Hello,

I am currently designing a game inspired by the Claymore universe, and I need a rule system that implements the type of stories that I want this game to tell.

The game is totally focused on duels opposing one warrior to one or more opponents (a bit like a western). The idea of each duel is to show:

- what each character is ready to put on the line in order to win (or not)
- how the universe functions
- show growth and evolution of each character from duel to duel

The reason I write this post is because I am confronted to some difficulties concerning the book keeping required of the system which is too heavy to be playable, and also because I would like to have some suggestions on how to increase the range of diversity supplied by the randomization tool (currently a single D20).

There are three fundamental tenets of the game that I would like to preserve, and for the rest I'm wide open for suggestions:

1 - The rules system should implement strictly the laws of the universe. These are quite simple, and can be summarized as follows: In order to win, a warrior needs to pool his inner Power. But wielding Power corrupts, and risks the corruption/destruction of the  character.

2 -  The randomization system should be as simple and nimble as possible, ideally only requiring a single die per scene/round: a D20 (I chose a D20 because it's the die offering the highest number of outcomes in one throw).

3 - The system should allow open ended character evolution (PCs and NPCs should be able to become ever more powerful without breaking the system).

Since I read John Kirk's book on RPG design patterns, I will try to use his terminology when describing the system as designed so far.

[hr]
Summary of the System

The mechanics are centered on characters. There is basically nothing which does not relate to them. The story is centered around contests between characters, and hopefully NPCs should have a simplified creation/management mechanic.

Each character is defined by 5 Attributes and 2 Gauges:

Attributes (ranging from A to E, A is better):

Strength
Speed
Perception
Willpower
Leadership

Gauges (scored in numbers, all are conflicted: increasing/decreasing them brings advanteges/disadvantages)

Power (total amount of Power that PC can invoke. The more power a PC has, the more powerful he can be)
Humanity (with 0 Humanity the PC turns into a NPC demon)

Released Power (0-100%) Fraction of the total Power that the PC invokes and can effectively use. It's easy to go from 0 to 30%, requires willpower to go to 50%, but then requires willpower to go down. Left unchecked, Released Power tends to go to 100%. Over 80% percent, it's practically impossible lower it voluntarily, and once 100% is reached, the PC turns into a NPC demon.
Stress (0-100%) Stress increases with hardship. Released Power >= Stress, so Stress can be a way to more easily release Power, but makes it harder do close it again

Available Power (AP=PxRP) Available power is the amount (in numbers) of Power available at the moment to the PC to do his stuff.

Traits

There are 3 types of Traits:

- Passions: what makes the PC tick: a goal, another character that the PC loves/hates, etc. In all circumstances in which the PC acts within the context of his Passion, his skills and capacities are modified by the Passion
- Trauma: All PCs (and NPCs) have an unique original Trauma that made them what they are now. The Trauma is similar to the Passion, but it's the original Passion, but most fundamental and basic one.
- Techniques: Techniques are skills that the (N)PCs learned that make them more efficient in a contest. A skill can involve combat (ex: quicksword), perception (telepathy), etc. Although Techniques modify the PC capacities, they are more under the control of the PC than the Passions, which depend more on the context. Each a Technique requires a certain amount of Available Power to be used.

[hr]
Contest

A Contest is a confrontation between one warrior and one or more opponents. If each faction has more than one warrior, combat is split into as many contests as there are members of the minority faction. This is not a game for melee combat, which has no meaning in this universe (much like usage of guns has no meaning in a kung fu movie).

The state of the Contest is indicated by another gauge (let's call it State of Contest: SOC). SOC starts at "even", and can change among the following values:
"Defeat" - "Desperate" - "Disadvantage" - "Even" - "Advantage" - "Supremacy" - "Victory"

Each side of the contest has its SOC, which evolve in a mirror fashion (Disadvantage for one side is Advantage for the other side). So in practice, we only need one SOC.

A contest resolution is divided in tours/rounds. For each round, each faction calculates its Attack Level, and Defense Level. Both of these gauges are derived from the Attribute level and amount of Available Power, modified by Passions or Techniques.

So if we assume that Attribute letter corresponds to a number (A=6,..., E=1), and that at each additional tens of Available Power, each Attribute is multiplied, we would have:

Available Power = 1..10: Strength (A) = 6, Speed (C) = 4
Available Power = 11..20: Strength (A) = 2x6 = 12, Speed (C) = 2x4 = 8
Available Power = 111..120: Strength (A) = 12x6 = 72, Speed (C) = 12x4 = 48

Attack/Defense Level could be a combination of the Attributes. So for instance:

Attack Level = Strength + Speed + Willpower
Defense Level = Strength + Speed + Perception

(this is just one possibility, any suggestions to calculate AL and DL would be appreciated)

To solve one round, one would calculate AL and DL for each opponent, and find a Target Value (TV) for each faction.

So TV = (sum of warriors) AL  - (highest of the opponents) DL + D20

One then compares both TV obtained for each faction, and the winner wins one level of advantage (i.e. "Even" to "Advantage", or "Desperate" to "Disadvantage", or "Supremacy" to "Victory")

If the TV difference is very high (i.e. over 20 points), then SOC is moved two states up for the winner of the round, and so forth, for each 20 additional points of difference.

At each new round each fighter can modify his Released Power level, or use different Techniques, etc.

Techniques require a certain amount of Available Power to be used, and increase the amount of an Attribute by  N x Letter.

So let's say that Quicksword (giving a 5x bonus) is used by a PC with an Available Power of 30, and a Speed of B: This means that the PC has as Speed of (B x 3 (Available Power) + B x 5 (Quicksword) = B x 8 = 40

You will probably ask me why use such a complicated system? Because:

1 - I want to keep the universe flavor. And in this universe, PCs have those five Attributes defined by letters A to E. This is a given.

2 - I want that changes in Available Power modify the capacities of PCs while preserving their identity. A PC with a A Strength but a D speed should be much faster with a lot of Available Power, but still better in strength than in speed. If Available Power was directly translated into additions to the Attributes, the more Available Power the PC has, the more his Attributes even out.

Of course, as it is, the system is much too complicated. I need to find a way to reduce calculations while maintaining the features of the system.

One way to simplify the system is to limit its degrees of freedom: so Released Power would not vary from all values between 0 and 100% but only from 0%, 10%, 30%, 50%, 80% to 100%. One could then pre-calculate what does that amount in terms of Available Power, considering the total Power of a PC. One could also pre-calculate AL and DL at each level of Released Power, and on the fly calculations would be limited to adding Technique/Passion modifiers.

Another way to simplify things is display the calculations in a table format, such that the players can visually find what the value they are looking for, without needing to calculate intermediate values.

