Critique my campaign setting (long post)

[billvolk]

This isn't a rules system - it's a setting designed to get the maximum potential out of open-ended, point-based rules systems like BESM (the Tri-stat system found at http://www.guardiansorder.com/downloads/) or Zen and the Art of Mayhem. I've run a few games using it in conjunction with the BESM rules, and it's gone over pretty well. What do you guys think of it?


All Kinds of Awesome

Concept – The Laws of Power
All Kinds of Awesome is a roleplaying campaign setting in which any genre of power fantasy can be played out: fantasy, modern action, science fiction, horror, superheroic, martial-arts, anime-inspired, whatever. It's designed for fun-filled action/comedy, and realism takes a backseat to awesomeness. To this end, the following Laws of Power hold true in the game world:

The Law of Paths: A character can follow any path to power and, with dedication and sacrifice, succeed. Any path will work about as well as any other. You can make a path up and it'll work, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. One character might strive to be the world's greatest martial artist, another character might strive to be the world's greatest gunman, a third character might somehow get the idea that he can draw magical power from his moustache, and they'd all be a match for each other in combat, assuming that they have dedicated themselves to their chosen paths about as much and sacrificed about as much.

The Law of Singularity: Characters will lose power overall if they try to walk too many paths to power at once. If a martial artist finds a monofilament weapon and trains himself to use it, then discovers how a school of magic works and decides to train himself in that, too, and so on, he loses his focus. This law, along with the Law of Paths, is why genres don't need to blend in this world. Some androids from Plastic City might introduce futuristic weapons to a tribe of cavemen, but the cavemen won't really be better off using them in battle. They might even be worse off. It's crazy. It defies logic. It's how things work in this world.
You may be asking "If advanced technology and fancy magic won't actually make people more powerful in this world, why do people develop them in the first place?" The answer is "Because somebody got bored with the status quo and went off on a new path, just to be different. Other people caught on, and eventually it became the new status quo somewhere."

The Law of Image: power tends to look cool. Looking cool alone doesn't make you powerful, and displays of power may not look cool 100% of the time, but there's a strong correlation.

The Law of One-Uppage: There's always someone more powerful than you. You will not reach the end of your path.

The Modular World
The world of All Kinds of Awesome is a modular world – each module takes after the setting of a particular genre, and GMs may freely add or remove modules. Players and GMs shouldn't be discouraged by the belief that something "doesn't exist" in the Modular World. If you want it, add it. Here are some modules:

Glass City – This is a contemporary city. If you've ever seen an anime or something
where there's a nice modern-day city, and everything's clean, and the sun is shining, and there's probably a monorail or something, that's Glass City. Glass City is a hub of extramodular people and activity: while other modules tend to be insular, Glass City has a lot of immigrants and culture clashes. There's at least a few members of every race somewhere in Glass City. Glass City hates dirty things and old things; it has an unmatched department of public works and a hyperactive construction (and demolition) industry. This is good, as Glass City's contact with other modules comes at a price: the tendency to sometimes be destroyed by giant robots and monsters. There are no old historical buildings in Glass City, and probably no large structure that's more than ten years old or so.

Concrete City – Like Glass City, Concrete City resembles a modern-day city. However,
Concrete City is darker and gloomier. Like Glass City, it often rebuilds itself, but it doesn't care about aesthetics or cleanliness. It can't afford to; Concrete City is attacked by giant robots, radioactive monsters, zombies, and supervillains almost on a regular basis. A large number of superheroes and other vigilantes live in Concrete City. Still, this module has more crime than any other.

Stone City – This is the pseudo-Medieval Western fantasy city. Elves, dwarfs, Rrr, and
other fantasy races share Stone City with humans, and magic is commonplace. Stone City has a ludicrous number of private adventuring companies, which it has come to rely on for military might, law enforcement, exploring other modules, and even doing menial odd jobs.

