I only got a small glimpse at the idea of a Vessel class, but I had a player over the New Year try out one of the options: the Animancer. Their choice was largely due to the obvious power of having teleportation portals.
As you'd expect out of magic portals, the possibilities are nearly endless; they can be used for so much more than just getting from point A to point B. But portals are fun, and thinking about using portals is fun (with or without cake). So, rather than remove the option entirely, I want to restrict them in order to prevent the power from being a "too easy" solution to basically every problem. On one hand, rewarding creative use of one's powers is exactly the type of thing I want out of my callings. But on the other, the key to that fun is limiting those powers in reasonable and interesting ways.
My first thought was that I could limit the portals to "ritual" speed - essentially preventing their use in action scenes. While such a restriction certainly is reasonable, it is not interesting. Doing this sucks nearly all of the fun out of being an Animancer Vessel (assuming that portals are your "go-to" thing).
One issue with the physics of magic portals is when they change the world's angles, as in, going from a hole in the ground to a whole in a side wall. Flippy floppy worlds can be fun to think about, but are nightmarish to declare rules for. The core of that problem is also the problem with having floor or ceiling portals at all: the acceleration of objects moving through those portals to ridiculous speeds. So, while I hate to simply sidestep design issues, this seems pretty straight forward: we could only allow our rifts in space-time to exist parallel to gravity.
But this of course is now not very reasonable. Your current question is most likely, "what about in space?" And you're absolutely right. However, this is where we are going to allow the setting and memory-style magic to wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimy explain it away. Basically, we'll say that portals are inherently very unstable (edits to space-time seems like they should be), and that if put at an angle, the gravitational force of one side of the portal would pull on the other, and much like a stretched spring, snap back into place, quickly balancing the two sides until they are both aligned. If the force of the gravitational differences is too great, the portal will simply be torn apart. Either way, only portals completely parallel to gravity will be stable enough to be functional.
So far that's all I've got. What kinds of fun (or broken) things can you do with these portals? What kinds of other limitations could we put on portals, so that they are interesting RPG tools, yet no so easy as to solve all problems?
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
New Class: the "Vessel"
Because of Hostargo's cybertech/fantasy setting, I picture the world full of high tech vehicles, airships, drones, robots, and other crazy machines. So, I thought a party might require the skills of someone more mechanically inclined; someone specialized in dealing with machines. Enter the Mechanist. His "role" was supposed to be both a vehicle driver and someone who dealt with fixing/modifying/destroying machines. But, more and more these seemed like specializations that actually just limited the class's overall usefulness.
In practice, the Mechanist seemed to be the least interesting class. I was having trouble coming up with interesting story hooks without always throwing in a giant robot or some malfunctioning machine. Worse, I was having terrible trouble coming up with how some of the callings in the game could be applied to the Mechanist role. Specifically the Biomancer and Animancer magic callings, which deal with basically everything but machines.
The inspiration for the Mechanist is clear: it's based off of both the "Rigger" class in Shadowrun and "The Driver" class in Apocalypse world. The problem with the Rigger class is that to make it interesting, Shadowrun bogs its books down with a crazy amount of detail about controlling your own drones and owning customized vehicles. Then the coolest part of The Driver class is that you get a vehicle to start... but that's about all you've got. Neither of these is really helping me push the Mechanist to be an integral part of the game.
So I took a step back and asked the important questions again. What am I really trying to accomplish with this class? After some backtrack thinking, I realized that the real purpose of a class like this, in a general sens, was helping the party get from point A to point B, no matter how that was achieved. Once I realized this, I was able to cut out the focus on machines, and instead focus on a less explored area of RPGness: party movement.
While on one hand this is actually cutting out part of the class's specialty, but on the other it opened up a whole new realm of thinking. And that's exactly what I was looking for. Now, instead of being too narrow minded about interactions with machines, I can have Leaders call in extraction requests, Biomancers whistle for a small hoard of ride-able beasts, and Animancers open dimensions portals for the party to teleport through.
