I've been incubating a stupid violent little game over on rpg.net for a month or so, but beyond the initial riff I’m not getting any kind of decent feedback on the mechanics. I was hoping the Forge braintrust could take a look at it, read it thoughtfully, and then kick it in the metaphorical nutsack until it puked and wept for its daddy to come any make it all better.

Here are the rpg.net threads for reference, though I’ll repost the crunchy and gooey bits here for easy access.

Opening Riff- ‘Time-Traveling Dimension Hopping Kung-Fu Killaz’

’Mechanics and Whatnot’

’A Bit of Intro Fic… if you’re really bored’

Alright, here is the intro section that lays out the what and wherefore.


So, you’ve decided to play Terminal Velocity… is there anything I can say that might dissuade you? This isn’t a very nice role playing game. It is a game about bad people. People who’s use of the English language is lazy at best, and down right offensive at worst. This is a game in which the word “Sumbitch” and the word “Fuckbutter” might appear more than once. Frequently in fact. In fact, if you have some aversion to blatant overuse of the ‘F-Word’, then you’d best play something else. The author of Terminal Velocity is the sort of game designer- the sort of fucking game designer- who thinks this kind of thing is just terribly amusing. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck. See? Best stop reading now.

Still with us? If so I can only assume you’re the sort of cat who digs hisself some bad language. But Terminal Velocity has so much else to offer! This game also glorifies violence, obsession, paranoia, substance abuse, piggish non-progressive attitudes, egotism, self indulgence, blasphemy, infidelity, personality problems, wallowing in cliché, and cheating at cards. It is not a very nice game. You will take on the roll of Shifters- people who, at the moment of their own absurd deaths screamed a reverberating cosmic “FUCK YOU!” at the universe, and refused to do the Easy Thing and just float off to whatever comes next. Instead, they tear off into fractal space-time propelled by the force of their own demise, moving at the speed of death through the infinite and infinitely absurd universe. And given the primal ridiculousness of this situation, Shifters have bit of trouble figuring out what the hell they are supposed to do.

This problem is alleviated somewhat by the fact that Shifters are pretty universally messed up people- only a really deformed personality has the kind of piss and vinegar needed to give Nature, God, and the Universal Order the finger. Sometimes a Shifter’s Death Moment is the culmination of a whole life lived in defiance of the natural order- more than a few Mad Doctors end up skipping fractal space-time- but sometimes a seemingly normal person’s Death Moment just hits their tiny little mind like a big fucking Tom & Jerry mallet, and squashes them flat with the sheer ironic absurdity of it all. This explains the number of slackers, existentialists, potheads, and Japanese corporate wage slaves that end up Shifting. Most shifters have enough triggers, hang-ups, and phobias to keep them entertained for eternity.

Also, Shifters tend to hate each other, and finding ways to fuck over other Shifters is a great way to pass the endless millennia of subjective time. Even better, Shifters can score some kind of energy or karma or mojo or some shit like that off each other. Some think of it as dramatic tension, and by harvesting it, a shifter can get more powerful. By ‘harvesting’ I of course mean cruelly and brutally fucking over other Shifters and mercilessly and ruthlessly as possible, as often as possible, and for as long as possible. While laughing.

By counting Coup off each other, Shifters get an edge, but the more Coup a shifter carries, the more a target he’s going to be. Making a powerful Shifter your bitch is like hitting the karmic lotto, and nothing’ll get you laid faster than the crackling aura of strutting pimp-god power that this kind of score brings.

Good thing fractal space-time is a bigass place. Infinite, if you want to be specific about it. Every twitching atom, ever butterfly wing, ever fart, every sneeze, every thumb smashed with a hammer, every girl who shoots you down, every gnat you suck up your nose on a hot summer day- everything fissures the universe into two or more divergent timelines and separate realities. Every choice is a fractal division of the entire universe, and the cough of a fast food manager is just as significant as the detonation of a thousand swollen suns. Everything is important. Which is another way of saying that nothing really is. Ooooh! Don’t think about it too hard! Just go with it. A Shifter can move around in space-time, hop skipping from reality to reality by tapping his Death Moment- and moving at Terminal Velocity (clever, eh?).

