Setting seeks System, for long walks, cuddling....

[Jason Lee]

I can't help wonder if this is something you want to focus on.  Determining which one of these is true?  Maybe some sort of building pool, maybe even tied to character decisions in the original Big Battle.  Like pitching one of four different colored tokens in the pot everytime something is encountered that points to one of the four, then counting up all the tokens during the end-game and deciding what actually happened...  I dunno, just brainstorming.

On this one, I was pretty much thinking that there isn't an answer.  Sort of like, "Which God is the right one?"  I quite like human society as just a bunch of messiness with people taking things terribly seriously; when you know the answers, fanaticism can be totally justified.

Well okay then.

I want to look into this, certainly, but can you tell me a bit more about it?  I sort of had the impression it was doing Hong Kong cinema or something, but it sounds like I have that way wrong.  What's the shtick?

No, you're way right.  There is a setting latched on it though, designed to let you play all manner of HK action characters in one game.

The premise is that there is a secret war raging across time to control feng shui sites - chi nodes.  PC's are special chi using butt-kickers running around trying to gobble up power centers for an organization (or themselves).  There are four junctures (time periods):

69 AD - Controlled by sorcerers.  Has magic and critters.
1850 AD - Conspiracy groups that remind me of free masons.
Contemporary - Modern times.
2056 AD - Totalitarian society ruled by techno-mages who swipe critters from 69 AD and cyber-ize them.

Plus the netherworld - realm of creepy hallways you can find jump points to the different time periods in.

Characters can come from whichever.

I looked at the book, and...

Oh, the personality trait is a 'Melodramatic Hook', and didn't work quite how I remembered.  It's supposed to a movie cliché story hook.  Book examples include:  has terminal disease, must clear father's name, and needs money for sister's operation.

Also, the magic-tech (Arcanowave Devices) would need a bit more re-tooling than I thought.  All the example tech is really creepy-critter, and you'd have to swap out the mutation side-effect for something clock-like, like going mad from temporal misperception or something.

Sample system stuff:

Kewl Kung-Fu powerz that must be the inspiration for the Charm system in Exalted.

Unnamed characters (mooks) are treated very different from named characters.

Wacky little action movie rules like:  'explosions deal only superficial injury to characters, but totally destroy property.'

Feel free.  Let me know how it comes out, though!

Sure 'nough.

[John Kim]

This isn't a movie (as John Kim points out) it's an RPG. I want to participate in the parts in which I get to create more than just dialog for my character, I want to be in the parts where I create plot. If the plot is known, I can't do that. So it's just not interesting to me to play out. Read, as an intro, or even write? Sure. Play? No.

But feel free to correct me on what I like to play again.

OK, let's back up a minute.  Mike, you're saying that you clearly wouldn't like to play in this game from the sound of it.  But Chris is addressing this by telling the players about all the plan.  If his players feel like you do, he'll know it up front.  If I were a player, I would be fine with Part One on the condition that it doesn't go on for too long: probably 4 sessions max.  Actually, it takes around that long for a character of mine to gel anyhow -- so that is a good length for me.  

Obviously that's the idea behind the game. And I never said it isn't interesting, either. I just said it's going to be hard to play. I mean, OK, here I am with this character, and I have no goals. The GM says, "What do you do next?" And I just sit there because I have no idea what the character would do next. In fact, I'm pretty sure the character would just look for something to eat. I mean, beyond survival, where does the character go?
...
What I'm looking for are ways for the player to communicate to the GM what he's interested in seeing other than just waiting for something interesting to come along, and then jumping on it if/when that happens. What I see is a group with some engaged players and others not, and the not engaged players resenting the engaged ones.

It seems like this campaign is a Threefold Simulationist one -- i.e. the GM isn't responsible for throwing things at the players.  cf. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6178">"Plotless but Background-based Games".  Instead, the GM simply portrays the rest of the world.  The players actively direct their PCs to what they are interested in.   This isn't to everyone's taste, but it can work.  

