Chronicles - Tabletop Roleplaying - Development Thread

[Daniel36]

I had to get a little used to the way you guys work here on this forum, but now I feel inspired to post what I have so far.

http://www.mediafire.com/?27b8b7b35ug8155

This is not a finished product yet, nor can it be used as is, but it shows my design philosophies. The thing that I find most difficult right now, and wich is holding me back, is the character sheet. I have immense difficulty with laying it out in a clear manner which makes it easy to check and makes sense. As such, the explanation of the stats is probably going to change a little, but not too much.

As you can read from this document, Chronicles is designed to be easy to play. I only use D6 dice, and I decided to couple the "to hit" phase in combat with the basic action table, so basically, if something is really easy it's a 2D6 roll of 4, easy is 5, normal is 7, difficult is 8 and very difficult 10. This way, there aren't many values you need to remember. I am most probably going for the same thing with the shooting to hit phase and the magic phase as well.

I changed my ideas about skills. Though this document says they can be found in a document called the "Old School Curriculum", I decided to go for a skill tree instead, so you can find what skills your Adventurer can learn on the Adventurer Sheet, and you have to make choices about what path to go. But I am not sure if that is the way I want to do it just yet. Am I going for a pure skill tree? Or am I going to give people the choice of mixing "branches" instead? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Let me know what you think. I would be more than happy to answer any questions.

[Daniel36]

Couldn't get my mind off of it, and now I have this idea that I want to run by you guys.

I still want to make skill sets unique to Adventurers, but the whole skill tree idea just didn't feel right enough.

I came up with this idea. Adventurers each have a list of skills. These skills are divided into "levels" (for lack of a better term, hate the term though).
There are Level 0 Skills. You need the amount of Skills correspondent to the level to be able to buy them. So as soon as you buy one of those, you are entitled to Level 1 Skills. If you have a total of 2 Skills, you are entitled to Level 2 Skills, etcetera. You don't necessarily need a Level 2 Skill to be able to buy a Level 3 Skill, as long as you have a total of 3 Skills when you do.

The higher level skills are more powerful, but cost more Skill Points to use, so you can also choose to focus on the lower levels instead.

How does this sound to you guys?

[Josh Porter]

Couldn't get my mind off of it, and now I have this idea that I want to run by you guys.

I still want to make skill sets unique to Adventurers, but the whole skill tree idea just didn't feel right enough.

...

How does this sound to you guys?

The obvious question that springs to mind for me is: "Why extra complexity?"  Don't misunderstand, I LOVE complex rules and I like the sound of the idea. But I have to wonder what purpose it serves. I figure that it is probably to a) differentiate the characters by their skills, or b) make certain skills harder to achieve. I assume it more of A than B, but I could be wrong.

Is it integral the game's design to have disparate skills? Or is it just a way to make characters more specialized. And what kind of skills are available at higher levels?

[Daniel36]

Hey Josh, thanks for the question.

The skills (and spells, which in this sense are skills as well) are there to give the different Adventurers a bit of colour. They are special attacks, so to speak. So it is indeed a) to differentiate characters and give them specific roles within the party.

I haven't yet thought of enough skills to give them, other than the spells for the Flame Wizard, one of the first four characters that I am going to release.

You see, characters are all going to be pre-generated. Leveling up is also pre-generated. Weapon levels are pre-generated, and the skills and spells that players get to choose from are also pre-generated. However, what isn't pre-generated is the skills that players are going to choose. I want to set a max of skills choosable from the list, so they have to think about which path they are going to take.

Am I going to give my Flame Wizard a minor healing spell so he can pitch in when needed? Or am I going to give him a far more powerful flame blast spell to give him even more oomph? Very broadly speaking, you have two types of skills. The offensive and defensive ones, and it is up to the player what kind of warrior he wants to create from these.

So, it's not really added complexity as much as it is the only way to create different types of warriors within the choices. So it adds a bit of flavour. Most of these skills are going to be damage dealing or damage reduction, though I am more than open to any other suggestions.