Thing is, while you can shift in time as easily as space, you can’t really change anything. Well, you can change everything really, but it doesn’t matter all that much. Want to kill Hitler? Go for it. This is something of a rite of passage for new Shifters. Until you’ve killed Hitler at least once, most shifters won’t even take you seriously. There actually is a shifter who claims to be Hitler. He’s a funny guy too- a Hitler with actual artistic talent, who got blown up in a beer garden (where he was meeting his lover Herman Gering) during a coup attempt by some bloke named Gerber. He’s actually killed other Hitlers something like eight thousand and fifteen times, just to see what’ll happen to the timeline when he does it. But he’s pretty weird even by Shifter standards, and when he walks in the door other shifters make an effort to stare down their beers, or slip surreptitiously off to the crapper, and climb out the window. Nobody wants to get cornered by Hitler and have to listen to how he just killed Hitler with an explosive wiener schnitzel. He’s like a dentist who can’t talk about anything but teeth.

Occasionally, shifters will find a few others of their own who they- for truly unaccountable reasons- can actually tolerate. Hell, sometimes they might even grow to like one another. Yeah, I know, pretty sick and weird, but depend on Shifters to plump ever twisted perversion they can think of- even something as fucked up as friendship.

Friends can come in handy though, because when some bastard comes gunning for you, scattering your shifts with trip-wires and tiger pits built from your own personality problems, you might need someone to help you track him down. When the throwdown comes, knowing someone got your back is a pretty good feeling. Also, it helps to have someone handy to bum smokes from. Circles of shifters- sets, gangs, posies, or “parties of player characters” share a pool of mojo from their collective coup-counting. Course, getting played also hurts your friends. You know that scene from Full Metal Jacket? Sometimes your friends are the ones wailing on you with bars of soap stuck down tube socks. For your own good, of course.

Shifters are pretty hard to get rid off. A shifter that gets ‘killed’ doesn’t die, exactly. Hell, a shifter ain’t really alive, exactly. More like some kind of psycho-spiritual projection manifest though the uncertain froth and boil of the quantum foam, and formed from virtual zero-point dark matter. Of course, that don’t make a goddamn bit of sense. As far as a Shifter can tell, he’s got a body about like he’d expect to have, that works about like he’d expect it to work. A shifter’s Terminal Velocity imparts vigor and speed and power and short-term resilience, but high-velocity Shifters are fragile over the long haul. Short term, Shifters are pretty hard to out and out kill conventionally, but it can be done. Getting offed sends you zipping back down your timeline, and you get to relive your Death Moment, before being slingshotted off in some random direction out into space-time. At least your amigos’ll be able find you easy enough, but there’s no telling the kind of funkass place you can end up after getting whacked. Course, if you need to get gone and don’t care where you end up, eating a bullet is a sure ticket to… somewhere else. But if you wake up in a springy polychrome world made of nerf to find a purple sponge rotwilier humping your braincase, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A Shifter’s greatest enemy is himself. Shifters hover somewhere between absolute Cynicism, and airy Optimism. Either end of the spectrum is lethal. Get too Cynical, and you’ll fall backwards along your own timeline, back to your death moment. Your Velocity won’t have the power to break the gravity of your death anymore, and you’ll sort of implode into a crystal singularity, frozen in the moment of your own death for eternity. Other shifters can do some pretty cool things with these crystals of space-time- though nothing you’d want done to you. Cyntech is a sort of shifter technology made from the frozen deaths of other shifters who got too Cynical. Get too burned or tired or cranky, and you’ll end up as some bastard’s pimp ride, big gun, or magic Zippo lighter.

At the other end of the scale is Optimism. When a Shifter gets Optimistic, his personality problems- the ones that ricocheted him off into fractal time to being with- loose their strength. Perhaps everything will be OK after all, right? Going back, and doing the Easy Thing seems more and more attractive, until finally the Shifter loops back to his Death Moment, and lives it out for one final time. Get too hopeful, and you’re fucked. The higher your Velocity, the shorter the distance between where you’re at now, and one of these lethal extremes. Where’s you hawt crackling power of the Gods now, eh?


Next post will be mechanics.

-Ben

The basics:

D10’s and mostly pool based.

