The Last Bastion RPG - an almost completed draft

[Mike Holmes]

Dumirik, what I was saying was that the d100 system was problematic in certain ways. The d10 version may be a solution to some of these problems. But it does give the game a coarser granularity by 10 times as much.

I guess the question I'd have is why you went with the d100 in the first place? Are you losing anything by going to d10? If not, then I think it's definitely worth looking at. But if there is something important to the d100 scale, then perhaps there are other solutions.

Mike

[Kirk Mitchell]

I went for d100 because it was a system I was familliar with, and I had worked well with a d100 system. It was all a case of "Oooh, I want to make an RPG based on this cool idea I have. Oh! d100 works. Yeah!". But it was all going well till you Forgites came along. Damn you (Keep up the good work)! I won't really be losing anything by changing to a d10 based system, I'll just have to change the numbers really.

I have gone back to the basics and am constructing a design sketch or document to solidify my ideas before I dive in too deep like I did when I first started. So when the design sketch is finished I'll post it on this thread for dissection along with some specific details I'd like to have you look at.

Kirk

[Kirk Mitchell]

Hey, I'm back again. I just finished the very basic concept of my game and rules, and they are pretty much ready for dissection. Tell me what you think, how it might work, if I have left anything major out or anything else of the sort.

---------------The Last Bastion RPG--------------------

A Short Description of the Game:

The Last Bastion is an RPG set in a Steampunk and Atomopunk (more on this later) world. For many millennia, Humanity has sat around, allowing itself to fall into the simmering pit of decadence and horror. None of this is visible from the outside. From the outside they seem to be a wonderful and happy society. But on the inside, this is a seething pit of corruption and decadence, contained only by the bounds of 'civilized' life. The only release for this hidden nature is through their dreams. But dreams have to go somewhere, don't they?

The dreams and nightmares of Humanity throughout their existence have forged out a realm of dreams somewhere beyond the world of men, where the very reality of that dreamworld is shifted and altered with every new thought and corruption of the Human race. Inside this world beings have evolved, spawned from the depths of Human madness.

At some point in the past, somehow, the barriers between the worlds collapsed, and the world of Humanity was overrun by these beings, dubbing themselves the 'Dumirik'. You either take control of these bizarre creatures, the Humans that oppose them, or the Humans that work with them. In this tenuous balance between these two opposed forces, what do you do?

The Hub:

A slightly beyond modern day Steampunk setting. That is, lots of steam powered trains, pneumatic machines, factories belching smoke and steam, huge sets of gears and clockwork and tons of multi-leveled urban sprawl. However, this is also an Atomopunk setting. If you haven't heard of the term Atomopunk, it is a setting which sort of uses the ideas and styles of 1950's sci-fi, meaning lots of great shining skyscrapers, old skool slave robots, laser blasters, atomic energy and death rays. So, consider The Last Bastion to be a really grimy, rusty and reverse engineered version of Atomopunk, a degenerated society which has fallen from grace back to using meager steam, pneumatics and coal (but the death rays and slave robots are still around. Heh, heh heh!). However, I am aiming for a rather whimsical view of all of these objects and characters in the setting, sort of a dark concept treated in a whimsical way.

The PCs:

PCs are vigilantes, businessmen and political leaders, all working to further their political goals and machinations by any means necessary, legal or otherwise. They are constantly shrouded in plots to gain more power, some of which are their own. Their own backgrounds, goals and motivations, whether they be for some imagined greater good, or pure greed, provide the catalyst for their  involvement in these plots.

The GM:

The GM is the person who structures the game, creating scenarios to be played and controls the NPCs. The GM takes control of the PCs' political adversaries and allies, and initiates the events in the game which lead to a schism or power struggle of some sort.

Play Structure:

Play is structured around scenarios which in turn are structured around Acts. The purpose of this structure is to create some form of organization to play, and to keep it from progressing on forever and going stale. This will create a rather episodic style of play, but each episode can have an effect on subsequent episode so as to create some overall plot progression or movement.

Rules Basics and Some Concepts:

DICE SYSTEM
The dice system is based on d10 dice. Whenever a character is required to make a specific action, the player rolls a d10, comparing the result to the relevant characteristic, adding or subtracting the applicable modifiers to the characteristic itself for this particular roll. If the roll is equal to or under the required number (the characteristic plus or minus the modifiers), the action is successful. Sometimes it will be required to know how well the character succeeded by. In this case, the number that the roll succeeded or failed by is the degree of success. When an opposed roll is required, the characters make a roll against the relevant characteristic, just as detailed above, however, they then compare the number of successes rolled. The character with the most successes wins the opposed roll and manages the action successfully.