That said, I foresee a problem with your setup, Chris.  Part 2 seems to me to be too broad in Scope -- so it will be difficult for you to have any prepared depth to it.  It would be better, IMO, if there were some sort of microcosm.  Perhaps there is a city which is an international central city that arose on the former site of the Demon King's lair?  That way you can have all sorts of factions within the city detailed, rather than having the PCs wander around a less well-detailed world through many cities.

[clehrich]

That said, I foresee a problem with your setup, Chris.  Part 2 seems to me to be too broad in Scope -- so it will be difficult for you to have any prepared depth to it.  It would be better, IMO, if there were some sort of microcosm.  Perhaps there is a city which is an international central city that arose on the former site of the Demon King's lair?  That way you can have all sorts of factions within the city detailed, rather than having the PCs wander around a less well-detailed world through many cities.

Well, I was certainly going to have a very complicated starting city with lots of factions, but I hadn't thought of putting it on the South Pole.  Why there?  I'm not quite following, I think.

Chris Lehrich

[John Kim]

That said, I foresee a problem with your setup, Chris.  Part 2 seems to me to be too broad in Scope -- so it will be difficult for you to have any prepared depth to it.  It would be better, IMO, if there were some sort of microcosm.  Perhaps there is a city which is an international central city that arose on the former site of the Demon King's lair?  That way you can have all sorts of factions within the city detailed, rather than having the PCs wander around a less well-detailed world through many cities.

Well, I was certainly going to have a very complicated starting city with lots of factions, but I hadn't thought of putting it on the South Pole.  Why there?  I'm not quite following, I think.

Oops.  I missed the part about it being on the South Pole.  My logic is this...  Having the city be at or near where they wake up would make it a natural focal point for Part 2.  If it is at some arbitrary other place in the world, then you have to somehow herd the PCs from where they wake up to that location -- and there are a lot of potential problems with such herding.  Now, there could be some sort of implicit logical connection which brings them to the city, but I thought having it be right there would simplify.  

And I say city as a microcosm because the PCs are concerned with the whole world.  They saved the damn thing, and now they will want to know what happened to it and the larger picture.  For example, it's quite likely that each hero will want to go see what has happened to his/her homeland.  That sort of wandering makes it hard to present depth.  So it's not enough that the city be complex.  It should represent all the important parts of the rest of the world.  

There are other ways of limiting your scope, but especially in a fantasy world these are tricky.  It is relatively easy to do globe-trotting in the real world, but it is harder in a fantasy world.

[clehrich]

Gotcha.  Entirely by accident, I had much of this in mind; it's nice to know it seems like it might work, since I didn't really plan it this way.

The place they wake up is the weird city run by clockwork magicians, which has spent its roughly 500 years of existence trying to be a kind of combination Switzerland and U.N.  Everyone uses them as a neutral zone for conversation and diplomacy (and also vicious intrigue), and they figure that it's pretty effective because these guys are very rich and have lots of magic power that nobody else really understands all that well.  Besides, outside their local area, they have no power at all, as their total population is sufficiently small that any of the larger empires have standing armies with more people.  They're not allied to anyone (and if they tried to become so would rapidly be stomped by others), but they're not enemies of anyone (do you really want to invade a vast citadel run by magicians with incomprehensible infernal machines?), and they stand in an uncomfortable but exciting central position for all the big players in world politics.

So in fact, the starting-point city really is a representative of everywhere, a kind of Lankhmar that's a bit more organized and a New York that's a little less American and so on and so forth.

Cool.  I can actually use that!

Chris Lehrich

[Mike Holmes]

Come on, Mike.  I wasn't ridiculing you, I'm not trying to give you a hard time.  I happen to disagree, and I thought that was worth discussion.  The thread was, and is, about what sort of system might work well for this setting.

Right. And my point is that no system out there will work for the game as concieved. Because right at the beginning of phase 2 it's going to die.

Let's take a look at one of my favorite systems that I'd like to think has broad applicabilty - Hero Quest. In that game, the most important part sof the character are his homeland and his religion/magic, in that these define the character's priorities to a large extent. Occupation just tells you what the character is good at. Now, let's say we use that system for your game. Now, we emerge in part two and presumably the homeland is no longer there, and the old religions are gone. Who does this character care about? Why?

