[SPLINTER] One Game, Two Worlds, Two Separate Core Mechanics

[Neurosis]

Hi. Splinter is an indie RPG that I've been developing more-or-less all by my lonesome since 2008. I'm not going to post the whole entire game here in one giant chunk and say "what do you think, sirs?" because by observation, that's not how the Den works. So I think a focused discussion of one aspect of the game (or at least an attempt at that) would be better way to start.

It's more than a little intimidating posting my homebrew game at a place that frequently has threads like "Anatomy Of Failed Design: Relatively Popular And Successful RPG", but I feel like it would be foolish of me not to avail myself of the expertise here since in between the vitriol, there is a fuck ton of expertise here.

Here is the basic fluff which is like everything a WIP, albeit only narrowly. I know it's a bit..."bombastic" and very pitchy. And that's intentional. The fluff stuff is not actually what I'm looking for critique on here, and neither's the overall concept. That stuff is just necessary to get to the mechanics stuff.

The year is 2471 and Games Corp controls the world.

The massive international mega-conglomerate, along with their (secretly wholly-owned) governmentally assigned monitoring organization, the Entertainment Broadcasting Consortium (EBC) control all of humanity. Nations, boundaries, and governments are a thing of the past, an obsolete irrelevancy.

All that matters is the Game.

The Game is what holds the world’s disparate cultures together as one people. The Game captivates them, binds them, rules every aspect of their lives.

The Game is, simply put, everything. The Game combines every nation’s penal system, professional sports leagues, and media entertainment into one tremendous chimera of an organization, part ruling body, part cultural phenomenon.

A few fortunate (or extremely unlucky) thousands actually play the Game. These range from convicted criminals trying desperately to win their own freedom (and in 99 out of 100 cases, they die trying) to the elite caste of Players, who are genetically engineered from birth and who spend their entire lives training in ultra-competitive academies. Of course, most of them end their careers dead too.

Millions more make their living keeping the game running, work ing in a dozen different capacities, from the lowly technicians to the corporate Administrators and Producers, the ruling aristocracy.

And every single one of the 6.2 Billion inhabitants of Earth watches The Game. In fact, if you don’t at least keep up the appearance of watching the game, you are red-flagged for governmental observation by the EBC Overwatch.

The entire surface of the world has changed into nothing but a massive user interface, connecting you to the game.

On the most basic level, the Game’s rules are extremely simple. There is only one rule: survive. But the devil is in the details, and the game is the most complex, detailed, and complete game every designed. Its history is a hundred billion times longer than the history of the planet earth. Its area is infinitely vaster. And its shape is infinitely stranger.

The Game’s board is the largest and deepest ever created: The Splinter. It is an entire world, a universe, all indoors, with no sky but a hundred artificial suns and mechanical moons. It takes the form of an enormous megastructure, an ecumenopolis or Dyson sphere, a hundred, thousand, or million times the size of the Earth. In addition to being nearly infinite in size, the game’s world is constantly changing. The Game’s rooms, zones, structures, levels, and areas constantly shift at varying rates.

Sometimes, a new floor will gradually grow or collapse over the course of a decade. Other times, the changes are violent enough and fast enough to cause players to be smashed alive, caught between an expanding wall and a hard place.

The Splinter’s technological level varies randomly from room to room, zone to zone, and level to level. While the majority of the Splinter’s architecture resembles a vast and incredibly intricate medieval dungeon labyrinth, everything from decaying and condemned shopping malls to glistening steel superstructures can be found within its expanse.

The Splinter’s zones span everything from pre-stone age to unimaginably futuristic technologies, indistinguishable from magic, blending with one another chaotically. The technologies found in the Splinter include thousands of strains never before invented by man, alternate paths of invention we never took at hundreds of junctures in our evolution; steam-powered clockwork computers, living guns made of interlocking bones and soft tissues, and devices so complex that the human science still cannot come close to understanding what they are, and how they work.

The inhabitants of the game—and the Avatars taken on by the players—are equally strange, radical evolutionary sports that went down paths of development that humanity never dreamed of. Neither truly antehuman or posthuman, they are humanity seen sidewise. All of them have the ability to spontaneously shape change, and the magic like power to Tune; to reflexively or intentionally change reality in the Splinter through will alone.

The Programmers have long since ceased being able to control on any major level the development of the Game’s setting or its players. They can still insert and extract players, and create minor changes, but they cannot control the development of the game’s world or its inhabitants. This makes the Game more exciting for everyone.

The Game is a virtual reality construct. The Players plug in first-hand, and can control the action. Those who succeed are the world’s rockstars, athletes, and media darlings. Those who fail bleed out in the chair and are forgotten when tomorrow’s fans rise. The richest viewers can plug into VR right in the studio, seeing, hearing, and feeling everything the Players experience. The rest of the world watches their favorite Players glued to their holograph sets. The best games are recorded, the recordings endlessly played and replayed. The Game is not fixed. It is real. Even the death. Who could ever look away?

By choice or misadventure, you have become a Player.

WELCOME TO THE GAME. WELCOME TO SPLINTER.

All of the text following this fluff is suffering with some terminology issues, but hopefully I'm making any damn sense at all; if not let me know and I will try and explain better.

***

So basically, if you can wrap your head around this, you the player of this RPG Splinter are playing a Player, a "real person" in the dystopian future of 2741. Your Player--that is to say the player's Player--is a contestant in the Game, an ultra-violent VR reality show that takes the form of a perilous dungeon crawl through an infinitely vast environment that is something like a cross between your standard D&D mega-dungeon, the setting of the movie Dark City and the megastructure from the manga Blame!. In the Game, your Player controls an Avatar, one of the native people of the Realm, the "world" where the Game takes place. And all Avatars are shape-shifting demi-gods.

(They don't start out more relatively powerful than say, 1st Level D&D 3.5E characters, but the Game's Avatar leveling mechanic literally measures "what percent of a god you are". So an Ascension 0 character is <1% of a God and an Ascension 12 character is ~12% of a God. The system isn't mature enough, but I'm fairly sure that Ascension higher than 20 (more than 20% of a god) would be the point where PC Avatars cease to be playable.)

Every player's Player is tied to exactly one Avatar. If a Player's Avatar dies in the game, the Player dies too; they can't "roll a new character". (Don't worry, you the player player at the table don't actually die.)

The "real world" of SPLINTER really really hyperbolically sucks. Think less Shadowrun, more 1984. But whether you're an academy trained pro or an unlucky criminal or resistance fighter who was caught and forced to play, you have the same odds of survival and chance at success within the Game itself. And success within the game can lead to Fame, which in a world based on entertainment is the most important kind of power.

***

The game of SPLINTER uses two separate sets of mechanics, one for Player scenes (that take place in the real world and might make up 10-25% of the average campaign) and one for Avatar scenes (which take place in the Game within the game, and might make up 75-90% of the average campaign). While Player stats impact Avatar stats in some ways, for the most part the rules systems are totally incompatible with one other. They don't need to be compatible because the Earth and the Realm are two completely separate "dimensions"--there is no transference between one and another. Monsters from the Game can't come into the real world, and Players can only enter the Game in the form of their Avatars, which are not, strictly speaking, themselves.

Because I see the Real World/Earth segments as being focused much more on roleplaying and the Game/Realm segments as being focused much more on exploration and combat, the Earth rules are extremely rules-lite (although note that I DO want there to be rules for play on Earth and I DO want them to be separate from the mechanics of the Game). The Realm rules very much aren't rules-lite and tend to be kind of the opposite.

The other thing that the Earth rules are besides "lite" is if you imagine a spectrum between "realistic" and "empowering" very much on the "realistic" end. It's meant to be a dystopian setting, so your capabilities in the Earth rules are very much constrained by realism; i.e. if you get shot with a gun, you will probably die.

I'm going to talk about the rules-lite Earth/"Real World" mechanics first, because those are the ones I'm less confident don't suck.

[Neurosis]

Probably worth a word or two about influences at this point.

It'd be a fair cop to say that S P L I N T E R is (in part) Matthew Stover's Acts of Caine series with the serial numbers filed off; exactly as much as D&D is Tolkien, Shadowrun is William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, and Vampire: The Masquerade is Anne Rice.

Anyway, so, mechanics. Let me just excerpt from the rulebook here. Please excuse shitty formatting.

RULESBURST: PLAYER CREATION

Don’t you mean character creation?

In most games you, the player, create a character. In this game, you, the person create a Player AND you create their Avatar, the “character” that they “play” inside the Splinter itself. Complicated? Yes. A bit of a mind screw? Definitely. But that’s the way we like it. In the future, the word Player, when capitalized, in these rules refers to the character you play, who is, within the game, a Player. When we refer instead to you, we will do everything possible to make it clear; usually, we will just say “you”, not “the player”. And we’ll try to do this rarely anyway. Player Creation should take no more than five minutes. Avatar Creation, on the other hand…

Professionals and Amateurs

There are two kinds of Players. You need to choose which one yours is.

Professionals grew up in Academies. Academies are semi-monastic military schools that train these modern day gladiators. Cross the most over-competitive, adrenaline fueled jocks you know with the most infuriatingly precocious, over-achieving geniuses, splice that with the confidence, poise and superiority complex of Miss America candidates and throw in some genuinely violent and extremely competent military types, and you have the milieu of a Professional Player. Worse still was the environment the Professionals grow up in, like Ender’s Game on steroids. Professionals are always competitive, ruthless, goal-oriented, and focused. When creating a Professional, think about the experience they had at the Academy. Were they the top of their class or an underdog? What things did they have to do to rise to the top that they’ll always regret? Did they come from the outside world, or have they had no contact with it?

In rules terms, players have higher attributes but have learned less Player Skills.

Amateurs were ordinary people, belonging to the lower classes, until something bad happened. Some of them are bad people—thieves and murderers and drug addicts. Others were just the urban poor, in the wrong place at the wrong time in an overpopulated fascist society. One of the most interesting backgrounds that Amateurs can come from is the Resistance Movement, since they are forced to play the Game that is the basis of the society that they are rebelling against. When playing an amateur, think about what they did wrong (or right) to wind up forced to play the game.

In rules terms, amateurs have lower attributes but have learned more Player Skills

Player Attributes
Since most of the game takes place in The Splinter, roleplay in the Portal is rules light, so Players have only four (count ‘em, FOUR) main attributes. And they are:

Strength: Physical strength, endurance, and toughness.
Speed: Quickness, agility, dexterity, foot speed.
Wits: Intelligence, perception, quick thinking.
Will: Bravery, courage, willpower, force of personality.

Professionals have 16 points to spend amongst their Player Attributes.

Amateurs have 12 points to spend amongst their Player Attributes.

You must have at least 1 in every attribute. The maximum any attribute can be is 6.

You’ll notice that Pros have enough points to have a 4 (above average) in everything, while Amateurs can have a 3 (average, ordinary) in everything. We suggest you instead distribute your points to give your Players more strengths and weaknesses, as this alone can make your Players moderately more interesting “characters”.

Attribute Tests

You will sometimes have to use your raw attributes to determine if your Player can do something that skills don’t govern; strength for bursting down a door, speed for outrunning someone, wits for remembering something, will for finding the guts to wade into a room full of corpses.

In this case, roll one die (all dice in Splinter are d6) and add roughly half the attribute score, rounded down. I say roughly for a reason. Here’s a table to help you remember what your bonus is for each attribute score:

Attribute Score: Bonus on Attribute Test
1-2: +0
3: +1
4: +2
5: +2
6: +3

Derived Player Attributes
You don’t spend points on these. They’re determined by the other attributes.

Health: How much damage you can take before dying. You have Health Points equal to your Strength x 6. A character with Strength 4 has 24 Health. Keep in mind, the “Real World” of Splinter is very realistic. One or two gunshots will kill even a tough character.
Defense: How hard your player is to hit. This number has to come up on a die for an attack to hit your player. Equal to the average of Speed and Wits (round up).
Player Initiative: Equal to Speed. Each combatant adds their Player Initiative to 1d6 each turn of combat to determine what order you all go in; the higher the result, the sooner you act.

Player Skills

There is no set list of Player Skills.

While The Splinter is a fantastic place, full of far out science fiction, fantasy, and horror elements the “real world” of Splinter very grimly resembles our world, with a splash of 1984 and Brave New World thrown in. Any skill you can have in the real world, your Player can have as a Player Skill. It just can’t be too general or specific. Skills that are too general are too potent a tool to give to a character- no one can easily learn to complete manifold tasks . Skills that are too specific might be nearly useless. Ultimately, skill creation is up to the discretion of the Referee (story teller) and players, with the exceptions of combat skills, which are provided for.

Some examples are also provided for reference purposes:
Music isn’t a skill. Too general. Guitar is. Firearms isn’t a skill. Too general. Pistol-sized weapons is. Science isn’t a skill. Too general. Chemistry is. Medical isn’t a skill. Too general. First aid is. So is Pharmaceuticals. So is Surgery. Talking isn’t a skill. Too general. Lying (Subterfuge) is. And so on, and so on, etcetera.

Sample Skills and Combat Skills

Feel free to choose from the following sample skills, but you don’t have to restrict yourself to this list. Unless you’re taking combat skills, in which case, you do.

Sample Skills: Two-hand Melee Weapons, One-hand Melee Weapons, Rifle-sized Firearms, Pistol-sized Firearms, Unarmed Combat (or specific martial arts skill), Throwing Weapons, Driving (land vehicle), Auto Repair, Lock Picking, Electronics Repair, Stealth, Swimming, Climbing, Football, Guitar, Demolitions, Chemistry, Calculus, First Aid, Cooking, Speak German, Read Latin, Stand Up Comedy, Drawing, Pilot (plane), Security Systems, Negotiation, Subterfuge, Leadership, Intimidation, Diplomacy.

Skill Points and Skill Ranks

Amateurs receive Wits x 5 Skill Points.
Professionals receive Wits x 3 Skill Points.

There are three ranks in each sill, representing levels of development.

