[Cosmic Combat] Starting development

[Jasper Polane]

So this is the first development thread of my 24 hour game Cosmic Combat: http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/Cosmic_Combat.php

We're going to play-test tomorrow night, and the main purpose of this tread is to fill in the biggest holes and fix some problems before that time.

Damage

The damage rules in the game are broken. Problem: 9 out of 10 conflicts ends with one of the contestants unconscious, unless he spends his Matter Pool. However, I want players to keep their Matter Pool so they can use it for damage or healing or whatever after their next conflict.

So here are the new rules:

You can use the dice from your Matter Pool to do damage to your opponent, for 1 point per die. Damage is used as penalty dice to all rolls until the damage is healed.

Damage Capacity: Add your Incarnate's two highest stats to get his damage capacity. If the total amount of damage he receives equals damage capacity, he's unconscious. If someone gets twice this many damage, he's dying.

When the Incarnate is dying but it's not yet the End Game, the player may narrate how his character survives and where he regains consciousness.
If it's the End Game, he's dead.

The Mission Pool

Right now, Adventure Difficulty does not serve any purpose. It determines the number of Mission Dice that are needed to start the End Game, but since player's can put dice in the Mission Pool after every conflict, they can still pretty much end the game whenever they want. And that's good, of course, that's what they're supposed to do.

New proposed rule: The GM can use the Mission Dice on any roll he makes. That way, conflicts will gradually become tougher as players put more dice into the Mission Pool.

However, I think if I use this, I think there should be a reward for putting dice into the Mission Pool. Otherwise, putting one of your Matter dice into the Mission Pool will just make things more difficult for you.

I've got no ideas on what that reward should be. Anyone an idea?


--Jasper

[Graham W]

Jasper,

You can use the dice from your Matter Pool to do damage to your opponent, for 1 point per die. Damage is used as penalty dice to all rolls until the damage is healed.

Speaking for myself, I like that much better.

One thing I didn't quite understand from the game: if I roll six dice and you roll four dice, then we pair off the top four dice as usual to find out who wins bits of the conflict. But then I've got two dice left over. Does that automatically mean two extra victories for me?

Damage Capacity: Add your Incarnate's two highest stats to get his damage capacity. If the total amount of damage he receives equals damage capacity, he's unconscious. If someone gets twice this many damage, he's dying.

When the Incarnate is dying but it's not yet the End Game, the player may narrate how his character survives and where he regains consciousness.

It's a good idea. But I don't understand how dying differs from unconsciousness. If you're reduced to "dying", does that automatically mean you'll die later, during End Game?

New proposed rule: The GM can use the Mission Dice on any roll he makes. That way, conflicts will gradually become tougher as players put more dice into the Mission Pool.

That's very nice. I like the idea of increased toughness (providing it doesn't make the game impossible to finish, if you see what I mean).

However, I think if I use this, I think there should be a reward for putting dice into the Mission Pool. Otherwise, putting one of your Matter dice into the Mission Pool will just make things more difficult for you.

The only thing I can think of is that you don't actually put one of your Matter dice into the Mission Pool. When you win a conflict, you get the option of putting a new die into the Mission Pool and your Matter dice stay the same.

Or...just off the top of my head...could you say that, in a conflict with a player, the GM can roll all the Mission dice except the ones which that player put in? That way, there'd be an incentive to put your dice in first, because the GM would have less power against you.

That's just a random idea, haven't thought through the implications.

Graham

[Jasper Polane]

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your comments! They help a lot.

One thing I didn't quite understand from the game: if I roll six dice and you roll four dice, then we pair off the top four dice as usual to find out who wins bits of the conflict. But then I've got two dice left over. Does that automatically mean two extra victories for me?

Left over dice go into your Matter Pool. They don't count as winning exchanges, if that's what you mean.

But I don't understand how dying differs from unconsciousness. If you're reduced to "dying", does that automatically mean you'll die later, during End Game?

You're right, that's not clear at all. It's the maximum amount of damage a character can get, so if a PC is dying, he can't be damaged any further.