Yes, yes, that's the point, I know. The problem is that the GM isn't left with any character specific information upon which to base the phase two action. So you may get the GM tossing stuff out there that doesn't engage the player. This requires the player to make decisions in a relative void. I mean, let's say that option X is to kill innocent women and children to promote a warlord. Option Y is to protect said innocent women and children. Given a character who went through the first part, and sacrificed himself, it would be hard to see him not taking option Y - there's no real choice.

So, then the other option is to "balance" the choices. Maybe Fight for Warlord X or Warlord Y. Now it's a real choice in that it isn't obvious which way to go, but an uninteresting one because neither choice makes any statement about what's important to the character. To have a meaningful decision, what you need are two things that the character does value, and a choice between the two. We don't have the first valuable thing present, much less the second.

Now, in actuality the character will have some values still present. Obviously they're heroes in that they decided to do the right thing in part one. In any case, I don't know of any system that would enumerate this well, and you don't seem to be concerned about it. Like I said, in TROS, the character starts with no SAs after the bomb, other than perhaps Conscience. So now the player has to develop new character priorities from scratch.

This is quite contradictory from the usual method where you create a character before play based on some idea of what the character is like, or what they'll be about. Now, if I started the game with the idea that we're starting at phase 2, then as a player I could develop a character who was "prepared" for it from the Player POV. But I think you're intentionally trying to avoid that, no? In fact, I think that players playing through phase one would actually be looking forward to phase two in that they'd be preparing their character to have something left over when they got there?

Would that be a good thing or a bad thing in your opinion?

The question seems to be "How does this stuff all translate from Stage 1 to Stage 2?" What mechanics will promote exploring the characteristics from the first phase that are still pertinent in the second phase. For instance, if you didn't mind it, playing TROS, the players could sorta "set up" their characters in the first phase to have stuff that oould give some direction to the GM in the second phase. But that sounds potentially way more metagamey than you might want. In any case, I'm not sure that the rules support it well.

In fact I don't think that there's any system that does.

If they just sit around waiting, there's more of a problem, which I thought was what you were describing before.

See, the "problem" continues to grow in-game, but the question is whether or not the player cares. I mean, I can actually see a lot of PCs committing suicide in this game, because they can't find something to care about. A representation of the player's lack of ability to latch onto anything.

If you allow them to sorta "prepare" for the second phase, then I think the problem is ameliorated somewhat. I just don't see a system that would do that.

On the snarky bit, I apollogize. But what I'm saying is that I've played stuff like this before (heck I'm about to publish something much worse in some ways). And playing such railroaded stuff out is just too constraining for some. Now, if your point had been that I'd missed something, then it would be an argument against this. But your argument seems to be that "playing along" will be fun becuse of the content. That's precisely what I'm saying that I don't like despite the content. At least in CoC, I don't know what the end of the mystery is going to be like.

Put this down to personal preference if you like. But I think that playtesting may show that many people feel this way.

Let me try this from a different angle.  I'm trying to construct a backstory that says, "You are 100% a party, in the classic sense, and you're pretty solid with that.  Despite the fact that you really don't have any actual interests, you apparently think your interests lie in common."  If I simply announce this, or do it through mechanics, this is the old, "Well, you've got PC on your forehead so you must be one of my gang."  I'd rather play it than militate it.  You apparently would prefer otherwise.

Yes, I would prefer the method used in all supers games, Whispering Vault, InSpectres, and most other "mission" based games where you just start with the very functional idea that you are all on the same side. The "party problem" isn't that the party is forged metagame, it's that there's no in-game reason for the party to exist. As long as there is a good in-game reason (and you have a doozy), then I see no problem at all with just saying, "you're all part of the demon killer team that's been asleep under the ice for a thousand years".

Point of thread: What system is good for this?
Your point: I don't like this setting.
My point: I don't care.  I do like this setting.  Some others do too, apparently.