Wood City – Just as Concrete City is the dark side of Glass City, Wood City is the dark
side of Stone City. Wood city resembles a real Medieval city much more than Stone City does. In fact, all the nasty things about Medieval life are accentuated, if that's even possible. Plague happens. Blight and starvation happen. Rrr invasions happen. Paranoia and superstition happen. Indoor plumbing doesn't happen. The other roleplaying setting that most closely resembles Wood City is the Warhammer fantasy universe.

Atomic City – This is a retro-futurist sci-fi city. In other words, this module is like the
future as people imagined it in the past. There are flying cars, blocky robots that perpetually dream of overthrowing mankind, and floaty rings around almost everything. This module is the only one that makes regular contact with other planets, and more Space Aliens live here than anywhere else in the Modular World. The nuclear power plants all over Atomic City have never had any accidents, but Atomic City may be somehow responsible for the fate of Fallout Land...

Plastic City – This is the "cyberpunk" city and the dark side of Atomic City. This module
has given up on space travel in favor of perfecting information technology and genetics. There are sophisticated piloted robots here, as well as the only lifelike androids in the Modular World.

Steam City – This module thinks that industrialization and modernism are the bee's
knees. It's got the most mad scientists and inventors of any module. Even destitute and homeless residents of Steam City fancy themselves scientific laymen. The steam-powered robots and various clockwork devices that can be found all over Steam City aren't as "pretty" or "streamlined" or "environmentally friendly" as the technology that some other modules have, but they can hold their own. Remember the Law of Paths.

Fallout Land – This module used to be different. It was probably a lot like Concrete City.
Then it suffered a localized nuclear apocalypse. Now it's a land of harsh survival and probably the module that gets the least amount of contact with the rest of the Modular World. It's got zombies and mutants to spare.

Paper City – This city resembles Edo-period Japan. It's got more cat-people and fox-
people than any other module. It's also the most xenophobic module, with the possible exception of Wood City.

Pirate Atoll – Pirates! This module is at war with the ninjas of Paper City, of course.

The Black Barony – This is the home of vampires, werewolves, necromancers, and
generally anything that might be drawn by Tim Burton or Edward Gorey. It's actually more than one barony, run by a handful of rival vampires and other noble nasties. Residents of the Black Barony aren't universally evil; some see necromancy and other icky paths to power as nothing but tools, only as right or wrong as the way they're used. The walking dead and other creepy-crawlies are so commonplace in the Black Barony that they don't seem scary or even unusual to natives.

The Nice Forest – This is where elves, fairies, and talking animals frolic. Many of the
elves in Glass City come from the Nice Forest or are the children of immigrant Nice Foresters.

The Mean Forest – The dark side of the Nice Forest, this is the forest that people used to
fear and write nasty fairy tales about. The Mean Forest is the home of the elves, fairies and talking animals that will kill visitors outright rather than play tricks on them. The residents of this module are at war with civilization, especially Steam City.

Dust City – This small city is located in the desert between Steam City and Fallout land.
It's where cowboys live.

Cave Valley – It's got cavemen. And dinosaurs. So what?

The Dungeon – This is an inexplicable subterranean module located near Stone City. It's
full of treasure, traps, and nasty fantasy beasties, but nobody knows why they're all down there or how they got there.

Other Planet – This is where Space Aliens come from. Citizens of Atomic City naturally
believe that all of Other Planet looks more-or-less like Atomic City. However, Other Planet is a complete Modular World, and its people, modules, and paths play out in their own way. Atomic City simply made contact with Other Planet's version of Atomic City, and vice-versa.

Outer Madness – This is the home of unspeakable Lovecraftian horrors, and not much
else. Some say that is infinitely large, surrounding all the other modules.


Races
These are some intelligent creatures that live in the Modular World in significant numbers. Many rare and unique creatures inhabit the Modular World, too.

Humans – They can be found on every module, and they're the majority of the population of many modules. You should already know quite a bit about them.

