@arkandel said in Wheel of Time mechanics:
which means as few 'filler' skills, talents and attributes as possible.
All systems need to be easy.
I think that these are very good goals for any game design. However, I think they explicitly conflict with these two points:
I'd like PCs to purchase overall potency, individual Powers or weaves directly, with each purchase becoming more narrow but more impactful.
I'm trying to figure out a system that allows PCs to buy sword forms directly to improve their fighting
Neither of these sound easy in the slightest, and they both sound like they would result in a great many "filler" skills/weaves/forms that very few people take (and some that everyone takes).
For instance, if you have forms, then they probably have to Rock-Paper-Scissors each other, since that seems to be what they do in the book. But then you get a really strong metagame: if Apple Blossoms On the Wind is the "most powerful/useful form," then when someone picks up its counter, they're suddenly super-good against half the MU that picked up Apple Blossoms. And if you have too many forms (and there are too many of them to keep track of easily, especially when you get into what counters what and what works with in what situation -- I've tried) then nearly everyone will have 1-2 forms that they're just hopeless against. I think that your idea of "second-tier" skills is an interesting one, however. Say you've got specializations in Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and Spirit for Channeling; Offensive, Defensive, One-on-One, and Group for weapon skills; Charm, Convince, Intimidate, and Bargain for Persuasion; Quality, Decoration, Speed, and Cost for Crafting (I'm making these up as I go along, you would want to change the details, of course), etc... it might work. But again, you're no longer anywhere near as simple or easy as you might be otherwise.
One part of the books I think is very thematic is the progression from trainee (in whatever disciple) into mastery.
There are a lot of games that do the Heroes Journey well, all it really takes is a high amount of XP given out, and a logarithmic(ish) cost scale to increase your skills. Make it easy to get up to a certain level, and then hard after that. You just have to balance this with the dangers of dinos and do-everything-characters (because if it's XP cheap to get all skills up to a certain level, then most long-time characters are going to have them at that level). I would suggest taking a page from FS3 here and capping the number of skills you can have above a certain level, and then going beyond that and capping XP at a point where you can't get every skill to that "easy-to-get level" (after you reach the XP cap, perhaps you can instead swap skills around? Lower one to raise another?).
Channeling:
So for example you could sink one point (?) into your overall strength as a channeler which powers all your weaves, or put it into Air to make all your Air weaves stronger than they'd get if you had just purchased a point in overall potency, or even use it to buy something like Windstorm specifically which would empower that one weave far more than the former two options.
This sounds very interesting, but also really hard to balance. What about something where you have a Channeling stat, with Elemental specializations, and then can just note where your character has particular strengths/weaknesses with individual weaves? Like Edges and Flaws-style? Then you don't have to have a full list of ratings for individual weaves (since there are likely dozens), but you can still have people who have advanced expertise (or weakness) in a given weave.
Not sure how I would handle overgrasping Saidin/Saidar enough to burn out.
How about tracking the amount of channeling one does vs their strength in the One Power (which should definitely be different than their ability to weave), and if they go over it, they have to start making exhaustion checks of some sort? If they fail, then they basically start a cascade of checks that could lead to them burning out. It doesn't address simply over-grasping, but it does address over-channeling, which seems far more common in the books.
Non-channeling:
Forms
I would suggest keeping Forms to RP, but styles (as mentioned above) in code (if you want that complexity). Forms are an interesting part of the WoT world, but they aren't really well-enough described to put together a full system based on them.
A trope from the books is fighting one-versus-many. I don't know if it's nostalgia speaking but in my own gaming past we gave NPC retainers to certain organizations - so for example a Whitecloak PC would have X NPCs with him, a Band of the Red Hand member would have Y (where Y<X) but with bonuses to Band-only groups, etc. These are hard to balance; is it worth having? Can you come up with or propose a system that achieves this?
I don't know that MiT every really balanced them well. I remember CotL wandering around obliterating (non-Asha'man) channelers with their awesome guild equipment and really powerful mob-summoning skills. I was never very good at coded PvP, but even I punched well above my level because of the mobs. I think as long as you have a series of NPC sheets available for use in RP and in code, you can let PCs (with Staff adjudication, of course) handle it.
Finally, what challenges am I forgetting so far that absolutely should be in a WoT game?
World of Dreams vs Real World? Tel'aran'rhiod is a huge part of the series as it goes on, but travel there is hugely different, and people start to be able to hop back and forth between them, and you can affect things is amazing aways in TAR. It's going to be a huge challenge to integrate into a game.
How are you going to handle the Flame and Void? It seems to be a pretty huge advantage for everything from channeling (heck, it's -necessary- to channel in most cases) to archery to swordsmanship. Will it be a skill? If so, how will it be implemented? Bonuses so long as you can stay in it, but chances to drop out based on Persuasion/Deception checks and wounds?
Just to be clear on an earlier point, I think that Ares is a great idea for a starting point, but I really, really don't think that FS3 is, based on your ideas thus far. I certainly think that a coder could make FS3 work for a WoT game if they were willing to write up and implement a channeling system, but several of your ambitions above (rate of skill increase, complex subskill systems, etc) are pretty much the antithesis of FS3.