Everyone has a Velocity- the speed and energy imparted by their Death Moment. Velocity is raw power and force, and since shifters aren’t really alive in the conventional sense, this is their ‘governing trait’. High-V characters are powerhouses who maul reality by their presence in it- you know those slow-mo images of a bullet going through an apple? Like that. They have awesome force, but little finesse- both in their actions, and in their ability to shift realities.

Low-V characters don’t have the same punch as High-V characters, but they are craft and clever, and nimble, and hard to nail.

At chargen, a Velocity is chose from 2 though 9, and pretty much remains fixed from there on (some things can tweak Velocity, but nothing can change it permenatlly)

Beyond Velocity, characters have three Traits: Violence (doing things to other people they don’t want done to them), Obsession (attention to detail and small stuff), and Paranoia (fear and avoiding bad thing- also awareness and perception).

In a throwdown, you use the dice from your Traits to do things:
Violence gives you Attacks
Obsession gives you Tricks
Paranoia gives you Defenses

The character sheet has a section at the bottom. A circle on the left in which you write your Velocity, with a line drown from the center of the circle across the page. Above and below this line are three boxes- one each for Violence, Paranoia, and Obsession.

A ‘round’ of combat is a bit of an abstraction, covering enough time to be interesting. It is also a bit ‘one roll’, with all the dice being thrown at one time. Only Shifters rolls dice though- Fracs (natives of Fractal Time) are treated more like a situation than a character, and handled with a less complex situation. A Throwdown is reserved for Shifters.

Basically, everyone says what they want to do with each of their three Traits in order of high Velocity to lower Velocity. This gives the Low-V characters an edge in decision making, as the High-V characters are typically charging in full-bore, and ain’t paying that much attention.

Next, everyone throws dice for the three Traits, and sets them either above the Velocity Line or below it depending on what they roll. Rolls of exactly equal to Velocity can be shifted up or down as desired, and these grant an extra die to roll for that trait. These dice can keep exploding forever this way, if Velocity keeps coming up.

A character has ten dice to divide among the three Traits at chargen, and all ten get rolled in a Throwdown.

Now you’ve got some dice above the V-Line and some below it in each category (or, perhaps you’ve got all the dice over or under- more on this later). Dice above the V-Line represent power, force, or effect. Dice below the V-Line represent skill, finesse, and control. At this point, it doesn’t much matter what you’ve rolled on the dice- all that matters is where they are in relation to the V-Line. Using three different colors of d10’s for this would make you a pretty fly dude, but you don’t have to.

Now resolve the actions as follows:

Compare the Finesse of Attack to Defense. An attack with a higher Finesse than a Defense hits, inflicting damage equal to Attack Power minus Defense Power. Otherwise, the Attack just whiffs. A character can take as much damage as his Velocity score before going down. Going Down either means you’re out of the fight, or if the guy you’re fighting is feeling nastier (or shooty, cutty, or pointy things are being used to hurt you) then it puts you out of your misery… or rather, puts you right back in your misery. Getting offed sends you shooting back along your timeline to your Death Moment, where you get to relive it, before being slingshotted randomly out into fractal time. Either way, when your Damage equals or exceeds your Velocity, you’re done.

You describe what you’re doing when your action resolves- make is as colorful as you like. You might only inflict a single point of damage with an Attack, but that can mean you bite off the other sumbitche’s ear while kneeing him over and over in the nuts. Make it as nasty as you like. Try and out-gross the other guy. The injuries aren’t really all that significant- what you’re really doing is breaking up the other guy’s locus in multi-dimensional space-time. The biting, kicking, and hollering just make it fun.

Yeah, I can hear your thoughts grinding away- you can get deadlocks with this system, can’t you? Low-V characters will be impossible to hit, and High-V character impossible to hurt. Well, that is where Trick come in.

Trick let you fiddle with things in certain ways, flip and fiddle with the odds here and there. A Trick represents an unexpected shift in your actions. You can play your Trick at any point you like, or not at all if you choose, and describe what it means in terms of description. Here are some examples of Tricks:

Shuck n’ Jive: You use the environment to your advantage, and set the other guy up for some more whammy next round. Add your Trick Finesse to your Attack OR your Defense dice next round, and roll them normally.

Float like a Butterfly: Nah-na-na-na-na can’t hit me! Use your Trick Power instead of your Defense Finesse this round.