Robots – The character and appearance of a robot depend on what module it's from. Steam City has clockwork automata, Glass City has a few metal-and-plastic robots that build cars and help old people, Atomic City has "classical" shiny metal robots, and Plastic City has all kinds of life-like androids, transforming robots, and artificial intelligences, as long as they don't have any sharp angles or chrome on them. Plastic City engineers hate sharp angles and chrome, and they're trying to phase out straight lines, as well. In all cases, robots can have personalities and feelings just like humans, though robots from Steam City and Atomic City have the slight tendency to have a distaste for emotions and organic life.

Elves – Elves primarily come from Stone City, the Nice Forest, and the Mean Forest, though they're now the second-largest demographic in Glass City, where they get along great as hippies and metrosexuals alike. If there's such a thing as "dark elves," they probably live in the Mean Forest.

Cat-people – Like robots, cat-people have multiple origins. Some cat-people are a naturally-occurring race in Stone City and Paper City. Some cat-people are genetically engineered in Plastic City. Some cat-people claim to be humans with a kind of lycanthropy or creations of a cat-god. In all cases, there are far more cat-women than cat-men, and nobody knows why. Cat-people are generally mostly-human, with cat ears and tails.

Fox-people – There are other types of animal-people, besides cat-people. Fox-people live mostly in Paper City. A fox-person is born with one tail, and he grows another tail whenever he achieves something cosmically significant. So far, no fox-person has ever made more than eight cosmically significant achievements.

Space Aliens – Space aliens come in all shapes and sizes. The most common variety of space alien is slightly smaller than a human and has gray or green skin, big black eyes, and sometimes antennae. Most space aliens in the Modular World are visitors to Atomic City, but some make it a point to explore other modules as well.

Dwarfs – Dwarfs live in and around Stone City and Wood City. They're also the second-largest demographic in Steam City. They like to build, use, and brag about tools, but the kind of tools depends on the individual dwarf's path to power and the module he's from. Some dwarfs think that beards are a big deal, but some dwarfs don't. A few dwarfs think that beards are such a big deal that developing the supernatural powers of their beards is their path to power. Dwarfs and elves aren't best friends.

Slimes – You know, like from Dragon Warrior. A slime looks like a basketball-sized
drop of blue goo with a face. They can manipulate objects with retractable pseudopods about as well as humans can use their hands. They generally have a great sense of humor, but serious slimes exist (and are, some would say, even funnier than slimes who want to be funny.) Slimes live in Stone City and Paper City.

Werewolves – most werewolves can be found in the Mean Forest or the Black Barony. A werewolf can choose whether to pass lycanthropy on to a human bite victim or not. There are other kinds of werecreatures, too.

Vampires – Nearly all vampires live in the Black Barony, but some live in Concrete City. Vampires don't age and tend to have scary powers, but they compensate by being cursed with angst. Vampires can only turn humans into vampires through complicated necromantic rituals, not by accident. It's uncertain which "traditional" vampire weaknesses are real and which they're just faking.

Zombies – Zombies are either the product of necromancy or radiation, but there are rumors in Concrete City of a virus that turns people into zombies. Zombies can be found in the Black Barony, Stone City, Wood City, Fallout Land, and sometimes in Concrete City. Some of them are intelligent. All of them like to eat brains.

Mutants – Mutants are created either accidentally in Fallout Land or intentionally in Plastic City. They have a tendency to have amazing powers, but they have a stronger tendency to be ugly.

Rrr – all the various Big Dumb Fantasy Races have, for the sake of simplicity, been conglomerated under one name. They mostly live in Stone City, but there are
immigrant laborers in Steam City and nomadic bands that like to rape and pillage around Wood City.

Spirits – metaphysical entitiesshow up now and again across the Modular World. They might only exist because people believe in them. Common types of spirits include ghosts, demons, angels, kami, fairies, and Lovecraftian horrors.

A note about half-breeds: By default, no two of these races can interbreed and conceive a child. This is for the same reason as the Law of Singularity, but the GM may naturally overturn this decision.

