Hello. Total Newbie here...

[Andrew Martin]

Attributes for Questor RPG
Size seems important, so does "Determination" -- see the impressive amount of Quentyn's determination to be a Questor at the Truth Stone. :)

I'd be tempted to use Fudge levels for these attributes.

For skills, these seem to be more easily acquired. Spells seem very easy to learn, once one has some training in the art.

[RHJunior]

Lemme clarify a few story points:

1) Those aren't dragons. They're GRAGUM-- centauroid alligators. bit of a difference, that.

2)There's a LOT of magic--- but levels and capacities differ from species to species (the story hasn't progressed far enough to address that, so consider this a bit of a spoiler....) To wit, the Rac Cona Daimh have a nearly 100% rate of thaumaturgical ability(or "lux aptitude", a genetic trait). This is counterbalanced by the fact that they tend to level out at a moderate power level... no earth-shattering magical titans among them.

Very very common magic, but medium to low power.

Humans, on the other hand, have very few magical adepts--- but the power curve is a lot steeper, going up abruptly from spoon-benders and water dowsers to heavy hitters.

Very rare magic, but very high power.

Whereas the Gragum (to give yet another example) have very very rare magic, AND very low power.....



Another limitation on magic is... well, it has a lot of the same limitations that *electrical* power has IRL.  Consider that electricity is incredibly versatile-- but after a certain point, the cost-to-benefit ratio starts going south. For instance, one of the problems with electric cars is that the batteries run down very fast-- and take a deuce of a long time to recharge. Which is the reason you see very few electric cars on the road, and no battery-powered battle tanks.

Essentially, the Rac Conan society is something akin to a civilization with all the whizbang electric gizmos--- but no internal combustion engine. (Hence the goat-drawn carts.)

5)Spells consist of shaping lux and forcing it to go thru particular convolutions and patterns (something akin to the way an electrical circuit makes electricity jump thru hoops to produce certain effects.) These patterns can be broken down into particular common building blocks... and different effects can be produced by arranging these building blocks in different ways.
Enchanting objects consists of basically "engraving" or imprinting these patterns into the material substance of the object, so that lux pumped thru the object follows those patterns-- certain substances being able to hold the patterns better than others... in fact, runes are nothing more than a "circuit diagram on the outside of an object, so that a mage can tell what patterns have been imbedded in the artifact.
(A real coup would be to design an actual "runic alphabet" so that players could design new spells from scratch.... ah well. Getting ahead of myself.)

4) Questor is, in Rac Cona Daimh society, a very particular career path (one that, in the time of the story, has faded away somewhat.) Something of a cross between a village champion, intrepid explorer, and an adventurer-for-hire... with a dash of private eye thrown in on the side.  Indiana Jones with a day job. ;) And, as Quentyn illustrates, the job has been somewhat romanticized by the passage of time. Questors are also some of the very few Rac Conans likely to go roaming far from home.... however, other types of Rac Conan professions would be playable as well.

An off-sides note here... why is it that all the game systems I have seen, clerics/priests can do healing, and exorcisms, and all other nonesuch--- yet not a single game system has a "proselytizing" attribute for them? I submit that this is one of the main objectives for most travelling ministers--- stopping and preaching the Holy Word of Whomever, winning converts, starting churches/ temples, etc. (and making the occasional enemy from opposing theologies, one might add.) It certainly would add more realism to the clerical characters-- rather than simply leaving them as human band-aid dispensers and Holy Lysol sprayers.  
Speaking as a son of a Baptist Pastor, I can testify (amen, brothah!) that being a 'cleric' rarely involves bandages and healing potions.. it more often involves ministering to the emotional upsets of your flock, settling in-church squabbles, dealing with outsiders hostile to your church, visiting your churchmembers' reprobate offspring in the hospital and in prison, patching the church roof yourself because noone bothered to show up to help like they promised.... and if you're a missionary in a foreign land (like your average RPG cleric could be assumed to be), it gets REAL interesting....
It's just a shame that most game designers don't take advantage of that rather story-rich aspect of things.

