The Other

A Storytelling Game of Alienation

Skeptical Characters begin with 6 Lucidity Points.
Haunted Characters begin with 3 Lucidity Poinst and 3 Other Points.
Insane Characters begin with 6 Other Points.

Locations/Scenes/Time Periods have a predefined number of Unknown Points to be used by the Narrator against the Characters.
An Unknown Point can either cause an Unknown Check or a Denial Limit.

Unknown Checks are the Other creeping in. The fog rolls in, monsters appear, ect. Spending a Lucidity Point lets a Character rationalize their way out of the situation (run, hide, use something nearby to defend oneself, sometimes just cover their eyes and ears and go "lalalalala"). Spending a Other Point lets a Character use the weirdness of the Other against it, allowing their madness to make them "mad creatures" just like the things that come out of the fog. This can happen in the form of an actual transformation, the manifestation of a supernatural ability (inhuman strength and ferocity, magic, spectral guns appearing in one's hands, ect), or simply the depowering of the opposing Other (monsters become weak enough to defeat with mundane means, or the fog is pushed back).

Denial Limits force a Character to either perform a certain reassuring action of disbelief or be confronted with a harsh reality of themselves. For example, John knows his wife is dead, but it would be so reassuring to believe that the doppelganger in the prison cell in front of him is her. If he wants to disobey this Denial Limit, he will gain a Memory Point and have a harsh vision (narrated by, you guessed it, the Narrator) of his past (in this case of his wife and the events surrounding her death). The first Denial Limit ignored gains 1 Memory Point. The second gains 2 (making the total 3), the third gains 3 (making the total six) and so on. This progression is stopped by following a Denial Limit (making ignoring the next only gain 1 Memory) and all Memory is erased by following two Denial Limits in a row.  When a Character's Memory reaches 10 they come to such a shocking realization that the Other is able to swallow them, or, in many cases, they go to it's numbing fog willingly. Following Denial Limits often lead to Unknown Checks.

Gaining an Other Point requires reaching out into the weirdness during a normal scene. This eliminates a Lucidity Point (if you have any to take 1 from) and can only be done once for each period between Unknown Checks.

Gaining a Lucidity Point requires spending a normal scene bolstering one's mundane defences, be it talking with other people to reaffirm reality or stocking up on weapons and supplies. This can only be done once for reach period between Unknown Checks and eliminates a Other Point (if you have any to take 1 from).

When a Character is all out of Lucidity and Other Points and an Unknown Check occurs (note that technically you should always be able to gain another point of Lucidity or Other inbetween Checks so this is hard to happen if your all min-maxing, but can very well happen if good roleplaying dictates someone would of been knocked out or otherwise busy during that period)  the Other gets them. However, this can mean being killed by monsters or being captured/possessed/ect. In the latter case, rescue by the rest of the Characters is possible, but they should at least have to resolve that scene and then spend another scene questing for it before it can be done.

To keep Unknown Checks from being a 1 point exchange each time with time to replace that point inbetween them, several other things can occur that disrupt what could otherwise become tedius:
-A roleplayed situation that, while can be avoided, if not avoided drains some set number of Other or Unknown points. Essentially a trap or maddening/falsely-reassuring-only-to-jump-on-you-later event.
-Instead of being an Unknown Check that each Character has to deal with in their own way by spending either an Other or an Unknown Point, there can be a Nemesis that requires a certain number of points, which can be from a single or any number of Characters, to defeat.
-Likewise if there's a scheduled 3 Unknown Points for the Wilchester Lake scene, you can sink all of those points into one Unknown Check (requiring everyone to spend the usual 1 point, and either one more person to spend 2 more or 2 more people to spend 1 more). That is, you can value Unknown Checks differently using your Narrator's budget of Unknown Points for a particular area/scenario.
-Until "solved" Unknown Checks get progressively more expensive. For instance until they delve deeply enough into the mysteries of the town to find the holy object for use against the terrifying Other monster that has been stalking them, each progressive Unknown Check costs more and more (1 each the first time, 2 each the next, ect.). When they resolve that situation the next Unknown Check will be the start of a new series of crisises and return to costing 1 point.

