Power 19 for Biohazard Dawn

[Amadeo]

[mjbauer]

I really like the ideas you have. This is the type of game I'd actually like to play.

The one area that I can see that might be problematic is the idea of gaining instant success for brash action. I really like that you are trying to speed up action and resolution in combat, but I'm not sure that ensuring success is the way to accomplish that. In a game where resources are limited and life is so fragile it seems like you are encouraging recklessness. The setting and themes of the game seem to lend themselves more to careful, planned, strategic decisions.

I'm all for fast paced combat. One of my pet peeves is the lack of realism when it comes to the frenetic environment of actual combat, so I'm glad that you are trying to simulate that, but I'm just wondering if it's appropriate.

[Amadeo]

Currently I have done no playtesting (first session on next Thursday) and I'll admit I'm worrying about that as well. To be honest it is a relic from a past iteration of the game that I may have to trim off or do some retooling.

But you are right, I'm having trouble balancing the strategic elements in my game with the fast paced action I want. I think your Genesys and my game both want quicker combat resolution. I'm just struggling with mine a bit.

I'm just glad that I'm not the only person who felt the Adrenaline mechanic seemed outdated. I was cautious about pulling it since my playtesters seemed to like the mechanic and I was at the time the only person who didn't think it was working.

Postscript: I'm glad you like the rest, thank you. I was quite nervous about posting my "first thoughts" as it were.

[Abkajud]

Hi, Amadeo! Your game sounds awesome! I think you should reward rash PC decisions; it could really drive play.

If the characters in the setting lack access to much, if any, education or sophisticated supplies, then they've got about as many options as a war party of chimpanzees when it comes to tactical decisions. Consider even a medieval level of sophistication: basically, you're going to either flank or charge, and maybe have some guys in reserve. Not exactly Byzantine maneuvering

While the idea of realism can be a compelling motivation, why not go ahead and say "This is what I want for my game - I want rash behavior to be encouraged."

If you're concerned about this making sense, then consider the in's and out's of conflict resolution: a decision made on the fly that succeeds will mean that the player wins the stakes for which he was competing.
If, in a rush, I state, "I chop off one of the mutant's fingers. He knows where our food supply is, and he's going to tell me," well, he might very well know where our tribe's food supply is, but the GM could take this information and raise the stakes: you get the info out of him, perhaps only to find out that the mutant clan is running a free hospital in a neutral part of the local ruined city. By stealing your food back for your tribe, you're killing a lot of sick and injured people who could've also benefited from it.

What I'm saying is this: if you want to avoid slow, cautious play, but you like MJ's suggestion that life in this world is fragile, then, without subverting the spirit of players' actions, try and capture the basic consideration a player makes when he pops off a decision. If he's going for "tribe first", then push that, hard. If he's going for "victim first" or "Seekers first", push that as far as it'll go. But make actions have consequences, and I think it won't be such a big deal to throw successes around.

That's the beauty of conflict resolution: the intent is the thing, and the skill points and such are the way you go about it. Success means you got what you were intending to do, and the GM doesn't have the power to gerrymander and say "You get the mutie to talk, but he's lying", or Vincent's ubiquitous "You crack the safe, sure, but there's nothing incriminating in it". I could go on and on about how awesome CR is, but that might be off-topic

- Abby

[Amadeo]

Thanks for your advice and your enthusiasm, it is one thing to like a concept you've come up with, another to have close friends support it, but to have people you don't know take time out of their lives to lend a helping hand is quite another level. Thank you. I love your idea of raising the stakes, I've been doing that regardless of system for awhile now, there is just something more fun as things escalate out of control and twists take you in directions you didn't think possible.

I'm playtesting the game for the first time next Thursday, and so far I'm leaving the adrenaline mechanic out due to its intrinsic nature with the timing mechanic. I want to see how the rest of the game will work with that piece missing. But I will be taking a good and hard look at the way Adrenaline works with my system.

[Abkajud]

Good luck fleshing out the basic stuff and working Adrenaline in there; I think your game will really come into its own when the "special" mechanics get introduced.

Similarly, I'll be having an interesting time with Mask of the Emperor's "trademark" mechanic, that of Honor. I'm playtesting tonight, and I have two players, one Honorable and one Dishonorable. It should be interesting trying to figure out how that all fits into the game, given that one of the characters is only as honorable as is required to maintain an acceptable reputation. I haven't spent a lot of time working on "insincere" Honor point-gains, but that's what I expected to happen in the course of play, so it should be interesting.

- Abby

[mjbauer]

What I'm saying is this: if you want to avoid slow, cautious play, but you like MJ's suggestion that life in this world is fragile, then, without subverting the spirit of players' actions, try and capture the basic consideration a player makes when he pops off a decision. If he's going for "tribe first", then push that, hard. If he's going for "victim first" or "Seekers first", push that as far as it'll go. But make actions have consequences, and I think it won't be such a big deal to throw successes around.

I think my main concern is that players who know that they get an "automatic success" could abuse that rule. It could easily unbalance a game if it isn't kept in check. I'm not sure to what extent the automatic success applies, so it might not be an issue at all. I just wanted to bring that up, in case it was something that hadn't been considered.

[Amadeo]

As currently written, when your character is submitted to a reasonable level of threat (currently GM's discretion, but after a few playtests I hope to pin it down a little more concretely) you get an Adrenaline point. You have a bar that goes from 1 adrenaline to 5 adrenaline. You lose adrenaline by taking longer than the allotted time during your turn to decide what to do, spending it to empower certain abilities, or for an automatic success. Issue is, if you get too much adrenaline your character is strung out, and loses the ability to spend it and takes negatives on most rolls requiring concentration, agility, and cognitive abilities. If you let your adrenaline fall to 0 after you've gained your first point, you crash, taking negatives on rolls that require strength, endurance, and your resistance against infection drops dramatically.

I'm currently working on a way to compare the breadth of the task you want to try with the abilities your character has. Example: A woman's child is under a burning car, with adrenaline she can lift the car high enough to allow her son to get out, but if the boy was trapped beneath a tipped semi trailer filled with goods, this woman could be the female body-builder champion and have a hard time saving him then.

I'm also building a mechanic to limit the amount of times people can access adrenaline.

If that doesn't work I'm going to try and set a number of adrenaline needed equal to the difficulty of the task.

Hopefully one of those three will clip the problem at the bud, because frankly Adrenaline is one of the great features about the game.