* Trained, which costs 1 Skill Point, gives you a +1 bonus to all rolls using the skill.
* Expert, which costs 2 Skill Points, gives you a +2 bonus to all rolls using the skill.
* Master, which costs 5 Skill Points and gives you a whopping +3 bonus to those skill rolls.

Remember that costs for buying skills are cumulative, so if you want to buy a skill at Expert level it costs you one SP for the 1st level, and then two SP for the 2nd level, for a total of 3 SP. To get a Master level skill, it costs 8 SP, 1 for the 1st level, another 2 for the 2nd level, and then 5 for the 3rd.

You'll note that Players aren't very awesome; they don't get a ton of skills, they don't get great attributes. Furthermore you'll notice that the RNG is very...narrow. For want of a better word. The game is highly deterministic. A +3 bonus on a d6 is a huge deal and is meant to be. This was intentional but I'm very open to looking at any unintended consequences that may have arisen from it.

Possessions

Actors can have all kinds of possessions, mostly luxury items, such as a swank pad, a private call-girl service, a Jacuzzi, caviar, or even personal weapons. Ask your GM what it’s fair for you to start with. Keep in mind, in a police state, your weapons won’t give you much power, and your toys can be revoked at any time. Gotta keep those ratings up.

Amateurs start with nothing but their prison jumpsuit. Them’s the breaks.

Possessions in the real world are really, really severely abstracted because I can't imagine many in-game situations where they would really, really matter.

Wrapping Up

Once you have a name, gender, appearance, and back story for your Player, and you’ve determined your Player Attributes, Player Skills, and any Possessions you may have, your Player is ready to go. Move on to Avatar Creation.

EARTHSIDE: THE CORE MECHANIC
(FOR PLAYERS)

The core mechanic of play when playing as the players' Players on Earth is to roll 1d6 and add either the skill bonus (+1 for Trained, +2 for Expert, or +3 for Master) for the relevant skill, or the attribute bonus (see p. XX) for the relevant attribute and compare the result to the target number. If the result was equal to or greater than the target number, the test was successful. If not, it failed.

DIFFICULTY: Target Number
Routine..................................3
Average.................................4
Tough....................................5
Challenging...........................6
Extreme...............................7-8
Practically Impossible...........9

Positive or negative modifiers (like equipment bonuses or visibility penalties) will be applied to some base target numbers where appropriate at the GM's discretion, but the maximum after modification is 9 and the minimum is 2. Modifiers should be used sparingly. This simple, light mechanic is used for effectively everything that a Player or other character does on Earth. Attacks are a weapon/combat skill test with a Target Number of the intended victim's Defense.

Combat resolves in initiative order, each turn is ten seconds, long enough for each combatant to attack once and each combatant can act (attack) and move up to Speed x 2 yards on their initiative phase.

It really is that simple. The mechanical component of the Game within the Splinter is significantly more intricate.

I know that is really, really NOT A LOT OF RULES for the Player portion of the game. But is it TOO little? And is any of it broken?

Obviously I've got a lot more junk to show you here, but I'm going to hold off on posting 100 consecutive walls of text until I get some feedback/thoughts/comments/lewd personal attacks.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I think you might benefit from specifically articulating what kinds of adventures people are supposed to be having in meatspace. Once you know what they are supposed to be doing, you can judge whether the rules are suited to having them do it.

As things stand, the write-up suggests to me that most of your meatspace adventures consist of coming up with something interesting to do, then seeing how long you can run amuck before security teams taze you into unconsciousness and plug you back into the Matrix. But I don't know that for sure.

Are the PCs going to be going on shadowruns against nefarious corporations?
Are the PCs going to be trying to effect some kind of social change?
Are the PCs just going to be interacting with other Players, or are they interacting with the rest of urban dystopia?

[Avoraciopoctules]

Sample adventure possibilities (banal):

1. There's a sack of delicious cocaine somewhere in the building. If PC Players can nab it, they could trade it to prison jumpsuited Players for virtual gemeralds or something.

2. Some Players get into a dickwaving contest that escalates into a major rivalry. Mess with one side, and the other might like you. Maybe enough to save your PC Avatar when Rezrex's Owlbear legion attacks next game.

Sample adventure possibilities (meaningful):

1. The Game's incomprehensible spaghetti code is a great place to hide stolen data. Neo-Wikileaks had you find a data node with info on government atrocities in the Game last session, and now you need to take a USB drive to their HQ without your handlers catching on.

2. It turns out that PC Player 2 got an email from a relative or something, and they are being menaced by Neo-Mafia thugs over something. PC Players need to take a break somehow and help.

[Neurosis]

I think that's a really interesting point, Avoraciopoctules and is one of the things that I least know about the game! So definitely good job on highlighting that, you know? I find these questions to be really useful prompts.

Basically, I imagine that what the PLAYERS do from session to session, unlike what the Avatars will do, is going to very wildly from GM to GM and from group to group. What Avatars will be doing is going to be relatively invariant from group to group: competitive dungeon-delving.

I could post the list of "Game Types" within the Realm, but that wouldn't really answer what you're asking. And I mean, I can identify a few possible concepts/themes for what PLAYERS might be doing in their time outside of the Realm, but I'm not sure how well they each translate to the game.

One important thing to mention is that while the Realm has many, many, many factions (ranging from those that are ideological to those that are merely of convenience) I really want Earth to be defined by a glaring LACK of Factions. So there is no Neo-Mafia. The Corporations aren't even really different Corporations. Even the Resistance may just be secretly controlled by Games Corp, and if they're not, then they're certainly doomed to failure.

As things stand, the write-up suggests to me that most of your meatspace adventures consist of coming up with something interesting to do, then seeing how long you can run amuck before security teams taze you into unconsciousness and plug you back into the Matrix. But I don't know that for sure.

This approach had actually not even occurred to me, but I can imagine the game being fun if it worked that way.

"What you do when you're not IN The Splinter?" is definitely a damn good question.

Are the PCs going to be going on shadowruns against nefarious corporations?
Are the PCs going to be trying to effect some kind of social change?
Are the PCs just going to be interacting with other Players, or are they interacting with the rest of urban dystopia?

1) Definitely, definitely, certainly not.
2) I really want to convey that any route to doing so that doesn't hinge upon "getting really, really famous by Playing The Game" will fail. Either their overt or covert attempts at fighting the system will be quashed utterly by superior forces and nothing will change, or they'll make themselves such a nuisance that they will just be outright terminated. One way to avoid the latter is for them to become "so big" that killing them is out of the question for ratings purposes.
3) That's a solid question; I think their interactions with other Players will be the "bigger deal" in the game but seeing their interactions with the rest of urban dystopia is an interesting idea also.

One last thing I will mention that IS significant: it's not meant to be overtly stated, but there is an almost subliminal, mind-fucky kind of thread running through the text of the rulebook that the Realm isn't...actually...a virtual place. It is in fact a real dimension. This isn't ever explicitly stated or decided but it is a fascinating possibility because...well think about it. It would change the moral and ethical and political dimensions of everything that's going on. And it would make Avatar power within the game a greater threat to the real world and the powers-that-be there.

1. The Game's incomprehensible spaghetti code is a great place to hide stolen data. Neo-Wikileaks had you find a data node with info on government atrocities in the Game last session, and now you need to take a USB drive to their HQ without your handlers catching on.

This is just a completely awesome idea. This is exactly the kind of thing that I can see a climactic game session or even a long-term campaign being staged around, with plenty of twists and turns.

[Ikeren]

Will isn't used at all, which thus far would make every character a weak-willed coward.

Presumably it will eventually be used for things equally useful to HP, skills and defenses.

As written, it seems profitable (+2, 3 skill points) to get expert in way more things and master basically none. I have a vague suspicion that playtesting will reveal that number (+1, 5 skill points) for master requiring tweaking.

Also, this closely resembles the Great California Voodoo Game by...some famous dude.

[Neurosis]

I have no idea what the Great California Voodoo Game is, having never heard of it. It sounds like it involves more Voodoo than this. : )

Will impacts Avatar stats which actually makes it supremely important; if anything it's overly important. It's also used for "Control Tests" between Player and Avatar. Posting about Avatar stats now. Player stats often act as "coefficients" (I may not be using that word right) for determining the value of Avatar stats. I am postin' about this now.

You may very well be right about expert versus master level skills. Maybe more like 4 skill points for mastering?

[fectin]

To put it harshly:

If you're spotlighting the dungeon-delving portion, and the Player portion is tacked on but there's no compelling reason to use it, why would I play this instead of a dungeon-delving game without the weird intermediate layer?

It's a neat idea, and I liked Heroes Die too, but it needs a compelling reason to care about both worlds at the same time. Heroes Die wasn't great at providing that either; it just had a strong central character. If you're going that route though, you have your mechanics backwards: actual change is only going to matter in the Player world, so that's where your mechanical focus should be.

[Neurosis]

The Realm itself and Avatar action in there (which remember is 90% of the game) uses a dice pool system with semi-fixed target numbers. This is somewhere between SR4/nWoD and SR3/oWoD (it uses d6). Basically, Target Numbers are almost always 4, which means any given die almost always has a 50% chance of succeeding. However, situational modifiers (penalties like inadequate equipment, bad lighting conditions, etcetera) are applied first in the form of "Step" penalties. At a one-step penalty, you're looking for fives. At a two-step penalty, you're looking for sixes.

Once you have a two-step penalty (TN: 6) it (the target number) can't get any worse, because stacking modifiers is fucking annoying.

Situational BONUSES are more likely to add more dice; anything like a "Step Bonus" (TN 3 for instance) would be extremely rare. I know that we're moving two-sliders to adjust difficulty here, but the truth is that both sliders have a limited degree of motion, and don't move often.

Dice pools are vaguely comparable to SR3. Six is a very respectable dice pool. Even three or four is genuinely usable.

It is also a semi-classed system. There are no classes, but there are races that function a lot like classes.

Here are the rules for avatar creation which also happen to contain a great deal of the mechanics WITHIN the game world.

This is long, and will be formatted in a way approximately as shitty as an actual poop because MS Word and 4ums are not particularly compatible. I apologize for the formatting, although not necessary the length; this a lot of the meat of the game here.

Avatar Creation

Every Player has an Avatar that they appear as in the world of The Splinter. The Player does not choose his avatar, but fortunately you do choose your Player’s Avatar. The Avatar does not change from Game to Game; a Player has only one Avatar, so choose wisely.

The transition from Player Consciousness to Avatar Consciousness is extremely jarring the first time, and honestly doesn’t get much easier after that. The Player’s memories are violently scrambled upon porting into The Splinter, shattering a Player’s lifetime of recollections into a million pieces, and leaving only half the pieces, badly randomized. The Player is left with only a vague idea of who and what they were in the real world; the Game preserves the player’s goal for the set of rules currently being used.

Likewise, upon first port, the Player has no memories from the host body—Avatar—that he Thought-Grafts onto. The Player first enters the game with no innate knowledge of The Splinter, its layout (which is a chimera anyway), its politics, or its inhabitants. Anything the Avatar learns by playing the game is remembered, even after Porting out, when the Player next Ports in. Anything that the Player learns about The Splinter from outside is fragmented and forgotten upon Porting in; but memories from the Avatar are retained.

The only thing a Player knows about their Avatar upon first assuming it is the Avatar’s name and basic capabilities. If the Avatar has a back story outside of the player, it will need to be learned through context clues. But many Avatar lives seem to be blank slates, newly created when the Player first ports into the game.

When the Avatar dies in The Splinter, the Player dies in the “real world”.

Choose a Bloodline:
There are seven sentient bloodlines that can become a Player’s Avatar. There are countless other non-sentient bloodlines in The Splinter, but these cannot be Avatars. While in traditional RPGs, each character has a ‘race’ and a ‘class’, the Bloodlines of Splinter have evolved to such a specialized degree that each one of them is a race and a class.

Each Bloodline has certain genetically inherited personality traits and beliefs. How much of these come through in the way the Avatar is roleplayed is entirely up to you. Different Players take on the personalities of their Avatar’s Bloodline to different degrees, or none at all. Likewise, even non-Player inhabitants of the Realm sometimes deviate from their Bloodline’s stereotypes.

Every Bloodline has at least three Shapes ranging from a Man Shape (most human) to a beast shape. Every Bloodline can change shape more or less at will.

Each Bloodline has bonuses and penalties to two or more Avatar Statistics. These bonuses and penalties both get larger as the Avatar shifts from Man Shape toward a beast shape.

Each Bloodline has access to several Harmonics. An innate kind of magic called Tuning, Harmonics tend to provide potent supernatural powers.

Each Bloodline has a propensity towards joining certain sects (ideological groups/political factions). The possible Sects for a given Bloodline are listed in their description.

In general, characters from any Bloodline may choose any Avatar Skills.


The Aventine:
The Aventine are the noble and haughty ruling class of The Realm, at least they believe themselves to be. In reality, the Realm’s governing structure could be best described as post-apocalyptic anarchy, and no one is in control of anything. Hence, the Court status of the Aventine is of at best dubious utility in many situations. However, no matter what the social structure, in small or large groups Aventine tend to wield a lot of social power, and often wind up in charge of the situation.

Aventine in Man Shape are tall, thin, pale and blonde humanoids with aquiline bone structures, long, narrow noses and sharp, severe features. They prefer to dress in light blues and greens. Aventine in Rione are taller and thinner, though still vaguely humanoid. Their blonde hair is replaced by short, glossy blue downy feathers, and occasionally their bodies are covered in similar down. Their manicured fingernails become razor sharp talons. Their eyes glow bright blue. Aventine in Gyre form are tremendous birds of prey, their feathers ranging from sky blue to midnight blue.

Statistics:
Man Shape: Celerity +1, Omniscience +1, -1 Vitality, -1 Might.
Rione: Celerity +1, Omniscience +2, -1 Vitality, -2 Might.
Gyre: Celerity +1, Omniscience +3, -1 Vitality, -3 Might.

Harmonics: Aventine Gauntlet, Storm-Crow, Regal Mien, Flight.
Possible Sects: Novemberist Court, Metropol, or Sages.