Other Notes:
If a character has 10 of either Lucidity or Other Points, and none of the other (so 10 Lucid and 0 Other, or 10 Other and 0 Lucid) they can reach 10 Memory Points safely. Their grip on reality or power over the Other allows them to maintain determination and actually benefit from accepting the truth about themselves that they had been Denying. If this happens they can never gain another of the type of Point they weren't using (so if they got 10 Lucid and 0 Other, they can never gain another Other; or vice versa) but also lose their Denial Limits.

Characters can fight each other, but it's in a way that's purely psychological. Have them rock-paper-scissors. The winner gets to deal a psychological blow to the other, incapicating them for the next scene. If it's a normal scene it makes them unable to generate an extra point during that time as they normally would probably do, and if it's an Unknown Check another Character must pay for them or they'll be captured/killed.

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This an attempt at a Silent Hill type game using a general ruleset that I haven't actually managed to divorce from the original game it was made with, Go To Hell, which I'll be playtesting on Saturday (and depending on vulgarity standards on these boards when I re-read the rules here will post the transcription in the playtesting section, if I can).

The "generic" core of this roleplaying system is that when Characters start conflict they generate a Reality Point for the Narrator to use against them, by either invoking a Reality Check (a repercussion they can't godmode out of) or a Weakness Limit (which forces them to perform a certain action based on a predescribed part of their Character's character). Spending a Karma Point (most people start a session with 10) allows you to narrate escape from a Reality Check, but it'll get more expensive each successive Check. On the bright side running away usually doesn't generate more Reality Points to cause the more Checks. Solving the specific problem will stop the progression of points, so that the next Reality Check based on all the Reality points you racked up solving the last one will be able to be avoided with a single Karma again.

Solving conflicts you didn't start (that is helping others or finishing things) recovers Karma Points.

Solving Reality Checks rather than fleeing them usually requires use of your Power Points, which is bassically spending a point to let you do whatever makes Characters better than PC's for the rest of the scene and solve your problems, for now.

Weakness Limits can also be disobeyed to prevent from having to do an unwated action, but it takes away increasing Sanity points each time in a row. At Sanity 1 your immobilized, Sanity 0 you have a complete "take me away" mental breakdown.

However the specifics of Character on Character combat and regaining Power Points got tricky when I tried to think of the "generic" take on this.

Go To Hell is the baseline but it's very specific. Power in that is called Luxuria, which you use to summon your demon, and you get it by doing sins. Also the only way to recover Karma is not just solving other's conflicts in general, it's going back later and repairing damage you'v done. Weakness Limits are for very nasty behavior as you can imagine. The recovery of Karma also allowed for, if you went from 4 or less karma back to ten, gaining an extra point on your Sanity meter so you'll be able to deny Contract Limits (weaknesses in Go To Hell) better.

The Other isn't about redemption, in fact I turned that into a Sanity type (rack it up too much and your out of the game) mechanic, Memory that is. It's probably a bit wonky, but so far I haven't gotten to playtest even the orignal Go To Hell and just input alone has allowed me to flesh out the system I'v been basing all this stuff on. Originally Go To Hell had no character development or character on character combat, and without those I wouldnt of thought "hey I can use this for other genres/things too".

Essentially I think the Other, with it's precarious balance rather than a funny vicious circle between Narrator and Characters like Go To Hell is supposed to be, will rely on GM pacing. How many points you let the characters start with, when and how you take them away, at what points do they get to try to gain more points, ect. It would probably take a while to get a sense of "ok, if I pace it this way it does actually give a chance of at least some of the Characters being defeated, but doesn't disrupt things like a simply poorly paced scenario".

Initial feedback on Go To Hell allowed me to tweak it greatly, and The Other probably has glaring ommisions/flaws that fit in with it's genre or what it's trying to do (the whole silent hill inspired thing) and just require an extra set of eyes for me to see them, so I posted it here (mainly because I'm going to try to get a playtest on the playtest part of the board at some point soon, if I can; otherwise I'd feel guilty about posting when I already feel confident about this as I'm going to until I get to run it for some people myself.)

Hate bumping but I can't find an edit button...

Because I'm afraid I was far too unspecific, I'm looking for feedback on problems that might come up during my playtests and things that seem wonky about the point based way of driving the story, that is essentially the heart (and main mass, if there's even anything else) of the system. Is there anything you'd suggest to require less specific Narrator-with-group stage tuning of the pacing? Any clearing loopholes in the point loss/gathering that could cause too easy fatality/victory?

