Some Racial Ability Advice

[Excalibur]

Hello once again.

I think I've gotten my combat mechanic ideas fleshed out now, thanks for reading that thread if you did.

A few different questions this go around.

How do you feel about differentiating races (species, whatever you want to call them, playable characters that aren't human) through different abilities in addition to their base stats?

Context:
My game has 15 playable races in it from a setting that a friend of mine and I designed some years ago. The ideas always stuck with me but until recently hadn't had the opportunity to do much with them.

The game I'm designing has three major components to how a character is defined: Skills, Talents, and Stats. I've already fleshed out and started the balancing act with attributes and have been working on skills and general talents that are available to all the different races.

What is my game about?
My game is about interactions, player vs monster, player vs player, monster vs monster, etc. via 4 different methods Physical, Mental, Spiritual, and Magical. The stats relate to these interaction types.

The setting
Is a fantasy world after a great war between Giants, Dragons, and Changelings. The Giants won. There is now turmoil and darkness brewing across the world. Humans, who were once sequestered away in their own lands, have become refugees in a land of monsters. Some were twisted by dark magics into other monstrous creatures. There is war in the land of Faeire, And the Trolls are waking from their millennial slumber.

The request for advice:
I am trying to come up with a list of 6-8 different racial abilities/talents for each of the races. Players get to choose 2 of these when they create their characters. I don't need the game effects (I can take care of that) just some inspiration. The names would be groovy. If you want to partake in this and give ideas about what these races might be able to do, that'd be great! If you want to give a short description of what you think the ability would do, that would be awesome as well. I will provide a list of the races below and a short description of what they're like in this setting. Humor is worth extra points.

• Human: Refugees, adaptable, hardy, survivors (survivors of the destruction of their land, literally an Atlantis-style sink in one day end to their entire continent)
• Elves: Diplomatic, impartial to the point of seeming to be cold (not Vulcans...Elves show emotion, they are just ultra-impartial when being diplomatic), negotiating between faeires and sprites, magical, wilderness folk
• Canin (Canine folk): Bandits, selfish, natural weapons (teeth)
• Felyn (Cat people): Merchants, honorable, natural weapons (claws, teeth), prefer to not fight but can.
• Sparok (Bird people): Religious leaders, Flightless (might be able to glide), natural weapons (claws, beaks). Includes all birds from Hummingbirds to Thunderbirds. They've just lost their ability to fly.
• Dwarf: Black market, sturdy, master craftsmen, not underground dwellers nor miners, their kingdoms were overtaken by fleeing dragons. See Felyn as their rivals (the reverse is not true)
• Orc: Lawful, Good, prone to rage, think of the marines. Once Humans, now trying to atone for the sins they were forced to commit
• Troll: Twisted, evil, regenerative trance (not automatic)
• Goblin: Lawless, selfish, but kind when necessary, wiry, witty, street-smart. Once Humans, now trying to escape what they were forced to do.
• Giant: Current leaders, strong, tall, able to use larger weapons and carry more
• Minotaur: Lawful, Good, hardy, strong, natural weapons (horns). Once Humans, now hell bent on destroying all evil (think of paladins)
• Ratling: Wiry, trackers, selfish, self-reliant
• Faerie: Can fly, highly magical, enmity towards the Sprites, small (tiny even, maybe a little too sensitive about their teensy-tiny bodies)
• Sprite: Highly magical, cannot fly, enmity towards the Faeries, small
• Raptor: Monastic, psionic masters, resilient, adapted to the desert, lizard/dinosaur species, some bordering on the size of giants (like T-Rex) many 1/2 hight to slightly taller than humans.

As an example, here's what I have for the Elves:
"It's Like a Wooden Machinegun!" (bow mastery), "I'm Magical!" (some sorcerer spells as natural abilities), "Sneak Sneak Sneak" (natural forests or wooded areas do not impede Elven movement), "What? You Can't See That?" (suffers no penalties for natural darkness under an open sky and can see 5 times further than a Human normally can), "Somebody's Watching Me" (ambushes and surprises are not automatic and the Elf gets a bonus to any such rolls--or he's just paranoid), "Patience of 1,000 Years" (takes a lot to get them angry, frustrated, and the like).

[Vulpinoid]

Two quick questions...

For the context of this game, what's the difference between spiritual and magical?