Paths
A character's path might be similar to a "character class" in other roleplaying systems, but it doesn't have to be. It represents what a character tries to be the best at. How far a character is along a path depends only on how long and hard he's been dedicated to the path and what he's sacrificed for the sake of traveling farther along the path. There are an infinite number of paths, and all the paths are fairly evenly matched – there are no "shortcuts" to power in the Modular World, though many try to find them.
Also, remember the Law of One-Uppage. Every path is endless. If a follower of a path has an end goal in sight, be it omnipotence, perfection, or just being better than everyone else, that character will walk down the path for a lifetime without reaching it. Some paths understand this law and are open-ended by nature.
Here are some example paths. This is not a list of every path.

Perfect mastery of a particular style of martial art
Being bigger, stronger, and/or tougher than everyone else
Discovering all the secrets of necromancy or some other style of magic
Inventing technological marvels (Note that, because of the weird way that paths work, machines won't work as well for people who didn't invent them.)
Devoting oneself to a god or other metaphysical power and channeling it through miracles
Perfectly embodying some idea, philosophy, or archetype of human nature
Attaining perfect mutability of form through shapeshifting magic, mutation, lycanthropy, being a transforming robot, or something else
Drawing magical power out of one's moustache or beard (Moustache Magi and Beard Wizards are mortal enemies, and neither side trusts the mysterious Sideburners.)
Carving wooden puppets and animating them with the spirits of famous dead people

Infinites
Among the followers of some of the more beaten paths to power, there are rumors and legends of figures to whom the Law of One-Uppage doesn't apply. They are the invincible embodiments of their paths, and they are called Infinites. They are said to be even more powerful than gods, if gods even exist. Infinites cannot be permanently killed, even by each other. There are no reliable accounts of Infinites, but they are usually said to be aimless wanderers of the Modular World, completely unreliable because they are beolden to nothing. If they are compassionate, they are condescendingly so; an Infinite's position as the upper limit of his path completely warps his view of lesser creatures. Infinites resemble the protagonists of anime and superhero power fantasies, but it is strongly suggested that they not be player characters in All Kinds of Awesome. The best examples of characters who would be Infinites in the Modular World are Goku, Superman, Vash the Stampede, and Dr. Manhattan.

Miscellaneous Modular Facts
Do gods exist in the Modular World? There's no universal consensus. Because of the Law of Paths, people can get power from anything, including whatever gods they believe in. However, people can also get power from skepticism, logic, staunch atheism, etc. A group of college students in Glass City recently "invented" a god called the Flying Spaghetti Monster as an experiment. They wrote some religious dogma, gathered some fellow students to be Pastafarian cultists, performed some regular services and rituals, and to the surprise of some, the Flying Spaghetti Monster became as "real" as any other deity in the Modular World. Devotion to His Noodliness is now the path to power of quite a few people.

Are there such things as "normal people" in the Modular World? Yes, absolutely. Millions and millions of people never leave the module they were born in, and all but an obsessed few never take anything more than baby steps along any path to power. Either they're weak-willed and don't dedicate themselves to being the best at anything that matters to them, or they realize that there's more to life than being able to level mountains with a thought or crack walnuts between your butt-cheeks.

What's between the modules? Just outside the cities are the suburbs, farms, whatever is appropriate to the city's setting. The roads and paths between modules, even civilized modules, can be dangerous and prone to "random encounters" from troublemakers and unique monsters. There might be lonely "rest stops" or small settlements set up by the nearest module.

Why don't people move out of modules that suck? It doesn't make sense that residents of Concrete City, Wood City, and other modules with nicer alternatives would take pride in their homelands. It doesn't make sense, but it happens. Even if their home module is always teetering on the brink of destruction or lacks certain comforts, it's a part of their identity and self-image. Even people who do immigrate to other modules out of necessity or a rare taste for adventure more-than-likely feel that the Old Module had a charm all its own and wasn't strictly bad. Also, some people in crappy modules, like Fallout Land, are unable to move out even if they want to.

[pells]

Hi and welcome to the forge !!!

