Big? Wild? Prey!

[Stefan / 1of3]

Hi.


I wanted to present a little game, I'm working on. (I have asked for some inspiration in this thread before.)

The game is about professional monster hunters in some fantasy setting. It should be pretty gamist.


Group
One player controls the monsters. He doesn't basically have more control over the rules and the general setting, than the other players, so I won't call him GM, but Dragon, since the dragon is the monster of all monsters.

The other players take the role of professional monster hunters.

NPCs can be controlled by any player, although people telling the hunters about the monster should be probably left to the Dragon.


Game structure
There are basically three types of scenes in the game:

-Sightings: Here the monsters and the hunters meet. Things hunters and monsters do during a Sighting are called Actions.

-Preparation: In these scenes the hunters prepare for the next sighting. This will be an important part of the game. Characters can study the library for weaknesses of their prey, set traps, brew special poisons, etc.
Things the hunters do during Preparation are called Tasks.

-Free time: Things the hunters do, when they not hunting.


The hunters
The main traits for the hunters are 12 skills in four elemental groups. In every group there is a physical skill, a magic skill and a social/mental skill.

Fire:
- Weapon master (Create and modify weapons and an additional favourite weapon per level).
- Exorcist.
- Leader.

Water:
- Lure (Luring the beast with human flesh is part of genre IMO. Since this game is about professionals, the characters can of course specialize in the high art of "Why is it always me?").
- Alchemist.
- Team worker (can help other characters with their Tasks).

Air:
- Trap expert.
- Healer.
- Scholar.

Earth:
- Scout.
- Rune crafter.
- Meditation.

I don't really like the name Meditation. The other traits all describe people not actions, which I prefer, since the statement "I'm an Alchemist." is stronger than "I can do Alchemy.".
Do you have any suggestions for a better name?


I'm a fan of graphical character sheets, so the traits will be arranged in four triangular formations with one centre field and two fields in each direction. The centre counts for all three traits, but costs two character points.
Characters will receive 8 to 10 points for character creation.


Professionals must of course be able to use any weapon, but each character may choose one favourite weapon and an additional favourite weapon per level in Weapon Master.


Apart from that I thought about an Origin trait, that offers some bonuses based upon the character's species and culture. But I'm not sure, which mechanics I should use.


Finally the hunters can gain Affections after a Sighting. (See "Affections")


The monsters
The dragon gains a certain number of points to create monsters for the session. He doesn't have to spend all points right at the beginning of the session, and he doesn't have to tell the other players, how many points he spent.

All monsters have three traits:

-Brains
-Mass: The better, the bigger. Mass is the basic difficulty to hurt the monster.
-Rarity: The difficulty to find information about the monster's weaknesses.

Furthermore monsters can have some or all of the following traits:

- Wildness (Bonus to attacks)
- Freedom (Bonus to movement)
- Deception (Bonus to stay hidden.)
- Dark Force (For demons, vampires and sorcerers)
- Havoc (Special powers to mess things up, like fire breathing or elemental control)

These traits are resources the Dragon can spend. Certain measure limit a monster in spending. (For example Exorcism blocks Dark Force, and nets block Freedom.)
Finally these traits offer the possibility to gain certain advantages. High Freedom can offer flying, high Deception further illusionary powers.


Affections
I got the inspiration for this mechanic from the thread in RPG Theory.

After a Sighting the hunters can choose to become emotionally attached to their prey, a very unprofessional state.
If the players do not want that, the Dragon gets additional monster points. That means that, when the problems are big enough (that is, when the hunters do not want the Dragon to have even more monster points), affections become more likely.

I'd like to have one Affection for every element, but by now I miss a fourth one. I have Hatred (~ Fire), Respect (~ Water) and Interest (~ Air).
Any ideas?


What do you think in general?

[Valamir]

How about Fear for the fourth affinity...and Fascination instead of Interest.

[xenopulse]

Sounds good so far. Any ideas on how the gameplay of the actual scenes will go?

I think it would be very cool if the characters can only bring limited resources, which they select in their preparation stage--informed by what they learned through research. So they can take risks and bring specialized weapons, or be more safe but potentially less effective by bringing regular weapons, etc.

[Stefan / 1of3]

How about Fear for the fourth affinity...and Fascination instead of Interest.