The Asilos:
The Asilos as a whole are somber ascetics, walking around in a haze of regret, mourning the mistakes of past lives, trying to make repentance for their sins as best as they can by doing good. Their primary cultural identifier is a failure to let go of the past. They frequently act as confessors of others sins, or staunch moral support in times of need, for others. While deeply felt, the moral code of most Asilos is simple enough; put others before yourself, and do do harm unto none. Asilos Avatars of course, like any Avatars, need not follow the Bloodline’s moral code.

Asilos in Man Shape tend to be stocky, slow moving, dark-haired, dark-eyed, sickly looking and pallid. Most Asilos even in this humanoid form shamble around with downcast eyes and perpetual frowns. They prefer to dress in dark clothing, especially monk’s robes and hoods. Asilos in Ghola are paler, darker-countenanced and smell worse. Their eyes either have huge dark bags beneath them or stare out blankly, like skeletal sockets. They go from being stocky to freakishly thin, with their skeletons often visible through their paper-white and paper-thin skin. Asilos in their final form, Lich, are no longer corporeal; they are dark shadows with eyes like smoke, animating black robes and staves of charred wood.

Statistics:
Man Shape: Vitality +1, Conviction +1, -1 Celerity.
Ghola: Vitality +1, Conviction +2, -2 Celerity.
Lich: Vitality +1, Conviction +3, -3 Celerity.
Harmonics: Dead Reckoning, Bone Weary, Necrogenesis, Smog Soul.
Sects: Penitents, Punishers, Priests

"Race Emo, Class Emo" would be a fair jab, but in actuality 13th century monks would be a more accurate comparison to how I saw these guys culturally. Well, I mean, 13th century monks that also happen to all be wereliches.

I'll add that I'm noticing as I post this that while I'm making a lot of generalizations about what different Bloodlines are like as people, those aren't mean to to be hard and fast "rules". You can have an Asilos who's super fucking pissed and has something to prove, a Needlekin who's quiet, gentle and introspective, and so on.

Other thing I am feeling self conscious about: I stole proper nouns from LOLFUCKINGEVERYWHERE.

The Mnemonic:
Mnemonics are brilliant inventors, tinkerers, craftsmen and scientists. Often they prefer architecture, engineering, and gadgetry to living people, and so they can appear cold, distant, and brusque. They are often narrow-minded, focusing only on the projects at hand. To most of the inhabitants of The Realm, the motivation of Mnemonics are inscrutable, but their skills are invaluable. They seem to share the curiosity that the Tzaetzi have about the nature of The Realm, but they seem more interested in reverse engineering for their complex and inscrutable purposes.

Mnemonics in Man Shape are frail, slight humans with pronounced foreheads, a slightly greenish or bronze colored huge to their skin. They prefer to dress in shimmering golden and silver robes, sashes, and tunics. Mnemonics in Clockwork have exposed artificial pneumatic arms and legs made of gears and cogs, pistons and actuators, the brass clockwork endlessly ticking. Mnemonics in Numidium are glistening golems of metal and machinery, their backs puffing steam as they trundle noisily about

Statistics:
Man Shape: Brilliance +1, Omniscience -1.
Clockwork: Brilliance +2, Omniscience -2.
Numidium: Brilliance +3, Omniscience -3.
Harmonics: Kraftwerx, Amputechture, Form/Function, Jam Tuning.
Possible Sects: Sages, Scientists, Novemberist Court.

The Needlekin:
Needlekin are the living embodiment of violence, combat, and physical force. They exist only to assert their martial dominance on the field of battle. They have no strong ideals or dominant personality traits, only the desire to always be fighting.

Man Shape Needlekin appear as big, strong humanoids with very sharp, strong teeth and nails. They prefer to wear armor and carry weapons at all times. In Razorback, the skin of bladelings is penetrated all over from razor sharp blades, spurs, and spikes growing out from their bones, and their skin gains a reddish hue from the blood that these natural weapons make on their way out. In the final form of Needlekin, Bladeling, the flesh disappears entirely beneath a razor sharp porcupine-like coat of steel bristles, that forms an exoskeleton layer of razor sharp armor that becomes the Needlekin’s skin.

Statistics:
Man Shape: Vitality +1, Might +1, Brilliance -1, Omniscience -1.
Razorback: Vitality +1, Might +2, Brilliance -2, Omniscience -1.
Bladeling: Vitality +1, Might +3, Brilliance -3, Omniscience -1.

Harmonics: Arms like Swords, Skin like Plate Mail, Rain of Needles, Battle Scream.
Possible Sects: Metropol, Punishers, Anarchists.

The Tzaetzi:
The Tzaetzi are serpent people, long-lived and wise. They make excellent counselors, and advisors, and hence are often close to royalty and those in power. They often explore the Realm out of pure curiosity, and they are great lovers (and jealous hoarders) of knowledge and lore of all kinds.

Tzaetzi in Man Shape are tall and sinuous. They have broad faces, amber colored, almond-shaped eyes, and slightly pronounced canine fangs. Their skin has a pale golden hue, and they prefer to dress in flowing green robes and sarongs. When Tzaetzi shift to Serpens, their reptilian qualities become more pronounced; their skin becomes tough and scaly, their tongue becomes long and forked, their fangs long and venomous, their fore-arms shrivel. In their final form, Ouroboros, Tzaetzi are enormous sixteen-foot long golden cobras.

Statistics:
Man Shape: Brilliance +1, -1 Celerity.
Serpens: Brilliance +1, Conviction +1, -1 Celerity, -1 Might.
Ouroboros: Brilliance +1, Conviction +1, Omniscience +1, -1 Celerity, -1 Vitality, -1 Might.

Harmonics: Star Venom, Cobra’s Gaze, Healer’s Craft, Raw Tuning.
Sects: Sages, Scientists, Priests, Novemberist Court.

The Wyndlass:
The Wyndlass are the silver-drake people. They are quick and clever, but flighty, capricious, irresponsible, and lack common sense. Many Wyndlass are artists, explorers, adventurers, and rogues. Often, a given Wyndlass will have many occupations in a life cycle and even flit from Sect to Sect, since very rarely can one way of life hold their interest for more than a few years.

Wyndlass in Man Shape are extremely tall and very bony, weighing next to nothing with bones that are near hollow. They have silver hair and eyes, and like to dress in rich dark red and purple silks with gold trim. They rarely wear armor. Wyndlass in Zu form manifest a long, prehensile silver tale, and a bladed silver carapace begins to pierce through their skin in angular plates. Their features grow more bestial as well, with their eyes flaring silver. Wyndlass in their final Aurora form become the incredibly thin silver drake, gaining two long, graceful azure wings and a slender, scythe-like tail.
Statistics: Man Shape: Celerity +1, Conviction -1.
Zu: Celerity +2, Conviction -2.
Aurora: Celerity +3, Conviction -3.
Harmonics: Flight, Silver Wing, Rift Wind, Prehensile Swordplay.
Sects: Almost any, except the Punishers.

The Vryx:
The Vryx are demons of greed and murder, often assassins and thieves. Even the kindest Vryx are incorrigible treasure hunters with little respect for the law. They are typically vicious and cruel, caring first and foremost about amassing a great fortune. For a typical Vryx, collecting treasure at all costs isn’t a choice, but a genetic imperative, a way of life. A Vryx in Man Shape is a scrawny, slouched humanoid with red-tinted skin and blood red eyes. Vryx in man form have their teeth filed down to points. They prefer to dress in black, for concealment. Vryx in Telane fall to all fours, growing four surprisingly dexterous cloven hooves in place of their hands, their arms and legs growing hairy. They also sprout a tufted, forked tail, and their skin color darkens to bright red. Vryx in Abadd on are truly monstrous, they crawl at incredible speed along the ground on their bellies. They have razor-sharpened six foot long tongues, and bladed tails, and speak in hideous, distorted voices.

Statistics:
Man Shape: Celerity +1, Omniscience +1, Conviction -1, Vitality -1.
Telane: Celerity +2, Omniscience +1, Conviction -1, Vitality -2.
Abbadon: Celerity +3, Omniscience +1, Conviction -1, Vitality -3.

Harmonics: Camouflage, Lock Lash, Cut-Throat, Hoarder’s Luck.
Sects: Anarchists, Punishers, or independent.

Choose a Sect
There are many sects in The Realm, political factions united by a shared belief in either the origins of The Realm or what its future should hold. While the Sects used to be powerful and unified enough to convoke and war with each other, the sects are now fragmented, shards scattered across the splinter, each trying to survive. Since your Avatar arrives in The Splinter with little or no knowledge of The Realm, the blurbs here are extremely cursory. Any more you want to learn about a given sect, you must learn by playing the game.

Note: your Avatar does not have to belong to a sect, and you may well have a hard time convincing a Sect you are a member of it even if you do. Also note these aren’t the only factions.

The Novemberist Court: The once-mighty Aventine ruling family of The Realm, the Novemberist Court wish to maintain the status quo and retain their power.
Metropol: The order-obsessed guards and police of The Realm, they wish to maintain rule of law and order at all costs.
Sages: The goal of the Tzaetzi lead sages is to collect all pertinent lore that remains in The Realm, and to put together a coherent history of The Realm, and even discern its purpose.
Penitents: The Penitents believe that The Realm is a prison to which all the Bloodlines have been consigned for their sins. For this reason, they share Metropol and The Court’s desire to maintain the status quo.
Priests: The Priests earnestly believe that The Realm is a holy place, an organ of living divinity, and they wish to protect and preserve its sanctity. They are opposed to Penitents and Punishers.
Punishers: The most dangerous of the factions, the Punishers believe that The Realm is a punitive hell for all there, and wish to inflict as much suffering as is possible upon everyone.
Scientists: The Mnemonic lead scientists wish to parley, decipher, and restore as much technology as possible; their motives are diverse, from personal power, to restoring civilization, to arcane motives, like discerning (and manipulating) the nature of The Realm.
Anarchists: Anarchists wish to destroy the status quo, and in spite of themselves, they are winning, due to the chaotic nature of The Realm itself. Many anarchists are looking for a way to escape from The Realm forever. Of course, they don’t work well together.

***

Avatar Statistics


Avatars have six Main Statistics, three mental and three physical.

Descriptions of Main Statistics

Vitality: Life-force, toughness, endurance, fortitude, resistance to damage, and health.
Might: Physical strength/power, which determines hurting, breaking, and carrying capability.
Celerity: Speed, agility, quickness, dexterity, adroitness, reaction-time.
Omniscience: Perception, alertness, awareness, and empathy/adeptness in social situations.
Brilliance: Intelligence, wits, common sense, knowledge, brain power. Mental vitality.
Conviction: Courage, willpower, force of will, leadership, Mental might.

The fact that all statistic names are when possible "ten dollar words when a one dollar word would do just fine" was actually an intentional stylistic choice. I know that other people arrive at attribute names like this by a different route, so I thought I'd point out that I was being intentionally pretentious to reinforce certain themes.

The following method is used to determine your Avatar’s Main Statistics.

Roll 2d6 (two six sided dice) and add the results together. Record what you got. Repeat this process five more times, noting your results each time. You should have six numbers between two and twelve. Distribute these numbers as you see fit amongst your six main statistics. Higher is better, obviously; you must decide your strengths and weaknesses.

Now, note how those statistics change when you apply your Avatar’s Bloodline stat modifiers for each form. Caveat: your Avatar must have at least a 1 in each Statistic, even after maximum racial penalties (for the most extreme form) are applied.

But hey, what if my scores are too low?

To determine if your scores really are “too low” add them all together. If they add up to 36 or less, then you can reroll all of them. You can keep rerolling until they add up to 37 or more.

I am aware of all of the ways in which rolling up stats as opposed to say, point-buy, is controversial and bad. However this was made as an intentional stylistic choice. The roleplaying game of Splinter that I am writing isn't meant to be unfair, but the game-within-a-game, the Game? That is explicitly meant to be painfully unfair. Like..."roll 2d6, drop nothing, and deal with it" type unfair. But I don't care about that enough to risk the game being fun. But then again ye olde D&D wasn't strictly speaking unfun so yeah...I don't know. Thoughts?

Statistic Tests

You will sometimes have to use your Avatar’s raw statistics to do something that skills don’t govern; Might for bursting down a door, Celerity for outrunning someone, Brilliance for remembering something, Conviction for resisting intimidation, Omniscience for noticing something, Vitality for resisting the effects of a poison.

In this case, roll a number of dice (all dice used in Splinter are d6) equal to roughly half the attribute score, rounded down. Here’s a table to help you remember what your bonus is for each attribute score:


Stat Score: Dice Rolled
1: None. (You automatically fail this test. Shit.)
2-3: 1
4-5: 2
6-7: 3
8-9: 4
10-11: 5
12-13: 6
14-15: 7

As with all Avatar Tests, each 4, 5, or 6 that you roll on one of those dice is a success. One success is enough for most tasks; the more successes you get, the better.

Derived Statistics

Life Points: How much damage your Avatar can take before kicking the bucket. This statistic is equal to your Avatar’s Vitality multiplied by your Player’s Strength. (A Player with Strength 3 who has an Avatar with Vitality 6 has 18 Life Points.) Note that maximum Life Points can decrease with shifting forms; this change in Life Points can shave current Life Points off the top, but cannot kill an Avatar in-and-of itself. Changing forms can increase/decrease Maximum Life Points, but never current Life Points.

(A Vrix with Vitality 6 in Man-Shape and 18 out of 18 Life Points shifting from Man-Shape to Abaddon would lose 6 Current and Max Life Points, and be at 12 out of 12 Life Points. Shifting back would leave the Vrix at 12 out of 18 Life Points.)

Evasion Factor:
Equal to your Avatar’s Celerity divided by three, rounded down. This is how many successes are required on an attack test to hit you. Your Evasion Factor can later be increased by worn armor. Shifting forms can increase or decrease your Evasion Factor; note your Evasion factor for each form on your sheet.