I've got a couple of questions for you, althougth I'm not sure that's the kind of comments you're looking for. You tell me.
- You're designing content, not mechanics. You presume the players will use the BESM rules, or at least, that's what you would provide, from what I understand. I'm not familiar with this mechanic, but from what I could see, it comes from d20. So, I suppose it encourages a NAR agenda. I'm not sure I want to go that way about agendas. Let's say I recommand to you the reading of articles on this matter. If you're going to participate in this forum this will be a recurring concern for you. That said, I don't see anything in your setting that seems to be linked directly to the system. Could you explain your choice ? Have you thougth of proposing more than one system ?
- What are your publishing goal ? Free pdf or sale your setting ?
- Will each module be proposed separatly or all together ? How long (number of pages) will be a presentation of a module ?
- Do you intend to propose plots ?

Why don't people move out of modules that suck?

- Do they go to war against each other ?

I would recommand you come up with more specific questions, instead of what do you think ? I might be easier to help you.

[Larry L.]

Welcome to the Forge, Bill!

I'd recommend you read through all of the "sticky" threads in this forum.

Are you planning to publish this? Tri-Stat is not an "open" system, you have to license any publication using those rules though Guardians of Order.

You say you've played this a few times. Maybe you could hop over to Actual Play first, and share with us how a game of All Kinds of Awesome plays out. That would be awesome.


Pells,

I'm a little confused by some of your statements. BESM/Tri-Stat is a point-based system (closest in mechanics perhaps to GURPS). But they've also spun off a BESM d20/OGL system. Also, I'm pretty sure the consensus around here is that D20 can support a Gamist agenda well, and leaves something to be desired in supporting a Narrativist agenda.

[pells]

I'm a little confused by some of your statements. BESM/Tri-Stat is a point-based system (closest in mechanics perhaps to GURPS). But they've also spun off a BESM d20/OGL system. Also, I'm pretty sure the consensus around here is that D20 can support a Gamist agenda well, and leaves something to be desired in supporting a Narrativist agenda.

Larry, let's say, for the sake of this thread, that this is my mistake. I just saw the big d20 logo and assumed it would be gamist, maybe wrongly. Let's leave this conversation for another time, unless billvolk wants to venture into this. But let me rephrase my point.

I strongly believe that designing pure content (setting/plot) is an enterely different trade from designing mechanic. Given that, I believe the choice of system is fundamental. Even maybe the most important choice. Because, when you choose a system, you send a big message to your public : this setting is meant to be played with BESM/Tri-Stat. But is it supposed to be played only with this system (be it gam/sim/nar or abashed) ? I believe it tends to narrow your public.
So, I think the choice of system needs to be thougth out very wisely and must come from strong believes.

[Anders Larsen]

There is some interesting ideas here. I just have a few comments.

Who decide which module is to be used in a game? Can the players make characters from different modules (ex a caveman and a atomic robot), and then The Atomic City and Cave valley is part of the game? How do you handle it if the characters in the group is wildly different, and are coming from wildly different modules? Because this could be a problem; how would such characters ever work together.

I have a small problem with The Law of One-Uppage. Unless the game is about dealing with stress related to never be able to reach your goal, rules like this can be very annoying in a game. You fight for something you know you never are going to achieve. Why don't you just give up?

btw, do you have any specific questions? Or some specific areas of the setting you want us to comment on?


- Anders

[billvolk]

Thanks for all your posts! Now I hope to answer some of your questions and pose more specific questions of my own.

I totally understand that system does matter. I don't think AKA would work well with the d20 system, even the BESM spinoff version. The d20 system has too many combat rules to exploit and not enough flexibility to make up paths to power. AKA would work best with a narrativist system, perhaps with minor gamist elements. It's not really meant to make sense as a simulation.

My first question is, is it feasible to talk about what systems work well with a setting without actually binding it to one system?

A particular quirk of the games I ran was that I let the players describe, freeform, what they wanted their characters to be able to do, then I wrote their character sheets for them. I'll talk more about how this worked out in the "Actual Play" section.

