Tamers: Gotta {pick one: capture, grab, acquire, snatch, get, obtain} em' all!

[whiteknife]

For most tamers fighting is at the simplest matter a question of being forced into it. Much like most kids go to school and have little choice in the matter, so to do tamers fight because the government and their families give them immense pressure to do so. Sure you could just not go to school or fail out of your classes, but there are punishments for that and your only other options are managing to get a crappy job or becoming a criminal since you don't really have any marketable skills. It's the same way for tamers, only with higher stakes. Instead of going to school in order to make the school look good and to get skills needed to get a good job, you're battling pet monsters in epic and often very dangerous fights in order to make your entire nation look good and to earn enough government money to have the pay of a good job for life, but without having to actually do work. Also like in school, there are some kids who are driven to be the best in order to prove themselves or get an even better job (or in this case, rock star levels of cash). Along the way, tamers grow up, make friends, and all that other fun stuff, assuming they don't bite it (not something particularly common, but similar to the risk of being one of those dangerous animal handlers you see on TV only with no formal and precious little informal training). Carrying out the school metaphor to its close, tamer abilities (The ability to have monsters obey you without months or years of training and the ability to have monsters not like attacking you) also have a time limit, as they tend to run out in the late teens.

Tamers personal goals and motivations are important too, but those are up to the individual player when they design their character. Also, depending on the exact nature of the campaign that you may be playing in the ever popular reason for fighting known as "in order to not die" may come up in varying degrees of frequency, although this tends to be a rather rare reason in the default setting, but it can be fun to break it out every now and then to ratchet up the tension.

Well, that was interesting. Thanks for the helpful question Ron and I hope I've answered it at least for the most part. This thread is helping me out a lot, so anyone who wants to comment on anything, especially this post should give some feedback. I just eat this stuff up.

[First Oni]

From a development standpoint (and my own personal preference), I think the only part that I don't like is that in a world and setting centered around monster taming... only kids can do it. I'd say that everyone should be able to tame them or have the tamers only be a single class, with the adults having just as cool things to do, since everyone won't want to play a kid.

I think i'd still play the game either way, mind you. :-) But as a personal preference, i prefer to give the player as many options as possible.

Hope that helps at all with the development.

-Oni

[whiteknife]

Yeah, I was kind of wondering if that part was too restrictive myself. To be honest, it doesn't matter particularly much and I could change it pretty easily. The reasons that I put in there in the first place were pretty much just 1) genre conventions and 2) to add a minor wrinkle to the character's motivations.

As for the idea of having different ages able to tame in different ways, that was an idea that i was exploring as well. Adults could gain or re-awaken tamer powers by using cybernetics, which are widely available, but have the downside of some long term health effects (but chances are if you've bothered to go back into the monster fighting business you won't be around until age 90 anyways...). Also, a small percentage of tamers (say 5%) retain their abilities forever.

Seems like everyone has something constructive to say, and it's helping me out a lot Comments on anything, especially this post (does that sound like it frees up enough options or should I just remove the kid thing all together?) would be great.

[First Oni]

The cybernetics thing sounds good, but still makes it too stressful to play an adult. And the only way to justify an adult without cybernetics would be to roll under 5% on a percentile roll. :-P

I wouldn't say remove the kid thing. I say remove the kid-only thing. But then, give them limitations. You could be, possibly, be a kid with the capability of taming a lot of monsters and controlling them all at once, since their their minds are fully open. As they get older, they are able to control fewer monsters, but with more accuracy. Or... you know... something like that.

Just an idea.

-Oni

[whiteknife]

You know, what's funny is that I already have a mechanic in the system that's a kind of stat with a sliding scale between two types of control: one where you're more emotional and have more trouble giving monsters routine commands but are better at getting them to perform above and beyond every once in a while, and the other where you're more strict and monsters fight better in general but don't pull off unexpected boosts in power very often. For some reason it never occurred to me to tie this in with age, but that actually makes a lot of sense and I think it'd solve some of my problems. Of course, you could still be a strict kid or a loose adult, but that could be the exception not the rule. As far as tying a mechanical thing in with age I don't think it's really a problem seeing as the setting kind of supports that.

So how about that? Does that seem like it'd solve or at least alleviate the problem?

[First Oni]

It does for me. :-)

At the same time, don't feel like you need to change stuff for must one person. I'm just little old me giving my opinion. But there could be others who don't like the changes as well. It takes all types and you can't please everyone.

That said... you've definitely made ME like the idea more.