[quozl]

Speaking as a son of a Baptist Pastor, I can testify (amen, brothah!) that being a 'cleric' rarely involves bandages and healing potions.. it more often involves ministering to the emotional upsets of your flock, settling in-church squabbles, dealing with outsiders hostile to your church, visiting your churchmembers' reprobate offspring in the hospital and in prison, patching the church roof yourself because noone bothered to show up to help like they promised.... and if you're a missionary in a foreign land (like your average RPG cleric could be assumed to be), it gets REAL interesting....
It's just a shame that most game designers don't take advantage of that rather story-rich aspect of things.

Here's hoping that you take up the gauntlet you threw down.  As a pastor's son, you have more insight into this sort of thing than the rest of us.  Please design a game like this.  I know I'd like to try it out.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi RH,

I'm very interested in your answer to Paul's question from yesterday. Any thoughts on that?

Best,
Ron

[Henry Fitch]

Here's hoping that you take up the gauntlet you threw down. As a pastor's son, you have more insight into this sort of thing than the rest of us. Please design a game like this. I know I'd like to try it out.

Just as a point of interest, one of my many back-burnered game concepts right now is about missionaries, and is tentatively titled Southern Cross. I probably won't get around to actually doing it on my own, but I'm up for some group-design if anybody else is.

[RHJunior]

Hi RH,

I'm very interested in your answer to Paul's question from yesterday. Any thoughts on that?

Best,
Ron

I'm not sure which question you're referring to....

[RHJunior]

Hi RH,

I'm very interested in your answer to Paul's question from yesterday. Any thoughts on that?

Best,
Ron

I'm not sure which question you're referring to....

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I'm not sure which question you're referring to....

Let me ask, you've got a lot of fun, evocative setting details: the melting tent, the whakadu, the fact that they fish with explosives. In your eventual roleplaying game, do you envision the players inventing these kinds of things during gameplay, so everyone is effectively contributing to the setting? Or do you anticipate detailing most of what you have in mind for the setting yourself in the text of the game, and for gameplay to be about the players experiencing what you've created?

Emphasis mine.

[RHJunior]

The more I consider it, the more it seems a better idea to create a module for "Tales of the Questor" as I intended originally, so that it's playable/compatible with another preexisting RPG system, as opposed to creating a whole new RPG from scratch... the initial objective was to let fans of my comic enjoy RPing some of the characters and races from my storyline.  In the end, it's much easier to adjust the saddle to fit the horse than to breed a horse to fit the saddle, if you see my point.
Still, I press onward. Danged if this isn't fascinating stuff.

I'm curious as to how one sets up an effective point system for various attributes--- especially in light of games that feature multiple playable races. Okay, first you have to determine what constitutes "average" for your game. Then you have to determine how RL increments in capability translate to game rules and incriments. For instance, assume that "normal average" translates a 30 year old human male, medium build, in perfect physical health for his age. (Now that alone causes problems. Does that mean he's an athlete? A Schwartzenagger? Or is he in perfectly NORMAL physical health for a man of his age-- aka a flabby couch potato?)

Either way, I would think that a game system would tend to put "average" stats at Zero, across the board.... and subsequent levels would run into positive and negative numbers. But what does, say, +2 to strength mean, in RL terms? twenty percent stronger? Two percent? Two hundred percent stronger?  I've seen enough "Murphy's Rules" to know it's darn dicey getting it right--- games where ordinary characters could fall up to two stories without an injury, where otherwise normal armored soldiers could outrun a timber wolf, ones where a PC with +2 to stamina could survive a rhino stomping on his chest but a +1 croaked if you looked at him funny.....
And intelligence as an attribute is hairy as all hell.


And how do you cap off outlandish increases? I've listened in and read up on gaming enough to know that eventually your players-- if they're any good-- eventually level up so high that their GM has to resort to "killing off" a character to save the game.... because no matter the system, even even the weeniest PCs level up to the point they're striding across the gameland, ten feet tall and farting thunderbolts.

