[Nevercast] - A hyper-simulationist role-playing game, overview

[Ar Kayon]

What is it about?
Nevercast is a post-modern rpg set in a made-up world, about 50 or so years technology-wise in the future.  Economic and social decay has crumbled the infrastructure of most nations, and the few thriving communities are typically de-centralized organizations.  This downward spiral was called the Nevercast, and many things suffered or were destroyed in the process: manufacture, emerging technologies, consumer culture, culture in general (including many languages), the enforcement of law, et. al.  Most of the activity is centered on a region of the surviving Urs Prime Republic called the Des Xiac nations: a melting pot of cultures, a place of violence and lucrative opportunities, and a political hotspot, where various national, local, and international groups fight for control.

Who are the players?
Player characters in the game will carve out their niche, typically by hunting for fringe technologies abandoned during the Nevercast, or selling their skill set to any politically-charged group.  Some players may be charged with helping to stabilize particularly chaotic areas, and others may be hopeless philanthropists, emissaries, wandering opportunists, or spiritual warriors.  The setting's complex environment allows for a myriad of playable professions, each with their own useful perks, but flexible enough to allow the player to customize future character development.

What are the mechanics like?
Nevercast's engine in progress is designed with the philosophy that dazzling realism and complexity may be achieved with simple execution, and will be explained in my next post.

[Ar Kayon]

Please inquire for further elaboration.

1.  The system is semi-diceless, which means that dice (d4) are only occasionally used. 

2.  There are no character levels and there are no skill levels.

3.  There are no hit-points.  Health and damage is based entirely on an intuitive and vivid effects system rather than abstract numbers.

4.  Resolution is based predominantly upon tactical superiority.  The more skilled you are, the more tactical freedom you are given in lieu of an improved success rate.

5.  There are no experience points.

6.  Combat is based upon an action/reaction exchange; combat time is extremely sensitive..

7.  Via points 1-6, Nevercast boasts an elaborately realistic, yet streamlined and intellectually rewarding engine, while maintaining rules-consistency.

[lumpley]

Hey Ar.

I've merged your two threads into this one, just for tidiness sake.

"Intuitive and vivid effects system" sounds great. I'd love further elaboration.

-Vincent
(site tech admin)

[Ar Kayon]

Thanks for the merger.  I'm still getting used to this site.

To answer your inquiry, the effects system is my answer to frustration with an abstract health and damage value system.  All my attempts to make a working model of realism using hit points turned out to be overly complex, cumbersome, and just plain ugly.  So I decided to scrap the whole thing entirely, and devised something that is, in my opinion, much more elegant.

It works like this:
*  When you score a hit, the directness of your hit is based upon how much you succeeded your check by.  This is called the "gradient of success".  The range goes from +1 (a glancing blow) to +4 (a perfect hit).  For each gradient, there is a progressively severe effect(s).  The effects are based on the attack type.  So, whereas a +4 from an unarmed punch will knock your opponent out, a +4 from a shotgun blast will kill you instantly. 

*  An effect is a qualifier that alters a combatant's effectiveness in some way.  For example, you get a +2 on your sword blow, and it causes the "profuse bleeding" effect, which means that in x amount of time, you will suffer the "incapacitated" effect, and die sometime after that if not treated.  Let's say you get +2 with a shotgun, then not only do you score the "profuse bleeding" effect upon your opponent, but you also knock him off his feet from the "knockdown" effect.

[lumpley]

Oh now that's cool, I like it.

So the rules include a list of effects, linked to their weapons or particular attacks, with their special rules (like "profuse bleeding becomes incapacitation")? How many effects are there? I'm imagining quite a few.