Moving Respect to earth and allocating Fear to water might work. But I worry that Fear could be dysfunctional, since fearful characters don't want to meat the monsters at all.

Any ideas on how the gameplay of the actual scenes will go?

There will be a short list of standard weapons like lances, cross bows, nets, axes and the like. Each weapon should have a destinctive bonus. I haven't worked on that, yet.

Hunters have a Task pool, that refills while resting. Dice from this pool can be used for the preparations described above. So they must decide what they want to spend their Task dice for.

- Exorcists can prepare items to drive the monster of.
- Weapon masters can train the team to aim at specific spots, and modify the standard weapons ("See this arrow head? I designed to penetrate an empty armor. That will teach those animated chain mails.")
- Alchemist can create various poisons and explosives.
- Scholars may know useful stuff about the beast, and can search through texts.
- Trap experts can - of course - build traps.
- Scouts are useful to find the beast and locate helpful places for an ambush.
- Rune crafters can create little amuletts, that offer some bonus for a single Sighting, and use their rune stones for little prophecies.
- Meditation allows to prepare for some Action, like: "When Eron lead the beast to the river, I will shoot at its eye."

Some skills can also be used as an Action. Those are Exocist, Scout (to see through Deception), and Leader. The latter allows to give other characters additional Action dice through specific orders.

As described above, Team workers are helpful in most Tasks, and the time of the Healer comes (big surprise!) after Sightings.

[Simon Kamber]

How about using determination instead of fear? As in "I'm afraid of this creature, but so is everyone else, and SOMEONE has to do this".

[Valamir]

How about Fear for the fourth affinity...and Fascination instead of Interest.

Moving Respect to earth and allocating Fear to water might work. But I worry that Fear could be dysfunctional, since fearful characters don't want to meat the monsters at all.

You wanted it to be an emotional unprofessional state, yes.  

Their professionalism will keep them hunting...just like Indy and snakes.

[Stefan / 1of3]

Good point. I'll give it a try.

[Stefan / 1of3]

I did a little play test on Sunday. My friends found the basic idea quite enjoyable (is that an English word at all?).

Some additions I made up:

Fate
Players gain a certain number of Fate points at the beginning of the session. The dragon gets as many points as the hunters.
Players can then spend those points on the Map of Fate or keep them to use as a resource during the game. (This idea was inspired by posts on this board, too. Thanks again.)

The Map of Fate is basically a sheet with certain categories:
- Environment
- Allies
- Equipment
- Information
- Initiative

Points spend to Map are placed in the form of d6 in one of the aspects. The hunters and the Dragon can call for a Fate roll on an aspect.

- Environment is pretty clear, I think.
- Hunters can use Allies to get some, the Dragon can use it to create traitors.
- Hunters can use Equipment to get stuff, the Dragon can use it to break something or make something get lost.
- Information is either true or false, depending on who has won the roll.
- Initiative is special. It is normally only called upon by the Dragon and describes the possibility to interfere with the hunters' preparations. - The next Sighting occurs before the characters are finished.
I gave the hunters a free point in this category.


This mechanism basically works quite well, although I faced some problems:

There is a certain disparity with Information. We had one situation, where the hunter's asked the villagers for information about the beasts. We made a Fate roll, the hunter's lost and I made something up.
A little bit later, a hunter wanted to search the local library. To find out, if there is any, we had another Fate roll. The hunters won, and the Scholar did some research using his skill.
At still another occasion the Scouts searched a farm for clues. They just rolled their ability, with no Fate roll before.

That is three ways for one thing: Gaining information.
Although it worked, I don't really like that.

Another major problem was finding stats for allies. I think, that will require some more playtesting.



The preparation phases worked quite well. I had exspected more problems there.

A major problem was combat. I decided for to use an Action pool, that characters can take dice from. (Leadership tests can give characters more dice for specific actions.)

The action pool and the remaining Fate points together with the various monster resources were a real mess, so I kicked the resource traits. Monsters can now get various special powers (which I haven't detailed, yet) and bonuses to certain rolls, instead.



Something else, I'd like to add, are meaningful rules for free time. (I'm not sure, how Meaning is defined in the Forge modell, so the term might not be the same.)
Although we had a short free time scene, it was neither very long nor very interesting.
I think it would be cool, to let free time influence the hunt somehow. But I'm not sure, how to do it.


Any comments or suggestions?