That would give:

[code]Available Power

        10  20  30  40  50  60  70 80... 100 200
-----------------------------------------------------
A        A  2A  3A  5A  6A  7A  8A  10A  20A
B        B  2B  3B  5B  6B  7B  8B  10B  20B
.
.
.
F        F  2F  3F  5F  6F  7F  8F  10F  20F[/code]

Considering a PC (strength(A), Speed (E), Willpower (C) has an Available Power of 80 and uses quicksword, AL=8x(A+E+C)+5E (Quicksword amplifies speed) = 106

But it's still way too heavy...

Another problem with this system is that as warriors become more and more powerful, their AL and DL values increase enormously, and the randomization range provided by the D20 becomes insignificant: there is less and less chance involved as warriors increase in power. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do not wish it. I would like to keep a constant fraction of the skill to be subject to randomization.

One solution that I thought about would be to only take into account the first two numbers in a value, and add the D20 to that: so for instance a D20 giving a 11 would mean different things for a AL of 34 or a DL of 458: if AL = 34, then the result is simply added, and one gets 43. If AL = 458, then the D20 is added to the first two numbers, which gives 568. In this way the fraction of randomization remains constant for infinite levels of AL/DL....

A more radical option to simplify everything would be to give up on the open ended aspect of the game, and limit the range of total Power within for instance 0 to 40, and design the game around that. But I would really regret to have to give up on the open ended aspect.

So again with my two questions:

1) does anyone have suggestions on how to dramatically simplify the system while maintaining most of its features?
2) any other ways of increasing the amount of results provided by the D20 (I thought of 2 more: open ended D20, getting 1 or 20 forces the player to through the D20 again), and also to give special results if the unit result of the D20 is equal to the unit result of the TV)

[hr]
Here is an example of a Contest, to clear things up:

Lets have two warriors duel: Patricia vs Claire

Patricia:
Power  100
Speed C
Strength D
Willpower C
Perception D
Leadership C

Claire:
Power  50
Speed E
Strength E
Willpower D
Perception C
Leadership E


Patricia vs Claire

SOC: "Even"

Round 1

Claire starts with
AL = E (Speed) + E (Strength) + D (Willpower) = 2+2+3  = 7
DL = E+E+C = 2+2+4 = 8

Patricia
AL = C+D+C = 4+3+4 = 11
DL = C+D+D = 4+3+3 = 10

Claire's player throws the D20 : AL (Claire) - DL (Patricia) + D20
TV = 7 - 10+12 =9

Patricia's TV = 11 - 8 + 6 = 9

Results: no difference, SOC stays "Even"...

Round 2

Claire decides to release her Power by 30%, giving her 15 points of Available Power. From now on her Attributes will be read from the tables second column.

Patricia notices the increase in Claire's Power, and decides to play it cautiously: she releases her Power, but only by 20%, giving her 20 points of Available Power. Her Attributes will also be read from the second column.

Claire
AL: 2E+2E+2D = 14
DL: 2E+2E+2C = 16

Patricia
AL: 2C+2D+2C = 22
DL: 2C+2D+2D = 18

Claire's TV : 14 - 18 + 14 = 18
Patricia's TV : 22 - 16 + 17 = 23

Results: 5 points advantage for Patricia, so SOC goes to "Advantage" for her. Claire earns 10% in Stress.

Round 3

Seeing that things are not going well, and will probably get worse soon, Claire decides to risk a large increase in her available Power. She releases her Power to 60%. At this level of release, her Power will not naturally go down, and she will have to actively try to curb it, when she's done. In the meantime she gets 30 points of Available Power, giving her access to the third column. Because of the danger, her Stress gauge goes to 40%

Patricia notices the huge effort that Claire makes to gather Power. She decides to raise the stakes and go for 50% Power Release. This gives her 50 points of Available Power, and allows her to get her Attributes from the 5th column. She also earns 10% Stress.

Claire:
AL: 3E+3E+3D = 21
DL: 3E+3E+3C = 24

Patricia:
AL: 5C+5D+5C = 55
DL: 5C+5D+5D = 50

Claire's TV: 21 - 50 + 19 = - 10
Patricia's TV: 55 - 24 + 20 + 1 = 52 (le player got a 20, allowing her to throw another die, but unfortunately this was a "1"!)

Result: - 62 for Claire! : It's a heavy loss, the SOC marker is moved 3 positions against her, leading to a swift "Defeat".

Claire's fate is now at Patricia's mercy.

Greetings, Alexandre.

I love Claymore.  My game has been inspired by it as well.  My first suggestion to simplify things would be to quit the multiplication.

If you're using a D20, for instance, could I suggest this:

Simply have attributes range 1-20, as well as Power.  Instead of Stress, just use Willpower, maybe call it "Control" instead.  Again, 1-20.

Power might just add to appropriate attributes in combat.  I don't understand the mechanical difference between "Strength" and "Speed" that you're using, so I might suggest wrapping them into one, and just using individual Techniques to distinguish between "Fast Warrior," "Defensive Warrior," "Offensive Warrior," etc.

Humans always have Power at zero, but they never have to worry about Control.

Since you're trying to get the most out of a single roll, just have every round be exactly one die roll.  Power+Strength vs. Power+Strength.  Of course this could be modified by Techniques and advantages a character might gain via special actions, such as perception actions.  With a single D20, you might want to add 10 to the opponent's score, and then require the PC to roll higher than this.  A simple win turns the tide of the battle by one category.  Winning by 6+ turns the tide by 2 categories; by 11+ turns the tide by 3 categories, etc.

Characters Release +2 power (equivalent to +10%) when the roll shows a multiple of their current power release.  This becomes increasingly harder as their current Released power gets higher, becoming only 1 in 20 if they go over 50%.  In that event, they may have to use other means (like you said) to release power.

But whenever they use those other means, they voluntarily reduce their Control by 1.  This may be fine until Control gets below 11 (below 55%), in which case their chances of turning into a monster increase.  Every time they roll a multiple of their Control, Control drops -4.  At Control 0, they're too busy trying to contain their raw power to even fight.  Anything below zero turns them into a monster (unless they have a Trait like Claire's, which would allow her to increase her Control even after it goes below zero).

Of course, this is all just an example of how it might be done with simple addition/subtraction rather than multiplication or complex formulas.  Your end result might be completely different.  Thoughts?

-Jason Timmerman

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the feedback! Let me try to answer you and perhaps better explain where I am trying to get:

I agree that the best way to simplify the system would be to get rid of the multiplications, and try to fit the game parameters within the scope or a D20.

However, if I do it the way you suggest, I will lose some important aspects of the universe, that I would like to preserve:

1) In the Claymore universe, warriors have widely variable levels of power. Humans are lowest in fighting capacities, demons higher, Power wielding humans even higher, and there are demi-gods. Despite these disparities, it is still possible for a group of inferior warriers to band together and eliminate a superior one. For these reasons, I would like to have a system which accomodates in a continuum widely different fighting skill levels. It should be performant in contests between warriors of similar levels, but still accomodate fights between fighters of different levels.