Bassically the "game" is small because I like rules-lite, and these are bassically the rules, leaving out everything else. I like them because they drive the game somewhere (if not in a specific direction) through conflict, and because points gathering/loss can be so easily tweaked/name-changed to fit different genres and feels.

However because it's based all around this dynamic, if the specific changes done to this, unfeedbacked so far, version have knocked even something slightly out of toon or have a single loophole, if you can spot it you can gurantee it would be a glaring problem in gameplay.

So that's sort of what I'm looking for in feedback specifically. In a way this is a "check out this specific mechanic of mine" thread, just by the nature of how I'v developed this I wrote it as a complete little handout.

I really dig the idea that you can best survive encounters by going toward either of two extremes.  Seems like a mixed party of uberMulders and uberScullys waiting to happen.

Two questions.  The first:

Coyote247 wrote:
Unknown Checks are the Other creeping in
. . .
Denial Limits (if obeyed -D.B.) force a Character to . . . perform a certain reassuring action of disbelief
. . .
Following Denial Limits often lead to Unknown Checks.

Good thoughts I'll review at least once more in greater detail. Like I might of said, at this point I have a lot more experience with the core idea behind The Other than any of the Silent Hill specific stuff. I'v worked on several variations that all seem to get closer to the genre theyre for than The Other seems to, but that makes sense in a way, the Other was the first and probably still most wild variation.

Still I learned some important things from writing it up, like to put in stuff about nemesises and "trap" situations, and the idea of putting the burden of paying the extra points in multi-point situations on one or more volunteers.

Here are some changes that I think will make the difference between the rational and weird types work better. Denial and Memory were clumsy mechanism meant to try to create some cost to power but ended up being a general thing that don't seem to work. Now of course for the specific "repressed trauma" sort of thing Memory works...in fact I might continue these revisiosn and make that like the Experience Mechanic, as your trying to unlock your memories, as painful as they are. But for now here's a revised version of a lot of the stuff meant to make things work better.

The Narrator divides segments of the game into Acts as the Characters move along. Each Act consists of Scenes and Unknown Checks. Essentially, each the Narrator decides the number of Unknown Checks that are in the Act at the beggining of it, while the Characters are freeforming through the first Scene. If they progress to another area in a "screen fades and then reshows here" sort of way, they'v moved from a Scene to another Scene. The Narrator interupts with an Unknown Check when he feels it's appropriate. After an Unknown Check there is a obligatory Scene, which allows for reaction and recuperation among the Characters. So, an Act is the sum of all the Scenes the Characters go through without being goaded, as well as all the Unknown Checks which them goad them into inbetween Scenes. When the predetermined number of Unknown Checks have all happened, then it's only a matter of Scenes (the Characters can be allowed to freeform the rest of the way or the GM can simply allow them to do whatever recuperations and then "fade out, fade in" into the first Scene of the next Act).

In Scenes inbetween Unknown Checks there is Weirdness. It could be the strange rolling fog, a pentagram drawn on blood on the floor, or whatever else the Narrator describes. The Weirdness can be siphoned for 1 or more (Narrator decision, pre-decided along with the Act's # of Unknown Checks if you have the time) Other Points by each Character (if there's enough for someone to have 3, there's enough for everyone to have 3, but not enough for a single Character to have more than 3; the way it functions).
Siphoning the Weirdness spends the productive time of the Scene for those who choose to do it. Otherwise the Scene can be spent getting Survival Points (number available decided in the same way as Other Points), which is equivalent to doing things such as rationalizing the previous Unknown Check's events or stocking up on guns and ammo, tending to your wounds, or simply talking with the other Characters (or other people around) looking for reassurance.

Other Points and Survival Points, either one can be used to deal with Unknown Checks. The difference is that each Other Point gained creates a point of Alienation for that Character, and Alienation doesn't dissapear with the spending of Other Points. This is an added danger to relying on Other Points over Survival Points, but there are added benefits. Other Points can be used outside of Unknown Checks to do certain things that are otherwise unperformable by human beings. A Character with a Magic Book or other Occult Item doesn't gain Alienation when siphoning Other Points from the Weirdness, but gains Alienation for each Other Point they spend outside of Unknown Checks.

