[sic] Why did they leave us.

[Christian Liberg]

Okay, im trying to jump into the contest as well ( in the last minute )

I will take the following set.

SET D
Setting: sword-and-sorcery/cyberpunk.
Theme: religious conversion/flight-of-fancy story.

My idea rests in the following. A good while ago, the world was a great place to be, sure there where orcs, and yes evil wizards roamed the land. Truth to be told the world was a dangerous place, but atleast the gods  where listening to the worlds inhabitants. These days even the gods have forfeited the world.

A small germ infected the cerebral of the worlds inhabitants. This was no cause of despair, in truth the cerebral parasite, only grew to its full evolution, when it infected the brain of a age old grown dragon. The dragon lead through its dracorage, a flight where the dragons cerebral pores fought the cerebral parasite. The dracorage lead a great waste to much of the once fertile land.

After a socalled dracorage, the dragon settled on a mountain, the cerebral parasite having taken to great a hold on the dragon.

within few months several dragons followed suit. The dragons used much of their age grown innate abilities, to enslave people. Orcs, humans and even beholders can be found in the dragons employ. Dragons soon grew fat and seclusive, tinkering with things not to be tinkered with.

Soon the most trusted in the dragons employ, appeared with a belt carrying vials. Vials of potent dragon blood, and with a single twist of the hand, the dragon blood would fill the veins and arteries of the trusted.

Little by little the dragons systematically killed of the gods chosen. Priests clerics and their ilk was destroyed, burned asunder in their temples, their groves and their mosques. The gods turned their watchful eye from these lands.

What drives the dragons, and to what end, they use the world for, noone knows, but now most of the world are enslaved by a few score of millenia old dragons, and their implant augmented followers.

A few people stand their ground, using the arcane arts and martial prowess to fight the opressive rule of the dragons. in a world where even the gods have left, they stand as beacons of hope for the world.

Well this is my idea, going to post alot more later

[Reprobus]

It seems promising so far...

What about tha PCs? Will they be dragons, or maybe priests who were long forgotten by their god?

[Christian Liberg]

Thanks

Im thinking that they will be priests.

faithful priests who are working to give their god a foothold back in this world.

Im juggling a few ideas around ATM.

Will try to write them up in a post in a few

Chris

[Christian Liberg]

Okay some more ideas spewing forth.

i intend for the game to flow in chapters, much like a book. Trying to follow the disposition of many a story.

so the first part of the game will be the defining act that creates the hero, in effect a prelude to the game so to speak. Im thinking that the first chapter will be a very short chapter, enabling people to get a quick introduction to what the world once was, and giving the players a spark plug to get the game running. This part is actually a co-narrative piece, where the GM and player quickly tells how the character to be's temple/monastery/grove/Sanctuary or what ever it is, are razed. This way the "softer" parts of character creation will be a part of the running game.


As i intend to run the game like chapters, there will be a few chapters which are almost mandatory.

1. meet the opposition ( the first chapter where the players actually goes head to head with the enemy, whether this be in a politically heated debate, or ferreting out a saboteur or meeting them in combat.

2. Where the players meet their allies and henchmens.

3. the Finale ( whether it is the end of the characters or the victory of an special important battle.

Any feedback on the idea of chapters in a book?

[ja-prozac]

1. Chosen by gods in country of despair(introduction)
2. Helping those in misfortune(small fights/debates/whatever)
3. Brave ones will be awarded(first allies/progress)
4. Spotted by the enemy!(First obstacle)
5. We made it!(progress because of the overcoming obstacle)
6. Treachery and catastrophe(major obstacle)
7. We will not give up(overcoming major obstacle and progress/plot twist)
8. Final battle

You can also check out sites with scrpt writing advices.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Looks like an interesting setting. I really like the minions empowered by dragon blood. Literal power addiction, and the trading soul for power vampirism angle - a lot of narrative heft in a single line. (Also reminds me of the Juicer, one of the better ideas to come out of the Rifts RPG.)

How about this for a way to frame the scenes: the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.) can be an extended metaphor for the (re)introduction of faith. First your laugh at, then blamed for heresy, further discussion, the masses question their lot under the old system, and accept the new dogma as an improvement. 