2) I would like the system to model the effects of the Power on the warrior's Attributes, and not just raw fighting ability. Let's say we have a human warrior with a Strength of B. If he wields no power, his strength will be of 5. If he releases his Power by 10%, his strength will depend on his total amound of Power: a human having a inner pool of 200 points of Power will have a strength of 10, whereas a human having a total Power of 500 will have a strength of 50 by releasing just 10% of his power! These huge differences in skills induced by the usage of the Power is what I want to model. Also a human who releases his Power at 10% has nothing to do with the monster he will become if he releases his power at 70%. This is why releasing Power is so seductive in this universe. Everyone knows that it hastens one's destruction, but you become just so much more strong, that it's hard to resist the urge to use it, just one more time...

I am afraid that if I use just regular additions and a closed system (around 20 points), I will not be able to reproduce the kind of situations that the characters of Claymore have to contend with.

Now this being said, it's better to have an imperfect system that one can play with, rather than a more faithful system which is utterly unplayable. So probably I will have to switch to additions, If I don't manage to find a way to simplify the system.

One game that constantly comes to my mind is HeroQuest. In this game the skill system is also open ended, uses a single D20 roll per player, and accomodates different levels of PC power.

The problem with HeroQuest is that it has no way to model the impact of Power on the PC skills. This is ultimately the biggest problem I have to contend with. The exponential nature of the Power and its impact on the PCs skills is hard to model in a simple way.

VoidDragon wrote:
I don't understand the mechanical difference between "Strength" and "Speed" that you're using, so I might suggest wrapping them into one, and just using individual Techniques to distinguish between "Fast Warrior," "Defensive Warrior," "Offensive Warrior," etc.

Since you're trying to get the most out of a single roll, just have every round be exactly one die roll.

All of your ideas could easily be integrated into additive mechanics on a D20.  You know what you want better than I do.  I never suggested that you should use specifically my idea above.

Since I know nothing about your setting, especially nothing about what it means to be a "demon" or a "demigod" in your setting, I'll just speak in regards to the Claymore series, a Setting and Situation we're both familiar with.

My main point is that all you need to do to fit in your goals is arrange the numbers to work the way you want them.  This does not require multiplication.

For instance, if you wanted to create creatures of different power levels, you could simply use what Claymore calls a "Genkai" (I think they translate it as Limit?)  Genkai doesn't have to be 20.  Some characters may be able to hit Power 30 before they've exceeded their limits.  This would be that individual character's "100%".  So when the character reaches "80%," and they have Limit 25, then they would be at Power 20 at that point.

Furthermore, if you wanted the gaps between different Speed, Power, etc. to increase in proportion to their base abilities to channel Power into these separate attributes, you could still manage this without multiplication or charts.

I could write a whole argument against using Attributes at all to describe warrior Strength, etc. for Claymore.  Yes, the Claymores are ranked according to "Fastest," "Second Fastest," "Most Powerful," etc., but they never put numbers on the traits themselves.  My personal view of the universe is that each Claymore has learned techniques in order to use Power to increase their abilities. 

Exponents are not hard to model using additive math.  I managed to do that in my system, fairly easily in fact.

Likewise, PC vs. PC combats could be functionally equivalent, no matter how you do it.  Just because a PC is fighting another PC doesn't mean that more than one die needs to be rolled.

But I could go on and on about how I would make your game.  As I said in my first post, it probably wouldn't be what you want.  We obviously see the logic of Claymore working differently.  I don't think my example was any less "faithful" to the way I see the Claymore universe work than your ideas were to the way you see it.  If my example is not faithful to your ideas, that's another story, and you'll just have to find another way to make it work.

In essence, the way I see it, my suggestion does not interfere with your goals.  However, my example might interfere with them, and you can always tweak the numbers until you get it feeling right for you.

Please excuse the rant.  Good luck with your game!

-Jason Timmerman

I like the idea of multiplying, even if it's mechanically difficult to use, because I think it would be fun to use, and would add a lot to the temptation of releasing more power.  A simple way to avoid scores getting wildly different with multiplication mught be to only count the difference in available power level.  You'd have to increase the granularity of "released power" for this to work, so there are, say, ten levels of "available power".  If two characters are on the same level, their scores aren't multiplied.  If there's one level of difference between them, they multiply by 2 (or 1.5), if there are two levels, they multiply by 3 (or two, or whatever progression works for you).  This means that usually you're going to be working with reasonably similar scores, preserving the importance of the d20.  It'll also create a "oneupmanship" thing, where it'll be extremely tempting to bump oneself up in available power to avoid being crushed by a superior fighter.

However! I think there's a more elegant solution to your problem.  Dice pools! Dice pools are cool because they can incorporate minute changes in probability without doing any hard math.  Instead of doing any math, it's just adding in or taking out dice, and counting values.  They're a great way to turn complex mathematical systems into a simple game.  What if, for example, the ratings in each attribute represented die types from d12 (A), to d4 (E).  Available power determines the number of dice rolled, and the AL and DL are the sum of the highest dice rolled of each kind? That's not perfect, but I think it's getting there.  I don't know the setting at all, so I don't know how superhuman the characters are.  The way described above means that more powerful people just perform to the maximum of their abilities more often.  That's not superhuman at all.  For superhuman, reverse the values.  Attributes represent a number of dice (from one to six), and dice type represents available power (from d4 unaugmented humans, to d12s for the most powerful humans, and d20s for demons and super powerful crazy things).  This way, available power dramatically increases both the average result and the maximum result, but there's always a chance for the weakest character to beat the most powerful. 

Hi Jason,

VoidDragon wrote: Please excuse the rant.

Since I know nothing about your setting, especially nothing about what it means to be a "demon" or a "demigod" in your setting, I'll just speak in regards to the Claymore series, a Setting and Situation we're both familiar with.

All of your ideas could easily be integrated into additive mechanics on a D20.

For instance, if you wanted to create creatures of different power levels, you could simply use what Claymore calls a "Genkai" (I think they translate it as Limit?)  Genkai doesn't have to be 20.  Some characters may be able to hit Power 30 before they've exceeded their limits.  This would be that individual character's "100%".  So when the character reaches "80%," and they have Limit 25, then they would be at Power 20 at that point.

Furthermore, if you wanted the gaps between different Speed, Power, etc. to increase in proportion to their base abilities to channel Power into these separate attributes, you could still manage this without multiplication or charts.

I could write a whole argument against using Attributes at all to describe warrior Strength, etc. for Claymore.  (...)  they never put numbers on the traits themselves.