My point is that, as presented, there's no system that will work. I like the setting, I just don't like the situation as presented. Change the situation slightly, and I think the "right" system may become obvious. More to the point, I think that you might be best off coming up with a system that promotes the overall concept for the game - since no system has been created, IMO, that can handle it.

Mike

[Valamir]

Hmmm.  I'm not sure I see what the sticking point is for you on this one Mike.

I think the idea is a pretty bang up one.  Part II seems just like a Troll Babe adventure.  The characters are going to be drawn into things bigger than themselves whether they want to be or not because of who they are.  In Troll babe its because of her relationship to both trolls and humans.  For this, its because of the prophecy.


What I would recommend, however, is to make Part I not completely irrelevant.  I'd have what and how the champions do in Part 1 determine the chinese menu of how the world works in Part 2.  I'd have this pretty programmed in along the lines of:

examples:  Say one of the key killer spells in the world is "the power of the sun" which is kind of like a sunlight fireball that can be pumped up for more damage based on how powerful the caster is.  Since this guy is THE Champion spell guy, he can pump it up to never before seen levels to dish out massive destruction.  In the game make sure that there are opponents suitably dangerous to tempt the player into doing so.  Unbenownst to them, however, that pulling too much power into the spell will actually permanently dim the sun.

Or perhaps the big bad has a pet serpent, defeatable, by the party but tough enough to weaken them prior to the final battle, and which isn't tactically necessary to confront...its locked in a cell and can be simply by passed.  


When they start to wander around the world after waking up then they'll hear things like:

"It used to be much warmer, but that was before the Champions of prophecy journeyed to the southern citadel.  In their hubris they believed themselves powerful enough to challenge even the gods and worked such mighty magics that the sun grew dim.  Now our world is cold and many go hungry".

"Yes, the Champions slew the evil demon lord.  But they failed to slay his pet serpent.  After the fall of the citadel, the serpent was free and tormented the southern kingdoms.  Thousands of square miles were laid waste by its depravations and 10s of thousands slaughtered by the creature which the careless Champions let loose upon the world"


So in this way Part 1 isn't completely irrelevant.  I'd have a good 2 or 3 dozen things that could be wrong with the world when the champions awake and find ways to tie them directly into simple binary choices the Champions made in the Citadel.  Some may not even make much sense but be accepted as truth in the manner of long oral tradition "The forest of Roos burned to the ground because the champions chose to go right instead of left at the fork"...and of course the forest DID burn to the ground because of the party went right....or pulled the wrong lever, or didn't open the second door, or removed the gem of power, or didn't rescue the princess...or better DID rescue the princess (who turned into a mad tyrant), etc.

If you're real ambitious I'd even write a whole series of nostradamus type prophecies where each of these elements is vaguely aluded to along with the right or wrong responce..."Lean on the sun with restraint lest its power be insufficient to sustain both you and the world"...that sort of thing.

That way, when they come out and see everything that happened you can tie all of the ways that the world went to shit back into them not doing a good enough job in the citadel.

At that point, Part II should pretty much take off.  Players may start to try to fix the problems they caused.  They may say "screw it" and just knock off their tormentors figuring they can run things better any way...any number of things that probably will result in the party splitting and breaking up and even winding up on opposite sides.  

Sounds like a blast actually.

I'd be tempted to run it using Savage Worlds...which has the same leveling up paradigm as D20 but which can handle super high power levels much quicker than trying to run a combat of 20th level types, and then graft a TROS-esque SA system on to it, where the reward was bennies instead of SA points.

Its perfect for tactical dungeon hacks like part 1 and fairly transparent enough to not bog down Part II with unnecessarily complex record keeping.

[Jonathan Walton]

I'm with Ralph on this one.  I don't really see what the problem is.  Sure, many things wouldn't be relevant in Part 2, but plenty of things definitely WOULD be.  Sure, everything the heroes knew is gone, but they can still find equivilent things in which they can invest themselves.  Maybe they can't protect a specific kingdom, but they could protect the remnant of the kingdom (which may have grown corrupt and may not be worthy of protection) or a kingdom that claims to hold similar values.  There's plenty of stuff that could serve as character motivation.  You just draw on the character's specified past in order to create relavant situations in the present.

