The setting is feudal Japan, or really any place similar, be it historical or made up. I have seen people do simmilar things in the past, though more like samurai games using rule sets from other games than something designed specifically for a samurai-themed game. Think of a classic samurai film, like Yojimbo or Samurai Rebellion. These stories are driven strongly by complex characters and the difficult situations that they are put in, or put themselves in, with the action being fast, furious, and decisive, though far from just some kind of hack-and-slash scene. Fights are done with style and grace, and quick-thinking. One tiny mistake means instantaneous death. A battle system that represents this well is the core of the game, not to say that it is particularly combat-oriented. Encounters are relatively quick, but still require thought and strategy to pull a victory, more than just "I slash this guy!" -while that is certainly an option- and do use a skill-based system that makes one character's strengths and weaknesses in battle different than those of the next. This is done through a "school" system that lets a player's character study a particular form of swordsmanship and gain bonuses and abilities unique to that school. Players may stick to one school or dabble in as many as they like with a leveling system like that of D&D 3.5, so I player may be a master of one school and excel at fighting how that school teaches, or divide their levels among numerous schools to learn that style of fighting in addition to any others.

Specifics of the combat system are still being worked out, but health is pooled and health totals compared to average damage will be lower than that of other games, meaning that death will come by more quickly. I considered dividing health among body parts but I have come too a compromise between the two health systems: again, health is pooled, but penalties come into play based on health percentages. For example, if a player is at full health, they can fight normally. If a player is at ten-percent or lower, they suffer a multitude of penalties, such as being slowed, taking a penalty to attack rols, etc. A player at, say, fifty percent, would only take some of those penalties. Attacking works precisely as it does in something like D&D, but if the attack total is equal to the defence total, it results in a "clash" in which both players roll d2s until one rolls higher than the other without applying any bonuses. If the attacker wins, the target takes half damage. If the defender wins, no damage is dealt.

At this stage of development at least, the combat system is my main focus. Do you guys think that I am taking this in a good direction? Or do you have any suggestions?

Hey, Sojikai!

My biggest thought is basically - do you want the game to be about sword-fighting, or do you want the sword-fighting to be *about* something else?

I ask because I'm intrigued/confused by this passage:

Sojikai said,
These stories are driven strongly by complex characters and the difficult situations that they are put in, or put themselves in, with the action being fast, furious, and decisive.... A battle system that represents this well is the core of the game, not to say that it is particularly
combat-oriented.

A character has several Spiritual Attributes, named variously as Faith, Passion, Honor, and similar, and specified by the player. They act as metagame mechanics on any other roll you make, if the Passion or whatever applies to the situation. In other words, fighting some random schmoe uses the plain old combat rules (speed, weapon, etc, etc), but fighting the Six-Fingered Man gets you all sorts of bonuses since your various personality scores are involved.

First I want to thank you for taking the time to not only read my general ideas for my game but to leave a response.

What I meant by that passage is not altogether different from what you mentioned later- swordfighting is a big part, but is not "what's going on". What I mean is that through story events, the tension is built up to a point of physical conflict, or an "encounter", to put it in RPG terms. Rather than "go here, fight a random tribe of goblins, find object on pedestal, fight guardian for object", gameplay will consist more of diplomacy, or other story-based events rather than just venturing out on a straightforward quest and battling some random monsters along the way. Players will be given a situation that they need to resolve one way or another. Let me go back to Yojimbo. A large part of that story is the particular method with which Sanjuro attempts to solve the main conflict. The sword fights are consequence of the actions of the players, not the goal of the players, except of course if they're trying to assassinate a particular figure.
With the combat system is hope to recreate thte feeling of those classic showdowns from Kurosawa's golden age of samurai flicks. This is the focal idea of the game. However, it is impossible to fully recreate that feeling without building up to it with the diplomacy and political intrigue that I think is an essential part of the "samurai" experience.

I hope that this has cleared things up for you.

Hi,

What tasks have you decided players have in this? Are they to be somewhat like co-authors?

I'm inclined to think that players only having like stats and bonus to hit and health - it doesn't give them any co-authoring tools of much significance, the majority of the time. So you don't end up with complex characters, or you do but only by chance after alot of sessions if your lucky.