Likewise, PC vs. PC combats could be functionally equivalent, no matter how you do it.  Just because a PC is fighting another PC doesn't mean that more than one die needs to be rolled.

Hi Simon,

Simon wrote: I think there's a more elegant solution to your problem.  Dice pools! Dice pools are cool because they can incorporate minute changes in probability without doing any hard math.  Instead of doing any math, it's just adding in or taking out dice, and counting values.

Hello again, Alexandre.

I'm quite interested, actually.  Sorry if I sounded a bit redundant in that last post, I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page as far as what I was talking about with the math thing.

Regarding the Claymore setting, I apologize if I haven't kept up with canonical guides.  I'm not the type of person to be interested by anything out of the sheer entertainment in a manga or anime.  I've been chewing through Claymore a bit too quickly to deal with American publishing dates or reading/watching it in English.  That said, even if the book you speak of were published here, I wouldn't bother with it.

That said, I understand your concern with canon material.  If you want the players to have a feeling of legitimacy, that's probably a step toward that end.

The main reason I focused on the complexity of your Power mechanic is because you stated a desire for simplification.  I tried to incorporate characters raising their power and exceeding their limits into a single die roll per round because that was basically what I thought you were asking for.

Alexandre wrote:
I want to use the Claymore setting too, but in these posts I don't want to use Claymore terminology, to avoid losing contributions from people like Simon, which do not know the universe but can make useful comments. I'm trying to solve a rule mechanic problem, not discuss the Claymore universe, so a person wishing to post should not need to read anything else about Claymore other than this thread in order to contribute.

If you're attempting to tailor mechanics to the way conflicts pan out in Claymore, at the very least the situations and the way these conflicts work needs to be understood as the mechanic is being designed.  I'm not saying we have to use the specific elements of Claymore.  Battles involving Warriors, Yohma, and the Awakened inevitably make use of Yohki, so the ways in which Yohki works must influence combat mechanics.  At the very least, setting down in your first post some basics on how Yohki (=Power) works was the important point in bridging the gap here.  

But I don't think people will be all that confused if we just use the female pronoun when referring to Warriors.  I noticed your tendancy to speak of characters in the masculine, even though you mentioned Patricia and Claire.  ^^

Regarding your interest in how to achieve exponential growth on an additive scale, I've got a couple ideas that might work here, even with the stats.  First, I need to know which of your original ideas were most important.  For instance, were Power and the five stats all that were provided?  Is the geometric relationship between Power usage and the Attributes set in stone?  Or would you prefer it exponential?  Repeating Simon's question, how important is the 1d20 mechanic to all this?

I'm fairly sure we can keep the numbers, and make a mechanic that will work.  Even more important than the complexity of the mechanic, it would seem, are the balancing points.

For instance, you said that lower-powered characters could team up on a powerful character.  At what ability gap is a 2 on 1 battle balanced?  At what difference in ability is a 5 on 1 battle balanced?  We then use this "ability gap" we came up with.  We can compare it, for instance, with a mechanic we've decided upon, and then use that to arbitrate what numbers can represent the ability levels.  Or, we can compare the "ability gap" with numerical stats we've already decided upon in order to create a mechanic.  All this is a matter of using statistics.  But I don't think that we can decide upon numerical stats, and a mechanic, and then expect our balancing points, i.e., the way the game should work, to pan out correctly.

Another important balancing point would be the speed at which Victory or Failure is reached, how long we expect battles to take, and how these states relate to costs, such as damage taken or resources used.  Will we simply narrate costs, or will costs be important, such as the loss of a limb?

The flat out easiest way to achieve geometric or exponential growth in a system which uses numbers to represent additive values is to add a specific number each time a growth condition is met.  Of course, this wouldn't necessarily account for a warrior suddenly jumping to their Limit from a resting state.  The mechanic for that will have to be based on our understanding of the mechanical effect of the power level difference we actually desire.

I will contemplate more, especially regarding the insights of your last post, and get back to you tomorrow.  Seeing as you're willing to fiddle with the mechanic, and looking at how you view relative differences in power, I'm sure I could think of a better way to handle this.

-Jason Timmerman

Hi Jason,

VoidDragon wrote:
I will contemplate more, especially regarding the insights of your last post, and get back to you tomorrow.

At the very least, setting down in your first post some basics on how Yohki (=Power) works was the important point in bridging the gap here.

But I don't think people will be all that confused if we just use the female pronoun when referring to Warriors.  I noticed your tendancy to speak of characters in the masculine, even though you mentioned Patricia and Claire.  ^^

Regarding your interest in how to achieve exponential growth on an additive scale, I've got a couple ideas that might work here, even with the stats.  First, I need to know which of your original ideas were most important.  For instance, were Power and the five stats all that were provided?  Is the geometric relationship between Power usage and the Attributes set in stone?  Or would you prefer it exponential?  Repeating Simon's question, how important is the 1d20 mechanic to all this?

Even more important than the complexity of the mechanic, it would seem, are the balancing points.

For instance, you said that lower-powered characters could team up on a powerful character.  At what ability gap is a 2 on 1 battle balanced?  At what difference in ability is a 5 on 1 battle balanced?  We then use this "ability gap" we came up with.  We can compare it, for instance, with a mechanic we've decided upon, and then use that to arbitrate what numbers can represent the ability levels.  Or, we can compare the "ability gap" with numerical stats we've already decided upon in order to create a mechanic.

Another important balancing point would be the speed at which Victory or Failure is reached, how long we expect battles to take, and how these states relate to costs, such as damage taken or resources used.  Will we simply narrate costs, or will costs be important, such as the loss of a limb?

Ugh.  Was I too tired to even preview that last post?  I apologize for not putting it into better context, but I was writing it intermittently over the course of an hour and a half doing other things, and by the time I was done writing, I was about to go to bed and saw that you had made another post.  My apologies for being too lazy to fix it.  With editing of posts off, I suppose I'll just have to leave it as-is.

I'm sorry if I've made use of the word "we" in talking about your system.  I'm here to help you out, not to join on-board.  I'm sure much of your creation process will be handled long after I've given my final suggestions.

Alexandre wrote:
Awakened Ones: Demons of such power that they seem like demi-gods

Alexandre wrote:
Nevertheless, I suggest we keep avoiding Claymore terminology, to make things easy to readers unfamiliar with the Claymore universe.

Alexandre wrote:
According to the way I want to set up the Claymore universe in this game, warriors are humans (...)

Alexandre wrote:
with a set of defined Attributes that won't change throughout the campaign. However, the effective capacity of a PC at each Attribute depends on the amount of Power the PC releases. Releasing more Power multiplies the Attribut skill level correspondingly. This is valid for all Attributes, but the increase magnitude depends on the initial value of the Attribute (A,...,E). Of course one could argue that Leadership or Willpower should not necessarily increase with higher amounts of released Power, but that's a secondary issue, to be solved later.