The whole setup reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy 3 (or maybe it was 5?) on the Super Nintendo.  You started out running around in these super powerful battlesuits that did more damage than anything else in the game.  But then you fought the main baddie and got toasted.  The whole rest of the game was spent working back up to the power level of the battlesuits in an effort to take on the baddie and actually win.  There are many Japanese video games that start with a very similar premise to this.  Zelda 2 for the N64 was the same.  You fight the bad guy, lose, and then spend the rest of the game traveling through time and eventually end up back at the point where you started, prepared to beat the baddie this time.

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm.  I'm not sure I see what the sticking point is for you on this one Mike.

I think the idea is a pretty bang up one.  Part II seems just like a Troll Babe adventure.  The characters are going to be drawn into things bigger than themselves whether they want to be or not because of who they are.  In Troll babe its because of her relationship to both trolls and humans.  For this, its because of the prophecy.

In Trollbabe, you're supposed to get engaged because there's something about the implicit issues involved about being both female, and a half-breed which color every contact. Yes, the Champion thing would be coloring. But would it develop implicit issues. It seems that the one issue that it would bring up, as is repeated over and over, is that of the responsibility of power or something akin to it. But it doesn't seem to do it in a way that has enough "angle" to it to bite. That is, the issues seem really to be the same as they would be for everyone, just at a higher power level. I mean, yes, the NPCs have good reason to come to the PCs. But when they do so what slant do the issues have?

Now, if this is just some Sim power romp, then I suggest Hero System (or Savage Worlds like Ralph suggests if you want a fast system). But from the descriptions so far, it seems that we're supposed to get to the whole "What do I do now?" issue. I just haven't seen anything proposed that would support that. I mean, if we suggest Over the Edge as a good example of Vanilla Nar, for example, then we're counting on the setting stuff to grab the players. But then we're detaching the characters from the setting, at least momentarily, so I think it's even more problematic than other Vanilla Nar play.

I think the overall premise is great. I want to play this game. But I want mechanics that support the premise. Don't have to be outre pervy, or anything, just extant. I'm fairly sure that the system to do it doesn't exist.


Jonathan, have you considered that in those games in question that A) the player agrees to be on a plot railroad for the entire game, not just the first phase, and B) they are unaware of where the rails lead? That, to me, is a viable way to go (certainly traditional). In this game, the Players would be aware that the plot was railroaded to a particular point of which they'd be aware, and then, and only then, are they really let loose. That's very different from what you're suggesting. It would be more akin to playing out the cut scenes, just maneuvering from stage mark to stage mark or something.

In any case, I'd totally play part one out if there was some impact on part two as Ralph suggests. Consider the advantages to replayability.

Mike

[Harlequin]

To add to, or echo, Johnathan and Ralph...

I would say that the more investment in the things that are gone, the better.  If you chose to go with TROS, then this would be elegant - you send 'em into the final conflict with some way pumped SAs, only one of which is as simple as "Destiny: Defeat the Demon King," the rest of which are interesting and specific Conscience, Faith, Passion, etc. variants, tying them heavily to the world they've just come to defend.  It's elegant because this would, itself, make them frightening... because these SA are pretty much all firing, that's the point, that's the setup.  So your badassinest champions are even more so, because the rules weight SAs as they do.

Then, when they wake up, they have all these maxed SAs - to things that don't exist anymore, or exist only in the most distorted fashion.

This doesn't leave them hanging.  Far from it.  Those directed passions now provide exactly the hooks Mike is failing to see, through their lack of relevance in this world.