Or you could look to the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell, and the Monomyth.

Any system ideas yet? Rules for encoding faith/convincing ontological arguments for conversion etc? Or is this more of freedom fighters against the theocracy than proselytizing?

What are the other implications of this parasite - cross species infection? A possible cure? Hive mind?

I'm not sure how well the chapters idea works in the 4 page instant rpg format, but it certainly sounds like something to pursue in a longer game.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Basing the chapters on Monomyth could be interesting.

You could have some InSpectres style progress meter, but I'm not sure if it fits your design goals.

I'd like to see your ideas for the rules - it should provide more material for discussion.

[Christian Liberg]

Thanks Ja on the chapters.

You can also check out sites with scrpt writing advices.

That was a good idea, havent thought of that, any links to good pages?

Basing it on the monomyth, sounds intriguing, perhaps giving enough info, to allow a possibility to play each such a phase, without its preceding or following phases. The Kübler-Ross model im having a hard time with at the moment, but perhaps i should give it some more thought, as it would work quite good with the loss of the gods.

The game is mostly centered around the return of the gods, set on a backdrop of these dragon architects and their minions. However i think i need to create a broad system enough in order to allow for people wanting to play it as a freedom fighter vs. the system and to play it as the resurrection of faith. im thinking along the lines of ressurecting the faith will give people a banner to unite below, enabling the free people of the world to fight back. ( more to come on that idea )

on the subject of rules.

I intend for the rules to be light, but versatile enough to give players leeway. I where thinking of basing the game on percentile dice, every roll being a percentile dice, and every modifier being a percentage score, allowing the difficulty to go up and down.

In terms of rewards i was thinking about two lines of rewards, one which gives faith token ( acts of Proselytism as well as building temples and so on, in short for acts that work against reenactin the faith ) and another for freedom fighting ( twarting the evil minions plans, creating sabotage against an enemy foothold, killing a evil minion )
I was also thinking about some sort of cumulative bonus if an action was Proselytizing and directly harming the system ( such as converting the lord of a citadel to the cause, and inducting him in the faith )

I also do not intend for the characters to be fighters, but they will have bodyguards or henchmen based on their faith tokens. These bodyguards/henchmen will be taken from the followers of the priest, and will be called acolytes. they will be the combative side of the game.

Im still trying to think up how that should work, but this is the gist of it.

Chris

[Christian Liberg]

forgot to answer this

What are the other implications of this parasite - cross species infection? A possible cure? Hive mind?

I was thinking three things.

1. The cerebral parasite are somehow linked to eachother, but only a few can actually use this as means of sending information.

2. The reason for the massively potent dragon blood, injected via tubes directly in to the bloodstream, are laden with the cerebral parasite, The parasite can survive on the dragon blood for a little while, enough to do something in the brain.

3. It started as a small contemplation but im kinda working on it, lets say that the term god is not correct? the term god is simply the collective sum, of the worlds brainwaves ( working much akin to a clustered server ) so what the parasites are doing is creating a "god" a collective hivemind, making reactions based on the thousands of tiny fragments of thoughts.

Hmmm im getting crazy ideas, think im going to blow the 4 page limit in a few hours

Chris

[Christian Liberg]

Mechanics

This is currently my ideas for mechanics

Mechanics.
The game uses d10 dies and most resolution is handled by opposive percentage rolls. understood in such a way that the person who rolls the furthest away from his or hers ability have either won or lost. a roll of 100 always wins the roll. In cases of even difference, the highest ability wins.  If a character tries something dangerous or with the danger of getting hurt ( physical as well as social ) the GM assigns a difficulty.


example
Grieg the old friar has a whooping 65 % in his social ability. Grieg are trying to persuade the male sahuagin to abandon the falseness of his ways, in a massive barrage of smoothtalking, the sahuagin only has 40 % in his social ability. The rolls come out Grieg 62 ( which is rather good ) and the sahuagin rolls 35 ( not bad but for bystanders not as good as Grieg) However the sahuagin is 15 % away from his social ability, and Grieg are only 3% away from his social ability. This causes the sahuagin to be the winner of the debate, and is surely not at all persuaded to change his allegiances.