Come to think of it, here are the four starter Adventurers. I would love for everyone to come up with suggestions for fun attacks and skills to give them.

Human Mercenary
– Sword and shield

Dwarf Adventurer
– Dwarf Axe

Elf Hunter
– Bow and Hunter Knife

Human Flame Wizard
– Staff

Aside from Shatter Armour for the Dwarf Adventurer, which destroys the opponent's DEF roll (Armour Save), and the Mercenary's Charging Smash, which does double damage when activated while charging the opponent, and the Fireball attack, Fire Wall defense and minor Healing Hand spell for the Flame Wizard, I haven't really been able to come up with cool skills. Another I just came up with is Piercing Shot for the Hunter, which I suppose will half the enemy's DEF roll...

So basically I am looking for skills such as these to outfit the Adventurers with. Perhaps I can also add things like "Strength" which just gives you an added D6 damage bonus...

But I am open to cool suggestions. Just give a general description of what it does and I will translate it to things that work mechanically.

Thanks in advance.

[Josh Porter]

Cool!

So skills in this sense are more along the lines of 4e powers or Apocalypse World special moves.  Please forgive my preconceived notions of what skills are.  You have challenged my assertions!!!

I think every good dwarf should have some type of "solid as a rick" type ability.  Perhaps a skill in which the dwarf doubles his armor and reduces his movement to a minimum?

[Daniel36]

Yes, I should've made the "skills" deal a bit clearer indeed. Yes, they are special moves, and this also entails spells, but they could also be, as I mentioned, something such as extra damage or an extra attack perhaps.

But yeah, solid as a brick is a good idea. Perhaps something like a "Defensive Stance" perhaps? "Dwarf Defence"?

[Josh Porter]

"Solid as a rick"?

That's what I get for posting from my phone.  I meant rock, but brick works too.

[Daniel36]

I started playing a videogame today and the character creation system in it is so genius, that I decided to completely overthrow my pre-generated character idea and implement a system like the one found in Mount and Blade.

In essence, the game asks you questions of where you were born, how you spent your early life, your youth, and where you ended up before you start your journey, and the answers you give determine your starting stats and skills.

I used to hate the "rolling for stats" deal as I thought it was so empty. Now with this system, you are actually developing a character at the start instead of just rolling stats. More on this soon!

[Callan S.]

"Solid as a rick"?

Rick is Snake's brother.

[Daniel36]

He features heavily in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 13 : Snake Shake.

Anyways, I am afraid Chronicles is going to become slightly more like D&D than I first envisioned.

When  I first set out to create this, I felt pre-generated characters were the way to go. You could still add personal flavour to them with Perks and Handicaps (like being better at jumping, worse at swimming, knowing how to disarm traps, being able to see and communicate with spirits etc.), but now with my "questionaire" system it is starting to become just a little bit more complicated. I am hoping that it will be easy enough to follow so that a new game can be quickly started without spending ages on character creation, but I am a little afraid that the outcome will be more difficult than I wanted in the beginning.

Also, "leveling up" is also going to be much more difficult to implement now. Before, stat increases were also pre-determined, but I am afraid that this won't be possible anymore.

Thoughts will be greatly appreciated!

[Daniel36]

Hmm, I think I just came up with a good solution.

These are the base stats:
MOV - Your movement. Set in stone.
FS - Fighting skill. Close combat. The higher the better
BS - Ballistic Skill. Shooting. The lower the better.
ATT - The amount of attacks. Upgrades with weapon.
HP - Your Hit Points.
SP - Your Skill Points, used for special attacks, spells and to add or deduct to a dice roll.

When "leveling up", you gain +2 HP and +1 SP and you may choose to add +1 to your FS or -1 to your BS or an additional +2 to HP or a +1 to SP.

Now, leveling up is a bit different to how it usually works (though not really). You can only level up if you are in a town that has facilities for you to train. This can be a barracks for fighty types or a library for studious types, it's up to the GM to determine if a town has the necessary accomodations to do so. You pay a set amount of cash to level up, which will probably become higher as you train more.

