[R&R] Connections / Significants

[Kashell]

Hey everyone!

My roommates and I have been working on our own roleplaying game for almost two years now. I somehow doubt that we will publish, but nevertheless, we want this to be the best system possible. We're really going for quality here that rivals some of the mainstream publishing material, such as D&D or GURPS.

As I'm unsure of our stance on publishing, I will not directly be posting the actual documents themselves, but rather, I'll be explaining the main ideas so we can ask some specific questions. I think the actual plan is to publish the work under a creative commons type of license.

Redemption & Retribution or simply R&R is a fantasy roleplay system that allows players and the GM alike to add, customize, and play the game in a very easy way.

The system uses only d6 dice for simplicity, though a GM may need 1d10 + percentile dice for rolling on charts and such (if he so desires).

The Core Mechanic: Every action is a skill check, performed by rolling a certain number of six-sided dice (d6), taking the highest, and adding modifiers. A character's proficiency in the skill determines how many dice are rolled. Depending on the situation, the skill check may be against a DC (Difficulty Class or Threshold), or against an opposed roll.

The Balance Mechanic: For every thing that gives the character an advantage, that character receives a +1 to that skill / ability / situation. As such, for every thing that gives the character a disadvantage, that character receives a -1 to that skill / ability / situation. This kind of mechanic is consistant throughout the game.

For example: Attacking with a weapon in a grapple is harder than fighting unarmed, so fighting with a weapon in a grapple receives a -1.

One of the things we have done with this is make social skills and travel skills feel just as exciting as combat skills. Just like a character can attack with Melee(sword) dice against an enemies' Dodge dice, a character can "attack" with Haggle dice against a merchant's Haggle dice. We are straying away from skills that don't offer this kind of excitment, though we do have some utilitarian skills, we are always trying to think of ways to get rid of them or make them exciting.

There are six main stats:

Strength
Health
Dexterity
Intelligence
Willpower
Awareness


The top three stats are all physical stats, while the bottom three stats are the "mental" versions of the physical stats (or vice versa).

Furthermore there are 4 derived stats:

Physical Damage Threshold (PDT): (HEA * 2) + STR + 10 = PDT
Mental Damage Threshold (MDT): (WIL * 2) + INT + 10 = MDT
Speed (action points) (SPD): 1.5 * (DEX + AWA) = SPD   (Minimum for speed is 1)
Charisma (CHA): (WIL + AWA) = CHA

Characters have 6 PHP (physical hit points) and 6 MHP (mental hit points). For every hit point lost, the character receives a -1 to all actions. If the character ever reaches 0 PHP or 0 MHP, he dies. Note that while this seems to promote a death spiral in gameplay, other parts of the system outweigh these effects.


Skills are broken down into 5 categories:

• Essential Skills (the big three)
  Craft Skills
  Social Skills
  Combat Skills
  Magic Skills

The races are very Tolkien-esque:
Humans
Elves
Dwarves
Little Folk
Goblins

The world R&R is set in deviates from the Tolkien-esque idea on many levels. Unlike D&D's 1 material plane, R&R has 9 material planes, each different than the others. 5 of the 9 material planes bear some similarities, as they are mostly set in the fantasy era, but the other 4 are completly different. The exciting thing here is that players can (if they are powerful enough and so choose) explore worlds from the fantasy Tolkien-era, all the way up until a WW2 / post apocolyptic setting.

Because of the extreme difficulty travelling between material planes, each place is in effect, it's own world. Therefore there aren't really any steampunk worlds (though I imagine in the future we may just make one of the worlds steampunk for fun).

I think that's about it for the basics. Please let me know if you have any questions or if my explanation was unclear.

[cont.]

[Kashell]

One of the ideas we want to include in character creation, and expand and develop throughout play is each of the character's specific backgrounds.

One idea that we love is the use of Connections or Significants in Paul Czege's My Life with Master. I personally don't know much about the game itself, but I've combed the achieved playtest forum quite a bit on it.

Essentially, we want connections to be people the character knows before the game starts. These are probably the character's good friends, parents, or maybe even love interests. Right now, these connections "provide advise, assistance, and support for your character." OK, I wrote those words down, but I don't know exactly what I even mean.
1) How can connections assist the character?
2) What kind of support can connections provide the character?


Characters in a fantasy environment gain lots of power, and they gain it quickly. If they aren't saving the city, they're saving the country, or they're saving the world (or the metaverse). I don't see any feasible way for character's connections to really help them out besides the lame "Haha, I was a dragon all along and you never knew it." type-affair.

3) If connections can't really help the character, what are some other things they could be used for, besides just convient GM elements? (haha, look, I took your family hostage.)

4) Should a character's connections level-up with him? Maybe the character's influence of over the connection causes him to train hard or become great at leading "the people" etc...  I have no idea how to go about something like this though.

On the reverse side, I can think of some cool things connections can do.

1) Of course, at first, characters are weak, and they really do need help sometimes. Connections can be there to provide a house and home, advise or "my 2 silver pieces" type-affairs.

2) As time goes on and characters grow powerful, connections can rally the troops back home so to speak. They can offer help behind-the-scenes for the characters.

3) Of course, when characters have super ultimate powers, they are obviously too busy to deal with the "small problems" going on in society. Maybe connections can serve as continued help-behind the scenes? ... I really have no clue for this one.


Thanks for all your help, and I hope we can get some brutal discussion going