[*]Loss - the object of the passion is gone, forever, and the character is now informed by the discovery, the desperate search for remnants, and the sorrow of the loss.  Nations, obviously, but also subtler things like the cultural mores that make up Conscience.  Where did all the innocents go?  Where's the fairer sex?  Esp. for a samurai-type, what happened to loyalty as a virtue?[*]Reversal - the object of the passion still exists in a technical sense, but no longer stands for what it did... it's now worth fighting against instead of for.  This may or may not be clear at first, of course.[*]Repair - the object could be reinstated or returned to a shadow of its former glory, but the task is massively complicated by the changes in the world.  This would be a good fit for Faith, for example.[*]Reinterpretation - the champion may find something which matches the essence of what he once held dear, and take that to be the "modern equivalent."  Transferral of loyalty is a powerful hook, especially if the fit isn't perfect or there was deception involved (possibly deliberate, if a student of history is involved).[*]Adaptation - giving up what is lost, as lost, and taking on drives relevant to this world instead.[/list:u]Really, the higher those old passions are, the more interesting part two becomes, because the contrasts are so much stronger.  Which doesn't mean that the SAs themselves are relevant in their statistical role... we had enough of that in part one.  But even that still drives things in a gamist sense... do you sacrifice your existing SAs in order to change, or do you hang onto those potent strengths for the rare occasions that they do become relevant?

Me, I'd say go straight TROS, all the way.

- Eric

(Edited once due to crossposting with Mike)

[Shreyas Sampat]

I may be being ridiculous here.

What if you played (at least some of) Part 2 first? You can start out with characters that have basically no cultural background, just some kind of wierd schtick (which is explicitly anachronistic in the world of P2), and in play you allow them to define the cultures that they are carrying with them from the past - and along with that, the impact that those ancient cultures have had on the present. Off the top of my head I can think of some really strange, paradoxical things that can come of this, but also things that could be really cool.

[M. J. Young]

I like Ralph's idea for prophecies that vaguely warn of how game actions in part one are going to impact the world in part two.

I also liked what John (I think) said about the fact that these characters now see the world of which they are the heroes. It reminds me of a world I've got in development. The player character is given the opportunity to save the world in a medieval setting by successfully completing a quest; the quest isn't actually that hard, so as long as he agrees to do it and doesn't do anything stupid, he'll probably succeed. (What else he does to help save the world is the more interesting part of play, really.) Then, after he's died and been somewhere else and died a few more times, he comes back to a modern world, and finds his own statue in a museum, a record of his past victory now mythic legend over which scholars debate--he's both famous and presumed at best exaggerated, at worse non-existent. Having the player characters return in your scenario to find their statues commemorating their ancient success would be a fun hook, particularly as this would tend to lead to recognition by the people they encounter, at least sometimes.

As far as my assessment that part one is gamist, it's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game--and in this case, it's about being flamboyant, about showing off your character's kewl stuff. Ever run a game in which the players knew that their characters were immortal? They tend to cut loose quite a bit as they get used to it. These players are playing the best of the best, and we want them to approach most of the fights with a cocky confidence because they know they're not destined to die here--they're destined to die when they face the ice demon himself, and not before. Thus they've got the context in which to show off what they can do. This gives us the knight who offers his opponent the first blow before killing him, the martial artist who sets down his weapons and invites the adversary to do the same. It encourages them to create flash.

It also occurs to me in this context that within this is another reason for the value of part one. In part one, the characters are invulnerable (well, not quite--they can be hurt, they can't be killed), and if played thus they should develop a sort of cocky attitude. When they awaken in the future, what happens to that cocky attitude? Some of them may think themselves completely immortal--after all, they've even cheated death. Some may suddenly find themselves extremely vulnerable--they aren't even supposed to be alive now, how can they think they will survive another day? However, the characters will have established patterns of behavior, and (this is the important bit) the players patterns of play, that cause them to act as if they think themselves invulnerable.

Interesting.

--M. J. Young

[Rob Carriere]

Silly thought, possibly indicative of the type of system you want: It seems to me that what you need is, in TRoS-y terms, meta SAs.

Each character has a number of meta-SAs, broad classes of things that can engage the character to the point of developing an SA. In part one, many (not necessarily all!) these meta-SAs have instantiated SAs. The character goes into the climactic battle with all of these SAs firing.

