Need critique/playtesters

[Palaskar]

All right, I've finally refined my house system as far as I can readily go alone. What I need now is some players and a GM to playtest it, as well as people to critique it.

Anyone volunteer?

The RPG, Signature 3.8.2, is at:

http://www.meant2be.150m.com/44index.html

[Mike Holmes]

Question.  What does the following mean:

gaining a new Trait: "I remember my youth as a pick-pokcet on the streets of Cairo." (gain the Pick-Pocket Trait.)

Does it mean that I just gain the trait, or that I have to roll to get the trait? There are large implications for the design that might need discussion.

Mike

[Palaskar]

Question. What does the following mean:

Quote:
gaining a new Trait: "I remember my youth as a pick-pokcet on the streets of Cairo." (gain the Pick-Pocket Trait.)


Does it mean that I just gain the trait, or that I have to roll to get the trait? There are large implications for the design that might need discussion.

Sorry I was unclear about that. You either have to pass an Action Resolution check set by the Guide to gain a new Trait, or spend Wild Points (whose maximum is limited by the heroism of the setting) equal to the rating of the Trait you wish to gain.

[Mike Holmes]

Are you concerned that players might simply accumulate permenant Traits?

In Synthesis, the point of play is to accumulate traits, but most traits accumulated are ephemeral. They're not meant to last very long. Aquiring permenant Traits is expensive, and can only occur with character development. So the goal of the system is achieved.

I'm not seeing what the goal of your system is. Is it to flesh out the character rapidly in play? That seems cool, but isn't there a point at which you're going to want the player to slow down? Where new Traits start to seem excessive? Won't you get to that point pretty quickly?

Mike

[Palaskar]

I'm not seeing what the goal of your system is. Is it to flesh out the character rapidly in play? That seems cool, but isn't there a point at which you're going to want the player to slow down? Where new Traits start to seem excessive? Won't you get to that point pretty quickly?

Yes, one of the goals of the system is to rapidly flesh out characters in play.

Although I've never mentioned it -- and I should have -- the more Traits a character has, the more difficult it should be to acquire new Traits, simply because the character already knows so much it becomes increasingly implausibe that the character had the time to learn all that stuff.

Again, this depends on the Signature. If the character's Signature is, say, "400-year old immortal swordsman", he's going to be able to add more Traits than, say, "young female hacker."

Because of the variability caused by the Signature, I've left out the exact difficulty to the discretion of the Guide. Again, the rating of the Traits also influences the difficulty. Even our 400-year old immortal swordsman won't be able to add many 3-point Traits (difficulty 3.)

Thanks for pointing this out.

[Palaskar]

To simulate gaining Traits over time, the player first declares something like, "My character has spent the last 6 months training this Trait. I want him to get it at 1."

Then the player must succeed in an Action Resolution test with a base difficulty of 1, modified by how hard it would be to gain the Trait.

For example, if the Trait the character spent 6 months training on is Dark Sorcery, and in the setting it normally takes years and years of practice to become good at Dark Sorcery, the Guide should assign a very large penalty to the test.

On the other hand, if the Trait the character spent 6 months training on is Tiddlywinks, and it is known that Tiddlywinks is very easy, the Guide should assign a bonus to the test.

Remember that since this is a test to gain a Trait, Wild points cannot be spent to give a bonus to the test.