Ok, so I'm planning to release Delphian Tides in march. The PDF has not been well edited or gone through rewrites, I'm giving myself a month for that. I've uploaded a 19 page version of it to my forums here:

http://inkarbon.com/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=2x5_delphian

So I'm looking for feedback on the mechanics and feel mostly. What feel does the PDF project? Do the mechanics make sense (except for 2 missing parts)?

Thanks,
Jason

Two things, mechanics-wise: The mechanics seem to rely very strongly on the Archon to define difficulty. There is no way (that I see) to create other characters, no concept of opposed action, nothing but straight "roll dice against the number the Archon devises". That places a huge burden on the Archon to be consistent in his application of the rules.

Also, I think the slow accumulation of Flame to obscene levels (like twenty or thirty dice) is very likely if you play the game as written. Say a buffed out combat Doomcryer decides to rough up a normal human. Why bother? Because he needs just one success. He rolls, say, six dice. He gets (on average) four successes and two failures. He takes two points of Flame, and his success is still stellar (even after the vaguely defined "consequences").

Is there anything in the rules to stop him from doing this as often as he chooses? If not you'll have one of two possibilities:

• (1) The Archon will allow any number of such rolls, and players with an eye toward victory will use the tactic to accumulate as many Flame dice as they want.• (2) The Archon will pick and choose what players are allowed to roll on, which places yet more of the responsibility for using the rules into the Archons hands, disempowering the other players even further

Tony,

I agree completely with your first point. There needs to be more structure to support the difficulty numbers. I'm adding that to my list. Any suggestions or good games that do so?

One the second point, I haven't run into that problem. You can't roll more than 4 dice for an action (the maximum fire height), and evn then it costs you 1 height of a fire. Ill use of fire can dwindle your available dice to roll quite quickly. In the playtest I see players in serious though before commiting fire to a roll. Even though it's not in the sample version here are the ways doomcryers get more fire: reaching magi assigned goals, roleplaying more than a demon, and being tormented by their chains.

I had contemplated a fixed limit on flame, like 6/9/12 dice, but the jury is still out on that.

Thanks for the feedback,
Jason

Fire? I don't think I was even discussing Fire.

Though, that having been said, having two different resource systems, one labelled "Fire" and one labelled "Flame", which are not in any way related to each other... that's confusing.

Have I misunderstood Flame? Is there some reason why people wouldn't be within their rights to use the tactic of rolling for easy-difficulty tasks to ramp their Flame to whatever it's maximum turns out to be?

Well I had thought that since they are connected, Fire and Flame makes perfect sense. Perhaps not though...

You expend Fire stacks to get bonus dice. Without that, you never get dice to roll. Total strength is Stat + results of bonus dice, not a large dice pool to roll.

Looking through the PDF a better walkthrough is needed I can see. Basically it works like this:

My doomcryer is trying to break down a door. I decided to employ my materia to get it done, global strength of 5. It's a really tough door (probably magical), so at first attempt I fail. My first attempt uses no bonus dice and gets a natural strength of 5. Now I decide to pull dice from a stack of fire. I have one of height 2. That will give me 2 bonus dice to roll and make it a height of 1 (stacks wind down one every use). I roll the dice for a 2 and 3. This earns me 5 + 2 = 7. Enough to get the job done. I expended some of my limited fire to make this happen though. Something not easily earned in quantity.

I'll take a look a rewriting the entire flow of the mechanics section to make it clearer.

<snipped>

Ah, gotcha... I think I was hoist on my own assumptions, rather than being led astray by your text. My fault for not giving it a more meticulous reading. Sorry.

Most changes to the shared-imaginary-space of the game will occur without resort to either Fire or Flame. Which means that the Archon will decide (essentially by fiat) whether the Doomcryer succeeds or fails, by setting the difficulty threshold against their known stats.

But the player has the opportunity to override such judgment by resort to the resource system. They will, if they are wise, do this in the cases where it is important to them. They're being given, essentially, a strictly rationed amount of ability to say "Mister Archon, this is too important to me for you to just say 'No', please let me roll some dice."

This sounds very similar to Nobilis's miracle-point mechanic. Is that a game you've had the chance to look at?

Heya,

I skimmed it, and have two quick opinions. First off, your imagery is really fantastic - very evocative names and concepts. However, you really need an edit, of pretty much everything. See if you can get a friend or something to read over it, at the very least. Specifically, I noticed a lot of passive voice and sentence fragments, and it would be a shame to hamper such a rich set of images with unedited text.

I'll try to get back with some more substantial comments later.

Nathan,

Yes editing is one of my main concerns. It's why I've given myself a whole month for a mere 32 page stream-lined game version. I have a couple people I can call upon for help, and I hope that will be enough. Thanks for the praise! I think the color of the game is quite compelling.

Thanks,
Jason

Couple of questions:

1) What is the point of a Medium, OPener, or Closer? What do they do?

2) What are some good examples of Maji spells, and how many do doomcryers get to start?

3) What does celestial (as opposed to material world) combat look like?

4) How does Flame/Fire work again? I can't seem to get it to gel in my head...

5) What do characters do in this setting? Do they ever run the risk of being brought to the point where they actually destroy the world?

6) What happens when Maji visit Earth? What about Demons?

I like very much what I think I see in this game, but I'm not sure if I'm seeing it correctly, because this game reminds me of First Edition Immortal RPG: cool concepts that I think I understand, but aren't quite layed out clear enough for me to be sure.

Spooky Fanboy.

Your touching on the areas not included in the 19 page sample PDF :) But I can shed some light onto your questions.