Example 2
if Grieg where to jump on to a ledge outside his window, fleeing from the blood-crazed brutal dwarf standing in his rented inn-room, Grieg will need to do a physical test against a difficulty set by the gm. 25 % for instance. If this difficulty are lower than Griegs physical ability, there are no need for a roll. If the difficulty is higher, the percentile dice is rolled. if the eyes are lower than the percentage roll, Grieg fails. The amount of this failure is left to the discretion of the GM.

a character of this game, has some abilities and numbers presenting their ability to interact with the world.
these are Physical / Mental / Social any action involves one of these
Health a bare number presenting how well the character takes blows, and or the sting of magic.

They also have numbers representing their progress
Faith - A number roughly corresponding to how many people they have converted to the faith, this number can go up or down, if people leaves the faith.
Leadership - How well people perceive them as beacons in the battle against the opressive rule of the dragons.


Finally they also have a special powers enabling them to interact with the world, and aid their comrades.
Gifts.
there are 4 types of gifts ( Healing, Protection, Body and Mind )

Healing is what it says, an amount of health brought back to any given character good or bad at the priests discretion.
Protection, allows a percentage bufferzone outside any single person, shielding them partially from blows. ( allows them to exceed their health pool )
Body - augments the physical attribute
Mind - augments the Mental attribute.

the gifts blessing can not be granted to the priest himself, nor can he receive the blessing from another Priest.

There are two types of people in this freedom fighting world.
Priests and henchmens/bodyguards.

A henchman has the same attributes ( Physical / Mental / Social ) as well as Health. Besides these, they have a few traits belong solely to the henchman
Loyalty = how loyal are the henchman and is a metric for how easily he can be bought, and how easily they are persuaded to the beliefs of the dragons minions.
Secondly they have sword/sorcery two stats on how well they fight with either the blade or the sword. Percentage stat once again.

a faith token is rewarded for each person converted, or any other contribution to the faith.
a leadership token is rewarded for striking a blow to the opposition.

That was it for now, at the moment, they are a bit jumbled, but will try to sort them out a bit.

[Filip Luszczyk]

I like the idea of faith and leadership tokens.

Other than that, I see two problems. However, they are inherent issues of this particular model of resolution.

First, you have a number of statistics here, and determining them might take some time. Here, I'm thinking especially about the GM, who might need to spend some time preparing NPC stats (or wing it in the middle of the session).

Second, you have difficulties set by the GM by sheer fiat, and NPC stats are probably determined arbitrarily too. Effectively, it's the GM who determines chances of success for the player, and the impact of PC statistics is purely illusory.

With what you have, I think you don't really need NPC stats and opposite rolls - in practice, it's just a complicated way of modifying players chance of success and it could just as well be done with a straight modifier to the roll. However, I think PC statistics might be redundant in the first place, as it would be much more direct if the GM simply determined the chance of success for the player.

Personally, I'd probably prefer if there were no modifiers set by fiat - i.e. some kind of budget for the GM for each chapter, or modifiers based on chapter, or no modifiers at all. I'd say it would be more playable if only players rolled the dice, too. However, that's just me and my general dislike for unchecked GM's mechanical fiat in games

[Christian Liberg]

I have always been fond of the GM's role as a storyteller, that his sole duty is to make others have fun. If a GM is good at that i dont see a problem with the GM assigning difficulties.

The other question about the statistics, are somewhat of a sore point, this being a sword and sorcery world, there are going to be several monsters, not something im ever going to fit into the 4 pages i have at my disposal.

I actually had an idea for another system of resolution, but i gave up on it, as it seemed well just not enough.

However i will share my vies on it nonetheless, hoping to get som good comments on it.

Mechanic #2
The game is centered around percentile dice. At the start of the game 100 is divided by the number of players. The result rounded down, is the modifier of one used faith token.

Whenever a priest does an action ( stabbing somebody, trying to persuade somebody or something similar ) each player around the table chips faith token in. this settles the difficulty.