Normally outside of Unknown Check uses for Other Points (which can be Narrator spoken opportunities or the Character deciding to do something and asking how much it costs) range from costing 1 to 5 Other Points. This ends up being 1 to 5 Other Points normal Characters got corresponding Alienation when siphoning from Weirdness, or 1 to 5 Other Points that now that theyre being spent outside of Unknown Checks will cause Characters with Magic Books corresponding Alienation.

The schism in the use and gain of Other Points is to represent those ordinary people who begin to drawn on the power of the Other into themselves, at a cost of their humanity, and those occult types who know how to use magic. And according to the laws of magic, bassically it doesn't start to screw you up until your doing stuff like raising the dead, out of Unknown Check stuff. It's the difference between people gaining powers at a cost to their humanity and magicians who know mind-shattering spells. And yes, a Character with a Magic Book could siphon Other Points from the Weirdness and then only use them to deal with Unknown Checks, and would never get Alienation. However that means that they won't be able to use their Other Points outside of Unknown Checks to do amazing things that can ordinarly be done with Other Points.

A Character that starts with Other Points and a Magic Book instead of Survival Points is essentially "the party mage" to use an out of genre term. They get to gain points without Alienation just like Survival Point dominant Characters do, but have the added bonus of being able to use their points, Other Points, outside of Unknown Checks to do unnatural things. However with that boon comes the danger of the Alienation point for each Other Point used outside of Unknown Checks. Essentially theyre just as viable as other Characters but have an added dimension of utility and an added dimension of danger as well.

It should be noted that since ordinary Characters with Other Points get Alienation from their gain, not their outside of Unknown Check use, that only Magic Book Characters should probably start with Other Points instead of Survival Points. This also fits story-wise. Ordinarily people can become touched by the Other when theyre confronted with it. The exception to that are occultist types who already believe in magic. However it's also believable that their occult skills are useless without the actual genuine strangeness of the Other, so you can have them start with Survival Points instead of Other Points. Really the split is more about what you spend your Scenes getting than what you start with. The only thing that really needs to be noted at the beggining is wether or not the Character has a Magic Book or other Occult Item.

Humanity Limits are situations that would risk the Characters, or at least expend their efforts, to help someone else. The Narrator should make these opportunities available, at discretion, during Scenes. That is once in a while, depending on the situation of the Characters, these should pop up in Scenes. When there is a Humanity Limit you have to either follow it, in which case you will get the number of Survival Points you could of gained that Scene, or will be unable to get any Survival Points at all. The risk of Humanity Limits is that some Limits (and this should be decided before anyone decides to do it to be fair) are Traps. Traps are like Unknown Checks, except there's a chance you won't have to spend the Survival or Other Points it takes to deal with it. This is another thing that should be decided when making a Limit situation a Trap. It can one game of rock-paper-scissors to decide wether it costs or not, or could even give three try's at rock-paper-scissors for the Character to avoid the Trap.

Humanity Limits have another purpose. Instead of siphoning Weirdness or getting Survival Points (including those he'd otherwise get from following the Limit) a Character can follow a Humanity Limit to halve their Alienation (it never takes away less than 1, but it will take away 1 rather than 1.5, 2 rather than 2.5, and so on).

Example Characters:

Agent Dana Redfield: A skeptical FBI Agent with military experience.
Survival Points- 5

Agent John "Creepy" Morse: A UFO chasing FBI Agent
Survival Points- 5 (but will probably switch over to main use of Other Points during the game)

Emily Hall: Psychic consultant for the FBI
Surival Points- 5
Is a closet occultist and has the Magic Book, "The Nine Gates of Oblivion"

David Haight: Motorcycle gang member and cultist
Survival Points- 3
Other Points- 2 (since he's a Magic Book type this isn't unbalancing)
Has an Occult Item (same as a Magic Book), a bent and crooked ritual knife.

Hiya,

I am really, really interested in this game. It reminds me a bit of Dead of Night, which I think is one of the best games of the last couple of years.

To answer your implied question, naughty words are perfectly all right at the Forge. Invective or name-calling directed toward a person is expressly not OK. But if you want to use hell or fuck or whatever for emphasis, or as a part of game title, that's cool.

Best, Ron

Another refinement, further polishing the previous ones, of the mechanic.

Unknown Checks are situations when the Other creeps into the Scene and takes it over. Things start becoming very difficult, in ways that can't be resolved using normal freeform roleplaying. The Characters become trapped, they hear a strange screeching noise down the hall, combat with nightmarish creatures is imminent. This kind of situation can be survived by ordinary people, but it is guranteed to cause them to enter the linear-cycle of alienation unless they can shake it off with lucidity and convince themselves it wasn't real, in which case they may only have normal mental breakdowns to worry about.