Does this system sound okay?

[Daniel36]

I have become very happy with my character creation solution, so for now I guess I don't need your thoughts on that (though they are still appreciated), but what I do want to discuss is the following.

Chronicles uses a dice roll for "basic actions", which are actions that basically everyone can do, albeit to a varying degree of success, whenever a situation arises where there is a definite chance of failure and when failure has consequence. I want to make this list as complete as possible. Right now these are the "basic actions";

Running and Jumping
Climbing
Pushing
Swimming
Hiding and Moving Silently
Eavesdropping and Listening
Applying Bandages
Using a Wand

Which am I missing right now? I am not too happy with "Pushing", I may need to change that name. Also note that these do not encompass "conversational"  actions, I have chosen to leave conversational roleplay to the players and GM, not to a dice roll.

Thanks!

[Daniel36]

The previous question still stands (and will as long as people give me good suggestions!) but I came across something that I also really want to discuss.

I came up with a really easy to use system for determining whether or not you "hit" with a close combat weapon.
Basically, every character and enemy has a Fighting Skill (FS) value, that shows how well they can fight. This value is actually three values, and can look like this:

(4) 8 (12)

The system works as follows;
If your FS is equal, you hit on a 7+
If your enemy's FS is lower, you hit on a 5+
If your enemy's FS is equal to or lower than your left value, you hit on a 4+
If your enemy's FS is higher, you hit on an 8+
If your enemy's FS is equal to or higher than your right value, you hit on a 10+

However, I need to decide how to establish the left and right value. I first chose to make the left value half of the middle value deducted (rounded up), and the right value half of the middle value added (rounded up).

This makes combat interesting, as the better you are, the easier you can hit weaklings and the more skill an enemy needs to possess to hit you easier.

But then I started wondering, what if your FS is changed during battle (by a spell or something), then you have to number crunch, which I personally suck at, so I thought, what if the left value is just the middle -4, and the right value is just the middle +4

This would be the difference:
1 2 3 / 1 2 6
2 3 5 / 1 3 7
2 4 6 / 1 4 8
3 5 8 / 1 5 9
3 6 9  / 2 6 10
4 7 11 / 3 7 11
4 8 12 / 4 8 12
5 9 14 / 5 9 13
5 10 15 / 6 10 14
6 11 17 / 7 11 15
6 12 18 / 8 12 16
7 13 20 / 9 13 17
7 14 21 / 10 14 18
8 15 23 / 11 15 19
8 16 24 / 12 16 20

I personally like the second best, because it involves less math. I hate math! But I can add or deduct 4. I can do that! The first one gives more differentiation, but if I use the second one I am probably going to start higher with the FS.

Let me know. Feedback is very much appreciated.

[Daniel36]

Should lockpicking and trap disarming be a Perk, or should it be a Basic Action that every Adventurer can pull off, but with different degrees of success?

[Daniel36]

Okay, so I am hoping people will reply to the following question. The previous ones I suppose I have dealt with already.

Anyways, in my quest for a more interesting character creation process, I felt I made things unnecessarily complicated once more and went back to re-simplify some of the steps. I want to ask the following question.

Aside from combat and special skills, each adventurer is able to use "basic actions"
These are as follows:
Running and Jumping
Climbing
Swimming
Hiding and Moving Silently
Eavesdropping and Listening
Lockpicking and Trap Disarming
Using a Wand

Rolls for these are a success on a 7+ on 2D6. You can improve them once to a 5+ and once more to a 4+, or degrade to an 8+ or 10+.

Question : Will I pre-generate these per race? So I decide which a Dwarf will suck at and which it will be good at, and for an Elf, etcetera?
Or will I leave this decision to the player? For each improvement you need to make another one worse.
I am leaning towards the second. The choice between a Dwarf or Elf (etcetera) will instead have different effects then.

Let me know what you guys think. Oh, and I decided to leave out "Pushing" and "Applying Bandage", as I didn't really come up with a good use for those actions.