Hard Wired (Gears and Cogs (GaC)) first thoughts please longish :(

[Seth M. Drebitko]

     Thanks for giving things read over I will try and be as brief on setting as possible and get to the meat and potatoes of what the forums really here for.

- Lucid Tech Inc. creates a form of internet called the "Grid" in which a persons neural senses are "tapped" to create a truly immersive environment by stimulating brain activity (think matrix).

- Crazy cult (The Plea) creates a program virus that fuses any persons consciousness who was currently on the grid permanently in the grid.

- The Plea then through computer networks disabled national protective measures and initiated a series of biological attacks on the world creating mass panic resulting in the ultimate demise of remaining human population (oh nooo!)

-   The Plea the went about creating a series of malicious computer viruses to seek out avatars (special AI's that were created to freely exist in the grid) and corrupt their programming to make them in to further destructive forces in order to wipe out the rest of the "operators" (any human stuck in the grid)

-   The free operators form the Wardens league creating protective networks to systematically route out the destructive corruption of The Plea as well as set up sever space to call their own. The Wardens also initiated a war agents any avatars that they may come across in order cut off The Pleas source of further "recruits"


-   The Avatars have done their best to consolidate themselves into as defensible positions as possible creating choke points at major server hubs where they can better defend themselves. They currently have four major servers which were originally the four primary servers used by Lucid Tech Inc.  The four major servers as it stands are the largest of all the servers and act as central hubs connecting for the most part to all other servers. For this reason the Avatars must keep constant watch on the hundreds of fire walls in place.

     So basically players (if you had not noticed) will represent Avatars in the grid trying to eek out an existence. The goals of the game for the players can run the gamut from simple hack and slash, to political intrigue as per the goals of the specific group.

     As for a gaming system I have none as of yet I want to do something with binary  I think, but not sure how yet. The primary thing I wanted to inquire as to was character management methods I will be using, as well as how I will handle kewl powerz.

     Characters stats for flavor purposes will be things like cpu to represent speed and things like that, while their "experience" will be tracked in megabytes, and kilobytes.

     One of the more unique (in my opinion) features of the setting is that characters invest their experience not only to increase skills, and stats, but to purchase "applications" these applications represent species, racial templates, as well as career tracks described below:

Species: As simple as elves, dragons, and dwarves. Species represents more or less the outer skin of an Avatar and can be interchanged as needed (assuming the space is available) allowing the character to be in the form that suits them best.

Racial Templates: Assuming the species meets the prerequisites racial templates act as per a species.

Career Track: These will be similar to classes and a character can draw abilities from a number of career tracks equal to his space open.

Players will have five uses for experience:

1.   Purchasing career tracks, racial templates, and species.
2.   Purchasing open space for the species slot (allowing bigger species to be used)
3.   Purchasing Racial template space (allowing more templates to be applied or better ones)
4.   Purchasing Career track space (as per racial template space)
5.   Purchasing Kewl Powerz

     Kewl Powerz will come in the form of ability seeds (similar to the idea of spell seeds in d20 modern) which can be mixed and matched to create a variety of unique abilities. Aside from the initial purchase of the career track characters will be able to mix and match abilities from any career track with one another (unless otherwise stated) in order to truly separate each character from another. Players would only be able to use Kewl Powerz if all applicable career, species, and templates associated with the power were "equipped".
     When changing from one application to another a number of in game hours equal to the cost of the ability divided by intelligence (to represent downloading)
     

     Example: Kel is an Avatar who has access to the Elf and Grey species, as well as the Vampire template, and use of the ninja, unstoppable warrior, scholar, and courtier career tracks. He knows that he wont be needing to heavy of combat skills of the unstoppable warrior but that he may need some to he takes the downtime while he is waiting to get into the ballroom he switches out for courtier and ninja. He also wants access to the telepathic abilities of being a grey but as he has only recently acquired the species and would rather have access to all the "Kewl Powerz" he has developed as far as social situations with Elf and Courtier. Finally he chooses to leave Vampire, as even if he removes it he will still be subject to the daylight curse (thus is life).

     As stated before the system is still cooking if I can't think of something to do with binary, it will probably be something along the lines of 7th sea with a little mix of alternity thrown in.

My major question is how practical does the character management end seem as far as flipping back and forth with species and stuff?

Aside from that if you don't like it or think it could be better suggestions would be awesome.

Secondary question being I know binary is a series of 1's and 0's in 9 digit order to represent something can you think of any way this might be able to used in task resolution. I don't personally know that much about computers so I have no clue if it's even worth using the binary.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head once I have more to put up on it I will. At the moment I am formulating all of the Kewl Powerz seeds so that I can whip up some example species, and career tracks.

Thanks for bearing with me on the long post, any questions or suggestions shoot them up.

Regards, Seth

[SkuToV]

Bimary is an incredibly horrible idea on coping with it as few people I know can understand it and read it like their own mother language. I like the idea for the background though and the "kewl powerz" is a brilliant idea. I would be glad to help playtest/design this.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

I did not mean actual binary just some kind of binary like resolution. Strings of nine numbers (possibly zero's and ones) compared to another string or something to determine success or fail.
(off to dinner though thanks for the interest)
Regards, Seth

[J. Scott Timmerman]

My system veils binary in decimal digits, and works great.  It seems to work a lot easier than even addition. 