Alexandre wrote:
Another important concept is that Power corrupts. What is important is not so much the absolute amount of Power, but the fraction of total amount of Power that is released.

Alexandre wrote:
Second comes the effort to preserve the manga's canon (type of Attributes, usage of the letter system as defined by the databook, impact of the Released Power fraction on the PC, etc - here is a sample of the databook).

These two are crucial, the first one is the reason I'm interested in the game at all, the second is important to enable acceptance among the public, and is part of the challenge.

Alexandre wrote:
Next is the necessity of an open ended game. This stems from the first two conditions. The manga is not yet finished, and like many other japanese manga, it suffers from an escalation syndrome. At every new release appear mightier and mightier NPCs. For me it's important that the system can easily accommodate future NPCs of unknown power. Also, the infinite growth potential participates in the theme of arms race among (N)PCs of the Claymore universe. Even if you don't want to become more powerfull, you have to, because otherwise you will be crushed by your ennemies. Setting an artificial limit would lower this effect.

Alexandre wrote:
Finally I would like to have a simple and practical randomization system (because it's handy, quicker, and requires less resources to play). Hence the choice of a single D20. I am not religiously attached to the usage of a single D20, but I certainly would not like to have to throw buckets of different dice. I think the absolute maximum I would tolerate would be to throw about 10 D6, or something like that. In the end though, I will accept what it takes to enable the first three points, as long as it remains playable.

Alexandre wrote:

Even more important than the complexity of the mechanic, it would seem, are the balancing points.

I agree that's an important issue, but I thought it could only be solved once the basic game mechanics are sorted out?

Alexandre wrote:
I'm pretty open on that account. I don't want to manage more than 5 vs 1 warrior duels, so we don't really need to manage gaps higher than those that allow five warriors to beat a single superior one. Of course, those five warriors would maybe not be enough to beat their opponent, but then the gap is just too high, and it's not a problem if the system does not manage that.

Alexandre wrote:
What that means in concrete terms depends a lot on the specifics: maybe 5 humans can beat one demon, or certain demons, but maybe not other demons. The same way, maybe 2 demons are enough to beat a Power wielding warrior, but maybe more are required.

Alexandre wrote:
Of course, like in the manga, if a warrior has regenerative capacities, a limb loss during a Duel is possible. But if that would mean the end of a Duel for an opponent unable to regenerate, then I would avoid that before the end of the Duel. In short, permanent losses are narrated, not provided mechanistically by the system.

VoidDragon wrote: I'm sorry if I've made use of the word "we" in talking about your system.  I'm here to help you out, not to join on-board.  I'm sure much of your creation process will be handled long after I've given my final suggestions.

I think even saying that warriors are still "human" is not answered by the comic.  In fact, warriors have to deal with that question, "Am I human?" as a part of the drama of the Situation.

I realize that you may see this point is a matter of manga cliche, can we simply say that Warriors are Warriors, leaving the question as to whether they are human in doubt?

A counterpoint to this is that warriors can adapt to use their Power in different ways.  I think their ability to channel Power into different "attributes" can adapt throughout the course of a campaign, as evidenced by Claire's continued growth, and learning of new techniques.

Even with a canonical guide out, I think that we could still simply think of the Attributes you listed rather as Ratings instead of Attributes.  It would simply make more sense to me that Warriors create these Ratings through use of Power in different Techniques.  To me, that would be "truer to the setting."  Again, however, this is your game, so you have the final say.

I noticed in the factbook a couple things.  While the text is too blurry when I zoom in, it looks like Power is rated as a letter grade as well.  Since the lowest-ranked Warrior in the Organization doesn't have an F in anything, are we sure that F exists?  Besides this, she has a C+ as of the Battle in the North?  So +/- grades exist, as well?

If we can get Power on the same scale as other attributes, then we have I think a better basis to go on.  We don't need to use numbers like 50 or 500 for Power release.

What we could do with the letter grades is a sort of Wraparound.  Like I was saying earlier, these grades might be looked at like a Report Card from the Organization, meaning they're only meant to classify Warriors that have existed.  That said, there might be warriors that change their notions surprisingly in a certain attribute, and for these, they might even use A++.  But there are some Awakened Ones on a completely different level.  At that point, we could start wrapping around to Z, Y, X, W, V, etc. to account for them on the same scale?  Just a thought.  These may have to correspond to numbers one way or another, if we're going to use numbered dice.

Figuring out balance after figuring out the mechanic is a backward and patchwork way to go about it.  If Balance is not built in in the first place, it's like hitting your head against a brick wall to get the exact Balance you want in afterward.  You're welcome to try it to have that experience, but I'm not sure I'd want to help you if you go about it that way.  You inevitably end up adding in a ton of fudge factors to the mechanics, and it can easily get unelegant.

Remember that system includes any way of deciding what happens in a game.  It's nonsensical, then, to say that a system does not handle something that happens in a game world.  So even if the manner of deciding who wins is just "He's an elder male Awakened One.  You're Warrior #47 in the Organization.  You lose."  That's still system.

Alexandre wrote:

Even with a canonical guide out, I think that we could still simply think of the Attributes you listed rather as Ratings instead of Attributes.  It would simply make more sense to me that Warriors create these Ratings through use of Power in different Techniques.  To me, that would be "truer to the setting."  Again, however, this is your game, so you have the final say.

I must admit I did not understand what you are trying to say?

A quick note.

If you want your game to be about Humanity, having a humanity score is the worst way to go about that.  The question "Am I still human?" won't have much traction in your game if the players can just look at their character sheet to answer it.  Ultimately, if you want that question to be important, it needs to be the players, and not the game, judging whether the character is still human.  That's a tricky thing to accomplish.  Two games that foucs on issues of humanity are "My Life With Master" and "Sorcerer".  They do so in very different ways, which I'll outline here.

"My Life With Master"has no "humanity" score.  There's a score called "self-loathing" which marks the degree the character sees itself as a monster, and there's "weariness" which determines how much your character still cares about the people around it, and itself, but there's no humanity score.  Ultimately, "Self-Loathing" and "Weariness" decide if your character will overcome the Master, but the game never answers the question of whether the character is a monster or not.  You may find even the character with the highest self-loathing to be the most human, and the least self-hating to be the most monstrous.  The judgement is left to the players.

"Sorceror" has a humanity score, and it confused me for a long time, until I realised that Sorcerer is not "about" humanity at all.  It's about how willing the character is to sacrifice that humanity for power.  There's no score in the game that tells you that, and there's no judgement of whether sacrificing humanity is justified or not.  A character with low humanity might be a selfish asshole, or someone who puts some ideal ahead of their own humanity.  Ultimately, it's the players who judge the characters, and decide if their actions were justified.

