When I first started, the couple of games I started out on (Beast Wars Transformers, and SuperMUX) had both player-helpers as well as a general glossary of common terms. Nowadays, a glossary like that might be best as a specific 'here is the new player orientation' page. I've seen a couple of really nice ones throughout various games.
So.
Because I was already working on this anyway, and had a bunch of stuff I could copy/paste because, again, bored.
http://www.hotbmush.com/blog/ has my development notes so far (or most of them).
Feel free to make an account on the blog and comment (or comment here, whatever). More will be posted there, but things i have on the docket for further theory:
@GirlCalledBlu
Thanks. If I can get some good notations of interest, I think it'll go well. I think one of the biggest hurdles I'm going to hit is, I want there to be a variety of powers to take, not just Potence 1 to 5 equivalent. Like, the shadow-control power might have the 'basic attack' but also a 'drain Life Points' and a 'inflict a status effect like an evasion debuff' type, all at the same ranks; or the superstrength power might have a knockdown debuff, an ability that acts as Armor Piercing, and such...
So I'll probably crowdsource some abilities, mostly because my typical method with automated combat is more along the lines of how TF MU*s build attacks and weapons.
ETA: Additionally, it won't be JUST combat powers. There will be non-combat powers and applications; familiar stuff like 'order another person around' or 'I am supernaturallly purty' or 'read auras' and 'telepathy' and such will be there, along with things like 'telekinetic blast' or 'transform your blood into a weapon' or 'I scare you so bad you take damage'.
@GirlCalledBlu
I always find issues of mixed-theme games to lack focus; you can look at the threads about the Reach and other games ending up not having focus, and that focus something I'd rather have. It lends itself well to a good environment,. Plus having them as unplayable, means more mystery and capability to use those as CvE antagonists.
What if the vampires of NYC are at war with the Witches? What if the Bygones approach House Axius in order to get information on some legendary Bygone that is threatening everything in the city? What if the Traitor Houses fuck with the Arisen and push an undying, truly immortal, superpowered Engine of Vengeance against the vampires of NYC?
That gives options to play around with. Plus i don't want to have to design the cultures, backstory, history and things for all of the 'cool monsters in the night' ideas I have.
@GirlCalledBlu
The core concept would have all players playing as vampires and possibly servii (half-vampire servants, think Renfield).
I am always iffy on playing mortals on games like this, because it leads to a lot of superfluousness IMO. It's like playing Jim the Hot Dog Vendor in Metropolis on a superhero MUSH, in my opinion. You can have fun but you'll never be able to encounter the 'core' of the game.
I stay bored at work. So I theorycraft.
I wonder what the interest would be in an original supernatural MU*, not pulling from WoD or Dresden or anything like that. I had been theorycrafting some things just because, well, boredom but... I think I like what I ended up pondering on, and wondering if there might be a market for it.
My thoughts are as follows:
I will probably expand on some of this just because, well, I like to write stuff up. But I think it's a sound premise and a good alternate to the standard WoD (which is what I think tripped me up with the OWoD game, using an unfamiliar system with something hyper-familiar to everyone who would be interested in it).
@Fantom the art is cool and all but why not include some more meaty updates than just random ad art?
@Lithium said in RPG Percentile Mechanics:
This reminds me of a couple system ideas I've been working on instead of trying to convert a table top system to an unrelated environment.
My first idea was to have dice cancel each other out, like if person 1 has 8 dice to attack and person 2 has 5 dice to defend then person 1 has only 3 dice to roll on attack against person 2 in normal situations.
So essentially NWoD's combat method (Pool - Defense/Modifiers), just using 'their active dice pool' instead of a Defense attribute.
My second idea was using d6's where your 'dodge' skill (or equivalent) would determine the target number to being hit. So if you had a 5 dodge skill then they'd need to roll 5's and 6's to hit on a d6. The only problem with this is having 1 in a skill was useless so I changed it so that you had to roll /higher/ than the skill. Still doesn't fix the problem of a 1 skill being pretty much crap. Still toying around with this idea as it's clearly not ready and needs modification.