I think if you only grant the players the capacity to work with character stats and abilities only, play will revolve around RPG's wargaming roots and playing to win. Trying to co-author a story while having only the abilities of a character and not an author - it's failure counter intuitive.

Welcome to the forge and some of it's participants crazy ideas! :)

One of my goals in this project is to devise a system that encourages players to not only play the role of the soldier, but that of the war-room strategist or diplomat, so to speak. Rather than simply carrying out tasks, players will have to come to a decision on what tasks to carry out without anything being overtly suggested to them for the most part. It is designed to be roleplay-heavy and discourage people from playing "some cool samurai dude" and playing "-insert elaborate Japanese name here-, Champion of the Red Moon, guardian of serenity, banisher of piety", if you catch my drift. I want the game to encourage players to deck out their character's personality, rather than being just another generic samurai. I shall attempt to do this by implementing a non-combat system for negotiations with a variety of different negotiation methods and giving NPCs set resistances to particular methods. For example, a particular NPC may be more resistant to intimidation than normal, but more likely to accept a bribe. Mostly what I've seen in other games is that it's up to the GM's discretion whether an intimidation check, and rarely have I seen detailed non-combat systems involving rolls and all.

So yes, the players are also partly storytellers, but through their characters exclusively. This of course is something that is present in near all tabletops, but something that I would like to put more emphasis on in this game.

According to your stated goals, a system in which each combatant rolls once, and whoever gets highest slays the other, would be perfectly plausible.  If combat is a brief (but significant) conclusion to the real meat of play, which is the rest of the social stuff, then you don't need a detailed combat system at all.

You  may want to check out some other samurai games which do similar things, at least to see some ideas of how differently you can do it.

For example, John Wick's Blood & Honor has a strong system focusing mostly on the non-combat issues of duty vs. personal goals, and when combat happens - the winner deals a mortal wound - period. 

The Mountain Witch follows a band of ronin who've all agreed to kill the Mountain Witch, but the real focus is their own issues and fates which are explored along the journey - especially dealing with the issues of trust amongst the band.  Death is possible, but getting wounded badly is a likely result from most encounters.

If you want the game to be not combat central, consider working on the system that drives choices and play of non-combat stuff first, and work on combat later.  I'd also say, if it's easy to die, you may not want to have tons of effort players need to go through in building a character- no one likes to spend 40 minutes to generate a character and have them die in 2 combat rounds.

Chris

The duel system in The Mountain Witch is particularly satisfying. The two players build up their dice pools by alternately rolling dice, but in secret. The characters are standing there in that "staring" phase. When either player says so, the pools are revealed.

Anyway, though, I wanted to take a larger view and look at the basic options.

1. Highly contextual fights, complex and bit-by-bit resolution for fights
2. Highly contextual fights, short "overview" resolution for fights
3. Constant and routine fights, complex and bit-by-bit resolution for fights
4. Constant and routine fights, short "overview" resolution for fights

Clearly you've eliminated 3 and 4 already (and I appreciate your clarity). What I'm trying to express is that #1 is not a bad option, if the complexity of the resolution genuinely adds to the color, drama, and consequence of the fight. I think The Riddle of Steel achieved that goal, and other games which have worked hard at the same concept include the Burning Wheel, my own Sorcerer, and Ralph Mazza's game in development, Robots & Rapiers.

Maybe I'm not saying this well. I'm trying to say that the difference between 1 and 2 above is entirely a different choice from the difference between 1&2 vs. 3&4. So given that you seek a specific relationship between personal/social problems and fights, that doesn't dictate that your fight mechanics must be simpler, unless you want them to be.

Best, Ron

I had some trouble with my internet connection today; as a result, Ron has mentioned some things I wanted to share ^_^ Here goes!

Sojikai, I gotta ask... what RPGs have you played/read? The former is most important, but the latter is useful to know, too, to get a sense of what your "horizon" looks like.

I ask because those of us who are responding have tried some pretty outre games, ones that differ from, say, D&D and the like quite considerably.

One thing that comes to mind: Callan mentioned players being co-authors. If your goal is to use this game to tell cool stories about samurai, (as in, if you related the game to a non-gamer who likes samurai, they would be invested and follow along) then chances are good that players will need just a little more mechanical *oomph* at their disposal than character abilities.