This new line of thinking has renamed the class Vessel, hopefully appropriately. I'm still potentially searching for a cooler name, but for now it hits the mark. I am once again excited about this class being a part of Hostargo!
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Action Action Action!
I've been away from the Hostargo thought train for a while. In that time though I've had the opportunity to play a handful of other RPGs, and it's been a good re-anchoring for me. I want to make Hostargo the most fun RPG to play, whatever that means.
I've had a lot of fun playing rules-lite games like Dread and All Out of Bubblegum. I've had just as much fun playing crunchier games like D&D. And I've had a blast playing video RPGs, such as good ole Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy (NES original!), among others. So I've taken a good look at each of these game's "action systems" in order to figure out what makes for the most fun per tick.
One key thing that these games have reinforced for me is the thought that turn order is unavoidable. You can make an overly-complicated initiative system, in an effort to make it a mechanic in the game players can interact with (e.g. Shadowrun), but this usually is too heavy for what fun it gains you. You can also completely ignore this type of rule, like Dungeon World. But just because you, the rules creator, chose to ignore it, does not mean the person running the game (GM) can. Someone must organize and select characters to "act" in turn. Yes, games like DW have the concept of the moving spotlight, but that concept falls apart quickly when you try applying it to a slightly heavier, tactical combat game.
And the tactical combat is a big part of Hostargo. So the trick will be to make a turn order system that doesn't get bogged down with mechanics, but isn't too loose as to not work for the combat portion of the game. To make a system like this, we have to first look at our action economy system.
Hostargo used to use a 3-tick system, where a normal action would be 2 ticks, an extended action was 3 ticks, and a reaction was a single tick. This worked, but not well. The problem was that in theory, it was a simple resource spending system, but in practice, it only served to confuse players trying to think about what they could do per-tick. Instead, I have to concede that D&D 5e's action-move-bonus-reaction system is pretty darn solid.
What helped me realize this was actually other games, such as Final Fantasy. In original FF, you either attacked, or cast a spell, and that's it. And while interesting as one of the original video RPGs of it's time, this actually doesn't hold up in the game design space. Attacking, especially with a random chance to miss (e.g. pretty much every tabletop RPG ever), is just not a fun use of a turn. D&D 4e actually realized this, and made all of the classes have special powers so that everyone could feel unique. Of course, an issue people have with 4th edition was that if everyone is special, no one is special.
But, I don't think 4e's design was too far out there. Really, it was a wonderful game and a bunch of people just didn't appreciate the lack of fiddly bits that they could munchkin. My theory is that in reality, they just didn't like the action economy system, because they only got to really do one thing a turn, and that thing was either a basic, special, or super special move. Their basic moves didn't feel special, because they could do them pretty much all of the time.
So with 5e they moved back to a system that included "basic" actions, such as "attack". And a lot of people are much happier with it, myself included. Special actions then generally cost some sort of resources (e.g. spell slot, superiority die), and we're back to having them actually feel special. But, special actions still replace normal actions, such that sometimes, your turn only includes a basic action. And those are the turns that are generally lackluster in 'fun'.
Instead, I propose giving players the power to do both a special and a basic action each turn. And, just like major-minor actions in D&D 3e, the player should have the power to downgrade an action. So, we'll keep our "3 tick" system: one special, one basic, and one re-action. But, you can downgrade a special to a basic, and a basic to a reaction, if you'd like. This gives players the ability to move -> attack, or attack + attack at a minimum. Or, use a "special move", and still act normally, such as following up with an attack, or moving to a better position. Lastly, I love reactions as a concept because it allows players to act directly in response to their allies or their enemies actions.
Circling back to turn order, with this <hopefully> streamlined action system, I can safely grant the ability for everyone to regain all of their ticks after the GM's turn. Then, I will start a "popcorn" initiative, starting with whichever player is in the most immediate, threatening, or just generally most interesting situation. So the GM chooses the first player, and then the players choose who goes next, until all players have gone.