-Vincent

[Ar Kayon]

*Effects are split into types for ease of memory.  So far I have: injury, bleeding, fear, and physics (for lack of a better name).
1. Injury effects - Stun, Hurt, Damaged, Crippled (typically for limbs), and Incapacitated
2. Bleeding effects - Bleeding, Profuse Bleeding, Excessive Bleeding (e.g. a severed artery)
3. Fear effects - Fear, Berserk (pending), and Frozen
4. Physics effects - Off-Balance, Knockback, Knockdown
5. Fatigue effects - Winded, Fatigued, Exhausted
6. Pain effects (pending) - Pain, Excrutiating Pain

*For further ease of memory, each effect in a specific type is assigned a category of severity, in which a category 1 will logically degrade into category 2 and so on.  Let's say you take a hard body blow and leaves you hurt for the round: if you get struck hard like that again within the round, you will suffer the "damaged" effect.  The GM might represent this as a fractured rib.

*Several effects don't actually do any lasting damage, but will affect you negatively.  For example, if someone jabs you and you are stunned, you will lose an action.

[JoyWriter]

What if you change physics to force?

How did you gauge tactical freedom and flexibility? What conflicts do you have tactical factors in?

[Ar Kayon]

What if you change physics to force?

How did you gauge tactical freedom and flexibility? What conflicts do you have tactical factors in?

Force is good.  Thanks.

When you develop an action-based skill discipline (as opposed to knowledge-based), you learn techniques instead of improving your success rate.  Each technique is ideally suited to certain situations, and poorly suited for others.  For example, it's easier to counterattack after a dodge than a parry, block or evasion, but it's harder to pull off a dodge.  An adept combatant may choose to dodge and counter against an opponent with particularly strong defense.  It's even more difficult to catch his kick and throw him to the ground in one smooth motion (an example of a reversal), but the benefits of pulling it off are great and potentially combat-ending.  A jab may not be particularly destructive, but the higher success rate will allow you to stun your opponent so you can set him up for heavier blows.  Take note, however, that these mechanics are not restricted to pugilism - I just use it as a descriptive example.   

It goes even further.  Since the core of the system is diceless (the d4 randomizer will be explained later), success is determined by comparing attributes in which techniques are based upon.  For example, Kanu Gon throws a jab and Lo Din parries.  The GM then compares the attribute of the jab (quick attack: speed+2) against the attribute of the parry (ward off: dexterity).  Kanu Gon has 6 speed and Lo Din has 6 dexterity, but the technique's bonus to speed gives Kanu Gon the edge.  Therefore, not only do techniques give you freedom of expression, but because they are based directly on your attributes, you can tailor your strategy to your strengths.  So, a strong fighter might plow into opponents in order to deliver punishing blows or subdue you, a dextrous fighter might prefer elaborate and precise counter-techniques, an agile fighter might try to submit his opponents with grappling, and a fast fighter might try to overwhelm his opponents with sheer offensive volume.

[JoyWriter]

So presumably they start off only with jab and block, or other simple actions, but over time gain more skills? One thing I also notice is so far I've only seen flat bonuses, rather than rock/paper/scissors "non-transitive" relations. You talked about this obviously, but I can't quite see where it sits in the rules.

The main trade-off I spot here is play it safe vs gamble, presumably with jab and dodge having high bonuses but lower effect. That's sort of like having power attack (in D&D terms) both on defence and attack, which is still random from your perspective if you don't know how the opponent will react.

Now that's not the only bit of tactics, there's also the idea of matching your behaviour to the terrain/finding advantages in specific moments that won't be there normally. Is this likely to be in the game? I ask because without it, conflicts gain a timelessness that means you can find "the best tactics" and just repeat them against similar opponents. The most rewarding systems are those where old adversaries can duel on different days in different places and have to switch up their tactics in order to accommodate the situation they are in. On the other hand, many games do without heavy environment interaction by just switching up your opponents frequently.

Also what kind of conflicts use knowledge based skills?

[Ar Kayon]

My response is about to get very comprehensive, Joywriter, so bear with me.  I'll split my response into several posts.  This one is about the close-quarters tactics.