(Sorry Ron if I've totally misinterpreted your game.)

So it sounds like your game is dealing with similar issues to Sorcerer:  The price of power, whether it's worth becoming a monster to save the world, how far each character will go.  The tension between humanity and power reinforces that.

There's a problem though.  If the characters are fighting to save the world, then it's always worth it to sacrifice their humanity.  The game doesn't address the questions you want to,  because there's no interesting question at its core.  If the choice is sacrifice your humanity or the world ends, it's a boring question.  It's an interesting tactical question, managing the risk of going over the edge against the need for more power, but from a thematic point of view, it's not so interesting, because it's never viable to choose not to release more power.  It's just a stick to make the characters act nice to people when they can.

So I think your game would be far better off dealing with humanity in a similar way to MLWM.  The question isn't "how much will I risk my humanity?" it's "what does it mean to lose humanity?" "Am I still human?" "How do I become human again?" and so on.  To facilitate this, I think it's best to remove the Humanity score entirely.  What mechanics you do use for this is up to you, but I think that having a score called "Humanity" is a direct hindrance to answering those kinds of questions.  Look at Vampire, if you need proof. 

Sorry, that wasn't the quick note I expected it to be.

VoidDragon wrote:
A major fricative point is the difference in how we see Yoki working.  I see a Warrior as being able to focus Yoki through Techniques to achieve results.  You see a Warrior as being able to amplify Human Attributes using Yoki.  It doesn't look like we can come to an agreement here.

Why do you need Attributes to represent a Warrior's Human component?  First, why does it matter what her attributes were when she was a human?  From a Warrior's standpoint, they were all pretty much the same as humans: cannon fodder.

Shouldn't some of the Warrior's Passions and Traumas represent her human component instead?  I honestly think that how strong she was years ago has no bearing on how she can channel Yoki into her strength now.

Simon wrote: If you want your game to be about Humanity, having a humanity score is the worst way to go about that.  The question "Am I still human?" won't have much traction in your game if the players can just look at their character sheet to answer it.  Ultimately, if you want that question to be important, it needs to be the players, and not the game, judging whether the character is still human.[

So it sounds like your game is dealing with similar issues to Sorcerer:  The price of power, whether it's worth becoming a monster to save the world, how far each character will go.  The tension between humanity and power reinforces that.

There's a problem though.  If the characters are fighting to save the world, then it's always worth it to sacrifice their humanity.  The game doesn't address the questions you want to,  because there's no interesting question at its core.  If the choice is sacrifice your humanity or the world ends, it's a boring question.

Continuing on the absence of choice about using the Power. It's true that actually there is no choice. This is a Duel game, if people do not fight, there is no game. So people will fight, and they will use the Power. The question then is not whether you will use the Power and pay the price.  There will always be a price, the issue is how you will pay it. This will tell who you are.

I thought further on the humanity issue, and came up with two new gauges to replace Humanity: Care and Hope. The way they function is not so different from the previous Humanity gauge, but hopefully they will be more useful in bringing up issues on the humanity of the Warriors.

Care: Care is a gauge that indicates how much the Warrior cares for others, himself, and is cared by others. Care increases when the Warrior makes something significant that shows that she cares for others. Even better, it will increase further if others show that they care for the Warrior. A Warrior with 0 Care has lost attachment to others, the world and herself.

Hope: This gauge quantifies the state of the Warrior beliefs. Every time the Warrior acts on her beliefs at a personal cost, this gauge will go up. It is also possible to envision that other's acts can increase a Warrior Hope. A Warrior without hope has lost faith in her beliefs, and in the world in general. Having high Hope does not mean that the Warrior thinks things will go well for her. It means she believes she will remain worthy of her own respect until her end.

Initially I thought about using a thirg gauge: Resolve, but in the end I think it conflicts with the Willpower attribute and the Hope gauge. I think all Warrior goals can impact on either Care or Hope.

So, how does this work?

Each Spring Warrior starts with a stock of Care and Hope. Everytime she uses her Power, she rolls Effective Power vs Willpower + either Care or Hope. If she loses, her level of Care or Hope is reduced. She will awaken if any of both gauges reaches zero.

In order to increase her Hope and Care gauges, the Warrior needs to act on her Passions and Beliefs. A Warrior who does not earn Care or Hope points by developping Passions or Beliefs or acting on them,  will run out of her initial stock, and undergo Awakening. This can be exemplified by Elena, a fellow Warrier of Claire. Elena starts at the same time as Claire, but spends her moral ressources rapidly, because she fails to find something to hang on to. Claire survives longer because she develops Passions that orient her life.

I would say that a Warrior changes from Spring to Summer when she has sufficiently developped her Passions and Beliefs to survive beyond the initial Care and Hope stock.

How do these Passions and Beliefs develop? They can be suggested by the GM, or picked up by the player. What is important is that as the PC Warrior starts to act upon these Beliefs or Passions, not only will she win more and more Care and Hope points, but her story arc will be more and more influenced by them. Eventually, these Passions and Beliefs will come to define the PC. What is also important is that these Passions and Beliefs will ultimately put the Warrior on a collision course with her existence within the Organization, ushering the Warrior to her existencial crisis and Autumn phase.

In this way I think both gauges can better frame the humanity issues that the Warriors face, while powering the PC story arc development.

Awesome.  You've got some really great ideas for you game here.  I especially like the idea of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Warriors.  I think it's a really cool structure around which to build your story.  Have you thought about mechanically differentiating between each of the stages?

What I mean is that since fighting and defeating demons is an essential part of the story, you can pretty much assume that it's going to happen.  That makes it a pretty poor motivation for the players.  What's cool to me is the idea that, as a Spring Warrior, my goal is to develop into a Summer Warrior, so I'm trying to develop hopes and beliefs, and I do that through fighting.  I develop Passions in this stage as well.  Perhaps there's a mechanic that lets me buy off damage by adding a new hope or belief relevant to the situation, or I can add a Passion relevant to the situation to increase my power.  When I have a certain number of these, I progress to a Summer Warrior.  As a Summer Warrior, I'm complicating the picture.  I don't know exaclty how you'd work this, but maybe you'd introduce mechanics about the truama here.  The idea is that during combats I can do things with my beliefs and hoppes, passions and Trauma, that move me towards the Autumn phase.

I like the idea of the whole game being a kind of extended character creation.  You're always building your character (through combat) towards completion, which is also the end of that character's story.

Something I noticed writing this was that you seem to have a lot of fiddly bits on the character sheet: Beliefs, Hope, Trauma, Passions, Care, and so on.  Are they all essential?  I can't say, but it's probably a good idea to keep this list as tight as possible.

