Den Next Design Challenge
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Josh_Kablack
- King
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- Location: Online. duh
Well the first 2 and a half are in. And, I am already laughing out loud; and punctuating randomly!
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Ok I'll take the race list and do something with it campaign wise. Shouldn't be too hard to think over something between now, sleep, and work.
Right off the bat I'm thinking of having elves be short pixie things that work like Seelie and unseelie fey. I mean full blown court where their higher echelons sometimes decide on the fate of other cultures. I'm thinking their iron grip has slipped dramatically from the days of old. The appearance of mecha and biotech have just further cemented their loss. The power of "Chi" is thus far unknown or is underestimated. Let's say they have various secret groups working to try and "fix" the problem through propaganda both religious and otherwise.
I'm thinking of Drow as militant group of conquerers who are distantly related to the fey elves. They're the reason that the elves have lost their grip in that they introduced "magic" to the barbarous races as pretty much a fuck you to their cousins. Now they're just biding their time to crush everybody.
Let's see... from there you have your Goblins as the race that invented mecha in the first place. Make them the genius race that came up with it. Everyone loves techie goblins so that should stick fine.
The Orcs are the people who built biotech... stuff. I'll say that they are particularly good at hunting because whatever and have some kind of talent in controlling beasts and ...animal husbandry why not.
Dwarves, gnomes, halflings and tieflings are planar touched races. Dwarves are blessed by earth spirits making them stout and rocky (because everyone loves stout dwarves). Halflings are air touched whimsical creatures. Tieflings are fire touched hot headed and impulsive while gnomes are blessed by water.
Humans are stuck, of course, being the every man because god damnit people want them to be and I'm tired so shut up. I'll get to work on the document. All of this is up on the board to be changed at anytime while I'm working on it.
Right off the bat I'm thinking of having elves be short pixie things that work like Seelie and unseelie fey. I mean full blown court where their higher echelons sometimes decide on the fate of other cultures. I'm thinking their iron grip has slipped dramatically from the days of old. The appearance of mecha and biotech have just further cemented their loss. The power of "Chi" is thus far unknown or is underestimated. Let's say they have various secret groups working to try and "fix" the problem through propaganda both religious and otherwise.
I'm thinking of Drow as militant group of conquerers who are distantly related to the fey elves. They're the reason that the elves have lost their grip in that they introduced "magic" to the barbarous races as pretty much a fuck you to their cousins. Now they're just biding their time to crush everybody.
Let's see... from there you have your Goblins as the race that invented mecha in the first place. Make them the genius race that came up with it. Everyone loves techie goblins so that should stick fine.
The Orcs are the people who built biotech... stuff. I'll say that they are particularly good at hunting because whatever and have some kind of talent in controlling beasts and ...animal husbandry why not.
Dwarves, gnomes, halflings and tieflings are planar touched races. Dwarves are blessed by earth spirits making them stout and rocky (because everyone loves stout dwarves). Halflings are air touched whimsical creatures. Tieflings are fire touched hot headed and impulsive while gnomes are blessed by water.
Humans are stuck, of course, being the every man because god damnit people want them to be and I'm tired so shut up. I'll get to work on the document. All of this is up on the board to be changed at anytime while I'm working on it.
Last edited by MGuy on Mon Jul 30, 2012 8:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
You need something for warlocks too, and I'd suggest some kind of demon shamanism for the goblins. Because tribal looking goblin warlocks are also awesome.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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...You Lost Me
- Duke
- Posts: 1854
- Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:21 am
So for combat. Also since no one is talking equipment, I'm going to take some of that under my wing:
- Armor Class is not separate from saves. Armor is represented by damage reduction.
- Mobs are easy to deal with and pose a threat to PCs without critfishing and all characters can deal with mooks effectively
- Acting as the party tank is a viable strategy. You can reliably stop Team Monster from hitting the squishies for at least a turn.
- The math just works
- Actions are streamlined and all players will have something more to do than just "Full attack".
- Character's relative base combat abilities (like BAB) can greatly influence the fight.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
EDIT: To be true to the spirit of the challenge, you should use 4D6 to resolve all tests without telling the people writing the other sections. I probably should've sent this as a PM.
If you want to make relatively small bonuses (e.g. to BAB) actually do something, you should resolve tests on 4D6 rather than on 1D20. The RNG is about the same width, but for real purposes it is narrower and +1 will almost always matter more.
http://anydice.com/program/5
- Worst case for +1 mattering on 4D6:
Compare a 5% chance of success to a 10% chance of success you get with a +1. Well, that's maybe a meaningful bonus, because you might actually try for that 10% chance; but probably it isn't and you wouldn't even bother rolling.
On 4D6, that +1 is either moving you from 0.08% to 0.39% at the very top of the RNG (you need a 23 instead of a 24); which is a smaller difference in absolute terms but is still 5x as likely.
By sheer coincidence, DC 20 on 4D6 is 5.4% likely; DC 19 is 9.72% likely, this is smaller than +1 on a D20.