Avatar Reaction:
This is what you ‘roll’ for initiative at the start of each combat to determine what order you act in combat; Avatar Reaction is recorded as a number of dice plus a flat number. You roll those dice during initiative, not now. Your Avatar Reaction IS: a number of d6 equal to the dice you roll for Avatar Omniscience tests + your Player’s Speed. A Player with Speed 4 and an Avatar with Omniscience 7 would roll 3d6 + 4 to determine initiative.

Starting Harmonics:
Your Avatar starts with a number of levels of Harmonics to distribute equal to the average of your Player’s Wits and your Avatar’s (Man Shape) Brilliance (rounded down).

In other words, your Avatar has starting levels of Harmonics to distribute equal to (Wits + Brilliance)/2 (round down).

Gnosis:
Your Avatar’s Gnosis is equal to your Player’s Will. Gnosis is the number of ‘stages’ per combat you can shift. (For an Aventine to shift from Man Shape to Rione is one stage; to shift from Gyre back to Man Shape is two stages.) Gnosis/2 (round down) is the number of stages that an Avatar can shift in a turn.

Tuning Points: Tuning points are used whenever you Tune, i.e. use your Bloodline’s Harmonics to achieve certain potent effects. You have Tuning Points equal to your Gnosis x Conviction. Note that maximum Tuning Points can decrease with shifting forms; this change in Tuning Points can shave current Tuning Points off the top. Changing forms can increase Maximum Tuning Points, but never current Tuning Points. (An Asilos with Conviction 7 and 21 out of 21 Tuning Points in Man Shape shifting to Lich would be at 21 out of 27 Tuning Points.)

Bonus Damage: All armed melee attacks deal an additional amount of bonus damage equal to ½ your Avatar’s Might (round down). Two-handed melee weapons deal an amount of bonus damage equal to your Avatar’s full Might.

Carrying Capacity: Your Avatar can carry Might x 2 stone and remain able to move. (Stone is a unit of weight in The Realm, equivalent to about 14 lbs.)

So yeah that's why Will matters.

Avatar Skills

Avatar skills are the stuff of adventure; dungeon delving, lock picking, hunting, trapping, and of course, combat. Unlike the wide-open skill creation for Players, there is a set list of Avatar Skills to choose from listed below.

Every skill has a level from zero (untrained) to twelve. Like all Avatar Tests, the level of a skill is how many dice you roll when attempting to perform that skill (making a skill test). Every one of those dice that turns up a four, five or a six is a success; the more successes, the better. If you must attempt to perform an action governed by a skill that you do not have, instead make a test with that skill’s governing attribute—however, on this test, only fives and sixes are successes.

Avatar Skills are bought with Talent Points; one Talent Point buys one level in one skill, simple as that. All Avatars have a number of (non-transferable) Talent Points to buy starting skills equal to their (Man Shape) Brilliance x 2 + their Player Wits + (50 – the total of all your (Man Shape) attributes, added together). In other words, a Player with Wits 4 who has an avatar with Brilliance 8 (Might 9, Omniscience 4, Conviction 7, Vitality 10, and Celerity 6, for a total of 44) would start with 26 Talent Points.

The highest level a starting skill can be at is 7.

Avatar Skill List

Barter: This skill is used to appraise the value of found objects and items, to haggle when bartering with other characters (the vastly decentralized world of The Splinter uses a barter system, if you can even find someone to barter with) and for other general applications of the mercantile trade. Your Barter skill cannot exceed your Omniscience Stat.

Athletics: This skill covers long-distance running, swimming, jumping, climbing, balancing, and various other athletic endeavors. Your Athletics skill cannot exceed your Celerity stat.

Deceit: This skill is your ability to lie and cheat, but not necessarily steal (see Legerdemain). Whenever you use Deceit, your opponent rolls a number of dice equal to their Omniscience to resist see through your lie. Whoever has more successes wins the contested deception test. Ties are resolved by the GM. Your Deceit skill cannot exceed your Brilliance stat.

Diplomacy: This skill is used for all social situations that don’t directly involve deceit, intimidation, or haggling. Diplomacy can’t be used for any of those things, but it can be used for any other social maneuver at the GM’s discretion. Your Diplomacy skill cannot exceed your Conviction stat.

Legerdemain: This skill is used to conceal weapons, pick pockets, and for various other feats of sleight of hand. This skill is not used to pick locks or disarm traps. Your Legerdemain skill cannot exceed your Celerity stat.

Security: This skill is used to pick locks, disarm traps, and perform miraculous escapes from bonds. Unless you have proper tools, only dice that come up five or six on a Security Test count as successes Your Security skill cannot exceed your Brilliance stat. One Step Handicap: No Tools.

Intimidate: This skill is used to coerce or scare another sentient creature into obeying you or fearing you, at least at the present moment. People who are intimidated tend not to like you later on. Your Intimidate skill cannot exceed your Conviction stat.

First Aid: This skill is used to provide immediate care to others. Unless you are equipped with some kind of proper tools—bandages, salves, sutures, styptics, herbal poultices—only results of a five or six on dice rolled for a First Aid test count as a success. When attempting First Aid on yourself, only fives and sixes count as successes—when attempting First Aid on yourself AND without proper tools, only sixes count as a success. Each success on a First Aid test to heal a wounded Avatar restores 1d6 Life Points to that Avatar. However, you can only attempt First Aid on an avatar once per any given set of wounds. After performing First Aid on an Avatar, you must wait until that Avatar is wounded in combat with enemies again before retrying First Aid. Your First Aid skill cannot exceed your Omniscience stat. One Step Handicap: No Tools or Working On Self. Two Step Handicap: Working On Self No Tools.

Literacy: This skill is used for all tasks related to reading, writing, translation, research, and study; it is also used to decipher the meaning of ancient scripts, runes, and texts. Your Literacy skill cannot exceed your Brilliance stat.

Animal Ken: This skill is used for all skill involving “social interaction” with non-sentient beasts, including training, taming and commanding “pets”, trying to get neutral beasts not to attack you, and riding any mounts you might acquire. Your Animal Ken skill cannot exceed your Conviction stat.

Technology: This skill is used for all encounters with technology that is more advanced than the splinter’s medieval baseline. Keep in mind that even if you and your Player know how to work an assault rifle or a biometric lock, your Player’s Avatar does not necessarily have that knowledge. This skill allows you to decipher, operate, repair, disable all manner of high tech objects. It also allows you to wield any high tech weapons you might find. Your starting (and only starting) Technology skill cannot exceed half your Brilliance stat (round down).

You automatically get a skill called "Sorcery" equal to your starting Technology skill level. I will get into why this is later on.

Survival: This skill determines your basic ability to keep you and your allies clothed, fed, sheltered, and warm within The Realm, as well as your ability to hunt and gather, and your skill at tracking enemies over a wide range of terrains. Your Survival skill cannot exceed your Vitality Stat or exceed your Omniscience Stat.

Stealth: This skill is used to hide, move silently, and avoid detection by other characters. Usually, your Stealth roll to do something unnoticed is contested by the Omniscience rolls of those looking for you; who achieves more successes wins. Stealth can’t be higher than Celerity. Two step handicap: hiding in “plain sight”.

Unarmed Combat: This skill is used for all attacks made with fists, feet, claws, teeth, tails, tentacles, clockwork limbs, razor sharp tongue, or whatever other natural weapons are present in the current form of your Avatar’s Bloodline. Defaults to Might at a one step handicap.

Melee Combat: This skill is used for all armed attacks with melee weapons, including dagger, swords, spears, axes, maces, halberds, and any other melee weapons you might find in The Realm. Defaults to Celerity or Might (user’s choice) at a one step handicap.

Ranged Combat: This skill is used for all armed attacks with ranged weapons, including throwing knives, slings, bows, crossbows, guns, and any other ranged weapons you might find in The Realm. Defaults to Ominiscience at a one step handicap. (Note, attacks with high tech weapons use Technology, default to Ranged at one step handicap, or default to Omniscience at a two step handicap.)

Defaulting:
If you need to use a skill that you don’t have, make an appropriate Statistic Test for the governing Statistic at a one-step handicap (i.e. only 5s and 6s count as successes), except for Technology, which defaults at a two-step handicap (i.e. only 6s count as successes).

Note that for short-term one-off games skills like Unarmed Combat and Survival have proven to be really important in playtesting because every time you port in to the Splinter, you port in Naked and Unarmed.

[Neurosis]

To put it harshly:

If you're spotlighting the dungeon-delving portion, and the Player portion is tacked on but there's no compelling reason to use it, why would I play this instead of a dungeon-delving game without the weird intermediate layer?

I agree with this, I think it's a really good question that I do need to answer. I would argue that there are a lot of people (myself included) who would be intrigued by the gimmick of the weird intermediate layer even if it wasn't DOING anything. Like, as a player, I'd try that shit just because it was weird/different, but that shouldn't surprise anyone; we all design the kinda games we wanna play.

But as a designer, that's not a good enough answer for me. The "real world" does need to "do something".

Heroes Die wasn't great at providing that either; it just had a strong central character.

This I disagree with; Heroes Die made me care about both worlds a LOT. It's something I've struggled to emulate here; I think that the Splinter is possibly MORE interesting than Overworld/Ankhana but yeah I find myself caring about the "Earth" of Splinter a lot less than the "Earth" of Heroes Die. I'm not sure why that is. It may be because Heroes Die has lots of amazingly strong characters on both sides of the dimensional gap and Splinter has..."some day some hypothetical person will make PCs I care about".

If you're going that route though, you have your mechanics backwards: actual change is only going to matter in the Player world, so that's where your mechanical focus should be.

Actual change in the Player world is almost impossible to achieve except by becoming indispensably famous in the Game world (the Splinter); this was one of my design goals. This was one really exciting aspect of Heroes Die I really wanted to emulate here.

[Neurosis]

Last "mass of text" for now.

Harmonics

A Harmonic is a kind of innate Tuning (reality altering magic) that an Avatar can perform, producing spectacular effects. Every Bloodline has the potential to use four different Harmonics. Every Harmonic has a level from one to five.

Starting Avatars begin with (Player Wits + Avatar Brilliance [Man Shape])/2 (round down) levels of starting Harmonics. For instance, a Player with Wits 3 playing a Tzaetzi Avatar with Brilliance 6 in Man Shape would start with four levels of Harmonics. The Avatar could begin with only one Harmonic at Level 4, four Harmonics at Level 1, two Harmonics at Level 2, or any other distribution of the four levels of starting Harmonics.

The highest level of any given Harmonic an Avatar can start with is Level 4.

Aventine Gauntlet:
“Chains of lightning dance around your clenched fist or grasping talon.”

Level 1: Aventine can spend 5 Tuning Points to make an unarmed attack that, if it hits, instead of normal damage does 1 Shock and inflicts a 25% weakness to all Magick based damage for the targeted character until the end of the Aventine’s next turn. (The effected target takes 125% damage (round down) from all Magick damage. An attack for 6 Shock, Fire, or Frost would inflict 7 damage instead.)
Level 2: The attack now deals 1d6 Shock and the weakness to Magick lasts for 1d6 turns.
Level 3: The weakness to Magick increases to 50%. (The effected target takes 150% damage (round down) from all Magick damage. An attack for 6 Shock, Fire, or Frost would inflict 9 damage instead.)
Level 4: The attack now deals 2d6 Shock and the weakness to magick lasts for 2d6 turns.
Level 5: The weakness to Magick increases to 100%. (The effected target now takes double damage from all Magick based damage for the duration.)

Storm Crow:
“A storm of black thunderclouds rolls and hisses around your falcon form.”

Level 1: An Aventine can pay 5 Tuning Points while shifting to Gyre form to have all targets within ten feet of the Aventine take 1d6 Shock damage.
Level 2: The shock damage is now inflicted to anyone within thirty feet.
Level 3: The effect now lasts for 1d6 turns, as long as the Aventine remains in Gyre form for the entire duration.
Level 4: The damage dealt each turn increases to 2d6 Shock damage. The effect now lasts for 2d6 turns, as long as the Aventine remains in Gyre form for the entire duration.
Level 5: The effect now lasts for as long as the Aventine remains in Gyre form, if he chooses to activate it. The effect can be deactivated at will, but the cost must be paid again to reactivate it.

Royal Mien:
“Your noble features and dominant gaze become difficult to disobey.”

Level 1: Add one die to all Diplomacy and Intimidation skill tests.
Level 2: Add two dice to all Diplomacy and Intimidation skill tests.
Level 3: Hawk’s Gaze: By making eye contact with a sentient being, you can spend 5 Tuning Points and roll Conviction + Intimidation + Royal Mien. If you achieve a number of successes equal to the target’s Conviction Score, the target is paralyzed with fear and may not act as long as you continue to do nothing but stare them down. Any other actions break this effect.
Level 4: Add four dice to all Diplomacy and Intimidation skill tests.
Level 5: You automatically succeed all Diplomacy and Intimidation tests except those made “versus” anyone with a Conviction score greater than yours.

Flight:
“Your winged forms are capable of majestic (and convenient!) flight.”

Level 1: Your Beast form can fly with a flight speed of Celerity yards a turn.
Level 2: Your Middle form can glide Celerity yards per turn. You cannot glide upwards, only vertically and slightly downwards; one yard of altitude is lost each turn gliding.
Level 3: Your Beast form can fly with a flight speed of 2 x Celerity yards a turn.
Level 4: Your Middle form can glide 2 x Celerity yards per turn.
Level 5: Your Beast form can fly with a flight speed of 4 x Celerity yards a turn, and can make an attack in the middle of a movement action, allowing for a fly-by attack. Your Middle form grows wings and can now fly with a flight speed of Celerity yards a turn, and may still glide at the movement rate listed for Level 4.

Dead Reckoning:
“You can gain wisdom from the spirits and bodies of the dead.”

