Spacefall (a gamist HeroQuest?)

[simon_hibbs]

I've been working on a new game system for a while now, and just recently decided to write it up. I've created a Wiki with the skeleton of a character generation system, contest mechanics and an essay on what I'm trying to achieve.

Some of you may know me as a HeroQuest guy. I've been involved in HQ from playtesting and rules brainstorming in the Hero Wars days, and I'm still active in the Gloranthan gaming community. The game system in Spacefall owes a lot to Robin Law's game design for HeroQuest, but it's an attempt to take that game design a step further, and in a slightly different direction.

My goal is to develop a system with a simple basic mechanic, far simpler than HeroQuest with it's Masteries and comparative levels of success, yet one that is at least as flexible in your contest resolution options. I've also tried to reach a balance between the gamist, Narativist and Simulationist stances, though there is much work to be done here.

Many people have tried to 'fix' HeroQuest. I've tried too, with crunchy contests and chained contests, but the core concept of the game is unremittingly Narativist and Robin is explicitly taking the game firmly in that direction. I've come to the conclusion the only way to achieve those fixes is to change the core mechanic, and then build out from there.

Here's the game: The Spacefall Roleplaying Game

I'd love to hear your comments, suggestions, questions or criticisms, but here are some questions for you.

* Attributes, Abilities and Resources are not quite treated equally. That's deliberate, but is it useful or necessary?
* Is the terminology clear? Should I rename Attributes as Characteristics?
* I'm too close to the contest mechanics text. Are there any ambiguities or absurdities? What needs clarifying the most?
* Do I need a hero points mechanic, if so how do you think it should work?
* The game doesn't really have 'critical hits', and only a vague notion of levels of success. Are they useful or necessary?

That's for starters, but any other issues you raise will surely be of interest to me.

The name Spacefall is a place holder for now. Although the game is notionally geared towards a Science Fiction setting, I'm still at the stage of working out the details of the generic core of the system. The Wiki does include a section on the science fiction background, but that's not what I'm asking about here yet. That part of it needs far more work. I'll probably post about that another time. Read it if you wish, but it's not yet reached 'critical mass' as a coherent body of work. The game system is getting there though.

Best regards,

Simon Hibbs

[Vulpinoid]

First glances say that you've done a decent amount of work on it so far.

I'll have a thorough read through the wiki site and tell you what I think...

V

[simon_hibbs]

* The game doesn't really have 'critical hits', and only a vague notion of levels of success. Are they useful or necessary?

Clarification, by 'Levels of Success' I mean conventional success categories such as ''Normal Success', 'Critical Success' that you find in RQ, HQ and many other games.

Spacefall has very fine-grained degrees of success or failure, and ways of applying those directly in the game. There is a table of success levels, but are thresholds like this really useful?

Best regards,

Simon Hibbs

[contracycle]

I think you need more worked examples for your extended contest categories, especially because the discussion of results appears afterwards.  It's readable to someone who already has a working knowledge of the system, but it might be tricky to figure out how to apply to frex the Multi-trial.

I like your setting out explicitly different methods to exploit the resolution system, and especially your incorporation of damage checks into the general case in the Combo type contest.  Here again it might be better to use a different example in the first presentation, and then have an explicit section on injury and death which shows that damage resolution is just like a combo step, see previous example.  People have a specific interest in injury results and character mortality and IMO its bets to have that all in one place.

Are you intending to use realised versions of these abstracts as setting elements?  I dunno, making a hyperspace jump might be a particular type of multi-trial, with specified number of steps and difficulties etc.  And maybe these change with drive tech.  I think that might be interesting.

[simon_hibbs]

Contra,

You're right about breaking out damage as a separate rules section, it would aid clarity and provide a good worked-out example of the system of chained contests.

I initialy avoided that because I wanted to emphasize the fact that there actually are no separate rules for combat, it's just another type of contest, but that's really just falling into the same trap as HeroQuest. As you say, combat is a special case because it occurs so often and has such dramatic, long-term consequences. Naturally it deserves special mention, if only to ensure clarity. Thanks for helping me get that clear.