- Other cases for 4D6:
Suppose you start with a 45% chance of success (DC 12 on a D20, DC15 on 4D6). Well, +1 to that goes to 50% on a D20, or 55% on 4D6. Twice as big a deal.
Finally, this is debatable, but I maintain that pushing failure chances very small is actually a big deal from the standpoint of the characters. Depending on what you are doing, a 1.16% of black-swan-failure can really screw you over; so reducing that to 0.39% (less than half as often!) is actually a bigger bonus than going from 10% to 5% black-swan-failure, even though the number of failures prevented is quite small. The very low chance of failure means that you can do something reliably, and that kind of reliability makes a +1 bonus a lot more useful.
And of course the 4D6 RNG allows for rare events (like critical failure) to be actually rare.
You can even use a lot of D20 material unmodified, since much of what is written seems to act like rolling a 1 or a 20 on a 20-sided die is some kind of outsized rare event, even though it isn't.
If you want to make relatively small bonuses (e.g. to BAB) actually do something, you should resolve tests on 4D6 rather than on 1D20. The RNG is about the same width, but for real purposes it is narrower and +1 will almost always matter more.
http://anydice.com/program/5
- Worst case for +1 mattering on 4D6:
Compare a 5% chance of success to a 10% chance of success you get with a +1. Well, that's maybe a meaningful bonus, because you might actually try for that 10% chance; but probably it isn't and you wouldn't even bother rolling.
On 4D6, that +1 is either moving you from 0.08% to 0.39% at the very top of the RNG (you need a 23 instead of a 24); which is a smaller difference in absolute terms but is still 5x as likely.
By sheer coincidence, DC 20 on 4D6 is 5.4% likely; DC 19 is 9.72% likely, this is smaller than +1 on a D20.
- Other cases for 4D6:
Suppose you start with a 45% chance of success (DC 12 on a D20, DC15 on 4D6). Well, +1 to that goes to 50% on a D20, or 55% on 4D6. Twice as big a deal.
Finally, this is debatable, but I maintain that pushing failure chances very small is actually a big deal from the standpoint of the characters. Depending on what you are doing, a 1.16% of black-swan-failure can really screw you over; so reducing that to 0.39% (less than half as often!) is actually a bigger bonus than going from 10% to 5% black-swan-failure, even though the number of failures prevented is quite small. The very low chance of failure means that you can do something reliably, and that kind of reliability makes a +1 bonus a lot more useful.
And of course the 4D6 RNG allows for rare events (like critical failure) to be actually rare.
You can even use a lot of D20 material unmodified, since much of what is written seems to act like rolling a 1 or a 20 on a 20-sided die is some kind of outsized rare event, even though it isn't.
Last edited by DrPraetor on Mon Jul 30, 2012 1:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Please don't do that. There are already Halflings, Gnomes, Goblins, and Dwarves. There are 9 fucking races, and four of them are short. The Elves and Drow do not need to be fucking short. That would make a super majority of short.MGuy wrote:Right off the bat I'm thinking of having elves be short pixie things that work like Seelie and unseelie fey.
-Username17
...Wow, I just sort of wrote up my bit on running the game as a bunch of contradictory douchebag DM advice/recommendations in the voice of Generic Douchebag Game Designer. Now I feel sort of bad that I didn't try to make my bit actually good. Well, it's written, and it's 1200 words I'm not going to rewrite, so...
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
You lost me, I feel like a lot of your part overlaps on Frank and I.
I have no idea how to deal with that, I'm just saying.
I have no idea how to deal with that, I'm just saying.
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
Section 5, Running the game. I know someone else is also handling it.
General recommendations for what to play the game, how to handle players (proud of that bit), the usual random anecdotes with a moral of a story, such as you might find in game dev articles saying "It worked fine when we tried it!" and, of course, "Play the game, not the rules!"
General recommendations for what to play the game, how to handle players (proud of that bit), the usual random anecdotes with a moral of a story, such as you might find in game dev articles saying "It worked fine when we tried it!" and, of course, "Play the game, not the rules!"
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
You lost me is a person. He's writing the combat part.sabs wrote:He wrote the douchebag so you suck at GMing this is how to play our game section. The section that's almost as worthless as the, "what's an RPG" section at the beginning.
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Username17
- Serious Badass
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- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
The Chargen section will of course be pretty long once we start going into actual options. Here is the intro:
In order to play a game of Next, you need to make a character that represents you in the game. You can choose a number of options to customize your character at the cost of increasing complexity. But until you have a better idea of how the game works, you might want to produce a character quickly by choosing a Race and a Class. After doing that, you will need to assign your character's Attributes. There are additional customization modules you may wish to use to make your character more unique - these are Themes, Feats, Skills, and Spells.
A character's Race is their actual species, since Next takes place in a fantasy world it does not overly concern itself with the differences between Koreans and Native Americans but instead between humans and elves, goblins and dwarves. Next can be played to tell stories in many different worlds, and there are many creatures that live in them including ogres, trolls, and even mighty dragons. The races listed in this book are by no means comprehensive, and stand merely as the races that are most accessible as protagonists in most worlds.