If a PC is reduced to "dying", he's close to dead, but he'll survive. In game terms, he's still unconscious until he's healed above his Damage Capacity. NPCs can die, unless he's the Big Bad of the adventure (a Lord Of Entropy). When a NPC Incarnate gets damaged twice his Damage Capacity, he's dead. Entropy Lords follow the same rules as PCs.

When you're dying and the End Game starts, you're still unconscious and dying, you don't die automatically. But if you're reduced to dying during the End Game, you're dead.

(Ignore the rule about the player narrating, by the way. The group as a whole should find a way for the character to survive.)

I like the idea of increased toughness (providing it doesn't make the game impossible to finish, if you see what I mean).

Of course this needs play-testing, but I think it'll be alright because the maximum size of the Matter Pool is determined by the number of players in the game.

Adventure Difficulty should be changed, however. I think a standard one-session adventure would need a number of Mission Dice equal to the number of players (including the GM). So on average every player needs to win one conflict in order for the mission to succeed.

About the Mission Dice: I think I'll test this as written first. Hopefully, finishing the mission is enough incentive to pay Matter Dice, and I want to try before changing it.

--Jasper

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Now the official Ronnies feedback thread.

Say it again! Mortal Kommmmmmbat! It's still a good thing, especially if you toss the Silver Surfer in there too. And good on you for posting [Cosmic Combat] First playtest.

This game represents one of the best and most straightforward, logical modifications of the Sorcerer dice system I've ever seen, especially the Matter Pool. It's a very elegant use of Currency and probably should be something of a poster child to demonstrate that concept to people.

I'm a little puzzled about why you'd take a 1 in anything. In fact, generalizing the scores as close to the midline seems like the only viable character design, which seems wrong ... for one thing, player-characters in this genre oughtta be very diverse, mechanically as I would prefer anyway, and for another, why bother designating scores as different from one another if everyone ends up rolling 5 or 6 dice at every step anyway?

Goals and Situations of play are very weak, and before anyone points to the video games as justification, I'll stress that most of the good ones are full of soap-operatic, colorful back-story, and that the one good movie (Mortal Kombat, the first one) has a frankly excellent story.

See, there's hints of some great saga potential in here, such as choices about conflict declaration and spending Matter Pool points ... if you're quick on your feet, your character can get a really powerful personal heroic thing going on. After all, there must be a point to the confrontations before the Mission Dice are all ready, which makes the final stage fun and about something. But at the moment that's all inference on my part, nowhere to be found directly in the current game.

Related to this, what's up with this Particle Vampire? Is it just a minion? Is it a Lord of Entropy? Are all foes Lords of Entrop, which would imply that no one really wins or loses until endgame?

If that's so, then "endgame" is the wrong word, it's just a chapter in which you get to kick this particular bad guy's ass permanently. That at least would explain why player-character improvement is in the game, which otherwise is nonsensical.

I'm getting the idea that at first, you were writing about a whole saga with an end-stage, but halfway through, and influenced by Mr. Particle Vampire, you shifted to writing chapter-structure instead.

That would explain, at present, why Mission Dice seem too bland, because it's not at all clear what a "mission" is, and why we'd need any buildup about it or pre-showdown stage.

I went back and forth on this one ... I'd almost play it. It has a certain purity here, and the final dustup seems neat. But it's too damn sketchy; there's no Situation, because the villains are just "there" and fight #1 seems like it'd be fight #12 or vice versa without any juice either way. And over all, there's a trend that I can only call "too much GMing," which is to say, if I were a player, I'd be annoyed at how the GM basically decided what scenes were and what they were about, and if I were the GM, I'd be annoyed at having to shoulder all the work.

Best,
Ron

[Jasper Polane]

Hello Ron,

Thanks for the feedback! I'm very much aware of the game's shortcomings, and didn't really expect it to be runner-up.

I'm a little puzzled about why you'd take a 1 in anything. In fact, generalizing the scores as close to the midline seems like the only viable character design, which seems wrong ... for one thing, player-characters in this genre oughtta be very diverse, mechanically as I would prefer anyway, and for another, why bother designating scores as different from one another if everyone ends up rolling 5 or 6 dice at every step anyway?