Simon wrote:
Something I noticed writing this was that you seem to have a lot of fiddly bits on the character sheet: Beliefs, Hope, Trauma, Passions, Care, and so on.  Are they all essential?  I can't say, but it's probably a good idea to keep this list as tight as possible

I especially like the idea of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Warriors.  I think it's a really cool structure around which to build your story.  Have you thought about mechanically differentiating between each of the stages?

What I mean is that since fighting and defeating demons is an essential part of the story, you can pretty much assume that it's going to happen.  That makes it a pretty poor motivation for the players.  What's cool to me is the idea that, as a Spring Warrior, my goal is to develop into a Summer Warrior, so I'm trying to develop hopes and beliefs, and I do that through fighting.

I like the idea of the whole game being a kind of extended character creation.  You're always building your character (through combat) towards completion, which is also the end of that character's story.

Jason suggested a different system of resolution, based on D10. I quote (slightly modified):

VoidDragon wrote:
The idea for a dice pool, which keeps your balance points intact, and makes use of the +/- system, is below.

The dice pools always represent the Defense.  The defender rolls a number of d10s equal to (Defender's Rank - Attacker's Rank + 2)x3.  If the defender has a + or -, she adds or subtracts one to her pool, and does the reverse if the attacker has a + or -.

Any 1s on a normal die mean a successful defense.  5 normal dice can be combined into a Tetradie.  On a Tetradie, any 1-4 means a successful defense.  3 Tetradice can be combined into an Octadie.  On an Octadie, any 1-8 means a successful defense.  A good idea to handle this would be to figure out if the dice pool is over 15, convert 15 dice into one Octadie.  You really should never be rolling over 8 total dice if you do this conversion, and in balanced fights, the dice should stay around 4 or less.

If a Defender has zero dice (because the Attacker beats her by at least 2 grades), then the Defender will have to spend some resource to actually build a defense pool to be able to defend at all.

So for example if fighter 1 has Strength B+ and fighter 2 has Speed C-, then the defense for Fighter 1 would be:

(B minus C+ 2) x 3 +1 +1 = 11D10 : B minus C = 1, Always add +/- after multiplying by 3

11d10 = 2 Tetradice and 1 Regular Die.  Any 1-4 on the Tetradice, or any 1s on the regular dice would mean a successful defense.

The way you've formulated each season, with a clear goal and reward for the player and GM, is really, really cool.  Make sure that clarity remains in the final text.  I recently played a game of The Mountain Witch, and it really highlighted for me the value of really knowing what your goal is in playing your character.  I think what you've got here is gold.

I like the mechanical distinctions as well, but I think maybe the lines between the different seasons could be clearer? For example, I'd like to see something that says "A character enters Summer when she has X Hopes points, and X Passions, and her Trauma has been revealed", and "A character enters Autumn when she has X techniques" and so on. 

Are you familiar with "Keys" from The Shadow of Yesterday? I don't think they're precisely what you're after, but they might provide some interesting inspiration for how to make "Passions" work in your game.  I'm also seeing a parallel between TSoY Experience points, and your Hope.  That's cool.

Here's a possible way of doing this:
In Spring, a character can get a power boost of some kind, maybe reduce damage or do a really powerful attack, if she decides to take some aspect of the current situation as a "Passion".  If they're defending a town, maybe she takes "Defending the Helpless" as a Passion, or maybe she chooses a "Love" for a particular person in the town as the Passion.  Also, for a mechanical bonus, the player can choose to have a flashback to the Trauma.  I don't know much about trauma, and how it should work, but these scenes should just introduce the character's Trauma without resolving much.  Once the character has a certain number of Passions, and has introduced her Trauma, she enters Summer phase.

In Summer, a character gets Hope points for acting on her Passions.  This could work like Keys in TSoY.  If you've got "Defending the Helpless", maybe you get one Hope point every fight in which you're defending a helpless person.  Maybe you get three hope points if you take a big risk to do it, and five hope points if you abandon your friends to defend someone helpless.  If you've taken love for a particular character, maybe you get one hope for being with them in a scene, three hope if you take their advice about something, and five hope if you're put in danger because of them.  Something like that.  During Summer, hope points can be spent to buy Techniques.  This provides a big motivation for acting on Passions.  Something should happen with Trauma here too, just to keep it in people's minds.  Perhaps one time during Summer the GM must introduce a scene involving some aspect of the character's Trauma.  The character gets a Hope reward for dealing with the scene.  Once the character has several Techniques mastered, she enters Autumn.  Here is where the GM needs to present a special scene, for that character, where her goals or passions come in conflict with the rest of the organisation.  The player can choose to sacrifice her goal (and end the character's story) or to go against the organisation, and continue it.

In Autumn, I think, is where things get interesting.  I think that here's where the "Buyoff" from Keys will be really useful.  The character still gets Hope for acting according to her Passions, but now she has another option: Act against the Passion, and gain a really big reward of Hope.  But, the Passion is gone forever.  The character lets a helpless innocent die to persue her own goals, she turns her back on her loved one, and so on.  You need some mechanics for Trauma in here as well, but I don't know how you want that to work.  Can you talk more about Trauma?  Anyhow, Autumn ends when the character only has a single Passion remaining, and all others have been sacrificed. 

Winter is all about the Trauma, and the last remaining Passion.  I don't know how the rules should work here.

Anyway, that's one way of doing it.  I'm sure you'll see lots of ways of improving it, and making it fit with the ideas you have more.  I'd really like to hear more about Trauma and how you envision that working.  I think this game idea is hot, and I really want to see where it goes.  I love the idea of different characters having different goals in play, centered around the seasons, so you've got grizzled Autumn veterans slowly coming to terms with themselves, while Spring warriors are just discovering what they really care about.  A game that lets you play out these stories side-by-side is super hot to me.

Aloha, Alexandre.

My focus on the resolution mechanic should in no way imply that I find it more interesting.  In fact, I like your descriptions of "what the game is about" at different times in a warrior's life.  I just don't have much time to comment on that. ^^

Alexandre wrote:
- Why not consider that the player is rolling for Attack, instead of being for Defense? Mechanically it seems equivalent, and the player feels more "active", and less "passive". If a player does not have enough ressources to attack the enemy, the player could rationalize that as just fighting a player too powerfull...

Alexandre wrote:
- Would one use only one Attribute on a roll, or several? In the example provided only one Attribute is used. Until now I was thinking that each roll would mix a physical and mental Attribute, but I think it's also ok to use only one of the 4 Attributes. However I would like for instance that Leadership gives an edge in a duel involving a faction, if the faction has a recognized leader.

Alexandre wrote:
- With the previous system, the number of "hits" was used to pool results of the fighters of the same faction, and to qualify victory (if a faction had double the amount of "hits" than the other, SOC moved two steps in advantage, instead of one). In this system, it only matters if a defense is successful or not. Would there be a way to qualify the advantage gained?