This can be a lot of things - some games use action/character/plot "points" that can be earned and then used to affect dice rolls as the players see fit to use them. Basically, to meaningfully participate in co-authoring a story with the GM, players will need some resource that allows them to affect the outcome of play from an "outside" perspective - i.e. some "metagame" mechanic, something that acknowledges the game that is going on, rather than merely staying tightly focused on the in-game setting, etc.

Does this make any sense?

Let's take contracycle's suggestion and run with it - if we each roll once, and whoever loses is dead (katanas are serious business), and the player loses, then his character is dead. To not be able to die would be to completely push aside the thematic risks of dueling - you circle each other, you charge, and then after a moment of stillness, someone's gi flowers with red and they collapse. But what if what you're after is a gripping samurai story? If the hero can be killed in the first fight scene, and, depending on circumstances, might *likely* die then, that's kind of a crappy story. Unless we then follow his shade's underwordly adventures, of course.

So - another suggestion: since they're samurai, they only get into fights if they absolutely must. But let's jazz it up a bit - maybe, if a fight is not super-climactic for the story, we roll some other rolls to see if the PC is otherwise defeated or detained without resorting to swordplay. He is disgraced, he's captured and tied up, a loved one is taken hostage, etc. He still loses something, and the plot advances, but without the risk of him totally dying on page 3. If a fight is really important to him, and if if feels right to a player to risk his bushi's life at this time in the tale, then go for it, and don't hold back!

Basically, what I'm imagining is, you ask the player - Would you risk your life on this? If not, then the fight doesn't happen. Nobody can make you fight. It would be good, I think, for players to be able to acquire some kind of metagame points they can spend, based on fulfilling personal goals or something, or maybe based on the player deliberately NOT fulfilling personal goals (I let them take my wife! *aaaaaangst*), such that the PC has more say than just the dice roll as to whether he... not just whether he lives, but whether the player gets what he wants from the situation. It may be that some cowardly bushi, unworthy of his swords, would choose his life over his honor. My point is that I want to engineer some mechanics where the player can make that choice in a meaningful way.

ON THE OTHER HAND
Of course, if the game you're envisioning is about overcoming challenges - about noble bushi using their wits, their cunning, and only reluctantly their swords to solve problems for their masters, then ignore the above suggestions. I suppose that's the larger question I want to ask, though, and it's a hard one to ask if you aren't as into this weird theory-stuff as I am - is your game about telling a gripping, emotional tale, or about *winning* at something regardless of what kind of pathos the tale might have?

Does that make sense? If you're excited about the story-focused suggestions I outlined above, I would highly recommend reading these mini-essays as well: A Small Thing About Suspense, A Small Thing About Character Death, and Practical Conflict Resolution Advice. At least those first two - they talk explicitly about how stories are structured. [find them here: http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html]

Thanks!

Combat systems in which the combatants roll once to decide the entire combat is not at all what I am going for. I am trying to create a system that is fast-paced compared to, say, D&D, but combat still consists of multiple complete rounds.

Here is what I have come up with so far:
1. For negotiation sequences, a "momentum" system. Let's say that the players are trying to free someone's daughter from the clutches of bandits through nonviolence. They all agree to negotiate. One of the players tells the leader of the bandits that he will cut him down if they don't surrender the girl to them. He makes an intimidation check against the bandit. Let's say that the roll succeeds and the bandit is noticably intimidated. The player then receives a +a bonus to the next non-combat roll against the bandit; the bandit knows that this guy's for real and thus is a little more likely to pay attention to his words. If the next roll succeeds, the bonus increses to +2, with +3 being the maximum bonus gained this way. On the flipside, a failed attempt results in a penalty to checks against that character. Three failed rolls in a row, and the character more or less ignores that player's words.

Now I have more to add but I do not want to miss Hammer Horror night on TCM.

sojikai wrote:
Combat systems in which the combatants roll once to decide the entire combat is not at all what I am going for. I am trying to create a system that is fast-paced compared to, say, D&D, but combat still consists of multiple complete rounds.

Hi everyone,

There's a grey zone between helping someone critique his or her own desires and goals, vs. helping them meet them.

I want to stress that Gareth's "why" question is not merely provocative for its own sake. It's a useful question that makes an important point simpy by being asked, as well as through whatever answer may be there. Such questions are often key for a designer to arrive at what they really want.