Level 1: Autopsy: You can spend 3 Tuning Points and make an Omniscience Test over the body of a dead creature to attempt to determine how it died, though not necessarily who killed it. Each success on the test gives you one fact about the creature’s death. Using this, or any form of Dead Reckoning, takes one minute (or six turns in combat) of exclusive concentration
Level 2: Gravemind: You can spend 4 Tuning Points and make an Omniscience Test over the body of a dead creature to attempt to read the last few moments of the creature’s life. Each success on the test allows you to witness/experience one minute of the dead man’s life, starting with the minute of death and going backwards.
Level 3: Dead Men Tell Tales: You can spend 5 Tuning points and make a Conviction Test over the body of a dead sentient to force it to animate long enough to answer your questions. Each success on the test forces the dead spirit to answer one question truthfully.
Level 4: When using Gravemind, each success now allows you to witness one of the last hours of the dead man’s life.
Level 5: Call Forth the Spirit: You may spend 6 Tuning Points to attempt to summon any dead spirit whose true name is known to you to answer your questions. First you must win a contested Conviction Test with the spirit to force it to appear. Then you can force the spirit to truthfully answer one question, plus one question for each net success you scored on the Conviction Test.

Bone Weary:
“Your skeletal hand saps away the life force of your vile enemy.”

Level 1: When in Ghola or Lich form, you can spend 6 Tuning Points to an attempt an unarmed attack (ST = Celerity/3 [round down] instead of full Evasion Factor, in other words negate armor bonus) that temporarily drains whoever it hits for 1 point of Might and Celerity for 1d6 turns instead of its normal damage. This attack instead deals 2 points of damage to any Undead that it hits, including other Asilos in Ghola or Lich form. Characters who have a Statistic reduced to 0 by this attack fall into a helpless comatose state until they regain their lost attributes.
Level 2: You now make a Conviction test when making this attack; each success drains an additional point of Might and Celerity from your target, beyond the initial one point of each.
Level 3: Each success on the Conviction test now causes the effects to last for another turn.
Level 4: The attack now drains a base of 1d6 points instead of one point.
Level 5: The effects now last for a base duration 2d6 Turns.

Necrogenesis:
“With dark chanting and passes of a smoking censer, you reanimate the dead!”

Level 1: You can spend 10 Tuning Points to restore a semblance of life to one dead creature, whether sentient or bestial. You must make three successes on a Conviction test to raise an undead servant. This resurrection takes one minute (six turns) of exclusive concentration.
These creatures rise as your undead servants. Undead servants rise from the grave with half the Maximum Life Points they had in life. Their Conviction, Omniscience, and Brilliance all drop to 1, as does their Evasion Factor. They lose all Harmonics and Skills they had in life, but retain all natural attacks and movement modes. Their Celerity is halved and rounded down. At this level, you can control one servant, with no more than 10 Life Points.
Level 2: You can now control up to two servants, as long as they have no more than 20 Life Points between them.
Level 3: You can now control up to three servants, as long as they have no more than 30 Life Points between them.
Level 4: You can now control 50 Life Points worth of undead servants. The creatures must still be raised individually, with the TP cost paid for each one.
Level 5: You can now control 100 Life Points worth of undead servants. The creatures must still be raised individually, with the TP cost paid for each one.

Smog Soul:
“While in Lich form, you transform into a cloud of incorporeal dark smoke.”

Level 1: While in Lich Form, you can spend 8 Tuning Points to transform into a semi-intangible cloud of darkness. This transformation takes an entire turn. You can remain incorporeal for 1d6 turns before reverting. While in this form, you can pass through grates and windows, and you are unaffected by normal ranged weapons. You may not attack in this form.
Level 2: You can now spent 6 Tuning Points to transform into smog form for 2d6 turns. While in this form you can pass through doors as well as grates and windows, and you are unaffected by normal weapons. You may not attack in this form.
Level 3: You can now spend 4 Tuning Points to transform into smog form for 3d6 turns. While in this form, you can pass through small cracks in walls as well as doors, grates and windows, and you are unaffected by all physical attacks. You may not attack in this form.
Level 4: You can now spend 2 Tuning Points to turn into smog form for up to one hour, or until you choose to turn back.. You can pass through any non-magical barriers in the way. You are immune to all attacks. You may not attack in this form.
Level 5: You can assume and leave Smog form at will, though the transformation both ways still takes one turn. You still may not attack in Smog Form.

Kraftwerx:
“You are able to craft artifacts of increasing complexity and utility.”

Level 1: You can craft items of Technology Level 1: Medieval. To craft anything at any level, you must have the required resources, tools, and time, and an expending of Tuning Points is also usually required.
Level 2: You can now craft items of Technology Level 2: Steam Era.
Level 3: You can now craft items of Technology Level 3: Modern.
Level 4: You can now craft items of Technology Level 4: Futuristic.
Level 5: You can now craft even items of Technology Level 5: Weird/Unimaginable.

Note to self: write any kind of actual guidelines at all for how Kraftwerx functions. So far it has been pure MTP at my playtests, with me making up Tuning Point costs and skill checks for making like a crossbow or whatever out of whatever random trash the players find.

Amputechture:
“Your arms and legs are modular, and can be hot-switched for ones you “find.”

Level 1: While in Clockwork form only, you can graft the arms or legs of others into your sockets. Performing a graft costs 10 Tuning Points and takes 10 minutes per limb, and cannot be performed in combat. You must roll at least three successes on a Brilliance test to successfully perform a Graft without ruining the limb. The limb decays in ten minutes after the completion moment of graft. If you graft on an arm, you can use your Might stat or the Might stat of the “:Donor”, whichever is higher. You also gain access to any base natural weapon attacks that arm’s “Donor” could perform with that arm. If you graft on a pair of legs, you can use your Celerity stat (and Evasion Factor/Movement Speed) or that of the “Donor”, whichever is higher.
Level 2: Each graft now lasts 1d6 x 10 Minutes. If you graft on an arm, you can use the arm’s owner’s Security or Legerdemain skill if they are higher than your own. If you graft on a leg, you can use the leg’s owner’s Athletics or Stealth skill if they are higher than your own.
Level 3: Each graft now lasts one hour. If you graft on an arm, you can use the arm’s owner’s unarmed combat skill if that skill is higher than your own.
Level 4: Each graft now lasts 1d6 hours. If you graft on an arm, you can use the arm’s owner’s Melee Combat or Ranged Combat skills if they are higher than your own.
Level 5: Each graft now lasts one day. If you graft on all four limbs from one donor, you can use one of that donor’s Harmonics (determined randomly) at a Level of 1d3 for the duration of the graft.

This hasn't seen a lot of use, I think it might be because early game enemies have a lack of good limbs or because Form-Function's a lot simpler and more reliable.

Form-Function:
“Your artificial limbs in Clockwork and Numidium form are enhanced.”

Level 1: Your pneumatic arms are improved; you receive +1 Might in Clockwork and Numidium forms. This only applies when using your own limbs, not “borrowed” limbs (see Amputechture, above).
Level 2: Your pneumatic legs are improved; you receive +2 Celerity in Clockwork and Numidium forms.
Level 3: Your pneumatic limbs are armored; you receive a +1 Natural Armor bonus to your Evasion Factor in Clockwork and Numidium forms.
Level 4: Your pneumatic arms and legs are vastly improved; you receive +4 Might and +4 Celerity in Clockwork and Numidium forms.
Level 5: Unarmed attacks you make with your Pneumatic Arms and Legs in Clockwork and Numidium forms add your full Might to their damage, not the normal ½ Might (round down).

Jam-Tuning:
“By concentrating, you can interfere with the Tuning of other’s Harmonics.”

Level 1: You can spend 5 Tuning Points and make a Conviction test to interfere with the Harmonics of a single opponent within line of sight. That character cannot use Harmonics that require the expenditure of Tuning Points until the end of your next turn.
Level 2: You now jam your enemy’s tuning for one extra turn for every extra success beyond the first that you make on your Conviction test.
Level 3: You can now cho ose to effect all enemies within 30 feet of you with one use. You must make a separate Conviction test for each of them.
Level 4: You now jam your enemy’s tuning for 1d6 turns, plus one extra turn for every success beyond the first that you make on your conviction test.
Level 5: Enemies effected by your interference no longer benefit from the passive effects of their Harmonics, in addition to being unable to spend tuning points.

Arms like Swords:
”Your limbs are sharpened into razor-edged steel.”

Level 1: Your unarmed attacks in Razorback and Bladeling form now have a base damage of 1d6 lethal damage, instead of the usual 1d6 non-lethal damage that unarmed attacks deal.
Level 2: The damage of your unarmed attacks in Razorback and Bladeling form increases to 2d6.
Level 3: You receive +1 die to your unarmed attacks in Razorback and Bladeling form. Additionally, you can use either your Unarmed Combat OR Melee Combat skill to make unarmed attacks in these forms.
Level 4: The damage of your unarmed attacks in Razorback and Bladeling form increases to 3d6.
Level 5: You receive +2 dice to your unarmed attacks in Razorback and Bladeling form, and your base unarmed attack damage in these forms increases to 4d6.

Skin like Plate Mail:
“A deadly coat of needle-tipped steel spikes protects your skin like armor.”

Level 1: You receive a +1 Natural Armor bonus to your Evasion Factor while in Bladeling form and unarmored.
Level 2: Whenever an enemy successfully hits you with an unarmed attack while you are in Razorback or Bladeling form, that enemy automatically takes 1d6 points of damage.
Level 3: You now receive a +2 Natural Armor bonus to your Evasion Factor while in Bladeling form and unarmored.
Level 4: Whenever an enemy successfully hits you with an unarmed attack while in Razorback form or an unarmed or melee attack while in Bladeling form, that enemy automatically takes 2d6 points of damage.
Level 5: You receive a +3 Natural Armor bonus to your Evasion Factor while in Bladeling form and unarmored.

Rain of Needles:
“You can launch your spikes as a deadly spray of razor flechettes.”

Level 1: You can spend 5 Tuning Points and 1d6 Life and make a successful Ranged Combat attack to launch your needles at any target within 30 yards. If the attack hits, the needles deal 1d6 damage, plus bonus damage from any extra successes on the ranged combat test.
Level 2: The launched needles now deal 2d6 points of damage. The range increases to 40 yards.
Level 3: The launched needles now hit all targets within ten yard of where you fire them.
Level 4: The launched needles now deal 3d6 points of damage. The range increases to 50 yards.
Level5: The rain of needles now deals (d6)d6 points of damage, and hits all targets within a twenty five yard radius.

Battle Scream:
“Your ferocious battle cry inspires your allies and terrifies your enemies.”

Level 1: You can spend 5 Tuning Points, make a successful Conviction or Intimidate test and use an attack action to unleash a terrifying battle scream. Your opponents receive -1 die from all attack tests and your allies get +1 die to all attack tests until the end of your next turn.
Level 2: The ability now lasts for 1d6 turns.
Level 3: Your opponents now lose one more die for each success beyond the first you get on your Conviction or Intimidate test.
Level 4: Your allies now gain one more die for each success beyond the first on the above test.
Level 5: The ability now lasts for one more turn for each success beyond the first you make on the test. Additionally, during the effect’s duration, your opponents lose one damage die, and your allies gain one damage die, on all damage rolls.

Star Venom:
“Your bite, when in serpens or Ouroboros shape, delivers a lethal poison.”
Level 1: When in serpens or Ouroboros, you can spend 5 Tuning points when making a bite attack to have the attack poison your target if it hits, in addition to its normal damage. This attack deals an additional 1d6 Poison damage when it hits, and deals 1 damage at the end of each of the target’s turns for the next 1d6 turns.
Level 2: The attack now deals 1d6 damage at the end of each of the target’s turns.
Level 3: You can spend 10 Tuning Points to secrete a poison that, when ingested by a Tzaetzi, allows that Tzaetzi to divine a vision of the future. The Tzaetzi must imbibe the star venom (one full turn action) and roll Omniscience; each success entitle the Tzaetzi to an answer to one question which must be either a yes or no question, or a question regarding the fate of a certain course of action, with possible answers of Weal, Woe, Weal and Woe, or neither.
Level 4: The residual damage from your poisonous bite now lasts for 2d6 turns.
Level 5: Your poisonous bite now deals 2d6 Poison damage initially, and 2d6 Poison damage at the end of each of the target’s turns for its duration.

Cobra’s Gaze:
“Your piercing gaze forces another sentient being to obey your will.”

Level 1: While in Serpens or Ouroboros shape, you can spend 5 Tuning Points and lock eyes with another sentient being (as a full-round action) to make a contested Conviction Test; if you roll more successes, you win. You can speak a one word or one sentence command which the target must obey as long as it doesn’t directly endanger its life.
Level 2: If you successfully use the above gaze attack, you can instead force a target to flee from you in mindless fear (cowering if cornered) for 1d6 turns or until they are attacked.
Level 3: You can now use the above gaze attack to enthrall a target, charming them into your power if you win the Conviction Test. You receive a bonus die (plus one bonus die for every net success on the conviction roll) to all social rolls (Intimidation, Diplomacy, Barter, Deceit) made “against” that character for the next hour.
Level 4: You can spend 10 Tuning Points, lock eyes with another sentient being and win a contested Conviction test to hypnotize that target, forcing them to mindlessly approach you, taking only one movement action per turn towards you until they take damage or until you look away. Taking any actions other than maintaining the hypnosis effect is considered looking away.
Level 5: If you successfully use the above gaze attack, you can instead force the target to be paralyzed for 1d6 turns, unable to move or act. You do not need to maintain eye contact to maintain this ability.

Healer’s Craft:
“Your magic touch causes wounds to close and flesh to meld back together.”

Level 1: While in Man Shape or Serpens you can spend 6 Tuning Points, touch any creature (including yourself), and make a Vitality test. If you succeed, the touched creature is healed for 1d6 Life Points.
Level 2: Your touch now heals 2d6 Life Points.
Level 3: Your touch now heals 3d6 Life Points.
Level 4: Your touch now heals 4d6 Life Points.
Level 5: Your touch now heals 5d6 Life Points.

You only need one success on the Vitality Test.

Raw Tuning:
“You manipulate the nature of reality through raw and powerful magic.”

