Forged RPG

[Kryyst]

First I'd just like to say hello as I'm new.  I've been browsing this site in particular this forum and the theory forum and there are plenty of great ideas floating around here.  

Anyway I've been working on my own RPG for awhile now.  It's called Forged (I've been calling it that for longer then I can even remember so I appologize if anyone thinks I'm trying to rip-off the name here).  I've recently found the time to start getting my paper scribbles transferred over to computer scribbles and like many others I'm looking for feedback.  I've started to get up the core of the system rules and I'm working as fast as my free time will allow to get the rest up to a readable/viewable state.

So questions comments I'm looking for them.  More on the actual mechanics then the site.  But whatever I'm not going to complain.

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Kryyst (what's your real name?), welcome to the Forge.

Discussions on this forum seem to go better if you have some question to be answered, or some specific feedback that you're looking for. What about the game would you like to look at specifically?

BTW, on the name, there's another game called Forge: Out of Chaos. Not too close, but just so you're aware.

Mike

[Shreyas Sampat]

Also Oathbound: Domains of the Forge.

What Mike said!  Welcome to the Forge, and are there any particular aspects of your game that you want to discuss?  Can you describe to us what you intended to accomplish with the game?

[Shreyas Sampat]

Intital impressions on the PDF: Comic Sans is nigh-unreadable for body text.  I'm not sure when I am being addressed and when the character is.

I'm also not sure how the "negative open-ended pattern works.  Is it: Roll.  If you roll only zeroes, then continue rolling as if the roll were positive open-ended, but the final result is negative instead. or Roll.  If you roll only zeroes, then reroll; the results are negative and both 0s and 9s open-end downward. ?

How does open-ending interact with the dice pool mechanic? Do you always discard additional dice and than open-end with a single die, or does each die open-end independently, or does it open-end in pools? (If one die open-ends, then the whole pool is rerolled for the open-ending process...)  I find the last possibility intriguing, because it means that high dice pools will actualy ramp up faster.

[Kryyst]

Ok first my name is Chris Groff.

I have noticed that there are some other Forge named products around but only similarly named not exact so I can live with the similarity.  

Next I'm looking on feedback on the mechanics so far.  If there is anything that seems broken or even unplayble.  For example do the difficulties seem way out of wack.  Which I realize is hard to tell until serious playtesting happens.

Yeah the font I was planning on changing that anyway.  I've personally never found it hard to read, but then again I'm so used to reading it I'm not even really reading it anymore.

You were correct on your assumption of negative rolls.  Keep in mind the standard dice pool is 1 die you only buff when you want to do something important.  So with that in mind I think it would be anti-climatic for our hero to bump up his pool so he's rolling more dice and then still have an equal or better chance of rolling a 0.  So the way it works is if you roll a 0 or in the case of more then 1 die all 0's.  You roll again and continue rolling as if it was a possitive roll but the final result is treated as a negative.  The exception being you still use your attribute + skill to add positively to your negative roll.  For example if you roll a 0 and a 9 and a 3 that would be a negative 12.  If your attribute + skill was 4 your final result would be -8 not -16.

The open-ended system as I currently had it worked out for more then 1 die.  If you were to roll 4 dice and score 9,9,3,2  You'd re-roll the 2 9's so if they came up 9, 3 you'd re-roll the last 9 say it's a 4 so your final result would be 9 + 9 + 4 = 22.

However your pool re-roll is an interesting idea if I'm thinking along your lines.  If you had 4 dice again and rolled 1, 2, 4, 9 because you rolled at least 1 9 you'd re-roll the whole pool again getting 9, 3, 5, 7 again 1 9 re-roll again 4, 5, 8, 7 the last roll had no 9s so you keep the highest giving you a 9 + 9 + 8 = 26...interesting indeed.  That I'll have to check.  

Which gave me another idea a slight mod on that one.  What if you kept 1 die aside from each roll.  So if you had a pool of 4 and get 1, 2, 4, 9 you set the 9 aside then roll only 3 dice, score at least 1 9 set it aside and roll 2 dice if you are down to 1 die and still roll a 9 you can keep going but only rolling 1 die.

[Kryyst]

nuts double post delayed edited to kill it.

[Jack Aidley]

Might I strongly suggest you invest in a copy of the Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams? As pointed out earlier that san-serif body text is very hard to read.