If a 10 is rolled, that is an automatic failure. However, to see whether this is an automatic failure, make the same roll again, without all modifiers, meaning no modifiers at all. None. If the result is a failure, the action is failed. If the roll is a success, a success with a single degree of success.

CHARACTERS:
Each characters have a race, either Dumirik or Human. This determines how they play the game and view their world. They also have their own political House, one of the Great Family Houses of their race. Each individual must have some sort of belief in things, represented by his Faction. Characters' motives for their actions are influenced by these choices.

CHARACTERISTICS
Each character has a certain amount of characteristics which determine what they can do. The characteristics in The Last Bastion are:
PHYSIQUE
   General physical strength and toughness.
DEXTERITY
   Speed and agility, both physical and sometimes mental.
WILLPOWER
   Strength of will and wisdom,
INTELLIGENCE
   Knowledge, knowhow and general smartness.
MANIPULATION
   The ability to get others to do what you want, as well as a large amount of social skills.
LUCK
   Pure, blind luck. Amazingly helpful in some situations.

When a Last Bastion character is made, he has 30 points to spread amongst his characteristics. Only one characteristic may be made below 2, and only one can be raised to 9. None may be raised above 9.

SANITY AND DOGMA
The Dumirik are not any spawn of this material world, but were born in the gibbous realm of Human dreams. They spent an eternity in a world that was in a state of continuous flux, a by-product of the dark obsessions and thoughts of Humanity. As they were formed from the idle and horrible mentality of Humans, they must only be able to exist in their native nightmare world. But, by some freak, twisted joke of fate, they managed to arrive into the material realm of unknown Kadath. However, such an abnormality of reality cannot last for long in the material world, and soon, the forces of being tear apart the malformation in corporeal existence and send it kicking and screaming into the sensation-less void.

As Humanity has shaped the reality of the easily malleable dream-world, also can it alter the true reality of the material realm. It merely takes more belief on the part of the Human. The Dumirik have long taken advantage of this, and use their alien, god-like prowess to sway the conviction of the soft Humans to their advantage, forming a reality that they can safely exist in, and alter to suit their needs.

This is not always possible, either the Humans are too dogmatic with their faith, or the Dumirik merely does not have the powers of persuasion or manipulation that others do. For them, there is another, darker solution. The sanity of Humans can be drained and manipulated, and in this mentally fragile state, the reality of the world around them can be altered by a significantly powerful being to allow such mutations as the Dumirik to exist in impermeable reality. However, this is a highly fragile state and for the effect to be maintained, significantly more and more Sanity must be drained. When a Dumirik loses all of his Dogma and Sanity, he is permanently destroyed, and his
Soul sent into the void without sensation known as death. The rules for representing this mechanically are as follows.

Dogma (Dumirik Only)
Dogma is represented as a number equal to the number of Humans that believe in that particular Dumirik. Dogma can be gained by convincing Humans that you (the Dumirik) are real, and that you exist in the same reality as them, and not just in their minds. This is determined by the GM, he or she deciding when an NPC is convinced of your reality. Ways that NPCs can be convinced is through demonstrations of your power, conversation, the development of a cult worshiping you and wordplay. These ideas only scratch the surface, and many other ways can be found to convert followers to your cause. Humans can be made to stop believing in you by killing them, or convincing them of your falsity.

For every point of Dogma you gain (up to a maximum of 10), you may choose another Dream Characteristic. If you lose a Dogma point, you must choose a Dream Characteristic to remove, and get rid of all its affects.

Sanity
Sanity is an entirely different affair to Dogma, however, its representation is similar to that of Dogma. Your Sanity Pool is also represented as a number, but the number is equal to how much sanity you have drained from a Human. Each Human has a Sanity limit or characteristic equal to Will+Physique (never going above 20).