Sting like A Bee: Give him a solid right hook, pistol whip him, stick your thumb in his eye, kick him in the stones, or otherwise lay down some cowardly dishonorable smack. Use your Trick Finesse instead of your Attack Power this round.

Sucker Shot: Fake the other guy out, bluff him, and make him your bitch next round. Subtract your Trick Power from his Defense dice next round.

Bob and Weave: Keep moving, and don’t let him hit you. Subtract your Trick Finesse from his Attack dice next round.

Get Gone: Break out of combat without handing him a free shot at you. You can only Get Gone if your Trick Finesse is higher than his Attack Finesse, otherwise you abort your Attack for the round, and he gets to resolve his normally before you can get the hell out of combat.

Catch your Breath: Shake your head, spit out a tooth, and get back in the game. Recover damage equal to the lower of either Trick Finesse or Trick Power at the beginning of the following round. If you get taken out before you can Catch your Breath, you’re done.

Takedown: Ditch your Attack, and compare Trick to your foe’s Defense. If this succeeds, rather than inflict damage, you take your foe down for a number of rounds equal to the damage. Other than keeping him out of the action for a few ticks, this move doesn’t do any actual damage. If you attack your enemy while he’s Taken down, he can respond in kind normally. Basically, if left alone (while you kick his weaker buddies ass, for example) he can do anything but Defend. A Catch Your Breath trick can counter this, but only of the Finesse and Power of the trick are greater than the Takedown trick.


The above covers fighting and other complex resolution between Shifters. More rules coming for dealing with Fracs- you only roll dice for Shifters. Everyone else in the universe is treated more like a circumstance.

The next mechanical chunk will deal with this, the next with Shifting itself, then with Counting Coup, then with Cyntech and any other fiddlybits I can think of.

Thanks in advance for any help.


-Ben

*blink, blink* Mindfrell, much?

It sounds like one of those games you play if you are a nut for Mortal Kombat and watch Quentin Tarantino for "artistic value" (read: carnage). Not my kind of game--my brain is brutally mucked up anyway--, but I must admit I might play it once or twice...then get my butt kicked. To me, its got an edge of "Highlander" in it, with the idea of the more powerful the loser is, the more powerful the winner becomes. Unfortunately, I'm quickly learning I'm no genius mechanics wise. But the crunchy-ness makes it a killer concept.

*Blank Stare*

I see why you didn't useful comments. That is a lot of new/badass terminology, the concept still hasn't leaked into my head fully, and its a bit to chew.

So, is the V-line your velocity Value? Are High V doods far more powerful?

You should show an example of how the rolls would be dealt when you attack for example. That might help it leek in better.

Yeah- the line is the character's Velocity. Roll lower, and the die is Power, roll over and it is Finesse. Roll exactly, and put the die above or below, and roll a free bonus die.

High-V characters are all power, all invulnerability, all brick-cracking wild swings and crackling destruction.

Low-V characters are all finesse, nimble, evasive, quick and artful, and slick to a near-creepy degree.

Without Trick to wonk things, the Low-V guy would dodge and evade, and land dozens of pretty much useless blows. The High-V guy would swing and whiff and destroy the environment, but rarely if ever land a blow on the Low-V character. Trick lets the Low-V character hit like a freightrain, or the High-V character bob and weave and evade.

The dice describe the flow of the round of combat pretty explicitly- but the players get to dress it up however they like.

I'll post an example soon.

-B

Bailywolf:

That's a cool, cool concept. Can players build their own Tricks on the fly, or will there be a list of them, like maneuvers, that players can select?

Oh, and is there anything specific you need help on or have questions about?

Cheers,


Jason

I know you haven't mentioned it yet, but how do you choose what kind of alternate world you end up in? How do you interact with the non-Shifted natives? Is it like Amber, and you make it up as you go along?

Also, have you read Paul DiFillipo's Fuzzy Dice? If not, I recommend it as a good resource for this game.

Jason- players pick froma list of Tricks, but remember that these are basically just generic little packages of mechanics and not specific manuevers or techniques. A drunken cowboy shifter can use a Sucker Shot and the player can describe it as "swaying drunkenly to the left, and when he comes at me while I'm off ballance, I puke in his face and grab his nuts and twist."