For instance Grieg the fat friar, are trying to run out on the ledge once more, running from the literally bloodthirsty dwarf high on Potent dragon blood. Their are 5 players each chipping in a faith token ( causing the difficulty to be 100 % ) a roll of 100 % would always fail.

Later in the game, Max the mad monk, stands in a heated debate with a caravan driver, trying to deliver the message that gods will be back, and that the group is actually the bringers of good tidings. Everybody knows that this is a really crucial part of the game, so people try to chip in, but only 3 people have faith tokens, so the difficulty is 60 % any roll over 60 would cause Max to fail.

the antagonists of the game would have something similar called Dark Dominion, which worked in much the same way. the number of Dark dominion points would be determined beforehand depending on the status of the antagonists.

there are a few stats
1. Faith Tokens.
2. Leadership Tokens.
3. Health.
3. Healing.

Leadership tokens enable one to build stronger henchmens, and attract new ones. ( no more henchmen at any given time, than your amount of Faith tokens though )

thats about it.

What do you guys think?

Chris

[Filip Luszczyk]

I think that the second mechanic has much more potential, and it sounds pretty playable. It's simple and involves the whole group at any given moment.

I'm not sure if you would need Dark Dominion points in the game - but it could be something that simply cancels out Faith points invested in the roll.

Leadership tokens could be spend just as Faith tokens, I think, but when the character acts through his proxies and not in person.

NPC stats I mention due to the "instant playability" thing, and the requirement of including everything needed to play the game in these four pages. This kind of makes it difficult to use traditional session prep models, and including pre-made lists requires sacrificing space - so working a way around it that doesn't sacrifice the playability is probably the best thing to do here.

I have always been fond of the GM's role as a storyteller, that his sole duty is to make others have fun. If a GM is good at that i dont see a problem with the GM assigning difficulties.

Well, I don't like games with the GM as the sole provider of fun, and the only person that has any real input into the game (especially if such setup is muddled with mechanics that confusingly suggest players they actually have real input). But then, it's usually difficult for me to see the GM as *the only* storyteller at the table, and the only person responsible for the whole group's fun, so I have a hard time relating to such games

[Anders Larsen]

Halløj Christian

I also think that your second mechanic is the most interesting. It is simpler and it is easier to add some interesting stuff on top of it. One thing I would recommend is to add something which will have some "side effect" on the story. One thing I was thinking about you could do is to have faith token in different colour which represent different feeling. For instance, red for anger, white for friendship, black for hate, yellow for love and so on. If the majority of the players then puts down a token of the same colour, that feeling will then dominate the following scene.

This is just en example. You could also have token which, when used, can give a player narratory rights over the scene, or give the players some other way to affect what happens, even though it is not their conflict.

Of cause things like this can crate some competition between the player, but because it is a game where the character have to work together this could result in an interesting tension.

- Anders

[Vulpinoid]

I hate reading through a topic, thinking some really cool and possibly insightful suggestions, then continuing to read through the topic and finding that other people have already made the suggestions I was thinking of.

As I read through the first part of the post, my initial thoughts were...the Hero's journey...then this was suggested.

Then I thought the five stages of grief [because I've been seeing the death of Captain America comics at the houses of a few friends]...but that one got suggested too.

I thought the idea of the originally suggested percentile system seemed a bit illogical and clunky, but that point was also addressed.

So I'll add something from a completely different angle.

What do the parasites specifically do to the host, and how many ofthe dragons are there? Maybe the parasites magnify a specific dark urge within the host (leading to a "7 deadly sin" option)? Are their lines of mortal descendant connected to the dragons who have retained parasitic blood in their families?

If this was the case, you've got pre-determined cults dedicated to the dragons who instantly become the antagonists to the heroes.

As for mechanic #2, why not allow players to secretly submit one of two types of tokens into a bag (black and white). Each black token adds to the difgiculty in the way you describe, and each white token has no effect. This way everyone puts in a token, but no-one knows what the difficulty will be until the end. The acting player may then roll their percentile die, to see if they succeed. They may spend a black token openly before the roll to increase their chances of success.

I'm just thinking of some potential ideas here...

V