I'm assuming that a GM will dictate that most or all of the modules exist, and possibly add some modules. Given this assumption, here's a section that was cut out to shorten the first post:

Big Changes
Many settings for power fantasy have an interesting paradox: They're full of super-powerful threats who want to destroy the world or make other Big Changes, but these threats never succeed. Especially in fantasy-roleplaying and superhero settings, nothing important ever really changes. You can use this paradigm in All Kinds of Awesome, but you don't have to. Here are some ideas for Big Changes that might actually happen in the Modular World:

The Mean Forest wants to destroy Steam City, and Steam City is working hard to chop down what's left of the Mean Forest. This won't go on forever...

Paper City won't stay so isolated forever. Other modules want to trade with it, the Pirate Atoll wants to invade it, and a bunch of otaku in Glass City want nothing more than to be able to visit it. The powers-that-be in Paper City may one day decide that it's time to keep up with the Joneses, and we all know what happened to Japan once it started thinking that...

A corporation based in Plastic City is beginning to export 10-foot-tall recreational robot suits into Glass City. Think of humanoid Segways. They're causing all kinds of trouble for policemen and traffic controllers, and there's been a significant environmentalist backlash, as well.

Fallout Land is trying to rebuild itself. There may be a stable civilization in its near future...

Atomic City has never had an accident involving any of its many sources of nuclear power. Isn't it about time?

The cavemen in Cave Valley have been following the Modular World's oldest known path to power for countless ages: being big and hitting things hard, possibly with a rock. The time may come when they all get bored and migrate away in search of new paths and ideas, leaving Cave Valley for the dinosaurs.

Concrete City is hanging by a thread. Some force that's a little too strong for it to handle might destroy it outright or turn it into a totally isolated no-man's-land.

Wood City is hanging by a similar thread. It's just begging to be wiped out by Rrr or horrors from the Outer Madness.

Adventurers from Stone City might finally empty out the Dungeon. That'd be it. Nothing of value left down there at all. This would, at the very least, mess up the economy of Stone City.

What would happen if one or more Infinites made their existence public and decided that the Modular World would be better off under their control? Probably nothing good, as Infinites tend to be assholes...


My second question is, are these enough to suggest plots or hooks for the players? Is the world so static that players will likely feel powerless?

[Josh Roby]

Bill, do you plan to do anything with this beyond play it with your own group of players?

[Anders Larsen]

My first question is, is it feasible to talk about what systems work well with a setting without actually binding it to one system?

I am not quite sure what you are asking here. But my approach to making a system, when I have a setting, is to see what important concepts and conflicts there are in the setting, and then make mechanics that support that.

Questions like: What is you game about, What do the character do, what are the important conflicts in your game etc., is a good way to find the concepts the system should support. When you know what the system should be able to do, you can then try to find one that can do it. Or make your own.

My second question is, are these enough to suggest plots or hooks for the players? Is the world so static that players will likely feel powerless?

Don't go out of you way to make extra conflicts and plot hooks. Making characters that have a strong goal to achieve great power, and some interesting environment this can unfold in, is more that enough to have many great games. Actually, if you have to many conflicts and plot hooks in a game, the thing that is really important will get pushed in the background, and the game will loose intensity.


And one more question. The powers the characters try to develop, who decides how they work? It would be cool if it was the players.

- Anders

[billvolk]

I currently have no plans to publish this setting. It'd be cool if people on this forum were to try the setting out and tell me how it worked for them, but I don't have any ambitions for it to spread beyond my own players. This is the first setting I've ever put together from scratch, and I see it as a chance to get my feet wet and teach myself what works and what doesn't.

[billvolk]

And one more question. The powers the characters try to develop, who decides how they work? It would be cool if it was the players.

- Anders

If the players are familiar with the system being used, they can by all means design mechanics for their powers, as long as the GM decides that they're fair. How it worked in my game was, the players told me what they wanted their paths to be, and I translated them into mechanics by writing their character sheets for them. I went in-depth about this on my new thread in the "actual play" section.

[Larry L.]