Level 1: You can spend Tuning Points to accomplish trivial changes in reality, at the GM’s discretion. You can also spend 3 Tuning points to use Tuning as a direct attack, inflicting Magickal Fire, Frost, or Shock damage on an enemy within line of sight. This requires a Brilliance Test with a Success Threshold of the target’s Evasion Factor; in other words, it is like a normal attack test. If your attack hit, it has a base damage of 1d6 Fire, Frost, or Shock. This counts as an attack action.
Level 2: You can now spend more Tuning Points to accomplish minor changes in reality. You can now spend 5 Tuning Points to have your direct attacks with tuning deal 2d6 damage.
Level 3: You can now spend 7 Tuning Points to have your direct attacks with tuning deal 3d6 damage. Your direct attacks with Tuning now hit everything within Conviction Yards of the target.
Level 4: You can now spend more Tuning Points to accomplish limited, finite changes in reality. You can now spend 9 Tuning Points to have your direct attacks with Tuning deal 4d6 damage.
Level 5: You can now spend more Tuning Points to accomplish significant changes in local reality. You can now spend 12 Tuning Points to have your direct attacks with Tuning deal 6d6 damage.

Damn it looks like half of this skill tree is no-guidelines MTP. Which means that thus far it's mainly been used to throw lightning bolts in playtesting.

Silver Wing:
“Your bladed wings can fly off your body as slashing weapons and return.”

Level 1: While in Zu or Aurora form, you can spend 3 Tuning Points to launch your wings at any target within line of sight. This is an attack that uses your Celerity for the Attack Test; you must make a Celerity Test with a Success Threshold of your target’s Defense Factor. The attack deals a base damage of 1d6, and can be staged up by extra successes as normal. Your wings immediately return to you the same turn; if you are in flight, during the attack, you drop ten yards downwards.
Level 2: Your wings can now hit two targets in one turn; the second attack has a base damage of only 1, and hence only does real damage if extra successes are scored on the second attack test.
Level 3: Your wings deal a base 2d6 damage against the first target, and a base damage of 1d6 against the second.
Level 4: You receive +2 dice on Celerity Tests made to attack with your wings.
Level 5: Your launched wings can now hit three targets in a turn; they have a base damage of 3d6 for the first target, 2d6 for the second target, and 1d6 damage for the third. You must succeed on the attack test for each target to deal damage to that target.

Rift Wind:
“You reflexively teleport out of harm’s way, confounding your enemies’ attacks.”

Level 1: When hit by a ranged attack, you can spend 6 Tuning points to make a Celerity test. Each success that you roll cancels out one of your opponent’s successes. If your opponent is left with less successes than your Evasion Factor, the attack has no effect.
Level 2: The above ability now only costs 4 Tuning points.
Level 3: You can now use Rift Wind when hit by any attack.
Level 4: The above ability now only costs 2 Tuning points.
Level 5: You have two extra dice to use on Celerity tests to avoid damage with Rift Wind.

Prehensile Swordplay:
“Your Zu form is capable of wielding a melee weapon in its tail!”

Level 1: In Zu form, you can use an extra melee weapon in your tail. When wielding one weapon in hand, you can wield a second one in your tail, and make two attacks per turn at no penalty. When wielding two weapons in hand, you can wield a third weapon in your tail, and make three attacks, each at a -2 dice penalty.
Level 2: You receive a bonus die to attack tests made with a weapon held in your tail.
Level 3: When wielding three weapons (two in hand, one in tail) at once, the penalty drops to -1 die for each attack.
Level 4: You now receive three bonus dice to attack tests made with a weapon held in your tail.
Level 5: You can now attack twice per turn with the weapon held in your tail, at no penalty. (This allows you to attack three times per turn at no penalty (weapon in hand, then two tail attacks) or four times per turn at a -1 die penalty for each attack (two weapons, one in each hand, then two attacks with your tail weapon).

Camouflage:
“The coloration of your skin ripples as you blend in with the wall!”

Level 1: When your back is to a wall, ceiling, or the floor you can spend 6 Tuning Points and use an attack action to blend in; you get an extra die on Stealth tests and the handicap for “hiding in plain sight” is reduced from a two step handicap (only 6s count as successes) to a one step handicap (only 5s count as successes). Before targeting you, aggressors must be able to score more successes with an Omniscience test than you did on your stealth test. Any aggressive action you take reveals you and ends this effect.
Level 2: While blended in with your back to a wall, you get two extra die on Stealth tests and the handicap for “hiding in plain sight” is completely negated. Any aggressive action you take still reveals you and ends this effect.
Level 3: Blending in now costs only 4 Tuning Points. You may now make ranged attacks without (automatically) revealing yourself; each attack you make allows all enemies in the area another Omniscience test with a Success Threshold equal to the successes scored on your initial Stealth test. They get +1 Die to this test for each time you attacked this combat. You now get three extra dice on Stealth tests when using this ability.
Level 4: You no longer need to press your back to a wall to use this ability, and you may use this ability as a move action. You now get four extra dice on Stealth tests when using this ability.
Level 5: You can now blend in for only 2 Tuning Points. When using this ability, you receive a one-step bonus to your Stealth Tests: 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s all count as successes. You now get five extra dice on Stealth tests when using this ability.

Lock-Lash:
“Your Tellane or Abbadon form gouges out a lock with a claw or tongue strike.”

Level 1: In Tellane or Abaddon form, you can default to Unarmed Combat to “pick locks” instead of Security, at a one step penalty, with no additional penalty for having no tools.
Level 2: In Tellane or Abbadon form, when using Security to pick locks, ignore the penalty for having no tools.
Level 3: In your Tellane and Abaddon forms you no longer have any penalty when defaulting to Unarmed Combat to open locks instead of security.
Level 4: You gain two extra dice when using Unarmed Combat to open locks.
Level 5: In Abaddon, you gain four extra dice when using Unarmed Combat to open locks with a tongue attack. Additionally, treat your open lock attempt as an unarmed attack (with bonus dice) against any creatures standing directly in front of the door on the other side at a distance of a 15 feet or less.

Cut-Throat:
“Pouncing on your opponents from the shadows, you grievously wound them!”

Level 1: When you stealthily attack an unaware enemy (one who has failed to detect you with an Omniscience test) you deal +1d6 damage. You can only Cut-Throat once per combat.
Level 2: As above, except the bonus damage increases to +2d6. You can Cut-Throat twice per combat, but may not Cut-Throat the same enemy more than once.
Level 3: When attacking an enemy who is unaware of you, ignore their armor bonus to Evasion Factor. You can Cut-Throat three times per combat, but may not Cut-Throat the same enemy more than once.
Level 4: As above, except the bonus damage increases to +3d6. You can now Cut-Throat each enemy in a given combat once, but still may not Cut-Throat the same enemy more than once.
Level 5: As above, except the bonus damage increases to +5d6.

Hoarder’s Luck:
“You have a nose for treasure, even if it wasn’t there in the first place!”

Level 1: When searching a given room for treasure, you can spend 5 Tuning Points to very slightly increase the probability of finding (additional) treasure. (5% Chance of More Treasure.)
Level 2: You can now spend 5 Tuning points to slightly increase the probability of finding treasure. (10% Chance of More Treasure.)
Level 3: You can now spend 5 Tuning points to somewhat increase the probability of finding treasure. (20% Chance of More Treasure.)
Level 4: You can now spend 5 Tuning points to significantly increase the probability of finding treasure. (35% Chance of More Treasure.)
Level 5: You can now spend 5 Tuning points to GREATLY increase the probability of finding treasure, as well as the amount of treasure found.
(50% Chance of Additional Treasure; 2x Amount of Treasure Found, if any.)

Whew. Almost done for now.

Form Characteristics

Each Bloodline has three types of forms; man, middle, and beast. These forms have their own unique characteristics, described below.

Vision:
The “Beast” form of any Bloodline benefits from natural night vision. Each other form requires some sort of light source to see in the frequently dark passageways of The Splinter.

Equipment:
The “Beast” form of any Bloodline gains no benefits from any worn armor, clothing, shields or the like, as these items meld into the Avatar’s body. Only avatars of the Needlekin, Asilos, and Mnemonic bloodlines can use weapons in their beast forms.

Natural Weapons:
Every Bloodline and each form thereof confers unique natural weapons upon the Avatar. The base damage of these natural weapons is described here:

Punch (Man Shape, all, Clockwork/Numidium, Mnemonic): 1d6 + ½ Might (round down) non-lethal.
Kick (Man Shape, all, Clockwork/Numidium, Mnemonic): 1d6 + ½ Might (round down) non-lethal.
Talon (Aventine in Rione, Gyre): 1d6 + ½ Celerity (round down).
Beak: (Aventine in Gyre, Wyndlass in Aurora): 1d6 + Might.
Claw (Asilos in Ghola , Lich, Vryx in Telane, Abbadon) 1d6 + ½ Might (round down).
Fangs: (Tzaetzi in Serpens): 1d6 + Might. [Tzaetzi in Serpens may not punch.]
Bite: (Tzaetzi in Ouroboros): 2d6 + Might [Tzaetzi in Ouroboros may not punch or kick.]
Tail Blade: (Windlass in Aurora, Vryx in Abaddon): 1d6 + ½ Celerity (round down).
Razortongue: (Vryx in Abaddon): 1d6 + Might. (2 Yard Range).
Special: (Needlekin, Mnemonic): See the Harmonics of these Bloodlines for details.

Natural Defenses:
Aventine in Gyre and Wyndlass in Aurora receive a +1 Size bonus to EF. Vryx in Tellane or Abaddon receive a +1 Profile bonus to EF. Mnemonics in Numidium and Tzaetzi in Ouroboros receive a +1 Natural Armor bonus to EF. Needlekin and Asilos receive better natural defenses by learning and using their Bloodlines’ Harmonics.

Edit: By the power of Herpaderpskull! I realized that this is probably kind of hard to interpret without combat mechanics and general resolution rules, which I was going to post later.

The basic combat mechanic is: roll your relevant dice pool. You want as many or more hits (4s or higher) as the target's Evasion Factor. So if you have Melee Combat 6 and the target has EF 3, you want to roll three or more 4s assuming there's no situational modifier stuff going on. Now, how "criticals/staging" work is that every success you achieve beyond the target's EF adds 1d6 to the damage. Obviously that's not the entire combat system, but it should provide some context to the foregoing text.

[Chamomile]

If you want the intermediate world to mean something, it cannot be an absolute dystopia. 1984-style fiction where everything is relentlessly bleak can work when we're observing the world, but not when we're expected to interact with it. If we can't change the environment we're playing in, why are we playing in it?

The intermediate world needs at least two factions that both have a real chance at winning. Even if both of those factions are just different flavors of dystopia, that still gives your PCs something to do.

[Neurosis]

I see where you are coming from with that opinion, chamomile, but I personally disagree and I am going to have to challenge your presumptions. For instance, IIRC, Paranoia is a game where all factions are (at least probably) being controlled by the same thing. It's also a game where you automatically are assumed to lose and die. But the rest of the design makes it fun to play.

So there are a lot of different ways to make a game, I think, and not just one equally valid way.

It's not that I don't want the players to be able to fight back against GamesCorp in the real world by any means. It's just that I want them to lose. (Again, unless they manage to become so famous that killing them would only martyr them, and that's when things get interesting.)

I'm not trying to be a dick here, especially since I've already gotten more substantial feedback in a couple of days than I might have in a couple of months on the Forge. So I agree that I need to do a better job of establishing what the PCs DO while the Players are on Earth. In playtesting, the issue hasn't been "why do we give a shit about the real world", it's been "what do we actually like...DO in the real world".

But I don't agree that the resistance necessarily needs to have the same real chance at winning in a straight out fight that Games Corp does. I like the idea that the only way for the resistance to win is "power via fame".

Now that the meatiest portion of the game is up, I wouldn't mind some thoughts on that. I'll post more in the next couple days either way.

[Chamomile]

]For instance, IIRC, Paranoia is a game where all factions are (at least probably) being controlled by the same thing.

And it's a game built for one-shots that gets old really fast if you try to play it as a consistent campaign. Unless you play it like the secsocs can actually beat each other, in which case it can sustain interest for much longer. Also, Paranoia is a joke game when played as written, whose main characters are intended to be some combination of cowardly, stupid, and egomaniacal (so that we can make fun of them relentlessly and laugh when they die in increasingly hilarious and sometimes arbitrary ways). I'm not sure if that's the mood you're going for with this.

But I don't agree that the resistance necessarily needs to have the same real chance at winning in a straight out fight that Games Corp does.

I never said the second faction had to be the resistance. The resistance can still not stand a chance and you can still have an actual game in the intermediate world. There just has to be some kind of opposing factions for the players to support, even if all those factions are just different corporations within the dystopian conglomerate and the choice ultimately comes down to which horrible oppressive regime you'd rather live under. Without any opposing factions there's no conflict, and thus no story at all, and if only one of those factions has any chance to succeed, the story isn't very entertaining.

Particularly, if the only two factions are the resistance and the corporations and the resistance doesn't stand a chance unless the players are mega-stars, then that means any players who decide they want to side with the resistance (and there will be plenty of players like that, especially if you're leaving any chance that it might actually work) are just going to sit around twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing in meatspace until they're famous enough to actually get things done.

[Judging__Eagle]

Right now, it's a pile of crunch, with some trimmings of fluff.

I'd say that having the RL factions based on fans of different players or game species would be more interesting than having everything be "boring".

Allowing the bored "dystopian 1984 world" people to dress up as their favorite species of The Game and have them act as groupies for actual Players who have Avatars of specific species types would be interesting.

Players in the real world would have to decide between studying and preparing for their next foray into the Splinter; planning with other Players; or even killing other Players in the real world who can allow them to catch breaks in the Splinter.

Remember conflict drives story. Conflict is the pressure on time that makes anyone remember anything.

If the "real world" has no conflicts that people give a damn about; then don't make people waste their time on a fictional world that the PCs can't actually recall.