Alexandre wrote:
- How do fighters in a faction mechanically cooperate to provide an advantage? Is defense rolled for each fighter? Does one compare the number of successful defenses?

Alexandre wrote:
- Finally, how does Power influence these rolls? Are calculations done as without Power, but simply the final number of dice rolled doubled for each Effective Power difference?

Err.  Wait.  I already thought of a problem with that last comment, on how to use the system with your vision of power.  Thinking of Power as something that basically stacks naturally, as various warriors have different default levels of released power, would upset the balance of the power relationships that we already set into motion.

Fixes might be:
1. more rolls per round (making a power-based roll separately)
2. averaging of power with another attribute and adding dice
3. thinking about Power the same way I did when devising this mechanic
4. changing the way you see power balance
5. lowering the multiplier of dice for each grade (1.5???)
6. giving up on this mechanic entirely

-Jason Timmerman

Hi Jason,

VoidDragon wrote:
My focus on the resolution mechanic should in no way imply that I find it more interesting.  In fact, I like your descriptions of "what the game is about" at different times in a warrior's life.  I just don't have much time to comment on that. ^^

Of course, the difference here is that I see the Warrior ratings as designations set by the Organization based on a Warrior's level in each as a Warrior (which would INCLUDE their ability to channel Power), not as a human.  You see those ratings as Human levels.

My justification for this is that every time anybody says "She's the fastest Warrior in the Organization" or whatever, they're always talking about her ability to use superhuman techniques to achieve that speed etc.  Every time a warrior compares their abilities with another warrior, they are talking about their effectiveness as a warrior, not the traits that their human body would have if they had remained human, which you see as "innate."

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your enthusiasm! To me it's clear that the quality of the game system has dramatically improved thanks to the input Jason and your have provided. This thread has been a godsend for the game design process.

Simon wrote:
I like the mechanical distinctions as well, but I think maybe the lines between the different seasons could be clearer? For example, I'd like to see something that says "A character enters Summer when she has X Hopes points, and X Passions, and her Trauma has been revealed", and "A character enters Autumn when she has X techniques" and so on. 

Are you familiar with "Keys" from The Shadow of Yesterday? I don't think they're precisely what you're after, but they might provide some interesting inspiration for how to make "Passions" work in your game.  I'm also seeing a parallel between TSoY Experience points, and your Hope.  That's cool.

In Spring, a character can get a power boost of some kind, maybe reduce damage or do a really powerful attack, if she decides to take some aspect of the current situation as a "Passion".  If they're defending a town, maybe she takes "Defending the Helpless" as a Passion, or maybe she chooses a "Love" for a particular person in the town as the Passion.  Also, for a mechanical bonus, the player can choose to have a flashback to the Trauma.  I don't know much about trauma, and how it should work, but these scenes should just introduce the character's Trauma without resolving much.  Once the character has a certain number of Passions, and has introduced her Trauma, she enters Summer phase.

In Summer, a character gets Hope points for acting on her Passions.  This could work like Keys in TSoY.  If you've got "Defending the Helpless", maybe you get one Hope point every fight in which you're defending a helpless person.  Maybe you get three hope points if you take a big risk to do it, and five hope points if you abandon your friends to defend someone helpless.

During Summer, hope points can be spent to buy Techniques.  This provides a big motivation for acting on Passions.

Something should happen with Trauma here too, just to keep it in people's minds.  Perhaps one time during Summer the GM must introduce a scene involving some aspect of the character's Trauma. The character gets a Hope reward for dealing with the scene.

Once the character has several Techniques mastered, she enters Autumn.  Here is where the GM needs to present a special scene, for that character, where her goals or passions come in conflict with the rest of the organisation.  The player can choose to sacrifice her goal (and end the character's story) or to go against the organisation, and continue it.

In Autumn, I think, is where things get interesting.  I think that here's where the "Buyoff" from Keys will be really useful.  The character still gets Hope for acting according to her Passions, but now she has another option: Act against the Passion, and gain a really big reward of Hope.  But, the Passion is gone forever.  The character lets a helpless innocent die to persue her own goals, she turns her back on her loved one, and so on.  (...) Autumn ends when the character only has a single Passion remaining, and all others have been sacrificed.

Can you talk more about Trauma?

I love the idea of different characters having different goals in play, centered around the seasons, so you've got grizzled Autumn veterans slowly coming to terms with themselves, while Spring warriors are just discovering what they really care about.  A game that lets you play out these stories side-by-side is super hot to me.

Alexandre,

The d10 system I offered up has geometric progression.  Dice represent multiples of effectiveness.  This extends to power as well, the way I envisioned power working.  So the difference isn't so much in Geometric Progression (both systems do that), but in handling your vision of Yoki.

Alexandre wrote:
Their system has low grain and limited range: For some obscure reason, they chose to use letters instead of numerals to quantify abilities. This means that the range covered by the system is restricted to the Warrior class, and with very low grain. Like you say, humans (and probably Demons) get completely out of the range. That's not a big problem, since the Organization's aim is not to quantify human abilities, but Warrior's. But then they use the same broken system to quantify Awakened ones, using values such as SS, or SSS+ (S for special? super?), which means (1) they are out of the range of their system, (2) they are starting to mix a qualitative with a quantitative system. They would be better off by scrapping the whole notation system and going for numbers.

Alexandre, it sounds like you've got some pretty solid ideas now of where your game is going.  I'm really glad that I've been helpful to you.  I think what you need to do now is sit down and write up some draft rules, and if possible, playtest them a little.  Even if you're not able to playtest yet, I think getting some concrete rules written will really help with future discussions, where we can hammer out the finer points. 

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing your next thread.

Hi Jason,

VoidDragon wrote:
The d10 system I offered up has geometric progression.  Dice represent multiples of effectiveness.  This extends to power as well, the way I envisioned power working.  So the difference isn't so much in Geometric Progression (both systems do that), but in handling your vision of Yoki.

My thoughts are that going halfway on whether you want to use the guidebook are not would leave me with an uneasy feeling regarding immersion.  I say use the guidebook, or don't.

I suppose my point is that, if you don't want to use their range of designations, why use letters at all?  Why bother with their limited range if you don't like it?

In the system I presented to you, you would not have to scrap the notation system at all.  (...) The system I presented does not ignore the fact that Power can modify effectiveness.  It includes my vision of Power, which is still geometric.

Perhaps I should never have presented it to you.  If I let my ideas try to taint your vision, I apologize.

Simon wrote: I think what you need to do now is sit down and write up some draft rules, and if possible, playtest them a little.  Even if you're not able to playtest yet, I think getting some concrete rules written will really help with future discussions, where we can hammer out the finer points.