To drain Sanity from a Human, you must talk to them, touch them for a significant duration, allow them to observe you doing something important, or otherwise interact with them in some significant way. During this time you are deliberately harvesting their sanity, you make a Manipulation check, and for every success rolled, you gain 1 point from the Humans Sanity, permanently removing it from his Sanity limit and adding it to your Sanity Pool. The Human can resist this effect my making a Will check, and reducing the number of successes you made by 1 for each success he makes. Every turn while you have some Sanity in your Sanity Pool, roll remove 1 point from that pool. Please note that you must be deliberately draining their sanity, you can't just be 'incidentally' be draining a Humans sanity while walking down the street.

For every 5 points of Sanity in your Sanity Pool (up to a maximum of 50), you may choose another Nightmare Characteristic. If you lose enough Sanity points to not have a Nightmare Characteristic, remove that characteristic and get rid of all its affects.

Human Sanity
Humans have a sanity pool as well. It is equal to their Will+Physique. This has the only effect of determining their psychological condition. Check the below chart for the effects of losing sanity for some reason. If any of the below mental illnesses listed are offensive, it was not meant that way, only as a way of representing artificial or forced mental illnesses (as a result of sanity drain).

1 below normal Sanity level- Sleeping problems, memory problems
2 below normal Sanity level- As above, minor delusions
3 below normal Sanity level- As above, moderate delusions, some problems with fine motor skills
4 below normal Sanity level- As above, problems with eyesight, drooling and fits
5 below normal Sanity level- As above, major delusions, frequent fits, extreme memory problems and development of schizophrenia
6 and further below normal Sanity level- As above, only increased exponentially
Sanity reduced to 0 or less- Coma or death

DREAM and NIGHTMARE CHARACTERISTICS:
As a Dumirik gains further power over his increasingly more mutable reality, it is able to increasingly alter his body to more resemble the one he possessed in the dreamlands. As Dumirik are each a completely unique creation depending on the unique dream that spawned them, in the dreamlands, they have their own completely unique physical form. However, in the material world, they are confined to the form of the Human dreamer they have possessed. So, to represent the Dumirik further altering their possessed dreaming body to suit their needs and their original form, as they gain Dogma and Sanity points, they are able to gain dream or nightmare characteristics to alter themselves.

IDEOLOGICAL and INDIVIDUAL GOALS
There is always a reason behind an individual’s actions in the Hub. Always… Be it a reason of faith, of philosophy or of personal disposition, there is always a reason for these beings to behave the way they do. These goals and reasons are represented as Ideological, Individual and Cryptic goals. Ideological goals are those which adhere to the philosophies of the character and his faction. Individual goals are those which represent where the character wants to go and his background reason for wanting what he wants. And Cryptic goals are those that adhere to the inherent sense of purpose for the character, what he feels he is destined for.

When you create a character, create a Goal for him for each of these types, usually depending on his faction, beliefs and character, and most often long term in description. Then the character has 5 Character points to spread amongst these goals in any way they want. These can change over the course of the game, and the scores can be switched around from goal to goal, representing the character’s change of focus. When a player does something that behaves in character and takes the character one step closer to one of his goals, the GM should award that player with a Character Point to a maximum of 5. These Character Points count as bonuses to any roll made that has to do with that specific goal of the character. Each Character point awarded counts as a +1 bonus to the applicable rolls, but only if the GM allows it.

The Experience level refers to the total amount of Character points you have gained over the entire course of the game (including those you have spent, see below).

Character points can also be used in a way that causes them to be used up permanently, being 'spent' to 'buy' affects. The uses are as follows (they can be regained as normal; by taking steps towards the goals of the character):

-Increasing wounds caused in combat by one per Character point spent.

-Allowing a character to do something abnormally mighty or heroic than he could normally do, each point spent increasing its effect.

-Allowing the character to decrease the wounds caused to him in combat by one per Character point spent.

-Any other reasonable proposal of the player as long as it has no more real effect than the above mentioned usages.

-Gaining a new Enigma

ENIGMAS
A character’s enigma is a dark secret of their’s, long kept hidden within the depths of their festering souls. These enigmas are basic character traits and flaws, outlining their character and background for rules application. This is basically a compressed description of a character trait. Enigmas should also be reasonably specific; no all round bonuses allowed

Enigmas work by giving a character that possesses them a +1 bonus to any roll that is related to that Enigma. When a character is created, create three Enigmas that relate to his essential character and background. Character points can be spent on Enigmas. When gaining new Enigmas, they must be in some way related to the base Enigmas of the character, to represent the character developing and revealing yet another character trait.