Simply put, to deal with an Unknown Check requires something from each Character and other person involved. For those who manage to remain rational and handle it through ordinary problemsolving without falling into alienation, it costs Survival Points. For those who are rational enough to think to use the madness of the unknown against itself, to constrain chaos by it's own self-evident rules, it costs Other Points. For those who are neither insane or one of the 8%, it causes them to sink into the process of Alienation.

While protecting from alienation, being resistant has it's own hard ends when it comes to high exposure to the Other. The insane have nothing keeping them from going all the way and becoming either stonecold Sociopaths, or become of the Other themselves, becoming Inhuman.

The 8% walk a tighter balance. Skeptics can become Hollow, and Believers can go Borderline.

A Skeptic uses Survival Points to react rationally, use strategy and whatever is available to survive, to coordinate and keep their cool. Psychos use Survival Points to get up close and bloody with monsters without batting an eye and to shrug off the fear of death while fighting like hell to stay alive.

Believers use Other Points to glean the weaknesses to monsters and to solve the riddles that the unknown tries to trap them in. Cultists use Other Points to do magic or become monsters themselves.

A Skeptic would narrate shooting monsters, getting to cover, finding useful items. A Psycho would narrate an insane mash of human skin and unnatural flesh in a dance of death.

A Believer would narrate figuring out a sigil to use agains the monsters based on the symbols around the abandoned town, or realizing that to deny the existence of the unknown is to weaken it. A Cultists would narrate using magic to speak in the monster's own tongue or growing claws and decapitating it.

Ordinary people describe running, lashing out in a panic with any object available, hiding, and screaming a lot.

In an Unknown Check, someone else (someone with Survival or Other points) can foot the points needed for a normal person as well, to keep them from having to rack up Alienation in exchange for getting through the situation.

Characters, who are assumed to be one of the four types (Skeptics, Believers, Psychos, Cultists) have no limit to the points of their type they can spend. However each point used racks up a point on their gauge (Hollow gauge for Skeptics, Borderline gauge for Believers, Sociopath gauge for Psychos, Inhuman gauge for Cultists).

Each level of the specific gauge has more demands for the Character to roleplay next time they want to use a point. A Skeptic with Hollow 3 has to obey the conditions listed on that level of the gauge when she wants to use a Survival Point to deal with an Unknown Check.

Characters who don't use their points to pay off the Unknown Check must either be comped by another Character, enter Alienation, or allow the Narrator to decide their fate (be it death or becoming a temporary plot device- abducted, missing, possessed, ect.)

Alienated Characters have no access to points and thus must either be overcome (Narrator fiat as stated above) or go deeper into Alienation. The deeper a Character goes, the harder it will be to get them out of it.

In Scenes, inbetween Unknown Checks, Characters can spend their time reinforcing or otherwise preparing themselves. For Skeptics and Psychos this is Bolstering; finding armament, tending wounds, gassing up that motorcycle that will make for a badass fight scene, investigating what exactly is going on as a way to build confidence and strategies. For Believers and Cultists this is Study, investigating the weirdness going on and/or trying to draw on it's power. These opportunities allow the behavior mandates of their gauge level to be ignored during that Scene and the next (usually an Unknown Check). There is no Bolstering/Studying for the Alienated. Each scene they violate the code of behavior for their alienation gauge level they give the Narrator an opportunity to use a Side-Effect at one time of their choosing (per Scenes spent in violation) sometime during the game.

Humanity Limits are opportunities to lower one's point on the gauge during a Scene or Unknown Check. It's a certain story condition that involves either helping someone else or just reminding oneself of your own humanity. The former is usually a group opportunity that can be followed by one or more, the latter is usually a personal opportunity for a specific Character. This is an important opportunity for the Alienated.

When a Character has filled their gauge, they can no longer go down it. Instead, Bolstering/Studying during Scenes are required, doing otherwise is a violation of behavior and gives the Narrator instances of Side-Effect to use against you later. The Hollow/Borderline can still attempt to follow Humanity Limits, but it's a fifty-fifty chance that it will turn out well or just be a trap of some kind that nothing can be gained from. If it does turn out well (win a round of rock-paper-scissors, roll above 3 on a d6) it gives them the stored up opportunity to violate their gauge mandated behavior for one Scene without causing future Side-Effect.