I strongly believe that designing pure content (setting/plot) is an enterely different trade from designing mechanic. Given that, I believe the choice of system is fundamental. Even maybe the most important choice. Because, when you choose a system, you send a big message to your public : this setting is meant to be played with BESM/Tri-Stat. But is it supposed to be played only with this system (be it gam/sim/nar or abashed) ? I believe it tends to narrow your public.
So, I think the choice of system needs to be thougth out very wisely and must come from strong believes.

I don't actually disagree with you in any way on this. I'm a big fan of System Does Matter.

[pells]

My first question is, is it feasible to talk about what systems work well with a setting without actually binding it to one system?

From what I understand, a setting, even a plot for that matter is not GNS related. You might say "I played NAR, using a NAR system and this setting. All worked well." But, maybe SIM players, using a SIM system and this setting might enjoy it too. Same thing for gamist...

I believe the strenght of your setting is the presence of this "puzzle" of various modules. But, from what I see, each one adresses different themes. What happens if a session is played in the plastic city and the next in the cave valley ? Do you keep the same character sheets ? Or could you just change system ?

A particular quirk of the games I ran was that I let the players describe, freeform, what they wanted their characters to be able to do, then I wrote their character sheets for them.

Look, that's already what you do. Players describe their characters and then you "stat" them out... You might have used a SIM system if it served the purpose of your game.

My second question is, are these enough to suggest plots or hooks for the players? Is the world so static that players will likely feel powerless?

I believe here you come to a choice. I like the pitch you propose, those different settings confronting each other. But, do you want to present, let's say The Mean Forest and the Steam City in a "static" way, and propose a picth or do you want to present those modules in the context of a pitch ? This is very different.

I currently have no plans to publish this setting. It'd be cool if people on this forum were to try the setting out and tell me how it worked for them, but I don't have any ambitions for it to spread beyond my own players. This is the first setting I've ever put together from scratch, and I see it as a chance to get my feet wet and teach myself what works and what doesn't.

In my humble opinion, the setting as you present it here is very ligth, and maybe there's not enough to play test it. Well, this is your first setting, so I understand you want to juggle with it before doing something more serious. But, if you want to design setting in the near future for publication, you might want to explore some modules more in details. Because, designing setting requires writing skills. And those skills come from writing, a lot. It's good to have ideas, but writing about them is harder.
And just one thing on the side, I believe play testing pure content (setting/plot) is very hard. What do you think might work or not ? What kind of feedback are you looking for ?

[TroyLovesRPG]

After reading these posts again (for the third time) I'm seeing the fun in this. Because of the pure motivations, stereotypes and predefined interactions I'm looking forward to a tremendous amount of cinematic action. Simple ideas and equally simple rules are in order. TWERPS, Toon and Teenagers from Outerspace came to mind. Those games were a lot of fun, being easy, pure and action-packed. I hope AKA will give me the same reaction.

Although you have a mindset to make this freeform, players will be overwhelmed by what they are allowed to do. Old gaming habits will pop up: how can I maximize my character to be better than the others by choosing the best combination of stats because role-playing really doesn't matter? Templates of typical characters from every world are in order. Showing your game by example is the best way. Or have base power descriptions and the players can build on those. If the game mechanics are simple then the powers need to affect the game with regard to the system; otherwise, they are useless.

Torg used descriptions and axioms (laws) to define the various areas of Earth. They governed the game mechanics and unique properties of those areas. So, world-hopping was more than just a new view, you were somewhere different. I can see the same for your modular world. Define every modular world with properties that are beneficial for natives and travellers. Also, give properties that are detrimental to travellers as a group and to visitors from certain worlds. A gazetteer would be excellent:

Cave City: Rock collector's paradise! Enjoy the uniterrupted view of sparse plains, grey hills and inviting cave openings. Don't miss the current rendition of Hair! Rock, paper, scissors doesn't work here, so LARPers beware! Make sure you can show your strength; the natives love picking on the weak. [Technology is frowned upon, big words don't make sense, weak characters are treated poorly]

Definitely need a diagram of worlds to show their relationships and the character types found there.

