Indie Monday (Oct 23, 2002): Fighter-D Alpha Planescape (3)

[Zak Arntson]

Okay, so it was really on Wednesday.

We continued our ongoing Fighter-D Alpha Planescape saga, the quest in the Impressive Ruins of Gondorr for the Sun Quill. You can read the first two sessions here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3744
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3841

To recap, we have Goro, the four-armed thing, Ninja, Mummy and Ghost Samurai. They just peeked into a dome which contained gigantic lobster monsters.

To make a long story short, it was a huge combat. Tons of fun, though. Here are the highlights:

Four-Armed Thing
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* Killed one of the lobster-monsters by lopping off a claw (which flew into the eye of the other monster), wrenching his stone axe into the thing's neck, using it as a lever to throw the monster to the ground, dead.

* Flubbed a Special Move, and wound up spinning himself into the ground a la Looney Toons.

* Used his narration to have eight crabs form Constructocrab, like some crazy biological Transformer!


Ghost Samurai
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* Used Tsunami Wave special move to call in a gigantic wave of ocean water (complete with seagull sounds), each droplet looking like the Japanese kanji for "water." The wave envelops Ghost Samurai, who uses the wave to dive swordfirst into the monster. The Samurai slashes and leaps away while the ocean wave chokes the gigantic lobster-monster.

Ninja
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* Ninja's special move, Enveloping Ambush, caused the screen to go black. Ninja disappeared and a split-second later, eight technicolor Ninjas flew in from all sides of the screen to mob the gigantic monster, cutting it to ribbons. When screen went back to normal, the Ninja landed and every crab around his feet exploded in a little geyser through Ninja presence.

* Ninja held the monster's jaw shut when it tried to spit crabs and, due to the whole in the back of the monster's neck, crabs spewed out of the hole and rained on all the other Fighters. Ew!


Mummy
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* Mummy flubbed his special move, Snake Kick, and lost his foot. He later flubbed a roll big-time. I handed Mummy some facts and this is what happened: The little crabs tore apart Mummy, killing him in a cloud of wrappings and dust. The screen goes black and the two mummified boys stand up and look sad. They chant and a ghostly pyramid appears, and out walks a baby mummy: Son of Mummy! Son of Mummy then spends the rest of the fight reading a book on Egyptian Kung Fu, to achieve the power of his father.

* While Son of Mummy is studying, Constructocrab (see above) makes a mental assault, only to fail when it actually reads Son of Mummy's mind and goes mad.

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System comments:
* I've started to explicitly use Fortune at the Beginning. We basically state the Skill used before the dice are rolled and that's it. The dice are rolled and facts are thrown at each other.

* Before narration, I tell the Player if he has killed a monster or not. This is the only guideline narration gets: Your narration either kills the monster or not.

* In regards to Player effectiveness being equal, I'm considering simplifying the system even further. A character would consist of
- Power (equivalent to D&D's Level)
- Actions (per combat round, derived from Power)
- Skill (which would be derived from Power, and is the numerical score of all Abilities)
- five-or-so Abilities (invented by the Player)
- Items (maximum usable bonus during a roll is derived from Power)
- Special Moves (no more Special Words. Your move just has to be thematically appropriate for your character), each Special Move has a score.

* During play, next time, I'm toying with a Special Move doing double damage, to encourage and separate them from plain ol' Abilities.

* We're adding a new rule: Tag Team Air Juggle. If you kill a monster, you can opt to leave it flying through the air. For the rest of the combat round, anyone can use their Action to pummel the monster. This means that if Goro finishes off Big Baddie, but Ninja still has enough energy to use a Special Move and doesn't want to save it for next combat ... well, Goro air juggles the dying baddie on over to Ninja.

[Bankuei]

Man, Zak, if you're going for the full videogame bit, you may wish to consider the now too common team moves, like from Rival Schools, King of Fighters, or Street Fighter games.  Also, you may wish to include the "power up" option for bonus dice on your next attack.

Cool stuff,

Chris

[Zak Arntson]

Funny you mention that. Last session, two players who got the same initiative roll, asked if they could combine their attack. They did the full-on tagteam attack using both of their rolls like one giganto-normous roll. I'll be sure to include those rules when I release the game.

Also, regarding power ups, the way Fighter-D works is that instead of taking damage, your Fighter gets Danger dice. These are the equivalent of a game's power bar. You use Danger dice to perform Special Moves. Danger dice are also rolled during any other (dangerous, i.e., combat) roll and have both good and bad effects.