[Crux] It's Undead! Now, weapons?

[taalyn]

hey all,

 Some of you may remember Crux, my color-mechanicked game from a year or so ago. Well, it's not dead, and is looking to rouse itself from the coma. I.e., I'm writing. As I've been working, I've noticed something that I could use y'all's advice/expertise on.

 The mechanic is very simple: get power for various colors of motes (tokens) drawn to beat a difficulty. In conflict, in terms of Red, physical, athletic, material stuff, weapons like knives and guns have damage. But I realized that other colors of weapons (like lies, which could be green/perception weapons, or insults, which would be blue/social), I don't have any such scale of weaponly might. In essence, mechanically, there is no difference between a blue weapon and a red weapon, except for this whole incongruous damage rating thing I've got for the red stuff.

 So the question: Can you see a way that the deadliness of a weapon, of whatever color, can be evaluated? It's easy to see that a bazooka would be much deadlier a weapon than a not-so-pointy stick, but is there some simple, intuitive way to distinguish similar classes for insults or lies? If I can come up with some way to apply such a scheme to any aspect / object / act, then I can get rid of the incongruity of having damage rating for red/physical weapons only.

  Thanks in advance...

Aidan

[Jasper]

Do you really have to distinguish between different weapons?  I mean, is it really important what weapons someone's wielding?  Assuming that it is, I have two thoughts.

First, don't distinguish on the basis of damage or whatever, but on how many people are affected.  A bazooka, for instance, can hurt a whole crowd, while a knife can only hurt one person.  Simlarly, for an insult to work on multiple people, it has to be more clever or they have to be all of a kind -- and all paying attention.  Not a direct correlation, but maybe you could do something with that.

Second, going back to the idea of damage, you could have information be the "weapon" behind lies and insults.  For insults, of course, you have to know enough about a person to make an insult meaningful.  You could factor in the existing relationship between the two characters as well -- so an insult from your spouse means much more than from some guy off the street.  For lies, you similarly need enough information to make the lie plausible.  A lie that's totally made up is just farsical -- they need at least a nguget of truth, and the truly great liers are capable of completely altering the appearance of truth with just a subtle manipulation.

How you gauge "information," and how characters get it beats me.  But there are two ideas.

[taalyn]

Heya Jasper,

 That's exactly the point - I don't want to distinguish between different weapons, not on a case by case basis, anyway. But just as the bazooka does more damage to one person than a not-so-point stick, the stick can do more than a bare hand. Not necessarily, I know, but that's the part I'm stuck on.

 I want something grainy and simple. Originally, there were weapons (guns, knives), big weapons (machine guns, swords), and huge weapons (most everything else), with tac nukes being an obviously enormous weapon. But how can a simple scale like that be transferred to acts of other kinds?

 How many people can be affected is up the right alley, but doesn't quite work because sometimes, it's the lie or insult precisely directed at one individual that does enormous "damage". This is similar, however, to how Crux judges ranged weapons and the danger there - it's all about how easy it is to avoid it. The easier it is, the less likely it's a ranged weapon. Insults are usually ranged weapons when there are witnesses, for example. Well, as long as the insult actually applies to the insulted party.

 Re: the second idea - that's part of what it is, all ready built in. If I have an aspect, Kickass Karate, that aspect is a weapon in its own right. Same with an aspect Cutting Insults. Because aspects (the "skills" of a character) can be weapons, then that seems to imply to me that there shouldn't be any kind of bonus from weapons of whatever kind, unless they're an aspect. And while Crux has certainly got some non-realistiuc influences, there is a certain amount of realism required to make the themes of the game possible.

 In other words, it doesn't have to be too realistic, but if I deny the usefulness of weapons and their damage bonuses entirely, it will make the realism that is necessary collapse.

 As an example, if it helps (using original system):

 Bob fires his gloch at the shambling mound of mango skin moving towards him. He makes his draw, and gets 4 power, 2 better than the difficulty to hit. He'll do 2 red damage, plus 2 for the gun, for a total of 4 red damage.

 Later, Bob is trying to escape from a swarm of humbugs. They get in his eyes and nose and eyes, trip him with their barbed bodies. In mechanical terms, they draw on the Catch Them aspect, and get 8 power. Bob draws to escape, but only gets 2 power, so the humbugs inflict 6 amber damage.

 But what about weapon bonus to the humbugs? They're using weapons too, so shouldn't they get a bonus for their weapon as well? Or should all bonuses for weapon be gone, and then how do I rationalize that in terms of realism?


 Aidan

[Spooky Fanboy]

In other words, it doesn't have to be too realistic, but if I deny the usefulness of weapons and their damage bonuses entirely, it will make the realism that is necessary collapse.

I'd make a compromise: set up a chart of Effect bonuses, such that better tools (not necessarily weapons) grant bigger bonuses if the PC/NPC succeeds. The better the tool for the job, the bigger the success. To use your example re: tacnukes, a tacnuke gets a big bonus for damage, a slightly smaller bonus for intimidation, and no bonus if you're using it to stitch up a wound or bake bread. For how to use the chart...I'm not sure how you'd do that with any degree of consistency. You'd have to depend on the players to make some sort of judgement calls.

[taalyn]

What about this as a possibility?

 First, every act which pits one person against another (e.g. opposed rolls) counts as conflict. The type of conflict is dependant on the color of the aspect that instigates the conflict.  So if Bob tries to trick Carl with his Tall Tales aspect (which is magenta), then the conflict is magenta, about willpower and psyche, regardless of how Carl responds.

Any aspect used in a conflict counts as a weapon. The bonus provided by the weapon depends on 3 things:

 - avoidability: ranged weapons are hard to avoid, as are insults in public.
 - penetrating: deeply wounding weapons, knives, not clubs, insults based on fears
 - size: big more than little, insults based on truth

 Generally, it's 1 mote per factor that holds. So, for a longsword: penetrating and size might apply, providing +2 to damage.  An insult based on a deep, dark secret, told in front of a crowd of people, would be a +3 weapon.

  Now, I'd have to provide some guidelines for how each of the factors apply, based on the colors / types of conflicts involved. Size will be different when talking about cyan/info instead of red/physical weapons.
 
  Comments? Input?

Aidan