-Oni

[whiteknife]

I know what you mean. And to be honest, I think that what you said almost certainly applies to a lot of people (I mean, there's almost certainly more than just you who'd be upset with playing as a kid) and in any case, it's just the setting, its not the be all end all for the game. I mean, you could stick the game in a variety of settings, and this one should be pretty open if it's going to be a good setting anyways.

That being said, if anyone else has any opinions or whatever on anything post away.

[chronoplasm]

How do you keep thing simple, but diverse?
Combinatorics.
Pick a small number of traits or attributes and rearrange them in every possible permutation and BOOM diversity.

A while back I was desiging a game where every monster had up four slots for 'element gems' (fire, water, earth, air). Each combination of element gems determines what sort of monster you get.

F
W
E
A
FF
FW
FE
FA
WW
WE
WA
EE
EA
AA
FFF
FFW
FFE
FFA
FWW
FWE
FWA
FEE
FEA
WWW
WWE
WWA
WEE
WEA
WAA
EEE
EEA
AAA
...and so on and so forth.

Also, I agree with some of the previous posters. I wouldn't want to play as a kid. Actually, maybe I would once or twice but mostly I'd rather play as a young adult.

[whiteknife]

That combining idea sounds pretty good, especially considering that i was going to have elements play a pretty large role in my games combat system. If I made each element have its own traits kind of like the colors in Magic the Gathering then I think that might be a pretty good way to up the diversity while making each one distinct...thanks for that, it sounds like something I'll incorporate into the game.

[chronoplasm]

You know, I think this would be more interesting as a cross-genre game than a straight RPG. That is, I could see there being a trading card game and/or a miniatures game integrated into this to help convey the collection aspect.
Also, when you say that you want players to be in control of lots and lots of monsters, the first thing I picture is some kind of war game with lots of little pieces arranged on a grid.
You may not need to use miniatures though, I think a ton of dice could be used instead if you had some way of making each one distinct enough to be recognized as a different type of monster.
...
...a collectable dice game? Naw.

[First Oni]

I'd have to disagree with Chronoplasm on the card game/miniature thing. I think the reason why i'm so interested in this type of RPG, is that i've not really seen this type of approach in an RPg before. Everything like it is already either a card game or miniature game or videogame. I'd love to see it well executed in RPG fashion.

That's just me though.

-Oni

[chronoplasm]

I have to disagree with myself too.
This can certainly be done in an RPG.
If you do want to go the $$$$ route,
perhaps, instead of doing a "Monster Manual" type thing, you spread out the monster information throughout the core and supplemental books.

[whiteknife]

The non-existence of an RPG that does this kind of thing was one of my main reasons for making the game in the first place.

As for a collectibles thing, I can't really see myself doing that (it'd be cool, but probably a bit too expensive to be honest), but if players used pre-created monsters (say, all the monsters are from pokemon, DnD, or whatever) then I've got other people who've essentially already done my job for me. And as for a collectible dice game, there has been one of those: dragon dice by TSR which came out quite a while ago. I actually played quite a bit of that game myself, after picking up a ton of stuff for the game in a bargain bin after it went under (over supplying retailers combined with the high cost of making thousands of dice made the game tank and contributed to the fall of TSR). It was fun, but not really what I'm going for. I'm planning on having the "a bunch of monsters" thing be  a side system kind of like the mass combat rules in some systems rather than the base model for combat since not all players will have the resources/time that would be required to manage that kind of battle efficiently.

[First Oni]

I think you're headed in the right direction... however, i definitely feel that, while the system needs to be really good, you shouldn't shirk the setting. From your previous post, you seem to give it a back seat, but i can't tell you that i own a lot of books that i bought for the setting only, whether or not i liked the mechanics. Just thought i'd say that. Right now the setting is very malleable and doesn't need to be the main concern while you building, but don't forget about it either.

Peace!

-Oni

[whiteknife]

Yeah, I haven't really worked on the setting that much yet, mostly because I want to get the mechanics hammered out first. I have a lot of ideas for the setting, but I haven't really gotten them solidified into one coherent whole yet. All I've worked out to that point so far are the parts of the setting needed to preserve the genre tropes. To be honest I'm not sure how much setting I should put in. On the one hand, having very little setting allows the game to be put into whatever setting the individual people want, but on the other hand an interesting setting can be what makes a game go from just OK to great. Right now I'm leaning towards a setting with lots of parts in it that can be taken in or out as desired or used as a whole.

So overall I haven't really forgotten the setting, I just haven't gotten to doing much with it yet. On the up side though, I'm making some good progress on the mechanics so hopefully I'll have some time to devote to the setting pretty soon.