I imagine if you keep the character generation and mechanics very simple, you'll have a rule set that matches the simplicity of the setting. The use of colorful character cards could be great! Pick a character template with body, mind and gear slots. Fill the slots with a number of cards no more than the power total of each. Caveman gets 7 body, 3 mind and 6 gear slots. Those are his initial stats and the max level he can work with in those areas. Gear slots determines the size of the maximum size of the gear he can personally use. A huge club is gear 5 and requires 1 mind to use it. A needle rifle is gear 3 but requires mind 4 to use it. Wizard starts with 3 body, 7 mind and 3 gear slots. A wand requires 6 mind yet is only gear 1. Talents work the same way in that you must satisfy the minimum requirements to use. Great leap for the caveman needs 5 body and 2 mind. Cast flame spell requires 2 body and 6 mind. Most powers and talents are available to everyone. Special ones are available only to the natives and a few are strictly forbidden.

Add two perk/flaw combinations. Each perk card has the benefit and detriment on it. Something simple where the perk comes in handy twice that of the detriment. The perks can overcome stat maximums, world properties or character restrictions.

Along with that add path/quests to visit a modular world and do something there. Quest fulfillment gives you a reward.

This looks fun!

Troy

[billvolk]

I'm beginning to work out the mechanics I want for AKA. So far, Dice are only rolled as simple attribute checks. There are five attributes: Body, Speed, Mind, Spirit, and Social. Characters make relevant attribute checks against each other for opposed actions, and the GM may give a static target number to represent the difficulty of actions that don't involve two conflicting characters if he doesn't want the player characters to succeed outright.

Characters earn "path points" that they can use to increase their attributes or buy "powers" Powers don't provide bonuses to rolls; they determine what a character can attempt to do (all attacks are powers; so are all domains of magic and uncommon knowledge, etc.) Every character has a free attack called "Mainstream Weapon" that lets them use any weapon that a normal person has a chance of using properly, from a gun to a rock to a mass-produced, user-friendly wand that shoots damage spells. All mainstream weapons do the same amount of damage: if a character wants to be able to make better attacks with a particular mainstream weapon, they have to buy a different attack that depends on the weapon. Every attack is tied to two attributes: the one rolled to use it and the one rolled to avoid it. All mainstream weapon attacks are both used and avoided with Speed.

I want to keep character creation open-ended, but a list of the most popular paths and a starting package for each one is definitely a good idea. I'm also going to give each premade path one or more rival paths (not for any game effect, just to give players an idea of which paths want to prove themselves better than which other paths.) Here's what I have:

Ninjitsu
Rival: Piracy

Piracy
Rival: Ninjitsu

Bushido
Rivals: Samurai are extremely ill-tempered and treat every other path as a rival.

Scrapping (untrained or improvised fighting)
Rivals: Magic and Invention

Open Hand Martial Arts
Rival: Mainstream Weapon Mastery

Magic
Rivals: Scrapping and Zeal

Zeal
Rivals: Spooky Powers and Magic

Mainstream Weapon Mastery
Rivals: masters of different mainstream weapons

Facial Hair
Rivals: Facial hair adepts are Moustache Magi, Beard Wizards, or Sideburners. Each school is a rival of the other two.

Spooky Powers
Rival: Zeal

Invention
Rival: Scrapping


I don't want to use Troy's idea of gear slots because I want power to be something internal, not something that can be given, stolen, or mass-produced.

My questions: are there any obvious premade paths I'm missing? Is the method of inventing attacks and powers too exploitable? Is the idea of rival paths interesting, and should they provide some kind of mechanical benefit (like giving a character bonus path points for proving himself against a rival?) Should I use a traditional hit point and damage system? (Even if I do use one, player characters won't die, just be incapacitated and humiliated, which is even worse for someone trying to prove that their path is the best.)

Soon I hope to finish the mechanics and setting and have them hosted for your perusal. I'm also illustrating example characters from each of the premade characters myself, along with a map of the modular world and its connections and racial demographics. Once again, I thank everyone for their feedback!