Does your game involve social interaction at any level, or is it all conflict? (I only ask because there's no obvious "Social" stat, and I could certainly see certain races fitting into a negotiator niche during a multi-racial war.)

V

[Excalibur]

Two quick questions...

For the context of this game, what's the difference between spiritual and magical?

Spiritual interaction in this game refers to inner willpower, beliefs, and the like. Magic is an external force that is manipulated.

If Spiritual interaction is willpower, does that not also affect Psionics, the powers of the mind? Not really, Mental interaction deals with wits, knowledge, science, and psionics. Spirit is more faith based.

As such, Magic allows you to manipulate spells in the traditional thaumaturgical sense. Magic is both offensive and defensive and some spells may take their toll on the character.

Spirit allows one to use rites to smite their foes and prayers to protect. It's usually a pact with some supernatural being (be it a god from a polytheistic faith, a monotheistic faith, or even a demon, devil, or great old one...witchraft and necromancy would fit in Spiritual interaction).

Does your game involve social interaction at any level, or is it all conflict? (I only ask because there's no obvious "Social" stat, and I could certainly see certain races fitting into a negotiator niche during a multi-racial war.)

I did not mention a social stat because I am working on the combat system only for the time being (for reasons dealing with the mentality of my current group). The adventuring part of the game is actually somewhat simpler except for the concept of Factions. Every god has a faction, every race has a faction, every religion, town, organization, etc. The Social interactive portion is the gain and loss of faction points as players make decisions throughout adventuring. Helping one village may cause another to become hostile, ignoring your deity may cause your rites and prayers to not work, angering the wrong people could bring in assassins or bounty hunters.

There is no real concept of alignment like in traditional games such as D&D. It's all about perception. If you've never been somewhere and people don't know you, you may have a 50 point (unknown/average) faction score in relation to them. As you work in the area, your reputation will grow and your faction points will increase or decrease. Race plays a big part of it. If you're a Faerie in the Sprite 's territory, you may have an immediate drop of 25 points which may cause most Sprites to distrust you or even go hostile.

[David C]

Brainstorm

If you don't know how to brainstorm, you really need to learn how.  The basic premise of brainstorming is that the critical part of your brain and the creative part of your brain cannot both function at the same time. People who write an idea than go "That's so stupid!" are shutting down the creative side of their brain. In order to brainstorm, start writing down every idea that comes to your mind, ESPECIALLY the stupid ones.  If it pops into your brain for even a second, write it down.  Do this for at least 10 minutes.  Do not look back at what you've written down or else you will start thinking critically.

After you have written out all of your ideas, go back.  Chances are that none of your ideas are ready yet.  However, a combination of your ideas will probably give you the results you're looking for.

Cheers

[Excalibur]

I've brainstormed, I have notebooks full of ideas, some scrubbed, some made it into the current incarnation (faction points for instance vs alignment) and some are still being looked at.

While I have a general idea of what I want racial abilities to do, coming up with what they actually do is becoming problematic. Sort of like writer's block.

I'm reading these forums and they're giving me more ideas on directions I can take but I thought I'd give it a shot and see what other people, who don't have their mind constantly on this project, would say. That's the key there, I'm the closest to this game than anyone and my vision may be too narrow to see more of what I need.

So, you might call this a collective brainstorming session where I'm asking people what they think about the original question: Should I worry about racial abilities at all and let stat differences dictate them? Or should I add more differentiation through racial abilities that only one race has access to?

Asking my gaming group is like asking a brick wall to smile. They only care about the combat system, whether it's too complicated or uses dice vs cards (big debate right now...I say you can use both). If anything outside of statistics hits them that is in any way imaginary, it is Satan's work and they want no part of it. Unfortunately, where I live, there is a lot of this closed-mindedness going on and it's difficult to find anyone willing to discuss the game or even play anything other than chutes and ladders (and that's edgy for them).

Thanks for the reply though, and the tip (I do this already, I go nowhere without a pad and pencil).

[JoyWriter]

Ok, here's some ideas for making ideas; one way to clear up an idea is by contrast; picture the contrasts you want there to be in how different species do things, probably draw them down in some kind of web (with the lines marked with "___ vs ___" or "more ___ than ____" or something like that) and see if that gives you any more ideas, especially when compared with what you already have.