GMs should encourage players to explain their Enigmas, describing them in a way that shows how their characters came to be this way and what this does for them. No “I have suddenly discovered that I was a boxing champion all along” for a purely intellectual character.

INFLUENCE:
As characters gain infamy and power, they gain influence. I am attempting to find some way of representing the fact that characters grow in respect and influence, possibly through sheer brutality, shows of power, gaining powerful allies or what have you. Any ideas on how to work this in a mechanical point of view?

TIME MECHANICS
A character may attempt as many actions as his dexterity score. Characters act in order of their Dexterity, from highest to lowest. If at any point a character wishes to act after his chance, he may choose to act later on whenever he chooses, so long as it is not at the end of the turn after everyone else has acted. When everyone else has acted, a new turn starts and the sequence begins again. In the event of a tie in Dexterity, roll a d10, and the highest result goes first.

COMBAT BASICS
Close combat is pretty much an opposed physique roll between two combatants, the player or character who gets the most successes wins. However, it is slightly more complex than that.

An attack counts as an action, and is made during the attacking character's action time. When a character is attacked, he is obligated to defend himself. When a character attacks, first he must move close enough to attack someone. Then he must choose a type of attack (thrust, slash, defend/attack or feint), as well as the direction the attack is coming from (above, below, right or left) and the target location on the defender's body. The defender then in response to these choices chooses a defense (parry, counter or dodge), as well as the direction he is going to block from (above, below, right or left). All of these options have an effect on combat.

The attacker then makes his attack roll (a simple physique roll), and the defender at the same time makes a defense roll (also a simple physique roll), which are opposed. The character with the greatest amount of successes wins. There is no effect in the event of a tie. If the attacker wins, he scores a number of wounds equal to his number of successes, minus the defender's armor value and physique score. Also, the attacker gets to attack next action. If the defender wins, he claims the initiative and is able to make a free attack next action (after that it goes back to the original attacker attacking).

Combat continues like this until all action points are used up by the attacking character, or one of the opponents is killed.

ORGANISATION of PLAY
Play is organized into a series of acts, which in turn are broken up into scenes. The purpose of this organizational plan is to prevent the ongoing campaign problem which plagues most RPGs. Although these can be linked together to form an overall plot movement, it would be difficult to keep it going forever. Throughout each of these series of acts the players are encouraged to carry out their own political machinations as well as react to the plots going on around them.

Act 1
Act 1 is the initiation of some sort of political action that is made that somehow draws the characters into the plot. This might be some political or ideological action that directly opposes some of the characters, or it might interest and intrigue their own ideas and they might be drawn in that way. This represents the introduction to the moral or political issue of this particular section of play, and consists mainly of political or court scenes, no real action.

Act 2
Act 2 is where the political machinations that the players are slowly drawn into come to fruition, and a power struggle of some kind ensues, which brings the characters in turn into a series of legal and illegal conflicts. Act two is comprised mainly of political scenes which result in action scenes.

Act 3
Act three is where the power struggle is somehow resolved, maybe as a result of the players’ interactions, or they are merely victims of the plot. This is comprised of any amount of action or political scenes, but generally leading to a closure to resolve this struggle. The characters then continue with their own aspirations and goals, perhaps striking off a series of events which leads to another power, political or ideological struggle.

EXAMPLE: This is an example of an episode which involves two player characters, but could include any other amount of players.
   
   ACT 1
Yaeger Vinston, a Human NPC, is the leader of the Free Dumirik Party. They are trying to bully the senate into giving the Dumirik more rights and priveliges. When they attempt to coerce Freddy Xavier, (a Human PC and leader of a group of mercs. who are often hired to 'subdue' unruly Dumirik) by killing one of his followers and threatening more to come unless they get of their back, Freddy gets involved to discover what is going on and to get revenge for the murder of one of his own. At the same, a plea is sent to a powerful PC Dumirik figure, Gabrethin. The plea is to aid the Free Dumirik Party in gaining the Dumirik more power. Gabrethin is intrigued and joins to see what the fuss is about. This is the initiating event which drags these two separate PCs into the same plot.

How the plot progresses really depends on how the PCs then react to their situation, depending on their goals and characters.


Hope that wasn't too long or too much of a waste of your time. I would really like you to look at the time mechanics, how I could make an influence system work as well as the Dream/Nightmare characteristics. If anything else comes to your mind, speak up.

Thanks for having a look,
Kirk