[Kryyst]

Because some people found the font hard to read it's been changed.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Do you have questions regarding things other than the difficulties?  I'm not a math guy, but I'd be happy to do a more in-depth critique of issues that aren't math-based.

[Mike Holmes]

Looking at the dice system, what happens (in either system) if you roll both 9s and 0s in a pool with more than one die? Does it explode both up and down? Have you considered cancelling?

Mike

[Kryyst]

Shreyas:  Right now I have lots of other questions.  Unfortunatley most of the questions are for things I have got written down yet.  I'm not to concerned about the probabilities as they are pretty straight forward for the most part.  I was just curious as to what people take is on the general mechanics.  I realise it's nothing entirely revolutionary but I feel that it sits right in the middle between hardcore simulation and un-realistic actions.  So right now I'm hoping that other people are getting the same sense of feel.  Also to me the mechanics seem simple but at the same time I'm pretty damn familiar with them so they should be.  If other people on reading through are going what the hell does that mean.  Then those are the things I need to start addressing and re-writing.

Mike:  As it is only the highest end result is taken so if you are rolling multi-dice and you get 0's and 9's then the 0's are just treated as any other low dice i.e. anything other then a 9.  I had thought about the cancellation idea but I don't think I'll go with it and here is my reasoning.  Normally you are only rolling 1 dice for a standard action.  If you are now spending resolve (meaning that your character is really trying hard not to mess up) or persona (meaning it fits in with the characters personality/goals/whatever) to because this is one action you really want to happen.  Then I don't think you should increase the chance of a massive screw up or a moderate success.  It would be anti-climatic to act in character struggle to the end enter the climatic scene pushing your character to slay the dragon that is holding his beloved and then end up with a critical failure or a moderate result.

[Mike Holmes]

Cool, that makes total sense. I must have missed it.

The system seems to make fairly good statistical sense in some ways (I can't see anything obviously wrong with it). But this all depends on your goals. What kid of feel are you looking for? Wild? Realistic?

Mike

[Kryyst]

Cool, that makes total sense. I must have missed it.

The system seems to make fairly good statistical sense in some ways (I can't see anything obviously wrong with it). But this all depends on your goals. What kid of feel are you looking for? Wild? Realistic?

Mike

You probably didn't miss it, there is a good chance I didn't have it clarrified very well.  

The feel I'm going for would be one in which characters are better the normal people because of their inner strength. Not just becasue in every way they are statistically better.  So characters and important NPC's will have resolve and persona where as normal people will have very little of either.  This should translate into characters that can go further when pushed then a normal person.  I'm picture source material like Conan, 13th Warrior, Lastman Standing, and Firefly to name a few.  So it will be pushing realism but more that Holywood style of realism then cold hard reality.  Getting the right balance will come out more in the playtesting phase as it really all comes down to tweaking difficulty levels.

[Kryyst]

I've been toying with some card mechanics to use instead of my current D10 system.  I'm not sure if I'll use them or not but this is what I came up with so far.  I'm looking for comments towards the viability of this mechanic.



Hand Mechanics:  
You have a base number of cards in your hand say 5 for a normal healthy character. You can draw an extra card(s) by spending points from a pool in my game that would be your Resolve or some Persona attributes (see Spiritual Attributes from Riddle of Steel). This would temporarily increase your hand for the current scene or a specific action but then it'd go back down to 5. Injured characters would have their base hand reduced depending on their injuries.  

Card Use:  
You read the cards from 2-10 at face value Ace could be flipped 1 or 11. Now the gimmicks....  
First the Ace. You could play an ace as a 1 so that your action will suck but playing that Ace would allow another character to play any card but it's value would be treated as a 10. The player playing the Ace nominates the other player and you can't poll people to see what their cards are before hand.  

Face Cards. Face cards themselves have no value instead they have a couple properties. First any 2 eyed face card is a chaining card so that you play any other card then a 2 eyed face card and then another card and add the results. If you have more 2 eyed cards you can keep chaining the results. With a 1 eyed card you can play it to replenish your Resolve pool or you can play it yourself or give it to another player so that you can discard any number of cards and redraw them.  

Attributes and Skills are just added to your card value to get your final result which is compared to a difficulty.

[Mike Holmes]

Getting the right balance will come out more in the playtesting phase as it really all comes down to tweaking difficulty levels.

I think that's very true at this point. I think that you're resolution mechanics are fine in principle, and only need slight tweaking if anything.

Mike