I'm probably changing it so players roll only one stat in a conflict.
The idea behind adding two stats was they would "color" each other: Just Kicking Ass isn't enough to win a conflict, you have to Be A Sneaky bastard as well. I still think that's a pretty cool idea, especially if you consider social conflicts. However, as you say, everyone ends up rolling the same number of dice.

In the first playtest, one of the characters had 4 in Kicking Ass and Wielding Awesome Power, rolling 8 dice in every fight. If you roll more dice your extra dice go into your Matter Pool, so against 5 dice, he got 3 dice in his Matter Pool for just showing up. In most other conflicts involving other stats, he had 5 dice like everyone else.

Goals and Situations of play are very weak, and before anyone points to the video games as justification, I'll stress that most of the good ones are full of soap-operatic, colorful back-story, and that the one good movie (Mortal Kombat, the first one) has a frankly excellent story.

The colorful backstory is exactly what I want for the game, but I'm not sure how to implement it into the rules yet. I'm thinking of something resembling keys from The Shadow of Yesterday, but tied to the Mission Pool somehow.

Related to this, what's up with this Particle Vampire? Is it just a minion? Is it a Lord of Entropy? Are all foes Lords of Entrop, which would imply that no one really wins or loses until endgame?

The PC Incarnates fight other Incarnates, mostly. Entropy Lords are "End bosses", Incarnates with something special. In Mortal Kombat, Shang Tsung and maybe Goro would both be Lords of Entropy.

If that's so, then "endgame" is the wrong word, it's just a chapter in which you get to kick this particular bad guy's ass permanently. That at least would explain why player-character improvement is in the game, which otherwise is nonsensical.

I'm getting the idea that at first, you were writing about a whole saga with an end-stage, but halfway through, and influenced by Mr. Particle Vampire, you shifted to writing chapter-structure instead.

What I want here is what I think of as movie/game series structure: Separate stand-alone adventures forming the campaign. So the first adventure is Mortal Kombat: The Movie, the second is Annihilation, the third Conquest, etc.

Every adventure has it's own endgame, and the Mission Pool provides buildup towards the climax of that adventure alone. Following week, we play a new game of Cosmic Combat, the mission is a different one, new badguys, new Mission Pool. The Adventure Difficulties were meant to provide a little of the same structure to the whole campaign.

Actually, the anime series Dragonball Z is a good example of what I'm after here: Every "Saga" is a Mission or adventure, and the characters keep getting stronger and stronger. Your a Saiyan? Well, I'm a super-saiyan! That's why there's PC improvement in the game as well. (But all it really does is provide for bigger special FX.)

And over all, there's a trend that I can only call "too much GMing," which is to say, if I were a player, I'd be annoyed at how the GM basically decided what scenes were and what they were about, and if I were the GM, I'd be annoyed at having to shoulder all the work.

Really? Where? Could you give an example of what makes you think this?

Because to be honest, I intend Cosmic Combat to be the exact opposite of what you're describing: The GM presents a mission, maybe the first bang, and after that let it go. I understand the game doesn't say anything about this, but that doesn't mean the GM has to do everything, does it?

--Jasper

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

There's no point in addressing your final question, Jasper. if you want to write it up so that your desired vision of play is clear instead of unclear, then my comments have achieved their goal.

Best,
Ron

[Jasper Polane]

You're right, pointless question.

But are there any specific rules or bits in the game that lead to "too much GM-ing"? Because I'll want to edit them out.

--Jasper

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jasper,

I think it would be the "GM setting the Mission," which itself isn't "too much GMing," but in isolation, perhaps sets the standard for scene-framing throughout play. Not by your intention, as you've explained.

So instead of editing that out, it's more a matter of putting the real instructions in. The more I think about it, the more I think that Meta Opera might offer a useful model, especially since Cosmic Combat has a somewhat more speedy, compelling mechanic for ramping up the tension/activity with each scene.

Best,
Ron

[Jasper Polane]

Thanks Ron, I'll check out Metal Opera. In the meantime, the conflict resolution mechanics are pretty much done, and I have a second playtest scheduled tonight. That will be the first time I run the game myself, maybe I'll get a better sense of what's missing.

--Jasper