Simple, understandable (more importantly easily explainable), and efficient. This will allow players to take awesome turns, without adding in needless complexity.
*Stretches* - aaaah yeah it's good to get back on this thought train. Cheers y'all!
I've had a lot of fun playing rules-lite games like Dread and All Out of Bubblegum. I've had just as much fun playing crunchier games like D&D. And I've had a blast playing video RPGs, such as good ole Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy (NES original!), among others. So I've taken a good look at each of these game's "action systems" in order to figure out what makes for the most fun per tick.
One key thing that these games have reinforced for me is the thought that turn order is unavoidable. You can make an overly-complicated initiative system, in an effort to make it a mechanic in the game players can interact with (e.g. Shadowrun), but this usually is too heavy for what fun it gains you. You can also completely ignore this type of rule, like Dungeon World. But just because you, the rules creator, chose to ignore it, does not mean the person running the game (GM) can. Someone must organize and select characters to "act" in turn. Yes, games like DW have the concept of the moving spotlight, but that concept falls apart quickly when you try applying it to a slightly heavier, tactical combat game.
And the tactical combat is a big part of Hostargo. So the trick will be to make a turn order system that doesn't get bogged down with mechanics, but isn't too loose as to not work for the combat portion of the game. To make a system like this, we have to first look at our action economy system.
Hostargo used to use a 3-tick system, where a normal action would be 2 ticks, an extended action was 3 ticks, and a reaction was a single tick. This worked, but not well. The problem was that in theory, it was a simple resource spending system, but in practice, it only served to confuse players trying to think about what they could do per-tick. Instead, I have to concede that D&D 5e's action-move-bonus-reaction system is pretty darn solid.
What helped me realize this was actually other games, such as Final Fantasy. In original FF, you either attacked, or cast a spell, and that's it. And while interesting as one of the original video RPGs of it's time, this actually doesn't hold up in the game design space. Attacking, especially with a random chance to miss (e.g. pretty much every tabletop RPG ever), is just not a fun use of a turn. D&D 4e actually realized this, and made all of the classes have special powers so that everyone could feel unique. Of course, an issue people have with 4th edition was that if everyone is special, no one is special.
But, I don't think 4e's design was too far out there. Really, it was a wonderful game and a bunch of people just didn't appreciate the lack of fiddly bits that they could munchkin. My theory is that in reality, they just didn't like the action economy system, because they only got to really do one thing a turn, and that thing was either a basic, special, or super special move. Their basic moves didn't feel special, because they could do them pretty much all of the time.
So with 5e they moved back to a system that included "basic" actions, such as "attack". And a lot of people are much happier with it, myself included. Special actions then generally cost some sort of resources (e.g. spell slot, superiority die), and we're back to having them actually feel special. But, special actions still replace normal actions, such that sometimes, your turn only includes a basic action. And those are the turns that are generally lackluster in 'fun'.
Instead, I propose giving players the power to do both a special and a basic action each turn. And, just like major-minor actions in D&D 3e, the player should have the power to downgrade an action. So, we'll keep our "3 tick" system: one special, one basic, and one re-action. But, you can downgrade a special to a basic, and a basic to a reaction, if you'd like. This gives players the ability to move -> attack, or attack + attack at a minimum. Or, use a "special move", and still act normally, such as following up with an attack, or moving to a better position. Lastly, I love reactions as a concept because it allows players to act directly in response to their allies or their enemies actions.
Circling back to turn order, with this <hopefully> streamlined action system, I can safely grant the ability for everyone to regain all of their ticks after the GM's turn. Then, I will start a "popcorn" initiative, starting with whichever player is in the most immediate, threatening, or just generally most interesting situation. So the GM chooses the first player, and then the players choose who goes next, until all players have gone.
Simple, understandable (more importantly easily explainable), and efficient. This will allow players to take awesome turns, without adding in needless complexity.
*Stretches* - aaaah yeah it's good to get back on this thought train. Cheers y'all!
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