Almost an Endeavor (Reflections)

[Seth M. Drebitko]

The below is the link to the original idea I had its not much important to this thread as I will give an overview of what my current idea is but if you want to check it out you can.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19204.0

The setting:

*The universe is made up of thousands upon thousands of realities each completely unique in many ways. Dinosaurs may rule supreme in one world where in another bugs have evolved far beyond any other species.

*Humans can travel between realities by sharing common ties with the inhabitants ( I have a list created but not all to important as this will be a separate source book).


*Empires of Belief are societies which have formed common belief structures and often employ the thought to be immortal Mirror Men to shape the beliefs of societies in order to allow the invading empire to move into its new territory. Many of these Empires are heartless seeking to only convert realities to their belief structures in order to eradicated the entire populace and make moreroom for "their" people to grow into.

The Character:

*Players play Mirror Men constantly faltering pillars of justice faced with the ability to embrace their darker sides for great power.

*Mirror men can travel from reality to reality without need to conform to the beliefs of a society but it is harder for them to pierce the veil between worlds the more adverse they are to their "alignment" (good, and bad).

*Mirror men are able to adopt the special talents of any reality by simply spending the time to attune themselves to it. This could lead to very intresting barbarian, lightsaber wielding Passions which will add a splash to any environment the characters visit.

The rules so far:

* When a player creates a character he must decide how he will rank what the important things about his character and from there distribute his character creation points. The decision of what is important about a character will be decided in a shadow run A,B,C,D manor, the four categories are species, skills/traits, abilities, and wealth. Depending on what you ranked each categories you will be given a number of resources to spend in each area.
     Species, there will be rules to create your very own species getting a number of points equal to how you rank it.
     Traits/Skills, standard traits and skills common in all rpgs you will be given a st number of fixed percentages to distribute                        amongst these based on its rank.
     Abilities, these can range from magical spells to, karate moves, and cyber gear.
     Wealth, gauges how much your character is often capable of scrounging up doing whatever it is he/she does from month to month as well as giving you a set number of cash upfront for devices. Devices can be anything from laser guns, power suits, to magical swords, and spell books packed with spell formula that the character paid to learn.

*Resolution mechanics use a percentile rolling under your combined trait and skill.

* Before any rolls can be made traits and skills need to be set up first add the percentage value of your trait to each related skill and then divide this number in half, anything from the original number to thenew number is an ordinary success. Further divide the new score in half again anything from the second number o this new third number will be a good success, any thing below the smallest number will be an exceptional success. This system is set in place so there is no guessing as to exactly how well you did at a task. An example would be a skill which after adding its trait to is equal to 60%(ordinary) /30% (good)/15% (exceptional).

*Advancing is done when your character performs exceptionally good deeds and is represented In a positive gain in karma which can be used to boost rolls or advance the character. By performing acts of "evil" you gain negative karma if this reaches above your karma score you may not spend or gain karma.  To raise a trait, or skill, or gain an attribute you must first spend a certain number of karma points, and then make a special check depending on how powerful the advancing trait is if you fail this check you do not gain a level but may instantly take one negative karma to advance regardless the role. Optionaly if you depend on your bad karma to get you through things you may before rolling gain a negative karma and then pay only half the required cost of the attribute.


My Questions now are:

In your opinion should people be able to get rid of negative karma if so it should be difficult?

Anything regarding any of these mechanics specificaly the karma should be asked now as I want that pounded out before I move over to the endeavors section at all.

[MatrixGamer]

Advancement and character development (learnign magic etc.) strike me as the most interesting parts of your idea. If Karma gets in the way of that then I'd want it easy to get rid of (at least from the point of view of a greedy player!) But making things too easy doesn't work either - people value what they have to work for. Intermittant re-enforcement is always strongest (Thank you Dr. Skinner.)

How fast do you want mirror men to be able to change when they enter a new reality? And how fast can they change reality so that non-mirror men can invade (as you discussed in your first post)?

Chris Engle

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Well the actual converting of cultures is for now just a back ground plot hook in the setting that the characters can contribute to or hinder if they so choose but this is not the key focus of the core rules ( I have a source book idea that I want to be separate about this).

The characters  are only limited in advancement by the actions they take in game, if characters constantly are pushing the game forward so that they can perform more and more good deeds or bad I suppose if you want to reverse the system. The gm should provide plot and situations in which it would more often than not be the wrong things which would provide the best results. It must be first decided before game how strictly characters must follow along the ideas of being good so that no arguments take place during game.

Characters gain a number of good karma equal to the degree of sacrifice they have gone through in order to further the goals of good/evil.

10 Minor
20 Moderate
30 Major

Characters Will gain negative karma for the following reasons.

5 does minor act of  evil/good
10 does moderate act of evil/good
15 does major act of evil/good

*1 If you roll and fail you may take -10 from what you rolled.
*1 You may willingly take one negative karma and lose one positive in order to subtract -30
*1 You may ignore a failed advancement roll.
*1 You may skip a failed roll and pay only half the normal cost.

Losing Karma

Positive
* raising an attribute
* If you initially spent negative instead of rolling for advancement.
1 if you take on negative to better a roll.
5 You may subtract -10 from what ever the out come of the next roll may be.

Negative
The only way to lose negative karma is when it exceeds you positive you must commit an act of equal or greater significance and subtract the amount of negative karma you would gain from that.
(Note: you must keep track of the amount of negative karma gain from the methods with the * next to it as you may never remove these points they stain your soul forever more.)

Ok I think that is about all for now I am in a hurry though so this is at least what's going up for now, I will check it latter today though.
regards, Seth

[MatrixGamer]

Karma works kind of like action points and experience all wrapped into one. It is a game mechanic that can allow players to do pretty much what they want. This lends itself to narrativist play, I think. Players would be confronting the question, how much bad karma am I willing to suffer to accomplish my goal?

There really needs to be a way to lower bad karma. It would be the lead in to many an adventure. You could have advantures about gratifying our lusts (which build up bad karma) that would be Faustian. Other adventures would be about redemption (working that bad karma down) much like the "Angel" TV show.

Maybe then working off karma should be hard - you've got to do an adventure to do it. Maybe they need to oppose those invasions lurking in the background?

Chris Engle

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Hmm looking at it I agree that you should not have to wait until its to late to do anything, but I will keep it that if you use negative karma to boost rolls or up stats it stays for good as you have sold away that part of your self.

As far as punishment for collecting to much negative karma I am thinking some form of physical change in the character. I can't realy think of to much on the way of mechanical negatives though and am open to suggestions.

The only other thing I am stuck on is I can't decide realy on how to handle the abilities you get from the differant concepts you adopt. I am not sure if templates, classes, seperate abilities purchsed on there own or any of the other possibilities will work best and am open to suggestions?

Regards, Seth

[MatrixGamer]

I've got no clue on which would be better. I always experiment when I hit such points and see how different methods work. I especially watch what player's naturally do in session and try to taylor my rules to do that. That way I'm not fighting nature.

Good Luck!

Chris Engle