Wouldn't most stats, IRL, follow something of a curve... after a certain point, increasing in a certain stat would yield diminishing returns?
For instance, what about the square-cubed law? (for those who don't know, it basically states that for every level an animal's size is increased, as its volume is cubed, its strength is squared. This is the reason that ants can lift 50 times their body weight-- not because they're super strong, but because they're super small, and the square cubed law works in their favor.) Turning into a giant, beyond a certain size, would NOT necessarily be beneficial strength and stamina wise. After a certain point, adding +Whatever to something should be gilding the lily.

And then there's the rule of Unintended Consequences-- aka "you can't do just one thing." Unless you're using a metaphysical explanation, increase in strength requires an increase in *size*--- muscle size, and beyond a certain point, necessary increase in overall body size. (Yet ever-upward-leveling warriors never need to have their armor resized. Odd, no?)  I would think that increases in certain stats and attributes should result, beyond a certain point, in alterations *and detriments* to other stats...

Then again, RPGS rarely address the consequence of neglect. In RPGs, if you start out with a level 3 intelligence, barring accident or evil curses or the like, you'll stay *right there* regardless of how little you tend to your mental growth.
In the real world, people's attributes-- their intelligence and knowledge, their physical health, stamina, strength, agility, etc etc, require constant maintenance, simply to maintain status quo-- as I can personally testify (he said woefully as he looked down at his woefully be-twinkied midriff.) And all else being equal, you can't focus all your attention on one attribute without suffering losses in another-- the bookworm gets flabby; the jock falls behind in his grades; the social butterfly loses grip on the reins of her finances.
And, of course, there are the debilitating effects of age and senility...
In other words, *you lose ground.*  
Perhaps game systems could avoid runaway juggernaut PCs if there were some sort of.... "use it or lose it" system in effect. Some method for actually losing ground on certain attributes. It would keep characters from endlessly climbing the Jacob's Ladder, and maybe result in some richer gameplay as the character's nature changed with the passing of time.

And it *would* be entertaining seeing some swarthy Cohen the Bavarian getting old, fat, and indolent, and finally retiring from adventuring, stinking rich, to loll about his mansion.... it wouldn't even necessarily mean the end of the character as a PC, just that rather than being a mighty thewed warrior he'd be a huge-bellied financier of other up-and-coming adventurers....

[RHJunior]

I'm not sure which question you're referring to....

Let me ask, you've got a lot of fun, evocative setting details: the melting tent, the whakadu, the fact that they fish with explosives. In your eventual roleplaying game, do you envision the players inventing these kinds of things during gameplay, so everyone is effectively contributing to the setting? Or do you anticipate detailing most of what you have in mind for the setting yourself in the text of the game, and for gameplay to be about the players experiencing what you've created?

Emphasis mine.

Ah.
Hm. Perhaps a mix of both?
In one of the Forge's articles, "Fantasy Heartbreakers," there was a description of a magic system that consisted of only seven basic spells, that you combined in varying mixes for different synergistic results. Very, very innovative.... made room for all sorts of creative interpretations.

I visualize the magical system for the Questorverse as something similar to that, albeit a bit more detailed.
What if spells used flow charts?
To design a spell, you draw up a flowchart-- built around certain basic magical "building blocks" (smaller spells that any mage can do on the fly.) The time required to cast the spell (or to enchant an object with the spell) would be determined by the number of nodes in the flowchart; time to *execute* the spell would be determined by the number of cycles in the flowchart. More complex flowcharts would produce more complex effects-- but small, quick and dirty spells would be useful too. A creative PC or GM could create new spells to suit their tastes.... or use or modify preexisting spells that came with the rulebooks.

The spellwriter would create or design the spells ahead of time, of course--- and the GM would have to go over them to make sure there weren't any mistakes in the design. (and if they had a mean streak, maybe let them use a spell with a fatal flaw in it..... heh. PC Smoke test. Plug the wizard in and see if he catches fire...)

