Hi There

I'm new to this forum (as you can see by my post count).

I would like to talk about a recent game of mine I have designed and I am currently play testing with the group I am in.

It's call Dark Lines and it's all about vampires. The ideas is that vampires are a secret race that have been in existance just as long as humans. There are however many other secret races that are fighting a secret war with each other for domination of the world.

The games system is based on rolling percentile dice and adding the result to a score the player has. This is then compared with a target number the GM decides and then you can work out wether people have passed a test or not.

There are however two very interesting sides to the system which I would like your thoughts on. The attribute system is based on 3 attributes - body, mind and spirit and everything is determined from these attributes. Body for physical stuff, mind for any mental tasks and spirit for anything to do with the dark powers of vampires.

The second interesting thing is that the game system is designed to be balanced. This means that for evey advantage a player gets there is a disadvantage. examples of this are when using cover to fire from. The percentage of cover you use to protect yourself is also the percentage you add to your shooting roll to reflect obstacles blocking your view.

Another example is when players pick their powers when making the character. A player may pick as many powers as they want... there is NO limit to how powerful they can be, it's just for every power they gain they also HAVE to choose a flaw. Now all of these powers include things like flight, change into bat ect ect and the flaws equally include die in sunlight, must drink blood ect ect.

I have also included a Unique entry for players to discuss with their GM's any special flaws or powers they want that are not in the game.

So far playtesting has shown some initial higher than expected skill rolls that have required me to tweak the target numbers so they are higher and I have also noticed  that it is very easy for characters to increase their skills higher, but much higher to gain new skills and indeed increase them.

Zoom

Zoom,

I like the idea that in your system, each situational advantage you have gives you a situational penalty as well. Symmetry in the mathematical part of a system is always compelling to me.

I didn't see a question in your post. Were you just looking for commentary? If so, it seems like you like the game as it is, and there's not a lot of commentary to make. I'll help out by asking a few questions:

* What do you want out of this game in terms of game play? What should a typical session of play look like? What about an entire "run" of play?

* Is the game giving you those things now? If not, where are the problems occurring?

I'm sorry for not putting a question... I as just after peoples comments on what they thought about the game.

My major issue with the games I have played in the past is that some game systems can be very complicated and very restrictive on the actual role playing. I've been play RPG's for the last 15 years and I have always enjoyed a good Role playing session as opposed to a game where you hack and slash and try to outbattle your friends.

I have even GM'd and PC'd sessions before where all there has been throughout the 3 hour session is pure dialogue (skills like subterfuge and observation for detecting lies). Very enjoyable.

So I designed this game to literally run itself so everybody could concentrate on how their vampire character develops into the storyline. The game is definately giving me the freedom to run these Role Playing sessions.

It has also been entertaining to see one of the players in the game who gave his character as much power, and so possibly the strongest individual in the game when compared to the rest of the characters, fall flat on his face as he has had to devise cunning plan after cunning plan to overcome the many flaws that came with the powers.

Thanks for your comments.

Zoom

This is probably the least important thnig in your design, but I'm curious why did you decide on using a percentile dice? I'm asking because judging from what you write 1d20 or 1d10 plus score vs. target number would most likely maintain the probabilities but simplify the math. Unless you actually need exactly this level of granurality, or want a percentile die for aesthetic reasons or something - and this is what I'm interested in.

There are a number of reasons why I decided to use a percentile system.

First of all the group I play with are very use to using percentile systems in the past so it would be a easy transition for them to move from one system to this one.

Secondly the way the skills system and it's advancement works in the game is based on the players marking how many times in a gaming session they try to use that skill.

At the end of the session they then use those marks to put their skills up. Now given that sometimes a useful skill such as un-armed combat could get used more than 10 times in a session that will be a considerable amount of marks available to put that skill up.

You can now see how having a percentile system slows down the advancment of players.

hope I've explained this clearly enough.

zoom wrote: It has also been entertaining to see one of the players in the game who gave his character as much power, and so possibly the strongest individual in the game when compared to the rest of the characters, fall flat on his face as he has had to devise cunning plan after cunning plan to overcome the many flaws that came with the powers.

I have a question about how you would purposefully upset the balance.  Is it possible to set up a situation in your favour?

It would be frustrating if the balance prevented you from planning an ambush or the like, I think.  That would feel as if everything has been left to chance.

TonyLB wrote:

zoom wrote: It has also been entertaining to see one of the players in the game who gave his character as much power, and so possibly the strongest individual in the game when compared to the rest of the characters, fall flat on his face as he has had to devise cunning plan after cunning plan to overcome the many flaws that came with the powers.