Now, if you allowed an Avatar to gain their original memories, becoming "awakened", and able to bring knowledge back and forth, that might be an interesting way to see actual character growth; with the Avatars as minor actors in a much more massive drama of survival in a vastly shifting and very power disparate world.

Also, most of the abilities.... don't matter. Writing up 4 or 5 powers for each of your characters... when you haven't written a single part of how an Avatar is supposed to be displayed and shown off in the real world is.... I dunno, it seems like you're not sure if you want a fantasy heartbreaker; or if you really want nested gameplay a la 1,001 Arabian Nights (rpg).

The whole "everyone watches this" needs to be really thought about, and displayed. Players should have a pretty good knowledge of the Splinter just from watching footage.

Even if Professionals are cloistered from knowledge of Splinter, Amateurs should be no such thing, and should definitely be more familiar with the entertainment slop that they have foisted upon them by the governing corporation.

The "evolution" of creatures in The Game from homonid to monsterous is some interesting transhumanism.

However, I'm guessing that in real life players simply get a basic cyber limb if they need to be amputated, or we might even see limbs getting regenerated with a stem-cell grow-bag strapped to the amputation site.

It also has some rather interesting logic issues; like how Players should actually know a fair deal about the setting; and their Avatars don't necessarily know it. Perhaps making Will tests for an Avatar to try and go over their memory and attempt to pull up a piece of "meta data" from their Player memories.

I think that in the end, you're going to have to realize that Splinter is going to need elements of The Sims to go along with the Wolfenstien 3D and Mount & Blade to Dom 3 elements that I'm already seeing. If not you can't really justify why everyone is going to watch your purely action driven entertainment. Unless Splinter has heavy roleplaying and emotionally driven entertainment elements; soap opera levels even; then you're seriously designing a game that is able to be dismissed purely on sexist grounds, your world of 2417 has either completely removed femmes from its population, or somehow femmes no longer care about watching deep and meaningful social and emotional relationships develop and change over time.

Seriously, the very notion of Splinter is hard to believe unless you can include some, if not all of the following into the storytelling: ""an emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and moral conflicts; some coverage of topical issues; set in familiar domestic interiors with only occasional excursions into new locations". From Soap Operas.

I honestly never thought I'd have to refer to Soap Operas as being relevant to storytelling; but if you're marketing your "story world" as "mass appeal" entertainment; then you'd better make sure you're not just inventing something based on your prejudices of what it would look like. Do some research.

[Chamomile]

It is trivially easy for a dystopian world to get everyone to watch the same show regardless of content. Two easiest methods:

1) There's nothing else on. Since you live in a really cramped apartment and playing in the streets is forbidden, the game is basically the only thing available, so you will watch it and like it, for lack of anything else to do.

2) It's mandatory. If you don't sit down and watch at least the highlights of the game, you get vaporized. More thorough interest in the game is rewarded in creepy, dystopian ways.

[Neurosis]

Now, if you allowed an Avatar to gain their original memories, becoming "awakened", and able to bring knowledge back and forth, that might be an interesting way to see actual character growth; with the Avatars as minor actors in a much more massive drama of survival in a vastly shifting and very power disparate world.

This is definitely something I'd like to explore more/write more mechanics for. Right now the main thing holding me back is that conceptually speaking the Splinter is too large to map. I don't mean just to "map" in the "draw every room and the corridors between them" since I mean it's definition ally too big to even map in a demographic/political sense. Like, even to say "this faction controls this area, this faction controls that area, here there's conflict between them, your Avatar grew up here" etcetera. The Splinter itself is fairly nebulous now because, well, hmm...unfortunately D&D's "points of light/sea of darkness" is a decent comparison. The Splinter is big enough to contain anything that any GM can think of. So yes, it's a fair point that both sides of the game world are currently overly abstract, for different reasons.

I am not sure if I'm making sense.

But yes, there are mechanics--called a control test--that determine to what degree the Avatar is a "puppet" versus a "steed". Basically upon porting in the Player rolls versus the Avatar and the winner winds up in control. So depending on how that goes, you could actually BECOME your Avatar or just be "controlling" your Avatar like a video game character. And yes, it does vary from one Port in to another.

I'd say that having the RL factions based on fans of different players or game species would be more interesting than having everything be "boring".

Allowing the bored "dystopian 1984 world" people to dress up as their favorite species of The Game and have them act as groupies for actual Players who have Avatars of specific species types would be interesting.

That's a really interesting idea, actually. I like it a lot. And I'm wondering how the limited transgenic technology available in the real world would play into it. I imagine that getting "transgened" as an Avatar would be the kind of insane thing only the extremely wealthy and bored would do, and of course you wouldn't get any of the physical benefits or the ability to change forms, and there'd probably be nasty side effects...but I bet people would still do it.

I never said the second faction had to be the resistance. The resistance can still not stand a chance and you can still have an actual game in the intermediate world. There just has to be some kind of opposing factions for the players to support, even if all those factions are just different corporations within the dystopian conglomerate and the choice ultimately comes down to which horrible oppressive regime you'd rather live under. Without any opposing factions there's no conflict, and thus no story at all, and if only one of those factions has any chance to succeed, the story isn't very entertaining.

I wonder...could those opposing factions be individual studios/managers/"auteurs" each trying to one-up the other? And could the factions be something defined by an individual game, rather than being a pre-generated factor of the game universe? Just thinking out loud here.

Unless Splinter has heavy roleplaying and emotionally driven entertainment elements; soap opera levels even; then you're seriously designing a game that is able to be dismissed purely on sexist grounds, your world of 2417 has either completely removed femmes from its population, or somehow femmes no longer care about watching deep and meaningful social and emotional relationships develop and change over time.

It's my own fail at terminology that causes me not to know if you're talking about the game I'm writing, or the game within the game.

If you mean the game I'm writing, then the girl I've been dating for the past five years or so is very female, and very interested in the emotional, social dimensions of both this RPG and the (much better executed, thus far) story of Heroes Die which inspired it, which is also pretty much a super-macho, ultra-violent piece of male entertainment. Of course, Heroes Die has a very strong romantic sub-plot which is certainly not something implicit in Splinter. And personally speaking I'm more interested in the Dungeon Exploration aspects of Splinter than the combat aspects. But I digress.

If you mean the Game WITHIN the game, well I'm jumping ahead a bit, but this:

Game Types

There are many types of game, organized here by the type of real life entertainment they correspond to and VERY BRIEFLY summarized here. Details that are left out are for the GM to make up, possibly as he goes along.

Pro-Sports/Game-Show/Reality Television/Extreme Sports

Deathmatch: In this game-mode, anywhere between four and sixteen players are spawned, alone, naked, and unarmed in a level of the Splinter verified by scouting parties to be relatively safe of outside threats (or not) and strewn randomly with weapons and equipment (or not). The objective is to kill each other. In one variant, the last man standing wins and is Ported home. In another variant, after a set amount of time (usually intervals of five minutes, depending on the size and complexity of the level) the player with the MOST kills wins. If there is only one survivor, he doesn’t get to go home unless he has the most kills. This tends to make for a more aggressive game and discourages camping.

Outside of its limited hardcore fanbase and cult following, the Deathmatch game-type is rapidly decreasing in popularity. Focus groups have shown that, surprisingly, they would rather see Players work together for a cause—even if the cause is only killing other players—than massacre each other senselessly.

Team Deathmatch: Like Deathmatch, but with teams. Two teams of four to sixteen players each (or up to four teams of 4 to 8 players each, but no more than 32 players total) are spawned together, naked and unarmed, in isolated locations. The goal is to wipe out all other teams.

While Team Deathmatch is more popular than free-for-all Deathmatch, focus groups would prefer to see Players working together to kill native Splinter fauna/denizens than working together to kill each other.

Capture the Flag: The most popular Deathmatch variant for its strategic depth, Capture The Flag is Team Deathmatch with a twist. There are always two teams (four to sixteen Players a team). Each team spawns in a room with a locked color-coded port and a flag. The blue team spawns in a room with a blue flag and a locked blue port. The red team spawns in a room with a red flag and a locked red port. The beauty part is this. The red flag unlocks the blue port; the blue flag unlocks the red port.
Traditionally, half of a team is on Defense, guarding the Flag, and the other half of the team is on Offense, trying to capture the opposing team’s Flag. Only one port will open. Once a team captures the opposing team’s flag and touches it to their port, they have both guaranteed their escape (unless killed) and guaranteed the other team’s doom.

Unlike in other Deathmatch variants, in CTF teams are allowed to stay together—in this respect, Players function very much like pro-sports teams. CTF is the pro-football of the 28th Century. For this reason, popular teams are rarely pitted directly against each other, since one team is wiped out during every game of CTF. When a big match or “superbowl” occurs, the ratings are tremendous, since fans know one of their favorite teams WILL be wiped out forever.

Escape/Survival: The standard proving grounds for new Players looking to move into ANY other type of Game.

In Escape, several Players (usually between two and eight, usually all PCs in meta-game terms, but NPCs are fine too) are ported in. Players may work against each other They have a time limit—typically eight hours—to find a working Exit Port, and Port Out. Failure to do so in the time limit means that toxin sacks introduced into their REAL PHYSICAL BODIES dissolve, killing them. In other words, this game type makes the Splinter even more deadly than it usually is.

Survival is in many ways the opposite of Escape, but in many ways the same. Players have only to SURVIVE for a set amount of time—again, usually eight hours—and will be automatically ported out. However, players are usually transferred into a

Predator and Prey:
In this exceptionally cruel game type, also called The Running Man, one player is the hare; he is spawned naked and alone in a remote area of the Splinter. The rest of the Players—usually no more than five—are the hounds, and spawn together in a room with weapons and equipment.
If the Hounds can successfully poach the Hare, they can leave safely. However, they cannot hunt from a position of leisure or safety. The Hare has a significant Head-Start and in the maze-like architecture of the Splinter, it’s easier to lose someone than to find them. If the Hare survives a set amount of time—usually about twenty four hours—the Hare gets an Exit Port, and the Hounds die. All players must deal with the dangers of the Splinter itself, as usual.
Dungeon Quest:

The short-form game variant fastest increasing in popularity. Eight Players are Ported into the top level of (or bottom level) of a ruin (in a Wild Zone, naturally) that holds a significant amount of treasure. Every treasure is assigned a “GP” or “Gold Point” value by a panel of GamesCorp Judges. The PCs have a limited amount of time, usually between eight and twenty four hours, to rush into the ruins, grab as much GP as they can, and get out. They can work together or against each other.
If they overstay the time limit, they are killed, the same as in the Escape mode. However, the one public Exit Port near the “Spawn Point” will only open for the FOUR PLAYERS with the Highest GP Score. (By default, if only four (or less) players survive, those players get to leave, if they make it back to the Exit Port). In other words, players must carefully balance the risk of gathering GP with the risk of NOT gathering GP.

Use the following table to quickly track NPC success during Dungeon Quest games with NPCs involved.

Each time the PCs move through a room on their way in, roll d100 for each of the NPC players to see what happens to them.
01-05: Killed
6-94: Nothing.
95-99: Found 2d20 x 100 gp worth of treasure.
00: ENCOUNTER WITH PLAYERS (optional)

Each time the PCs move through a room on their way out, roll d100 for each of the NPC players to see what happens to them:
01-05: Killed
6-94: Nothing
95-99: FOUND THEIR WAY OUT.
00: ENCOUNTER WITH PLAYERS (optional)

Like Deathmatch, Dungeon Quest has solo and team variants.

GM Note: Running Games Where PCs Directly Compete
If running a game where PCs compete with each other either alone or in teams, it is best to take turns. Have players/teams roll Reaction to see who gets the first turn. Each turn consists of moving into and clearing/quickly exploring one room, or backtracking for two turns. In other words, about a minute of game design. Have each team/player keep their own map, and do not give them any metagame hints where the other ones are.

The “Discovery Channel”

A fairly new niche market, closely monitored by the Splinter technicians, “Free-Mode” or “Exploration” is a genre similar to the Natural Geographic of 20th century Earth. Essentially a twist on the “Long Form” or “Adventures Unlimited” game type, work together to simply OBSERVE the strange peoples, civilizations, architecture, culture, technology, magic, wildlife, and other unique aspects of the Splinter, trying to see as much interesting shit as possible, without dying.

Although some consider “Free-Mode” a dead-end career choice for Players, since their generally isn’t enough violence to develop a real fan base since Players are specifically DISCOURAGED from becoming involved in political infighting and assassination, in other words, Adventures.

However, Players who do well as Explorers might be able to switch careers, ceasing to be Professional-Caste Entertainers and becoming Professional-Technicians instead, finding work as GamesCorp scouts.

The timeframe of “Free-Mode” games is similar to that of “Long-Form” games, usually with equipment rated for 1000+ hours of continuous transfer before Death by Dissociation occurs.

Feature Film/Television Miniseries/Hour Long Weekly Drama Series

The “Long-Form” or “Adventure Mode”, properly called “Adventures Unlimited”, is the career pinnacle that most professional Players aspire to. Also called “Role Playing”, Players develop a detailed Avatar-persona—often drawing on the true memories and identity of their Avatar—and roam the world of the Splinter as dashing rogues, powerful wizards, and noble knights, searching for excitement, adventure, treasure, violence, and sex. Players are free to embroil themselves in ongoing events such as wars, political intrigue, and great quests, while pursuing adventures such as robbery, assassination, peace keeping, and battle. Adventures Unlimited is the big league, and Long Form equipment is rated for 1000 hours of continuous transfer and up, up, up.

The most popular format of the game--and the one that therefore has the most money/importance associated with it--is the long form, that last one listed. This is your soap opera, your feature film, your episodic entertainment, etcetera. It is also the "big time", and "prime time".

That's your "female" demographic/your people looking for "story now". The long form is the most popular with the broadest stream of demographics because it has romance and intrigue and a lengthy, episodic, "character driven" story...but it's also incredibly violent so it's still popular with those 18-35 year old males.

