier, from your Chi stats. You have 5 stats, and they basically provide the main resource draw for the game, since your Chi pools are equal to all your Chi ratings. These come and go pretty quickly, techniques are rated from 1 to 5 and you regenerate at least 1 each turn barring Interesting Times. However, a kung fu will generally use the Chi Modifier of the resource as well, meaning if you have a maxed-out Scarlet Chi, kung fu that use this (generally pertaining to Speed) will also gain a really high bonus. There's a couple breakpoints and it generally tends to plateau due to the level system, rather than constantly scale up, but you get the idea.

What if we kept (Level) of (Skill) dice and added or subtracted people's (Element) modifiers? WotG uses them for pure benefit, but in our case we can add or subtract alike. We could use (Element+Skill) dice plus the ENEMY'S modifier, or anything inbetween.

Well, I don't really expect much to come from this brainstorming. Everyone wants to design aWoD or Kitchen Sink FRP. But I figured I might as well stir the pot, since the idea was fresh in my mind. And now, coffee. *sips*

[Orion]

I've actually done a fairly substantial amount of writing for this game--not mechanics, but setting and flavor and so on. I haven't posted it here because I'm being perfectionist, and because I have an irrational desire to own it. I know I'm realistically not likely to make any money off it, but I'm not yet ready to fork everything over to the public domain.

I will say that I pinned down a concept for Universal Standard. Their thing is space tech. They got hit harder by the shadow than the zaibatsu, but the trick is that the shadow doesn't extend to space, so the space station still has reliable technology. America is now a demon-haunted wasteland inhabited by small tribes of fanatical nomads taking orders from inscrutable masters in the sky. Basically, it's like the religious right was right about everything.

[TavishArtair]

As a minor note, especially re: mechanics, my understanding is that you can incorporate works from the public domain into a private thing. You can't claim ownership of the public domain pieces, but you can't claim much ownership regarding dice mechanics anyways.

I totally understand the desire to retain ownership, and am working on a mostly private thing myself.

[Orion]

Oh sure. I could even retain my rights to all the parts I posted while letting Frank put his in the public domain. The finished work would be something I could sell and the public parts wouldn't be of much use to anyone.

But this isn't really about commercial viability. It's more that I want to have a project to my name to show off. I'm looking at publishing jobs, grad schools, and so on where having a large project I could point to might be useful. And while a commercially published work I just contributed to would be fine, I think an unpublished work needs to be essentially all my writing if I'm to claim meaningful credit for it.

[TavishArtair]

Eh, Monte Cook wasn't the sole designer of 3e D&D and he gets to write "made D&D" on his resume, but OK!

Ditto with Gary Gygax. >_>

[kjdavies]

Do Clan powers have elemental affinities? If so, are they divided among all the elements or do clans as a whole have elemental affinities?

Off the top of my head, the Carp should do more water to have more black rays of passive nonexistence. And to be more, you know, fishy. But they should still have elemental masters of all the elements.

Similarly: Lion should do more Fire; Tiger should do more Earth; Ox should do more Metal; Raven should do more Wood; and the Boar should be an even split.

Long ago, in the before times (even before this was posted a year ago) I explored the idea of having in a D&D campaign only one god with all the domains, but each church/order/saint/whatever provided access to specific subsets of the domains. *All* clerics of the Order of Albry had the Healing domain, most had either Plant or Strength, some had others but were sometimes seen as a little odd by those outside the order (everyone knows Albrians heal and are either tireless or are excellent farmers). All clerics sworn to Trenneth had Law, many had War (avenging justice) or Knowledge (truth seeker).

Something similar could be done here. I can see a few ways you could implement it, and I'm sure there are others.

• Hardcode it. Ravens must have Wood as their strongest element, though it can be matched by another -- it just can't be exceeded
• Leave it more as a social thing. A Raven that is weak with Wood might end up as an outcast -- socially at least, he might be quite useful because he has other strengths
• Just give them a bonus that makes them more likely to be strong with Wood and let them go from there. This means there's at least a minimum ability with Wood that all Raven's have, and while most might build on that, others might leave it at that and pursue something else.

Keith

[Username17]

So I can't make Roll and Keep work. Sorry, I just can't.

But I've been having a discussion with another game designer about a system that works thusly:

• Each Turn you roll five dice for the battlefield, that determines how much you can channel of each of five different things.
• You personally have a channeling skill in each category, and you can't channel more than your skill or the ebb and flow of that type.
• If you channel more than 1 less than your skill, your power dries up.
• If the flow for the battlefield is more than 1 higher than what you are actually channeling, you get hammered with backlash.

And that's basically it. I think it would be a pretty good match. On average, you'd have about 2 lists you could pull down off of each round, and since it would be established right at the beginning of the round, everyone would have time to prepare a plan of action.

-Username17

[Orion]

Yeah, I concluded roll/keep was unworkable a while back.

I've been kicking around a system that share mechanics with the latest Bad Juju thread. Unfortunately, I spent all of last year starving to death (and now I'm very busy), so probably I won't buckle down to finish a game until I graduate in June.

[Username17]

Rolling and keeping are only really comparable if on of the following is true:

• You are already rolling and keeping enough dice so that it is very likely that the dice bing dropped will be negligible - which in turn requires that the dice are individually very polyhedral - even a "1" is pretty relevant to a pile of d6s.
• What you are actually looking for is "features" rather than "totals". Extra rolled but unkept dice are totally awesome if you are looking for straights and pairs and stuff.

Unfortunately, while those can be kind of cool games on their own (see To Court The King), resolution takes kind of a long time. And that makes it basically unacceptable for a role playing game system backbone.

The fastest roll and keep system is to deal out cards, because people can quickly sort them and move them around and separate them into kept and unkept without knocking them over and having them say different things. But it still takes people a long time to add up the results of several 1-13 draws and even longer to determine whether they have straights or flushes or pairs. It's just not a fast enough way to do things to run a game off of.

-Username17