1. There are 12 basic strategies you may use in close-quarters combat alone: strike, grab, lock, throw, takedown, shove, feint, block, ward-off, resist, dodge, and evade.  Each technique is based off of one of your following attributes: strength, speed, agility, reflex, and dexterity. 
So, depending upon your makeup, you are likely to favor certain strategies over others, until you realize that your speed strategy doesn't work against someone faster than you, so you have to carefully assess his weaknesses to determine your new strategy.  For example, if every time you try to strike your opponent, he hits you first, you may try a feint to agitate his timing (he loses actions), get in close range where there the lack of distance makes lighter techniques ineffective, and dismantle him with heavy blows because he ran out of actions to make an active response.
Also, the jab you refer to is only a qualifier; there is no jab technique per se, but there is a quick strike technique, and it falls under the striking strategy.

2. You likely won't be able to win with safe strategies alone.  Jabbing your opponent repeatedly won't do it because your opponent's Effect Reduction, based off of his strength, is likely to reduce the effect to a superficial status, such as the "stun" effect, or may negate the effect entirely.  In terms of defense, easy techniques do not put you in an ideal position to take the offensive.  If you evade, you move outside of range, which means you have to carefully close the distance all over again.  If you dodge, you get a counterattack bonus because you are already in the position to counter and you have the advantage of timing while your opponent recovers from his attack.

3.  I've hinted that combat time plays a very prominent role in your strategy.  If you play it safe all the time and don't use enough combat actions when the situation warrants, then you won't be able to progressively degrade your opponent's defenses and fighting capacity in a death spiral.  Likewise, if you use too many combat actions or run out of them by other means, and you didn't manage to take your immediate opponent out of the fight, then you are in trouble for the remainder of the round because you cannot make an active response, and all attacks made against you will be checked against your Passive Defense score.

4. I've also hinted at the extreme importance of minding your range.  Each range increment in close-quarters combat prefers a different method of fighting because of its influence.  For example, if I'm fighting you in the pocket, I do less damage because attacks need space to be powerful, therefore I can either utilize heavy power strikes to soften you up, or I can grapple with you instead. 
On the other hand, If I am outside of striking range, and I try to charge in, then I am going to telegraph myself to my opponent and he will have a wonderful opportunity to interrupt me with a sharp blow.  Therefore, I need to close the range by 1) distracting him 2) using my "concentration" or  an extra combat action to time his rhythm, which will improve my success rate with the d4 randomizer 3) using the "combat step" to move in without fear of retribution, assuming he wants to fight close and doesn't back up 4) waiting for the opponent to make the first move instead.

[Ar Kayon]

Now, as far as the knowledge-based skills go, I haven't fleshed them out much in terms of mechanics because I believe it's important to take a gamist approach only to gamist elements; why should I impose a machine-like structure to aspects of role-playing that many players prefer to freeform?  I don't want to make a game that says, "this is how you should play", but a game that says, "this is the world, have fun".  Granted, I'm not insinuating that you're suggesting that gamist is the only appropriate method to go - I'm merely revealing my rationale.  The reason why the combat is so gamist in nature is because Nevercast is a simulation; it gives you the opportunity to utilize strategies and tactics that work in real life.

At the top of my head, there is only 1 skill that players typically freeform that I added a small amount of structure to, and that's because I've seen a growing consensus that it would be fun.  I'm talking about social exchanges in this case, and the Nevercast system allows you the opportunity to skillfully control the flow of an exchange, without stonewalling by the GM.  Please read on:

"This is decidedly a hairy topic for me to delve in. In role-playing games, I've noticed that social interaction is typically free form. Naturally, a player may assume that introducing mechanics to interaction is essentially non-interactive. I don't want to railroad, however. I want to offer new and exciting avenues of approaching a staple of role-playing.
Sometimes, in a session, players will go in circles trying to gain the upper hand in social interaction or attempting to derive information. In one session, I observed players interrogating a crooked merchant for HOURS. Sure, the role-playing was good, but it was fucking boring, and two of the action-type players were effectively removed from the session.
In Dungeons and Dragons, balance of interaction between the DM and the players is offered via the charisma attribute and the related skills bluff, intimidate, and diplomacy. Without it, no matter how persuasive or clever a player character is, a DM can be as inflexible with his NPCs' responses as he wants. Thus, railroading and circular interaction. However, I feel that these mechanics are...well, mechanical, because a character with many points in these skills may circumvent engaging interaction (Gamist design attributes superimposed over a Narrativist aspect), and serve to undermine the required depth of social interaction. This is why I believe players choose not to invoke these mechanics.
I offer mechanics not to force results from NPCs, but rather to give insights to the player as to how he may skillfully navigate social situations. My proposed method is to combine the effects-based techniques system with the personality and philosophical profiles presented in my previous post.  ((inquire for further elaboration))
For example, a PC wants to coerce an NPC into doing something. So, he uses a technique to discern the NPC's philosophical profile. The GM compares the player's Insight attribute to the NPC's ability to hide his true thoughts and feelings (Charisma). The player passes with flying colors, and the GM reveals to the player that the NPC has an extremely strong bias towards Principles, and since he passed with such a degree of success, the GM will tell the player what those principles are. A resourceful player may then use this information somehow to persuade the NPC that non-compliance will violate his principles. In this instance, GM inflexibility will be noticed, and thus deterred. Another way it could be used is to discern the NPC's profile, and then pretend to act in a similar manner. Because of common ground, the NPC will be more inclined to like or trust you, in which your Charisma adjusts the magnitude.
As a byproduct of this system, I think that these dynamics will bring out vivid, complex NPC personalities and provide for a very organic experience of social interaction."

[lumpley]

This all makes a lot of sense to me.

Have you playtested?

-Vincent

[Ar Kayon]

And now, to demonstrate tactics from a group perspective:

"In one of my favorite movie firefights - in Tears of the Sun - Bruce Willis and his small team of Navy Seals are caught under heavy fire by an overwhelming opposition. They survive (well, some of them, anyway), by tactfully holding the line and then retreating. Watching this scene made me think of a combat skill that allows you to coordinate your group in battle, called "Battle Tactics".
Since combat time is based on action/reaction, a leader or other combat unit can call out a command or request (e.g. "cover me") and the recipient(s) of the command will be able to react to it, rather than have to wait until their normal turn. Naturally, the team will have to be trained in battle tactics, otherwise they will not be able to coordinate; an unskilled combatant might think, "What? What does he want me to do?".
Commands vary in complexity, especially commands that require the coordination of several units at once, such as formations. When used properly, this skill will give soldier-type characters the edge in combat.
Example: Kanu Gon and Lo Din are behind cover and under heavy fire. When Kanu Gon yells, "Cover me!", Lo Din lays down suppressive fire, which forces their opponents behind cover, while Kanu Gon simultaneously runs toward a more advantageous position. When an opponent gets out of cover to fire back, Kanu Gon already has him in his aim and takes him out with a 3-round burst.
(Notes)
To elaborate on the mechanical side, yelling out a command will allow recipients of the command to react on your turn, or at the beginning of the next round.
Naturally, concerted actions will give you a significantly greater advantage than the sum of its parts. A gladiator might be able to block arrows being shot at him one at a time, but he is much more likely to get hit if all those arrows were fired simultaneously."

[Ar Kayon]

This all makes a lot of sense to me.

Have you playtested?

-Vincent

No, I have not playtested yet, unless if simulations run in my own head count!  Designing the game's architecture has demanded an overwhelming amount of effort and time spent on research and brainstorming, and of course screwing around with dice theories and probabilities to come to the conclusion that semi-diceless with an exploding d4 was the best method for what I wanted to accomplish (the exploding d4 is magical).  The reason why I'm confident the system will work is because the rules are consistent - they all fit together like puzzle pieces - and because the nature of the system is based on small numbers and qualifiers instead of quantifiers, therefore bookkeeping is kept to a minimum.  My design philosophy is to achieve the maximum amount of complexity and flexibility, appropriate to the setting, with as little entities possible.
So, anyway, for right now I'm posting my ideas here because it's imperative that I practice explaining my system as well as recieve critical feedback in order to objectively evaluate the validity of my engine, as well as the clarity of the language I use to describe it.

[whoknowswhynot]

Very interesting.  This all covers areas that I neglected in MAYA not because I wanted to, but because I simply didn't know how to incorporate.  You explained it well too.