1.) The mold of the doomcryer is there natural purpose. This manifests itself when a chime event occurs. While this is not described in the presented pages, a chime occurs on an action that results in a 12 or better strength.

2.) Magi spells are quite diverse. Diverse enough the book doesn't try to give a list but supplies guidelines for them. Spells are classed into Ascendant, Transcendant, and Descendant. Those that create, alter, and destroy respectively. In addition they have a set target type/class, like 'human', 'door', 'ant', etc. The way each spell operates if up to the individual Magi. I should note the Magi only create spells for doomcryers that cannot work true magic. They themselves have true magic, not unlike will over reality itself.

3.) Since the game covers players born of creation, celestial combat looks the same as mundane combat to them. The difference is the source of strength.

4.) Flame is dice that are caught (up to 3) from Fire based rolls. When you apply a Fire to a roll it offers it's full height in dice to the roll, then is decreased one. Fires of height 0 don't exist. The rolled dice are worth +1 strength if they come up 4 or less. Otherwise they fail. The failed dice can be kept as flame if the player accepts consequence from the action at hand.

5.) It's quite possible that a doomcryer can be brought to that point. This is handled through chime events, each placing the doomcryer closer towards that point. If the end occurs, the game resets to a previous time and the world is skewed. Then play starts again. The Archon judges the way the world really ends, and all the possible scenarios are played out before it.

6.) The Magi come to earth often to instruct and communicate with the doomcryers in their charge (possibly more than one). They appear by controlling others or inanimate objects. This can make for an interesting surreal effect at times, as seen in my playtest. Demons that come to earth are weakened (-3 to scores) since they have no true place there. Usually the black guard then rampages until the doomcryers stop them.

The humanity of the world in Delphian Tides is rather aware the world is ending. They have seen the strange super-powerful doomcryers, felt the magic of the Magi, and the wrath of the Demons. However, the Archon strikes down those that seek to rally about the end of days. This makes the whole subject taboo for anyone that wishes a long life.

Hope that clears things up some!

Jason

Jason Petrasko wrote: 1.) The mold of the doomcryer is there natural purpose. This manifests itself when a chime event occurs. While this is not described in the presented pages, a chime occurs on an action that results in a 12 or better strength.

3.) Since the game covers players born of creation, celestial combat looks the same as mundane combat to them. The difference is the source of strength.

4.) Flame is dice that are caught (up to 3) from Fire based rolls. When you apply a Fire to a roll it offers it's full height in dice to the roll, then is decreased one. Fires of height 0 don't exist. The rolled dice are worth +1 strength if they come up 4 or less. Otherwise they fail. The failed dice can be kept as flame if the player accepts consequence from the action at hand.

1a) Yes, yes, and yes. If you get a 12 your doomcryer is compelled to perform the act of their nature: Open a door for an opener, Close a door for a closer, or Channel a prophecy for a Medium. They can choose to resist the compulsion, but then lose Archon's blessing (flame and ressurection). Each time this happens they move one step closer to ending the world. Three steps and you are there as a general rule. The doomcryer can take steps back by doing things that directly evade the destruction of the world.

3a) Celestial combat uses the same trait scores, but at a weakened level to reflect that the doomcryer is out of their element. (-3 in vaults, -6 to materia + -3 in fog, and only Magic works in celestia). The doomcryers are often sent out into the realms beyond creation at the behest of the magi. There are now real limits to whats out there, but at the least there are Demons, Ghosts, Magi, and Ancients. The doomcryers are sent back and forth through portals. Magi can make any opening in creation a portal to somewhere else. Celestial realms look like anything the GM can imagine, from a realm of cold black rock to a lush forest that time forgot.

4a) The starting doomcryer gets a fire of height 3, and another of height 2 for each chain they give the character. Chains are connections to humanity that often torment the character. Fire is gained by one at a time by a moment of particularly engaging roleplay, making solid progress towards a Magi's quest/mission, and being tormented by chains.

It's not enough to play the game, and I was looking for feel/mechanic feedback. I like discussing the game so ask away and I'll answer!

As for your critique I'm making a note about expanding explanations for the Fire pools. For question 2, the doomcryers are equally in conflict with each other, the magi, the demons, the ghosts, and the ancients. A lot of the time the doomcryer is just stuck in creation, trying to get by in the human world. This puts all their abilities in contrast, as they have little social aptitude.

I have kind of fixed the materia. The other more fantastic/crazy realms of ability belong to the Magi and other hidden forces.

Thanks for the interest!,
Jason

TonyLB wrote: Most changes to the shared-imaginary-space of the game will occur without resort to either Fire or Flame... But the player has the opportunity to override such judgment by resort to the resource system. They will, if they are wise, do this in the cases where it is important to them...

This sounds very similar to Nobilis's miracle-point mechanic. Is that a game you've had the chance to look at?

Spooky Fanboy wrote:
Maybe I'm stupid, but I initially thought this was a basic playtest document. If not, sorry, but I was trying to treat it like one and get people interested. Before I did so, there were gaps in my knowledge I was trying to fill.

One last question, and then I'll quit:

How soon are you going to add more examples to your current e-book? I think I have character creation down, but as far as cobbling together adversaries, running players through chime events, knowing some good examples of what secrets maji keep, etc. I'd like to have some examples. Examples are a big help to me: they're what helped get me through Fastlane.

Or are those for the release of the main book/.pdf?

Hmm, I really want to keep the ebook form limited. I don't have much desire to publish everything online. How about another idea?

I should be able to put up an actual play post this friday night (after my next session) that will answer your questions. If you want to list specific areas go ahead and I'll make sure I include them.

Thanks,
Jason