BTW I feel the terminology I'm using is very awkward. Multi-Trial, ugh!  Suggestions welcome.

Mitigations - are these necessary? The problem is that at the moment, any wound causes a commensurate penalty, which is really brutal. Even with Mitigations you really do NOT want to get hurt in this systems as-is. But Mitigations feel wrong. Thoughts?

Simon Hibbs

[Vulpinoid]

Quick question..

If you don't want combat to be separate from other types of activity, why not apply similar rules to both.

For example, in a more social contest, the two players fight over status (or rank or a pool of friends) instead of hit points.

In a more mentally focused contest between two opponents, a loss of prestige within the scietific community, or some other similar long term effect can come into play.

These types of effects could target the resources of the character, and slowly heal in time like hit points. In fact hit points could be used as a resource in itself...

V

[simon_hibbs]

Quick question..

If you don't want combat to be separate from other types of activity, why not apply similar rules to both.

I am using exactly the same rules for both. The discussion with Contra was about writing up a separate section on combat just so that it's easy to find and shows clearly how to run combats, but the actual rules you use for combat, or a debate, etc are exactly the same rules.

This shows I really need to put in more examples to make this sort of thing clear.

Simon Hibbs

[contracycle]

Mitigations - are these necessary? The problem is that at the moment, any wound causes a commensurate penalty, which is really brutal. Even with Mitigations you really do NOT want to get hurt in this systems as-is. But Mitigations feel wrong. Thoughts?

I agree this feels "wrong", not least because I expect any fighter type is going to take it very high, and then they will be largely immune.  It will be a bit like Fortitude in Vamp etc.  Maybe you can do something different, like require a recovery role to reduce the wound penalty, and allow Endurance to act as a modifier to the recovery roll.  Endurance might also alter the frequency with which the recovery roll can be made.

What was your goal here, top represent physical toughness or to reduce the effects of injury?  I think games can be quite workable with very high levels of injury effect, you just have to get out of the mindset that the characters have not been tested unless they have lost hitpoints.

[simon_hibbs]

What was your goal here, top represent physical toughness or to reduce the effects of injury?  I think games can be quite workable with very high levels of injury effect, you just have to get out of the mindset that the characters have not been tested unless they have lost hitpoints.

I don't really want a system in which every injury is a semi-permanent, persistent penalty. I'd like some possibility for even severely injured characters to be able to perform meaningful actions. On the other hand I think the idea of wounds acting as difficulty modifiers is a powerful one. How about this.

Wounds automatically act as difficulty modifiers against any physical activities by the character. However characters can spend a round attempting to 'overcome' their wounds temporarily using Willpower or Endurance. If the contest is successful then the character can ignore the penalty from that wound for one round per level of success they got in the contest.

This means that initially the shock of any wound will slow you down, but if you have a chance to get yourself together and psyche yourself up, you can overcome the penalty for a while. That allows the potential for heroics, while still making any injury a serious business.

What happens if your attempt to overcome the injury fails? Perhaps you can't try again for a number of rounds equal to the margin of failure.

What i like about this system is that every time I come up with a contest, there always seems to be natural way to use the resulting success or failure margin either as a resource, or a modifier, or as a duration for an effect.

I'm engaged in a rewrite of the mechanics to make them clearer. Rather than listing lots of different types of contest, I'm cutting that down to only a few, but then focusing on how to use the success or failure margins in follow-up contests. It's what the victory margins mean and how you use them that's key. Once you get that, I think the whole rest of the system follows.

Simon Hibbs

[simon_hibbs]

I've finished rewriting the contest rules (Getting Things Done). I hope it's a significant improvement in clarity.

I plan on putting sample contests in a separate skills page, so for example the combat rules will be under the sections for the Guns skill, Close Combat skill, etc. Not really made a start on that yet.

Simon Hibbs