Thinking about doing a conversion for "Albedo"

[Bryan_T]

I don't know if any of you ever gave a gander to the science fiction role playing game "Albedo."  Perhaps I should call it a "Furry science fiction rpg" as all sentient creatures in it are anthropomorphized (spelling?) critters.

The premise is basically that not so many generations back, a planet full of people woke up one day, with knowledge, an advanced infrastructure, jobs, and all the trappings of life....but they don't know how they got that way.  They are all humanoid, but are bear-like humanoids, mice like humanoids, rabbit-like humanoids, etc (yes, even the dreaded cat-girls!).  They soon take to space and find other planets, all of which seem to be terraformed to be suitable to them, but without sentient life--if seems someone has prepared this piece of space for them.

Eventually a group of rabbits colonize one of the worlds and keep it exclusively a rabbit colony....and proceed to breed like, well, rabbits.  Soon they have a militaristic society that is running out of room, and start trying to expand, starting the first war.

That war has settled into a cold war now.

While I'm not all that crazy about furries, the setting has some good points:
- it involves many fairly varied species, without any questions of why they all seem to act fairly human.
- It allows exploration, in fact encourages it--one of the central questions is "who created this setting for us?"  Was it god or gods?  Was it some superior species?  Was it people just like us?  
- It has a central conflict with some sublety to it--it isn't just "rabbits bad," as many rabbit people live within the main confederation in peace.  Associated with the conflict are questions of species relations, militarism, central control versus independance, how much trust to give an "enemy" and so on.
- The setting is large and diverse, without being overwhelming.

My main issue with the game at the time was that I just didn't care much for the rules.

I think HQ would actually handle the setting admirably.  But I see a few things to sort out:
- Of course the usual issues of how to treat advanced weapons, but not so big a deal as some settings because side-arms are rare.
- Settling the details of how to handle ships--mostly I'd follow the Men of the Sea model, but there would be some issues of deciding the rough scale between a shuttle and a naval warship.
- A whole pile of creature key words would have to be created, and this could actually be the hardest thing, for two reasons:
  + How to keep them reasonably distinct
  + An obvious variable is creature size.  It would demand making size
     an almost universal and objective ability, and of course HQ doesn't
     handle that sort of ability very well.

With all that background, I have mostly one question: any thought on how to handle the size issue.  Basically every character would have to have a size rating.  Is this going to conflict dreadfully with the "abilities reflect how well you use it" issue?  Also how to make sure that a 'mouse' 1/4 or less of the mass of a 'bear' does not have a strong rating that allows it to push the bear around?

--Bryan

[soru]

With all that background, I have mostly one question: any thought on how to handle the size issue.  Basically every character would have to have a size rating.  Is this going to conflict dreadfully with the "abilities reflect how well you use it" issue?  

I'd make judicious use of the system I suggested in the 'very simple contest' thread. It's not so much that some abilites, like size, are universally less subjective, just that some ways of using abilities are always going to give consistent results.

soru

[droog]

Decide on a 'baseline' or 'average' size (eg dog people or whatever) that has no rating. Assign Large and Small ratings to taste and/or balance. This is just as in HQ (cf Anaxial's Roster).

You can't give a universal Size ability because everybody will be able to use it to augment, which seems a bit odd.

On the mouse vs bear issue, you could limit certain abilities for certain species; eg all mice may have no more than 6 Strength.

[Mike Holmes]

Actually, and this may surprise Soru, I think you should go with a relatively objective size scale. I think that Anaxial's roster went with a wrong way of balancing things, and that, in fact, the value of size simply isn't that important.

Especially in a sci-fi setting. I think it's much simpler and consistent to use one scale for everything. If that means that some beings get really big bonuses when trying to squish others, so be it. It's simply not a problem in contests dealing with interstellar trade agreements.

Mike

[droog]

But how about situations in which being Small might get you a bonus? If the mouse-guy just has a minimal Size ability, how do you assess that?

[Mike Holmes]

No, no, no.

A Human has Large 6 and Small 6 by default. This is your "zero base." A mouse has something like Small 10W6. Which gives it a +13 to dodge stuff, and a -13 to throwing people around.