Filling the Alienation gauge is equivalent to death or becoming another soul trapped in the Other.

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This change makes it about the deterioration, or alienation (the Alienation being really only one form, the four other types really still being alienation) of the characters as they spend points to get through situations rather than about gaining the points in the first place. The Silent Hill version of sanity based stuff, as well as sort of also a cool way to show how either being a stone badass in the face of monsters or using supernatural power makes you more and more unnatural yourself.

It also goes the Scully/Moulder bit one further, seperating it into the Resistant and the Insane, and those groups into the Skeptics/Believers and the Psychos/Cultists. Bassically Survival and Other Point Users Who Cares About Redemption, and then those who don't care about redemption and instead have more over the top description styles.

I'm working on a reworking of the mechanical structure that will get rid of trackign tons of points and worry about generating points as such to focus on a more narrative structure.

Now the "very lite gamist structure to add tension and conflict to a narrative game" worked great in the Go To Hell Playtest on saturday (if I can figure out how to get a log from irc, then I'll post it in the playtest forum). But I'm thinking going the other direction with The Other.

Or at least, that is...just streamline things, and go back with some earlier instincts that you can see in the first and second posts of mine here on this thread.

Like, with the Act structure, you can bassically say that there's 3 Survival Markers to be found this Act, and that there will be one straight up encounter with the Weirdness. There's other phenomena stuff going on as the backdrop, but essentially 3 "resources to gather/things to do" and 1 out and out supernatural encounter of the way too close kind.

And the great thing would be the Act can have as many scenes as occur. The Narrator can provoke scene change and so can the player.

Right now I'm thinkering it with a scenario about a guy trapped in an apartment thats half the obvious inspiration and half Ash going crazy in the Evil Dead cabin.

So, this way, since being shaken by something (in lieu of having/spending a Survival Mark or an Other point thing, more on that later) is bassically allieved bit by bit through scene change I think there has to be some right out mechanical thing that happens with scene change so it's not always used as an escape route, or that is so it's a perilous escape route.

I dunno. Adding a single die and a few tables might actually simplify rather than complicate things, though I hate randomizing things so. I prefer cat and mouse between player and narrator, the inherent conflict of actor and larger plot, man struggling against fate.

But that's really a philosophical stance than a design ideal for this.

Anyways, I'm gonna go tinker on it and I should have a rough idea to show for it at some point.

Well I finally said to hell with it and went full on freeform and set up the character generation and everything exactly as I wanted.

Then I added in an afterthought of a simple mechanic.

To avoid perhaps just being embarassed I'd like to try playtesting this. A look at the sticky thread on the contacts board made it seem like since I already have a thread here I should try to get my playtest together here. A few people have expressed interest in this, so would anyone be up to a playtest?

If not I'll probably see if my Go To Hell playtest group is up to trying this out on saturday instead of finishing up their game from last week.

Actually nix that.

Calming down a bit, I noted a few ways I can tweak to add complexity and bassically put the document to bed for now. I'll get to it when I get to it. Best that I take a break from it, I was started to be like "ungh, this is hard, hey I'v got ideas for 50 million other ingenius games" which is a bad thing since I am very much not a Game Designer. I'm not a hard-thought, linearistic, hardworking, number crunching kind of person. I'm more of the person that stands behind those people spewing clever references and funny stuff to things they say.

I'v bassically reconciled my ferverish "hey I'll adapt this to do this" with the actual conception of what the game would be about, wrote down some stuff that I need to do next time I pick up, and even have some nice guy making some handouts for the rather odd character sheet type thing I came up with.

Well I'v made a complete, unplaytested, but cleaned up and pretty spiff if I might say version of the game; in true Generic0 tradition (go to hell had it's final version made well before my first playtest).

You can check it out here:  http://coystudio.blogspot.com/2007/09/other-text-version-of-my-free-micro-rpg.html

And that I think concludes this thread.

I'd definitely like to see this in a playtested format, assuming you want to take the time to work on it.

I liked your concepts very much. I have a few ideas myself which I plan on turning into a SH-like RPG too, and I'd love to discuss them with you. Forgive my stupidity, tho, but I can't find a Private Message button anywhere! Mind if I e-mailed you?