Another way to do it is to zero in on their lifestyle/culture etc. Some people prefer to distinguish species and culture, and I can definitely understand that, but I think it's better to create one culture that embodies the species traits, and then try to create another, than to stay in generalities, especially when you're facing writers block.

Once you start to work out what a selection of Sparok lives look like you can consider what parts of that life fit characteristics you associate with the race, and you may even find that it inspires you for other races too, what they do instead of ____ or why they might actually be better at it etc. You get this backward and forward between building the day to day life and the needs of your contrasts and races, with each change chucking out a load of possibilities for actions.

If you come to resolve the problem in some way, tie-ing a lifestyle to a specific set of species traits in a coherent way, then you'll have done pretty well, but you can also start trying to find simularities between the various offcuts you've created that you find interesting, and pull them together as an alternate version, which may turn out to be better than what you originally intended.

The advantage of doing this back and forth with practical ways of living is that it gives you a concrete idea of how they might be living; actually on the ground, herding horses or making pots or travelling as mercs or writing songs or translating or making wine or having festivals or creating walls or whatever they get up to in your world. Do the canin and felyn eat plants? What do minotaurs do with their kids? How do humans actually do all that travelling? And then you can consider how they would bring the skills from those areas into the conflicts the games focus on.

This kind of thing is pretty useful for making a source of inspiration for what make your races unique in their situations, but you have to insure it doesn't clog up any of the moving parts of your stories, so keep going back every now and again and insuring that their daily lives include the threats of the monsters and giants and whatever else, basically keeping it from getting all pastoral and lovely!

If you can't see the places in your head you could grab some books, possibly wikipedia'ing up historical periods that suit what your looking for and then reading historical novels set then, but keep it light to suit your style. Also find some kids history books, because of the focus they have on "bringing it alive".

Anyway beware in using this advice because my game based on it is in a state of perennial incompleteness! The important thing for you is probably to find enough depth and concreteness to drive details, then handwave the contradictions this likely produces. The trick for solving writers block is to do something different, write/research in a different way, so you can find new solutions.

[Excalibur]

Thanks for that bit of advice. While I was running errands it occurred to me that I could bring in the lessons I learned in creative writing during my undergrad days.

I was thinking it might be interesting to learn more about each of the races if I created a bunch of characters (minus any combat techniques or racial abilities...more or less average people representing the races) and interview them. Ask them questions about their daily lives, how they survive, what they find most helpful about their species, their "gods given talents" and see where that took me.

I got a little unnerved about the trolls though, a nasty bit of work that bunch is

I'll post anything I find out from this exercise.

[Locke]

1. where do the majority of the characters powers come from?  class, race, skill?
2. how many racial abilities shoudl a race have?
3. do you want to structure each race into having one flaw, one social benefit, one combat benefit?  it might be easier to start here
4.  do u have build points that players spend to create the character?  maybe racial benefits are bought,  the first one free and each gets more expensive as you go.
5. try placing a value between 1-10 to assign to each racial ability to help ensure they are balanced
6. find a way that all races have hooks and links into teh world.  its one thing to have dwarves, elves, and dragons, but what does each mean to the world.

sorry im more of a mechanics guy so im not focusing on the roleplaying or larger world or fluff stand point.

[Excalibur]

Thanks, Locke. I can answer some of these, actually.

1. where do the majority of the characters powers come from?  class, race, skill?

Race and overall general talents. There are no classes in this game, just talents and skills. Combat techniques are skills, spells are skills, etc. Talents allow you to use some of those restricted skills, e.g. Thaumaturgy allows your character to cast spells, Piety allows your character to use prayers and rites, Psychic allows your character to use psionic powers...

2. how many racial abilities shoudl a race have?

Each race has a pool of between 6-10 racial abilities. Not all members of the same race will have the same exact spread of abilities.

3. do you want to structure each race into having one flaw, one social benefit, one combat benefit?  it might be easier to start here

I've thought about providing a different ability that improves weaker aspects of the character (such as a low attribute score) for a price. Thus that big, stupid giant might be an idiot savant when it comes to one or two spells (able to cast them naturally, improves his magic score by 2) but at the cost of 3 strength. I also intend to give each race an ability that allows them to ignore environmental effects such as being able to ignore movement penalties while in the forest or mountains, being able to see in the dark, etc. (see the above example of the Elf).

4.  do u have build points that players spend to create the character?  maybe racial benefits are bought,  the first one free and each gets more expensive as you go.