However, sometimes, the designer simply knows and is happy with knowing it - and not out of unconsidered ignorance, but through what can only be called aesthetic preference or goal. In that case, the "why" is distracting and irrelevant

I don't know how to tell the difference between the two situations. I do know that I've seen a person's desire to discuss their game in design get tanked when the deconstruction hits levels they don't need to go toward.

I'm going to hold my nose, jump, and say that I think the statement which very clearly says what's to be discussed should be respected by all of us, and we should simply turn our attention to games like The Riddle of Steel, Robots & Rapiers, Burning Wheel, Zero, and (modestly) Sorcerer to see what can be mined, critiqued, or possibly serve as negative examples.

However, Sojikai, if it seems to you as if the "Why" question knocks on some doors you want opened, then say so, and we can go there too. You're in charge at this point.

Best, Ron

The answer to the "why" questiion is actually quite simple. I feel that there is a great deal more to climactic samurai duels than just one battojutsu strike, or staring each other down before delivering one decisive finishing blow. For the most part I am thinking about battles in which the combatants have already drawn their weapons. However I am contemplating implementing a system that assumes that a warrior starts the battle with their weapon sheathed and they are granted a bonus to their first attack. The game that I am imagining is one in which the battles generally consist of more than just two combatants, and things such as being quick on your feet and being able to cleverly make use of your surrounding just may prove to be essential to your success.

And to continue with my previous post:
Such nonviolent conflicts, of course, will not be solved with just one dice roll. The players have to be careful in what mehods they use, for the NPCs may react strongly to a certain method of persuasion. "Negotiation" skills so far are as follows: bluff, intimidate, innuendo, perceive innuendo, bribe, strategize, compromise, leadership
Bluff checks are against leadership checks, intimidate checks are against intimidate checks -someone will always be intimidated when an intimidate check is made-, inuendo is against perceive inuendo, bribe is against Morality level, compromise is against Pride level, leadership is against leadership checks.

Players may lose Negotiations by the dice rolls. NPCs do make the same rolls ansd checks as the players do in a Negotiation scenario. Order of turns in a Negotiation is decided by a dice roll plus each character's Pride bonus. Negotiations end when all characters on one side are "defeated". A character loses a negotiation when when tthey reach -5 points. A point is given to the winner of a particular check and subtracted from the loser of that check. A character may not attempt a check if they have already rolled a successful cjheck with a +3 momentum bonus with that skill, as it is assumed that that character has already made their point in that area quite well, though another character on the same side -another party member- may continue making checks with tat skill if they have not yet madeda check in that skill with a +3 momentum bonus. If a Negotiation is not over even after no more rolls cn be made by any character, the negotiation ends and the side with the highest point total is victorious. Checks must be made with an in-character statement, meaning that a player cannot just say "I make an intimidte check", they must say, for example, "I will cut you down if..." and then declare the check. This is to ensure that Negotiations include at least some level of roleplaying.
If anything seems confusing or anything, feel free to ask about it or make some suggestions.

sojikai wrote: One of my goals in this project is to devise a system that encourages players to not only play the role of the soldier, but that of the war-room strategist or diplomat, so to speak. Rather than simply carrying out tasks, players will have to come to a decision on what tasks to carry out without anything being overtly suggested to them for the most part. It is designed to be roleplay-heavy and discourage people from playing "some cool samurai dude" and playing "-insert elaborate Japanese name here-, Champion of the Red Moon, guardian of serenity, banisher of piety", if you catch my drift. I want the game to encourage players to deck out their character's personality, rather than being just another generic samurai.

Sojikai,
  This would be a great game, if you can simulate the following common events in Samurai fights:
1) A swordsman taking a half a step forward and all of his opponents stepping to maintain the same ranges.
2) Sizing up an opponent by looking at them
3) Demoralizing an inferior opponent by staring them down
4) Using subtle advantages like the position of the sun to great advantage
5) Using subtle clues to detect hidden things
6) A vastly superior swordsmen mowing down mooks, like so much grass
7) Evenly matched swordsmen fighting to a draw
8) Attacking with such speed that the opponent isn't even aware they are dead
  Basically, I haven't found a game where I can do all the cool stuff I see in the Samurai movies, how do you plan to enable that?