A character's Class is what they do in the context of being an adventurer. Your character may be an accomplished painter or carpenter or something, but those aspects of a character are considered Skills. When performing quests, exploring caverns, and hunting monsters it is a character's proficiency with a spell or blade that distinguishes one from another. And it is a character's Class that determines what those strengths actually are.
So it is that by describing your character in terms of race and class, you can cover the basics of what they are and what they can do. If you tell the other players that you are playing a Halfling Fighter, the other players will know that your character is small and lucky, and also that they are a master of weapons who can slay dragons with a sword or spear. If you tell other players that you are playing a Drow Illusionist, they will know that your character is a tall dark elf who is able to use magic to deceive and beguile. But you still need to determine your character's Attributes. Attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, and they are associated with a number that is normally between 3 and 18. A higher attribute represents being better in the field, while a lower attribute represents being worse. Even two characters of the same race and clas will likely have different attributes and thus have different strengths and weaknesses in the story and in the game.
If you want to get started quickly, you can choose to select the Default Theme for your Class, at which point you are essentially done with character generation. The Theme will come with a number of skills, feats, and spells that allow the character to be able to pull their weight as an adventurer in the expected way. However, you may customize your Theme by trading skills, feats, or spells for other examples of the same. Each class also comes with two other potential Themes that are intended for more advanced players. These Advanced Themes have more complex abilities and also come with their feats, skills, and spells unselected. It is assumed that players who want to use Advanced Themes will be selecting their abilities anyway.
In order to play a game of Next, you need to make a character that represents you in the game. You can choose a number of options to customize your character at the cost of increasing complexity. But until you have a better idea of how the game works, you might want to produce a character quickly by choosing a Race and a Class. After doing that, you will need to assign your character's Attributes. There are additional customization modules you may wish to use to make your character more unique - these are Themes, Feats, Skills, and Spells.
A character's Race is their actual species, since Next takes place in a fantasy world it does not overly concern itself with the differences between Koreans and Native Americans but instead between humans and elves, goblins and dwarves. Next can be played to tell stories in many different worlds, and there are many creatures that live in them including ogres, trolls, and even mighty dragons. The races listed in this book are by no means comprehensive, and stand merely as the races that are most accessible as protagonists in most worlds.
A character's Class is what they do in the context of being an adventurer. Your character may be an accomplished painter or carpenter or something, but those aspects of a character are considered Skills. When performing quests, exploring caverns, and hunting monsters it is a character's proficiency with a spell or blade that distinguishes one from another. And it is a character's Class that determines what those strengths actually are.
So it is that by describing your character in terms of race and class, you can cover the basics of what they are and what they can do. If you tell the other players that you are playing a Halfling Fighter, the other players will know that your character is small and lucky, and also that they are a master of weapons who can slay dragons with a sword or spear. If you tell other players that you are playing a Drow Illusionist, they will know that your character is a tall dark elf who is able to use magic to deceive and beguile. But you still need to determine your character's Attributes. Attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, and they are associated with a number that is normally between 3 and 18. A higher attribute represents being better in the field, while a lower attribute represents being worse. Even two characters of the same race and clas will likely have different attributes and thus have different strengths and weaknesses in the story and in the game.
If you want to get started quickly, you can choose to select the Default Theme for your Class, at which point you are essentially done with character generation. The Theme will come with a number of skills, feats, and spells that allow the character to be able to pull their weight as an adventurer in the expected way. However, you may customize your Theme by trading skills, feats, or spells for other examples of the same. Each class also comes with two other potential Themes that are intended for more advanced players. These Advanced Themes have more complex abilities and also come with their feats, skills, and spells unselected. It is assumed that players who want to use Advanced Themes will be selecting their abilities anyway.
Aw, c'mon, Frank. You're supposed to send it all into Josh and then he slaps down the finished product as a whole unit!
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Indeed, but we're just doing this shit for advertising purposes. I don't think we need to flesh out the whole thing really. I think we're just supposed to give a vague description of what we're doing in this project without going into "much" detail like the people talking about 5th. I'll be writing the Setting over the course of the next two days (between work and sleep) and it's pretty much just going to be a big overview of what's going on. Like saying "there are a bunch of fantasy classics in here but it'll be unique and interesting versions!" and "There aren't any copy pasta real world analogues amongst our cultures, everyone will be original and unique to the setting". Then make big promises for sweeping changes that will be made to the game world as its "time line" progresses. Special "events" that highlight the rise and fall of groups/nations perhaps possible genocides so players can participate in key moments of the world's history as it evolves. Just shit like that.sabs wrote:Not to mention, Frank went over his 1200 words without ever naming a single class or race
Guidelines -were- about 400-1500 words. I don't think that's a hard-and-fast rule.sabs wrote:Not to mention, Frank went over his 1200 words without ever naming a single class or race
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
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Quantumboost
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 968
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Poe's Law.sabs wrote:*facepalms*
Okay.. noone gets hyperbolecheck.
I was making a joke about your ... verbosity ... but it apparently went woooosh over everyone's head.. except maybe Mguy.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I'm not going to go full-asshole, but I'm turning up the dial about 50 millikaeliks.