Mike

[droog]

In that case, Mike, aren't we just saying the same thing? Isn't this how HQ does it already? Apart from the fact that you've given the mouse a higher Small score.

[Mike Holmes]

I see the confusion. When I said to use the "one scale" I meant the normal HQ scale (which includes both Large and Small). What I was objecting to was the fact that Anaxial's roster and all of the other creature listings use a different scale for size.

For instance, a 10W3 indicates about maximum human ability with, say, sword skill. So, logically, the largest human should be about Large 10W3 as well. But the AR scale says that humans max out at about Large 14 or so. And that horses are Large 5W. Basically, in order to devalue size and such from resolution, the HQ enumerations use a second scale for such things.

There is, IMO, a good reason to do this for some games. I just don't see it for the Albedo conversion. In fact, having the radically different scores would, I think, be very appropriate to the genre.

Here's a theoretical chart for linear dimensions (AKA height):

Code Select Expand

Rating     Dimension
6            175CM
13         178.5CM
17         180.5CM
1W           183CM
5W           187CM
9W           191CM
13W          195CM
17W          200CM
1W2          205CM
5W2          210CM
9W2          215CM
13W2         220CM
17W2         225CM
1W3          230CM
5W3          235CM
9W3          240CM
13W3         245CM
17W3         250CM
1W4          2.6M
5W4         2.75M
9W4          3.1M
13W4         3.6M
17W4        4.35M
1W5          5.5M
5W5          7.2M
9W5          9.7M
13W5        13.5M
17W5          20M
1W6           30M
5W6           43M
9W6           53M
13W6          83M
17W6         125M
1W7          190M
5W7          290M
9W7          440M
13W7         660M
17W7         990M
1W8          1.5KM
5W8         2.25KM
9W8         3.35KM
13W8           5KM
17W8         7.5KM
1W9         11.5KM
5W9           17KM
9W9           25KM
13W9          40KM
17W9          60KM
1W10         100KM
5W10         150KM
9W10         210KM
13W10        280KM
17W10        350KM


Mike

[droog]

Wow...I don't know if I'll ever use that chart, but I'm saving it anyway.  

When I said 'assign according to taste' I meant that Bryan should do adjustments at that stage. Eg in my Dark Ages conversion you might notice that I gave Germans a Large ability, which implicitly starts at the keyword level of 17. Obviously this doesn't fit with the scale in AR (or HQ for that matter). I think the best thing to do would be to decide on what level you want the augment and work back from that.

[Der_Renegat]

I´m not sure if i can add something to this topic but here is what i think.

Confusion number one comes from Anaxials Roster which had very low ratings. There was this very long discussion on the yahoo list what AR is actually for if the numbers are odd and officials said something like: the numbers are just examples and you must use whatever rating fits the story.
Also the book gives you ideas what abilities a creature has.

Then Mike talks about two different scales. The AR size scale and the ability scale where certain levels of mastery mean different levels of skill like journeyman and master.
In the end a rating measures: how useful an ability is.

So the question when assessing size values is, how useful is this size in a contest?
I dont think that size for humans will ever give you the maximum fom the human scale what would be 20M3.

How useful is it being 2m tall?
How useful is it weighting 180kg?
Not very much i think. Definitely not more than 10M.

So maybe you must first think about:
what can size do ? and then: how useful is this in a contest?
Two obvious examples: someone very small is diffcult to hit.
Someone who is big can sit on you, crush you and capture you with his mass.

Christian

[Mike Holmes]

I dunno, I think a +7 to a wrestling roll is about right for a guy who's seven and a half feet tall. :-)

Large itself, outside of augmenting, has few uses. As a resistance to being picked up for instance, it tends to work out right. It takes about the strongest person to pick up the largest human.

Note that Tall 10W3 will give you the same height as Large 10W3, but not the same weight. Large would probably assume proportional mass - Shaquille O'neal is Large 8W3. Manute Bol was Tall 10W3.

I agree that for a fantasy game, that these considerations are a tad overwrought. But for a sci-fi game, I think they could be fun.

Mike