Writing up 4 or 5 powers for each of your characters... when you haven't written a single part of how an Avatar is supposed to be displayed and shown off in the real world is.... I dunno, it seems like you're not sure if you want a fantasy heartbreaker; or if you really want nested gameplay a la 1,001 Arabian Nights (rpg).

I'm not actually being a smartass here: I'm not sure how to parse this. What exactly do you mean "a single part of how an Avatar is supposed to be displayed and shown off in the real world"?

[Judging__Eagle]

How do Avatars get ratings from viewers.

If you can't show how that happens; there's no need to ever tell about it happening.



Having a whole list of character powers is useless if the goal of the game is "get high view ratings for my character", and there's no way listed for characters to actually increase their ratings, or check their ratings globally.

Are player Characters are expected to become world-renown entertainers, and if so how does this system support that part of the story?

[Chamomile]

Judging Eagle has a point. If the goal of the game is actually to get high ratings (which is evidently the case), then that can't be satisfied purely by just winning at dungeon crawls, else you may as well make the goal of the game to just be some prize directly associated with winning at dungeon crawls. There needs to be room for players to win by losing just by being a popular underdog. There also needs to be a mechanic where immediately losing a major event is worth much more than utterly crushing the competition in a more minor one, even if you're facing the same opposition. Sure, as a general rule bigger events will be deadlier, because that's what draws the viewers in the first place, but the challenge involved doesn't matter directly. In fact, success doesn't even matter directly. The most important thing is screentime.

I wonder...could those opposing factions be individual studios/managers/"auteurs" each trying to one-up the other? And could the factions be something defined by an individual game, rather than being a pre-generated factor of the game universe?

Definitely. The conflict in the intermediate world doesn't have to be globe-shaking, it just has to reach the minimum level of personal importance where it becomes possible for the average human to take interest at all. You'd want to provide a set of pre-generated studios (or whatever) with the game, though. I know that I, personally, wouldn't really want to bother with generating more than one or two brand new studios just to GM a game of this.

The Splinter itself is fairly nebulous now because, well, hmm...unfortunately D&D's "points of light/sea of darkness" is a decent comparison. The Splinter is big enough to contain anything that any GM can think of. So yes, it's a fair point that both sides of the game world are currently overly abstract, for different reasons

Easy solution: Provide a map or description of the Splinter as of 2471, and mention that because it's intentionally built to be extremely volatile, the political landscape will change significantly every year. If a GM wants to tell a story that's not compatible with the version of the Splinter given, just set it in 2461 or 2481. The political landscape of meatspace will be practically identical, while the political landscape of the Splinter will be radically altered.

But yes, there are mechanics--called a control test--that determine to what degree the Avatar is a "puppet" versus a "steed". Basically upon porting in the Player rolls versus the Avatar and the winner winds up in control. So depending on how that goes, you could actually BECOME your Avatar or just be "controlling" your Avatar like a video game character.

I really don't see what this is doing for your setting at all. Why is there any advantage to the Avatar having an independent consciousness that's unfamiliar with the outside world? It just seems like one more thing that makes the Splinter seem like a regular fantasy dungeon crawl with meatspace tacked on unnecessarily. The less interaction between these two worlds have, the less justification there is for the meatspace angle to exist at all.

[Morzas]

Judging Eagle has a point. If the goal of the game is actually to get high ratings (which is evidently the case), then that can't be satisfied purely by just winning at dungeon crawls, else you may as well make the goal of the game to just be some prize directly associated with winning at dungeon crawls. There needs to be room for players to win by losing just by being a popular underdog. There also needs to be a mechanic where immediately losing a major event is worth much more than utterly crushing the competition in a more minor one, even if you're facing the same opposition. Sure, as a general rule bigger events will be deadlier, because that's what draws the viewers in the first place, but the challenge involved doesn't matter directly. In fact, success doesn't even matter directly. The most important thing is screentime.

When the Avatar dies in The Splinter, the Player dies in the “real world”.

I don't think underdogs can exist in a setting where losing = death and if you die in the game, you die for real. This game seems to be about bloodsport.

EDIT: Oh, reading over the game types it seems that people don't like those modes, probably for the exact reasons you described. They seem to prefer to watch dungeon crawls on their four-dimensional TVs.

[Chamomile]

If every loss of every event results in death, the game is unsustainable anyway. You just can't take that many losses to your playerbase and keep a game of the implied size of the Splinter running. Note that the losers of actual Roman gladiator battles were spared often enough that it was actually advertised when a battle would certainly end in death...A practice which was banned by Caesar Augustus because the demand for gladiators had begun to far exceed the supply.

[Morzas]

I could see bloodsport working in a posthuman virtual world if the gladiators fought under team banners. The individual components of a team can die off, but the team itself is something that people can relate to. Take a look at organized sports today: none of those teams have the same players that they did when they were founded, but they have loyal fanbases regardless.

For this setting to make sense, I think the Avatars have to have megacorporate sponsorship.

As for the sustainability problem, it could be handwaved with a cynical outlook on population growth, but that goes into all kinds of dirty First World-centric stuff.

[Neurosis]

How do Avatars get ratings from viewers.

If you can't show how that happens; there's no need to ever tell about it happening.



Having a whole list of character powers is useless if the goal of the game is "get high view ratings for my character", and there's no way listed for characters to actually increase their ratings, or check their ratings globally.

Are player Characters are expected to become world-renown entertainers, and if so how does this system support that part of the story?

So to be clear, you're talking about a System where by kicking ass (and simultaneously Ascensioning their Avatars) Players earn like, for lack of a better word, Fame Points? Like, new rules for this?

That is actually kind of awesome. And I'm going to seriously think about it. Until now I'd just been kind of thinking that could be up to the GM to advance the Players' wealth and fame with their success as was dramatically appropriate. But I think including actual rules and guidelines for that might be a pretty fun idea.

***

Right now we have THIS System, which is similar but not the same. It's based on the idea of the Soliloquy from Heroes Die. This doesn't describe how winning makes you famous, but it describe a system where being entertaining makes you win! I know that parts of this are hit or miss, so as currently phrased, it's optional: it also can't hurt the player, only help.

Color Commentary

A sportscaster’s onomatopoeic gutter-poetry, relating the violence and feats of athleticism on the field below. The dramatic intensity of a Shakespearian actor’s soliloquy. The ultra-stylized banter of a private eye’s internal monologue in a film noir. Color commentary, the sub-vocalized narration by which an Player relates his experience to the audience, is all of these things and more, and is an important part of the experience of the player, and the Player, in Splinter.

The normal course of a roleplaying game involves the players seeking information from the GM, and then telling the GM what their characters intend to do based on that information. The player side of this back and forth dialogue is normally very functional and plain —I move there and attack this enemy. I listen at the door, I check the lock for traps. Color commentary encourages players to spice up their narration, while still being clear and making tactically sound decisions.

How color commentary works, is that first, the Player announces that color commentary is being used—by simply saying so, or by passing a marker in to the table. Once color commentary is “Activated”, the Player says what action their avatar will take, describing it in a way that is as dramatic and colorful and “extreme” as possible.

Ground Rules
*Color commentary can be used in combat or out of combat, but should not last more than 15-60 seconds of IRL time.

*If the Player won the Control Test, color commentary can be “activated” (Player Wits + Color Commentary Skill Level) times per encounter/per hour. If the Avatar won the Control Test, it can be activated (Player Wits + Color Commentary Skill Level) times per day-in-the-Splinter.

*Color commentary describes intention, not results. Hence, “I’m gonna smear this goon’s brains all over the wallpaper”, never “I smash his face in” because you do not know whether or not you will hit. The GM decides that.

*Decent color commentary is worth +1 die to the relevant roll, good color commentary is worth +2 dice, and great color commentary could add three or more dice. The quality of color commentary is entirely up to the GM—it should be both entertaining and in character (for the Player, not the Avatar)—but a sincere effort should always be worth a bonus die.

*Color commentary never penalizes the player.

*Color commentary must still accurately describe all actions being taken in a combat turn or a course of action proposed outside of combat.

Judging Eagle has a point. If the goal of the game is actually to get high ratings (which is evidently the case), then that can't be satisfied purely by just winning at dungeon crawls, else you may as well make the goal of the game to just be some prize directly associated with winning at dungeon crawls. There needs to be room for players to win by losing just by being a popular underdog. There also needs to be a mechanic where immediately losing a major event is worth much more than utterly crushing the competition in a more minor one, even if you're facing the same opposition. Sure, as a general rule bigger events will be deadlier, because that's what draws the viewers in the first place, but the challenge involved doesn't matter directly. In fact, success doesn't even matter directly. The most important thing is screentime.

I am really glad I posted this here. The response I'm getting certainly isn't the response I was expecting--I was expecting a much more crunch-focused discussion--but it is really interesting and valuable.

I really don't see what this is doing for your setting at all. Why is there any advantage to the Avatar having an independent consciousness that's unfamiliar with the outside world? It just seems like one more thing that makes the Splinter seem like a regular fantasy dungeon crawl with meatspace tacked on unnecessarily. The less interaction between these two worlds have, the less justification there is for the meatspace angle to exist at all.

Two points.

One is that even with the real world layer removed, Splinter is really far from being a fantasy heartbreaker. Because even the "fantasy" part of it is a really weird and trippy blend of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction. I mean the entire thing is set in a constantly changing and highly mysterious megastructure, all of the PCs are shapeshifting posthuman demigods, there are literally random and highly asymmetrical technology levels from area to area, everyone of sufficiently high level can reshape the very fabric of reality with will alone through Tuning, you can hijack people's limbs, etcetera. So it's not like the world within the world is just "D&D only not", the world within the world is already some crazy shit even before if you add on the outer layer of Earth.

Two is that I do want the Realm to feel like a world, with factions, conflict, history, ideological issues, unexplored cosmological issues, etcetera. Therefore I do want the Avatars to be real characters with their own goals that conflict with the goals of the Players. I want the fact that the Avatar agenda and the Player agenda can differ to be a major source of conflict.

I don't think underdogs can exist in a setting where losing = death and if you die in the game, you die for real. This game seems to be about bloodsport.

Underdogs, and the idea of being one and milking it for screen time/fame is definitely something I at least want to exist in the game.

EDIT: Oh, reading over the game types it seems that people don't like those modes, probably for the exact reasons you described. They seem to prefer to watch dungeon crawls on their four-dimensional TVs.

I wanted to create a gradient of game types that varied in in-universe popularity, specifically because I wanted it to be possible for the PCs to advance from the "bush leagues" daytime TV type stuff to the prime time, and several stages in between.

If every loss of every event results in death, the game is unsustainable anyway. You just can't take that many losses to your playerbase and keep a game of the implied size of the Splinter running. Note that the losers of actual Roman gladiator battles were spared often enough that it was actually advertised when a battle would certainly end in death...A practice which was banned by Caesar Augustus because the demand for gladiators had begun to far exceed the supply.

They have a very well stocked prison system and they have a surplus population they're more than happy to decrease. Lack of Players is really a non-issue for GamesCorp. Even the professionally trained ones are extremely numerous. It's something everyone in the setting wants to do, just like everyone today wants to be a rock star, an actor, or a professional athlete. Everyone wants to be rich, famous, and badass. It's human nature. Note that none of the above uses of "everyone" actually mean "everyone" just "enough" that running out is a non-issue for the EBC.

That said, if you win enough to actually matter--i.e. if you're involved in a LONG TERM Adventures Unlimited series with a substantial subscriber base, or involved in serious scouting--then the Company will absolutely cheat to keep you alive depending on the situation. They don't want you to die anti-climatically, if you're a Name and you're going to die on camera they want time to sell tickets and hype it up first. Relatedly, there's just as much room for "failure without Death" in the Long Form games as there is in your average game of D&D or Shadowrun. There's plenty of rooms for players to fail their quest or mission but surprise. But in the short form games, failure = death is the rule.

For this setting to make sense, I think the Avatars have to have megacorporate sponsorship.

I agree, sponsorship should be a big deal.

As for the sustainability problem, it could be handwaved with a cynical outlook on population growth, but that goes into all kinds of dirty First World-centric stuff.

Oh, not just dirty, but absolutely filthy. We're talking about a dystopian society here that literally uses a caste system. They're about as fucked up as can be.

[Judging__Eagle]

I think you might want to watch Rollerball, to see an example of what this could look like; specifically how to organize the "Factions", perhaps by industry or field. I mean the original 1975 classic; the more recent one was... just a crime action flick; not socio-political commentary on the commercialization of sports as population attitude control.

So to be clear, you're talking about a System where by kicking ass (and simultaneously Ascensioning their Avatars) Players earn like, for lack of a better word, Fame Points? Like, new rules for this?

That is actually kind of awesome. And I'm going to seriously think about it. Until now I'd just been kind of thinking that could be up to the GM to advance the Players' wealth and fame with their success as was dramatically appropriate. But I think including actual rules and guidelines for that might be a pretty fun idea.

Honestly, I think this should be the core of your setting; and dump all of the distracting species-specific powers; and just have a list of 4 or 6 power types that everyone buys, but are flavoured based on a character's species.

If the game is about getting ratings; then that should be the point of every session. If not the game is about you wanting to make your fantasy heartbreaker and making it X-Crawl on a virtual Dyson Sphere.

[Neurosis]

Honestly, I think this should be the core of your setting; and dump all of the distracting species-specific powers; and just have a list of 4 or 6 power types that everyone buys, but are flavoured based on a character's species.

Well I mean obviously you'll forgive me if I don't dump the mechanical core of the entire game. Character options are good! In the end I'm probably going to wind up wanting more of them, not less.

If the game is about getting ratings; then that should be the point of every session. If not the game is about you wanting to make your fantasy heartbreaker and making it X-Crawl on a virtual Dyson Sphere.

I think I can explore both with the design; I certainly want to try. In any case, I really appreciate all the feedback I've been getting.

I think you might want to watch Rollerball, to see an example of what this could look like; specifically how to organize the "Factions", perhaps by industry or field. I mean the original 1975 classic; the more recent one was... just a crime action flick; not socio-political commentary on the commercialization of sports as population attitude control.

I'll give it a look.