Any round the character does not manage to complete an action, a digit which represents margin of success/failure is calculated.  I call this digit "partial".  Partial is kept track of on a "Track", which is basically a string of digits like you say.

In my system, the lower "Partial" is, the better the success; but depending on how your system works, you may want to reverse this.  A partial one higher means half the success, whereas a Partial of zero means complete success.

In any round you obtain Partial success, you write it on the Track.  If that Partial is already there, you instead write one lower, getting you closer to having a zero.

As you can see, this is all based on Binary in a roundabout way, though the players don't actually have to think in binary.  I use this system to replace things like Hit Points and Time lapse.

-Jason T.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

In theory it sounds like a spiffy method though I am having trouble at this early hour of the day picturing it lol. Could you possibly toss an example of how a round of actions for a character would go via these rules. Also I am gonna try and churn out one of those example templates on lunch today.

Regards, Seth

[J. Scott Timmerman]

While I could go over how a round would work in my system, I think my main point was that binary can work well, if you use it to its advantages.  In particular, a single round can't illustrate why binary works in my system, because the whole point behind using a binary Track at all is when multiple rounds are required for an action to reach completion.

Here's an abstract of how a series of several rounds would work.  Know that "Initiative" as it appears below is not initiative as it works in most rpgs.  "Initiative" in this system simply refers to the result of the character's action, which incorporates the difficulty, the dice, aspects of the action itself, the capabilities of the actor(s) [and perhaps the defender(s)] as well as a stunt-like mechanic.  I rigged the outcome here to show you my point (also, I wanted Gotarou to win).

Samurai Warrior Gotarou is ambushed on his journey by a group of 5 dark ninja.

Round 1:
The ninja attack (to kill) Gotarou with their shuriken. Initiative 10
Gotarou takes a Reaction action versus the ninja's stealth.  Initiative 12

The Span of the round (the highest initiative for the round) is 12.  Therefore, Gotarou's Reaction action completes, but the kill attack fails by 2.
Gotarou reacts in time to avoid dying, but is still wounded.  He marks a 2 (12 - 10) on his damage Track.

Round 2:
One of the ninja throws dirt in Gotarou's eyes: attack to blind.  Initiative 11.
The remaining ninja draw short swords and attack to kill, Initiative 9.
Gotarou tries to swipe at the one who is about to throw dirt in his eyes. Initiative 11.

The span this time is 11.  Gotarou manages to kill one ninja, but is blinded.
The remaining ninja don't manage to kill Gotarou, but still inflict another 2 onto his damage Track.
Since Gotarou's damage track already has a two, the two is instead crossed out, and a 1 is placed there.
Gotarou, with a 1 on his damage track, now suffers a -1 Damage Penalty to his actions (and he can't see).

Round 3:
The ninja move in to slit Gotarou's throat to finish him off; Initiative 8.
Gotarou uses an old technique to visualize the auras of his opponents.  He stunts, and still manages to get Initiative 10 on his attack to kill the ninja, despite his condition. 

The span is 10.  Gotarou manages to slay his enemies, but has not come out unharmed.  He takes another 2 (10 - to his damage Track, which is now showing "1 2", meaning that further actions he takes would incur a -2 Damage Penalty.  Besides that, he's blinded.

Gotarou must now seek medical attention at the nearest town, if he can find it in his state.

-Jason T.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Seems like an interesting mechanic I think I might go along these lines myself.

Player rolls a pool of d6 equal to stat + skill + mod - negatives arranging the dice in a string highest to lowest

Players at the start of combat roll initiative (equal to what ever I decide determines initiative) arranging the dice from lowest to highest.

Players go around the table announcing and committing actions to those dice from lowest to highest. At the end once every one has announced actions play goes as follows.

To complete an action roll a pool of dice as noted above list the dice in order highest to lowest and announce priority of action. All rolls are composed of multiple parts representing the "cogs" in the over all "gear" that is the action the most basic cogs are quality and speed. A secondary part of taking an action is fusion in which one dice is removed from the chain to cause the dice next to it to be counted as one value higher. However a character may wish to resolve multiple actions within a single task and example would be:

Rowin attempts to strike at Nico with his heavy sword deciding that he wants one quick devastating blow to be landed, while Nico scrambles to defend he to attempts to get a quick shot it. Rowin's total dice pool is equal to 5,4,4,3,1, while Nico's roll is equal to 6,3,3,2,2,2.

Rowin had initially put his priority as damage and so his secondary was to hit putting it at four. Nicos primary was defense with a secondary of attack, and a third of damage. When Rowin had consolidated down to 5,and 7, while Nico had preferred 7,3,6. Deftly Nico rolled to the side slashing across Rowins gut with his short stiletto on the way, his seven matching (and thus blocking the attack roll), while his own attack was uncontested and he dealt a total of 6 damage.

I am thinking something along those lines would work  probably needs a little tweaking but basically even in combat each "action" would actual be like its own little mini scene.

Would love to hear opinions on the basic mechanic idea, while I am still whipping up those example templates.
Regards, Seth