A zen-like martial artist might use the same Trick, and make the move a "flawless Seven Cranes In Fight technique, baffling this ingrate's dull senses, and opening him up for a Tiger Claw strike."

Remember- the descriptions are free.

Spooky- see below. A shifter can try for any kind of reality he desires, and the following mechanics (in first-aprox form) cover doing it:


Shifting Basics


Alright, want to see the glorious wonders of the infinite cosmos? It's as easy as dying.

There are Three Ways to Shift, and three Reasons to Shift. When dancing through fractal space-time, it pays to pick the Way that fits your strengths and the Reason that fits your situation. When making a shift, you use one of each. Shifting involves a number of Twitches. A Twitch is a specific change, representing you hopping over into another twist of the infinite fractal. Here are the Twitches and what they get you.

Time: You hop into a reality identical to your present locale, but into another time- future or past. For all intents and purposes, you can travel the entirety of a given timeline from the big bang to the big whatthefuckever. This doesn’t involve any relative shifts in space though…. or involves nigh-infinite shifts in space, what with the moving of the planets, stars, galaxies, and space itself. Don’t worry too much about it- if you want to shift back to 10AM this morning to have another serving of bacon before your crew eats it all, then walk into the kitchen and do you thing. Of course, the thing you won’t find in the past is the relative-past of another Shifter. As far as anyone knows, all shifters are on the same relative timeline. Doesn’t make much sense, but lump it.

Space: You can shift anywhere in the same relative time-space… or course, you aren’t really in the same reality anymore, but in an identical one in which you happen to be in Paris instead of Boise, Idaho. This one is pretty easy to get your head around, but remember- this ain’t teleportation, this is reality-shifting.

History: Stay in the same relative time and space, but move into a reality with a different history. Want to see what it would be like if Star Trek had never been canceled? Easy peasy- just shift sideways, and go to Best Buy and snag a DVD collection of Seasons 1-10. Course, it’s hard to keep track of all the possible changes- the further back the historical breakpoint, the weirder the reality you hop into will be. This can be fucking hilarious sometimes, especially when you end up in a reality where Billy Shatner ends up as US President.

Reality: Like History, but shift into a place with different physical laws- a place where magic works, or people are solar powered, or the oceans are tapioca pudding and fish are marshmallow. Whatever. Reality shifts can we really weird and disconcerting if you make them too dramatic, and most involve some kind of History shit as well- it’s hard to move over into a reality where everyone is Elvis and not get some kind of divergence from the timeline you’re leaving.

Stuff: Want to bring things with you? Unless you want to arrive buckass naked, you need a Stuff twitch. You might need more than one, if you’re moving some major stuff. The twitch usually acclimates the stuff (or people) you shift so you don’t get some kind of horrific mater extermination explosion when the alien stuff interacts with native stuff. It would suck to take the girl you’re hot for on a psychedelic magic carpet ride through space-time, and have her go off like a supernova when she sips a Diet Pepsi. Generally, you can shift about your own body mass per Stuff twitch you use. The exception is Cyntech- cyntech travels free, and something like a Cyntech GTO is doubly sweet, cause you can just drive the thing across the universe.

Track: A Tracking twitch lets you follow another Shifter- you pick the Track shift, and then let all your other Twitches flow into the same ones the other bastard used. If you have a starting point- or you know one or more of your target’s Hang-Ups, then you can do this pretty easily.

Sneak: Like Track, but exactly the opposite. Every Sneak twitch you use cancels one Track twitch. Easy, right?

Trap: Trap twitches essentially create a path of least resistance for a target- another shifter- based on his personality problems. Each Trap uses one of your foe’s Hang Ups (which you’ve got to know about, of course). You create some kind of conflict in the reality path before him that will engage his hang-ups, and put them at risk. If he beats the conflict, he gets Optimistic, if he blows it he gets Cynical. Depending on where he sits between these two poles, this could hurt him or help him.