Cue part 2. The SAs have all died with the Demon King, but the meta-SAs are still around, waiting for some appropriate aspect of the new environment to let them re-instantiate. As these aspects occur in play, the characters gradually re-develop SAs.

The advantages of having these explicit in the system are that,
[list=1]
[*] All PC-players will be clear that they need to consider these things,
[*] The GM-player, by knowing the set of meta-SAs will know what sort of stimuli are needed to give the characters new SAs.
[*] It is now possible to have a character switch tacks significantly in a plausible way, by having one or more uninstantiated meta-SAs in part 1 that do instantiate in part 2.
[/list:o]

SR
--

[clehrich]

Many thanks to everyone!  (Especially Mike, actually, who among other things prompted some of the most exciting ideas for this that I hadn't thought of at all....)

I think I'm going to borrow Ralph's basic concept of having stuff that happens in Part 1 turn out to be big issues in the later world.  Suddenly all that dungeon-hack-romp stuff has bite.  Turns out it wasn't all fun and games like they sort of thought it was.

I just got my copy of TROS, and started running some combat simulations (love the little download program for this!).  If you've never done it, try creating a way-cranked character and have him fight some mediocrities.  It's sick and wrong, but there's a weird sort of pleasure in figuring out what's the fastest way to kill someone really messily without getting any on you.  I'm adoring the fact that a super-samurai type can go Defense, then Counter, then slaughter, while a super-axeman can just say the hell with it and blast through some poor sap's piddling defenses (very messy, brains and limbs everywhere, etc.).  If you have a little gang of these supermen romping through a dungeon that really isn't all that hard, all things considered, they're probably not going to pay a lot of attention to detail along the way, because they're having so much fun slaying in elegant ways and cracking wise at each other.

This produces several things:
1. They don't really realize what long-term consequences there are, so there are lots of hooks;
2. They learn the combat system, which strikes me as a worthwhile point right there;
3. They develop personal styles and shticks; and
4. They get in the habit of using those SA's every time something really serious happens.

Once we get to part 2, all those huge SA's need to be put to use, so the gang will almost necessarily start looking for things to latch them on to.  I hadn't really realized this about TROS: if the point of your SA goes away, as I understand it, the points usually vanish; in this game, the points don't vanish, but you have to find something relevant to attach them to or they start degrading fast.  Thus there is HUGE incentive to go find something to care a lot about.

As someone pointed out, this might very well lead them to do crazy things, and because everyone cares about everything they do automatically, they're going to find themselves in very sticky situations very quickly.

I think I just have to memorize TROS and collate my notes, and I'm good to go.  Actually the clockwork magic thing isn't going to be very hard, because (as in TROS) this stuff is really very powerful and alien, and not something normal people (including the Champions, actually) are messing with; it's usually just a question of being able to buy some magic gizmo that presses your pants, and if it gets used in combat or something it might as well be TROS sorcery.  Much hacking and agonizing will ensue....

Thanks, everybody!

Chris Lehrich

[Mike Holmes]

Your initial experiences with TROS are classic, and your comments had me chuckling. :-)

The post sounded like you were closing the thread, so, at the risk of prolonging it...

This produces several things:
1. They don't really realize what long-term consequences there are, so there are lots of hooks;

The thing is that, if I understand correctly, the players will know what the repercussions are. Not to sound anti-author stance, but how do you think they'll handle that?

Yes, the power of SAs work in your favor to incentivize players to grab onto something, and this works in your favor. But I wonder if it's not overly powerful in a way. I mean, looking at the demise of all that the characters hold dear, wouldn't you switch to things that are more generic like the standard "Be the Best" Drive? Meaning that when you get to part two, I think that the players will have a full set of useable SAs - they just won't have anything to do with the current setting (I'm seeing lots of Luck).

And this makes sense in-game, too. That is, if I was going off to certain doom, I'd probably make my peace with the current world, represented by dropping all of those SAs on the way to the palace. OTOH, I think that many characters are going to arrive in phase 2 with "Drive: Kill the Demon" at level 5...

A playtest is probably the thing at this point. Good luck.

Mike