Some of the basic types of nodes(note, this is all off the top of my head) would be:
detect mana source, tap mana source, shape effect, detect spell target, impliment effect.
This list is of course abbreviated. Wizards would advance by learning new kinds of nodes to add to their spellcasting " language."

The more I type about this, the more intrigued I am by the idea. Lemme scribble a few things out and see what I come up with....

[Shadeling]

I am a little late coming in...but I gotta say this sounds awesome. Love the comic.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

 In the end, it's much easier to adjust the saddle to fit the horse than to breed a horse to fit the saddle, if you see my point.
Still, I press onward. Danged if this isn't fascinating stuff.

Unless what you have is a camel saddle, if you see my point. :)

Judging by the rest of your post, I guess you don't. Hmmm... I don't even know where to start or if it's right that I should.

[Jasper]

With regard to your questions concerning experience, attributes, etc., you might want to check out a series of old columns on RPG.net called http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/ruleslaw.html">Ruleslawyer For Free, by Sergio Mascarenhas (scroll to the bottom).  He has several on experience and trait curves, ideas of learnings and mechanics to match, etc.  

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/fiddly18jun02.html">Fiddly Bits, by Larry D. Hols might also be wirth checking out if/when you get into the nitty gritty stuff of mechanics design.

[Paul Czege]

Hey RH,

I've listened in and read up on gaming enough to know that eventually your players-- if they're any good-- eventually level up so high that their GM has to resort to "killing off" a character to save the game.... because no matter the system, even even the weeniest PCs level up to the point they're striding across the gameland, ten feet tall and farting thunderbolts.

I'm going to suggest that your research, likely unbeknownst to you, has been concentrated on a subset of the range of possibility delivered by roleplaying games.

I've read your comic. I think it's awesome. My girlfriend read it. She loves it. Unlike, say, Todd Macfarlane, you have dual facility as both an artist and a storyteller. I envy you. I went and read some of your posts in the Keenspace forums about the physics and geography of the Questorverse, and the posts you've written here about Lux. Let me explain what I was trying to suss from you with my first question about what you envision for your game module:

You've spent a lot of time thinking about the physics and cosmology of the comic. There's nothing wrong with that. But I suspect that all the stuff you've come up with is actually in retrospect to the actual artistic and creative process of doing the comic every week. I suspect that your actual artistic process is one of spontaneous invention, informed by a strong personal understanding of how to create narrative tension and deliver a compelling story, and that your attitude toward the setting when you're actually doing the comic is almost certainly one of great flexibility. When you're actually doing the comic, you give yourself license to re-envision anything and everything about the setting in service to the drama of the story. Am I wrong? I bet I'm not.

And so my question first question to you was an effort to determine whether you were interested in a gameplay dynamic of collaborative artistic creation emulating more of the actual artistic process of creating the comic, or that you were actually interested in delivering your setting in a more canonical way that avoids players potentially creating into it in ways that maybe you wouldn't personally think were all that cool. I submit that in seeming contradiction of your RPG research and experiences, that the former is entirely possible. The latter is the traditional approach.

Now, there's nothing wrong with either of these approaches. But if you're curious about the not so traditional approach, take a look at http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3492">this thread about actual play of Clinton Nixon's game Donjon, starting with Dave Turner's sentence, "For those that care, here's a brief synopsis of what actually happened in the story."

Paul

[RHJunior]

In other words, Do I want people to be inventive and go their own route, or do I want to keep the game strictly "canonical" ? :)
hm.

WEll, I really doubt there's any way I could ever possibly keep it perfectly canonical anyway. I'd be more interested in the preservation of the *spirit* of the comic.... that wisdom, courage, intelligence and virtue outrank brute power and ruthlessness; that good is a worthy goal in and of itself. A little spit in the eye for those who would deconstruct heroism.

Eh, enough woolgathering.


I think that, if I design the mechanics as I intend, I'll be able to preserve the spirit of the story regardless of what variations from the canon people may devise.