Ways to Shift

Hell-bent for Leather: Fast but sloppy shifting. Pick your Twitches, and roll your dice (pool based on your Reason for shifting), and make a number of these Twitches equal to the number of dice that fall EQUAL or UNDER your Velocity. Any OVER your Velocity become Twitches picked by the GM, and they could be anything he likes. Same with the number of hits beyond the desired number of twitches. Also, any Twitches you picked but didn’t have enough dice to make stay the same type, but result in a different twitch- you try and do a Stuff shift, and don’t get the Hits you need for it, you might shift with a big chunk of the ground rather than your gun and rocket-pants. You can do this kind of shift with nothing but a minute or so per die you roll, but sometimes you end up… in weird places. You can’t take a Hell-bent for Leather shift during a Throwdown, and you need a fair bit of focused concentration to do it- getting socked in the kidney would tend to break your concentration. If you try and do this while doing something else, the GM may stick you with die penalties, or just be a double-big bastard when picking your blown Twitches.

Taking it Easy: A steady and easy way to shift. Not all that fast, but not all that risky. Roll either UNDER or OVER your Velocity- whichever you want, picked before rolling. Hits become Twitches, described after they are rolled. You’ve got to take Twitches equal to your hits, but the GM only gets to pick your Twitches if all your dice come up misses. It takes about ten minutes per die of fairly close concentration to manage shift while Taking it Easy. You can do something mindless like drive in normal traffic, smoke, or listen to you wife lecture you on how you’re supposed to clean the dishes, but it ain’t the kind of thing you can do if someone is trying to kick you in the face, or you’ve got to concentrate on your actions.

Tippy-Toe Tenderfoot: The safest and slowest way to shift. Tippy-Toeing through fractal space-time pretty easy- just roll OVER or EQUAL to you Velocity and pick twitches equal to your hits. Tippy-Toeing never results in random reality misses like the other two ways, but it is the slowest and most involved. You’ve got to have at least an hour per die to focus and concentrate and meditate and shit on your goal reality, and really feel out the path you’ll take.

Remember, shift times matter- another Shifter gets a two hour head start on you out into the frac, and he’s got two hours on you- doesn’t matter of you try and shift to his past… you can’t. And he can’t do the same dirty bastard trick to you, so consider it a blessing. If every dickhole you piss off could ride back a few hours and run over you with a motherfucking car before you got the chance to piss him off, then shifting would pretty much blow for everyone.

Need extra dice to try a big shift? Then it’s time to work that mojo. When you tap one of your Death Elements- one of the symbolic components in your Death Moment. Each one you can manifest ritually during the shift will get you an extra die. You died by fire? Then hold you hand over your lit Zippo. You got trampled by a crowd? Duck into a Tokyo subway train during rush hour. Death Elements can also make a shift more stable- rather than take en extra die, you can elect to cancel one missed die from your shift roll.

Reasons

Knowing HOW to shift is one thing, coming up with a good reason to bother is another. A Shifter’s motivation determines which score gets rolled for the shift. Without some reason, a shifter can’t really be bothered to make the effort. It isn’t hard to come up with something though- most places piss a body off something fierce, if you look close enough. Sometimes all it takes to travel to another time or universe is getting sick of hearing that same damn song every time you turn on the damn radio. Shifting angry, is Violence, shifting for self-indulgence is Obsession, and shifting out of fear is Paranoia. Want to lay down a tiger-trap for that bastard shifter cockscuker stole your girl in Neo-Paris during Emperor Izzard’s coronation ceremony? If you know one of his hang ups, and you want crush his little bitch mind, then use your Violence. Getting the sneaking suspicion that some pussy shit is trying to bushwhack you over a little misunderstanding with a girl and the Imperial guard at that party thing you crashed in New-Paris? Use your Paranoia to shift sneaky. Want to skip realities to see what Elvis would have done if he’d gone into politics? Use your Obsession. Tracking, Sneaking, and Trapping can all generally be done for any Reason- you can Trap out of fear, you can Track out of boredom, you can Sneak cause you’re pissed off, and don’t want the other bastard to see you coming.


-Ben

Does this game also have rules for social combat? Or can you use the basic combat rules and improvise?

Also, do you have to get into a plane where magic/psionics is permitted by the local physics in order to use them, or can Cyntech make those gifts portable? Or is it possible to learn them and take them with you to other planes?

Spooky Fanboy wrote: Does this game also have rules for social combat? Or can you use the basic combat rules and improvise?

Also, do you have to get into a plane where magic/psionics is permitted by the local physics in order to use them, or can Cyntech make those gifts portable? Or is it possible to learn them and take them with you to other planes?