Players choose 2 racial abilities for free when the character is created. They're also given 50 creation points to choose starting skills, talents, and gold. There is nothing stopping them from grabbing another racial ability if they can afford it.

5. try placing a value between 1-10 to assign to each racial ability to help ensure they are balanced

I've done this with attributes already. I guess it wouldn't hurt to put point values on bonuses and penalties that not only help balance, but also increase or decrease the cost of the ability.

6. find a way that all races have hooks and links into teh world.  its one thing to have dwarves, elves, and dragons, but what does each mean to the world.

sorry im more of a mechanics guy so im not focusing on the roleplaying or larger world or fluff stand point.

This is where I intend to give them the option of ignoring environmental effects. For instance, if a character's race is naturally mountainous (orcs or dwarves) they may be able to ignore the speed penalties for moving through such terrain (the Elf has something similar above...Sneak Sneak Sneak).

Thanks again. I think I'll be setting up that chart to help balance abilities, I was waffling on doing that, but better to be safe

[Locke]

hmm kinda sounds like my system, check it out on the connectiosn page... age past.  It might give you some ideas.

[Excalibur]

I gave your system a quick once-over and it's sort of similar. Though your game seems to be a mashup of Palladium and Villains & Vigilantes (from what I could see).

This game that I'm working on is more open ended and I'm trying to make a simple mechanic for it all. Though I think I've gotten more complicated that I wanted.

Reviewing what you have reinforced some of my thoughts though.

What do you think of this idea:
In building the racial abilities, I'll look at:

• Player vs Himself,
  
• Player vs Player,
  
• Player vs Monster (NPC), and
  
• Player vs Environment.
  

Each of this will provide a bonus and a penalty in a way that describes how the race would interact with each.

So, as an example, let's look at "Sneak Sneak Sneak." This racial ability for Elves is meant to allow the race to ignore movement (speed) penalties while in a wilderness setting. Forests may cause up to a -3 movement penalty due to the amount and density of the vegetation. Since the highest penalty ignored is a -3, the Elf who has this ability would receive a reciprocal -3 penalty in another environment such as underground or in the mountains.

How about an ability such as "What? You Can't See That?" (suffers no penalties for natural darkness under an open sky and can see 5 times further than a Human normally can) What would be it's offset? I would have to say that if there is any light source (Humans would need one at least) then this ability does not work, however, if alone or with other Elves...

The main difference between your system and mine is that talents and racial abilities enable a character to do something a bit better than everyone else. Some have levels which can be purchased with XP, while others enable the use of certain skills. There is no limit on how high they can go. Then again, the amount of XP one receives is not that high so an open-ended system may never see it's full potential.

Thanks for sharing! I plan to read through your document a bit more (though you need to fix some grammar and spelling issues...hee)

[Locke]

well a suggestion i would make is to brainstorm.

- make a list of EVERYTHING you think an elf should be able to do.  It should be like 20 to 60 things.
- make a list of everything the elf should have NO business doing

then tag the list to differentiate the powers
then choose so many standard starting powers that also have racial drawbacks
- then make a list of the leftover powers that can be bought at creation and leveling up, be sure to place a similar number for all the races. like each race might have a some sort of movement bonus (elves move through forest, snakepeople move through sand, cat people climb trees)

- i would choose: offensive, defensive (or combat), movement, social, magic, and skill.  Then give each race the same number or about the same of each.

hope this helps

[Excalibur]

For a thread that started by requesting possible names (humorous or no) I've gotten a lot of good advice in brainstorming the ideas.

Thanks! I do this already, but I'll see about working in all the different aspects as suggested.

[Locke]

well the problem is what you listed is a mess.  i think it would take several nights to have the races flushed out with 4-6 powers each and sort it and balance it.

so people are tying to help you figure it out, b/c if i place time into it and you hate my idea nothing happens.

I could sort my vision of 3-4 races so yo could see how i would do it, but i don't know if it would have value.

[Excalibur]

Thanks for the offer If you'd like to do so, I won't stop ya. I'll be going through my notes and what history I have of the races and see what I can pull from there. I haven't read it in a few months so it'll be like reading it for the first time (and vomiting all over the place at the grammar and spelling errors...heh).

In terms of game mechanics, I'll have to deal with that mess, but you've given me some good advice and inspiration at different ways to see things.

Thanks again!