So, entertain us!  Tell us those stories.  Details, man, details!

In particular, I'm interested in how the other players responded to the difficulties of the player with the powered-up character.

contracycle wrote:
I have a question about how you would purposefully upset the balance.  Is it possible to set up a situation in your favour?

It would be frustrating if the balance prevented you from planning an ambush or the like, I think.  That would feel as if everything has been left to chance.

zoom wrote:
A thriving city with indeed a thriving sewer system to go with it :-). So when his character stepped out into the brisk cold night to stalk down some enemies I made it quite clear to him that he was unable to move for than 3-4 feet in any direction for some reason. It took him 5 mins before he looked at his character sheet and figured it out. He then had to spend money on a car and driver to chauffer him round the city :-)

TonyLB wrote:

zoom wrote:
A thriving city with indeed a thriving sewer system to go with it :-). So when his character stepped out into the brisk cold night to stalk down some enemies I made it quite clear to him that he was unable to move for than 3-4 feet in any direction for some reason. It took him 5 mins before he looked at his character sheet and figured it out. He then had to spend money on a car and driver to chauffer him round the city :-)

So ... he'd deliberately signed on for that when he chose the flaw?  He just forgot?

Or are you saying that he thought that he was getting a dramatic sort of flaw where he'd chase a hero along a plaza and hit a vaulted gothic bridge and be unable to chase any further, reducing him to yelling "Another night, fool!" but instead he got told that his vampire is a hopeless twitching wreck because underground water hems him in like a constant labyrinth of invisible fences?

Because, honestly, if he deliberately signed on for it, that's cool.  But if you ambushed him with this ... I call foul.  That's no way to treat your friends.  If your design encourages that then I think you need to seriously reconsider.

zoom wrote: I even very clearly told him what the power means. You cannot at any moment cross running water.

I honestly didn't think about it till he said he was walking out into the streets.... so no I didn't.

Well, I worry that your system is not acting as an aid to communication.  Defining these disadvantages (it seems) is not helping people to settle the question of "How much disadvantage should I take to how much advantage?"  All it's doing is passing the buck on that decision to how the GM chooses to interpret the disadvantage, vs. how the player thought it would be interpreted.

Honestly, I'd recommend a quick look at Nobilis's Restriction system, because I think it's an awesome way to get at what this kind of thing is usually meant to be doing:  A restriction gives zero points until it is brought up in play.  When it is actually brought up in play, it gives the player a token.  That token can be used later to make their funky powers important and relevant.

So it's a little bit of a backwards way of doing things:  You would expect the player to say "Oh, shit!  I'd love to pursue this guy, but there's an underground water main here, and it's enough running water to stop me in my tracks."  Or, if he wants to stick more with the Hammer Horror feel, he could narrate that the guy he's chasing gets away across a foot-bridge.  Whatever.  The point is, he's motivated to find these "liabilities" because they give him points that he'll want later.

Then, contrariwise, when he spends those points the GM doesn't have to be judging "Hey, would the ability to climb walls like a lizard actually give him an advantage at this time?"  He's spending a point.  He tells you why it gives him an advantage.  And you know he's earned that advantage, because he payed for it earlier, doing whatever he did to get the token.

Do you see how tying the actual moments of play ("Running water stops me this particular time") to a currency makes it easy to agree on the appropriate value, whereas tying the hypothetical patterns ("Running water will stop me some undefined amount of the time, which the GM and I haven't really agreed upon, but we sort of hope that it'll work out") to a currency just leaves people ready to bitch and moan about the price and value having been misrepresented?

I don't think the system is to blame for the player having this dis-advantage, but I do however take on board your advice about communication of dis-advantages.

I had to be careful when I was selecteing the flaws as whilst they were traditional flaws accepted as being the downfall of many a vampire, I also had to try and make them as broad covering as possible. This is to reflect the freedom or lack of it in this case in the game.

Perhaps I could rate the flaws and us them as a points system for flaws and powers.. what do you think??

That way if a character buys the flaw cannot cross running water for 10 points as aopposed to the flaw must hide from crosses for 2 points the character will have a better idea of the importance of the flaw.

Thanks for your comments so far everybody....

I have developed the setting and politics of my game. It is set in a world where the vampires have created "Houses" in every major city of the civilised world.

I say civilised becuase their is a lack of vampires in places such as africa where they are in far more threat. Each house has a house leader called a prince or a king and the leader is a member of something called the covenant. The covenant is the world council of the vampires and when the covenant is called decisions are voted on regarding the survival of the vampire race.

what do people think???