Yeah; the lower skills make it less ideal.
The third idea I had was to go with a percentile based system where each point in stat + skill combinations equated to 10% chance to succeed, which was reduced by environmental factors, and your opponents defense stat + skill combinations. So if you had a 4 skill + a 3 attribute you'd have a base 70% chance for success. If the target had 3 skill + 3 attribute it'd be reduced to a base of 10%.
This is what I'm fiddling with, using a number comparison to get the percentage. For example, attacker has a total of 10. Defender has a defense total of 10. Net 0, so you end up with 50%. Same scenario, but defender has a defense of 6. You have a total of 4, and the attacker then has a net bonus. So saying 5% increase per difference, you have 70%. Conversely, Attacker 10 and Defender 14, removes that down to 30%. 5% per differential is probably too high in most situations, and then you have to account for anything and everything you have that gives a bonus.
The problem with this is that it'd drag out combats to an insane degree for equally skilled combatants so this too needs further tweaking.
I ran about 20 test rolls using that earlier, it was 12 pass/8 fail; but the dice are going to skew how they fall no matter what. Any dice system is going to veer your outcomes. I ran a bunch of d10 WoD style stuff and lo and behold, I had a 20 dice test where I got 2 successes.
The other way to use percentile is to just have a chart. A few games back in the day were percentile based and used a chart to determine whether or not you hit or missed based on the weapon, range, and skill of the shooter. This can work, but if you start using a chart, and then start getting into the minutiae of it based on range, environment, cover, etc it's a lot of charts and math which some people do not enjoy.
Doable. I have very little experience with the 'roll on a chart' systems, though. But yes, you get into crazy minutiae and it becomes bogged down. But it's probably a good option if people are willing for it.
Which is why I am leaning on a static TN 5 on a d6 for my new system with counteracting dice pools reducing to a minimum of 1. This works for both hit and damage so there is a variety of ways to defend, dodge, or armor, and both are equally effective over all.
Let me know how that works for you. I'd run some tests on something similar but it wasn't as ideal as I would have liked.
Unrelated to Cap, but my hype level just went over 9000.
New Cardcaptor Sakura sequel series.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/04/27/cardcaptor-sakuras-new-manga-isnt-a-one-shot-side-story-but-a-sequel-series-set-to-start-soon/
@Coin
I think that's how the Cthulu percentages work, you take yours, sub theirs and you have your target.
I'm fiddling with some theorycrafting and was looking at a stat vs. stat determines the percentage of success (so someone with equivalent stats, attacking someone with equivalent stats, has a 50% chance at 0 total; then each +/- increases or decreases the success level) method, and trying to just theorycraft.
We have a huge core of tabletop and other RPG gamers here. Does anyone have much experience with percentile dice systems? Particularly i'm wondering if there is one out there that considers the stats of two opponents to determine the percentage.
@Arkandel
I was a little iffy on the 'Mystique is the mutant's most known individual,' but it makes sense in the context of the movie universe. She was the most public in regards to stuff going on during DoFP and it's logical to a point.
My favorite thing about it? It was a straight-up comics movie. Some of the previous X-Men movies, particularly the early part of the franchise were trying hard to make it 'in the Real World' and not deal with a lot of the more over-the-top X-men stuff. Whereas Avengers and Thor and stuff eats up those standard comic tropes. I'm glad this new timeline gets that.
And like you, I want to see more of the team. They have good chemistry. I'd also love to see some of the more minor characters doing stuff (I am always a fan of background mutants doing mutanty things, like the basketball game w/powers from the first X-men movie that's just a 'here's an example of powers'.)
And there's already a built-in secondary villain for the next movie, who has a reason to hate the X-Men, after the villains 'glare then walk away' thing that happens.
@Jaded
It won't ever look like comics 'Pocky exactly, but I liked it. I found that, especially during closeups on a big screen, you got a lot of the 'he has hypertech added to his body in weird ways' effect that came across as presenting what Apocalypse is: a mutant enhanced with hypertech. I didn't find it jarring or comical/cartoony, no worse than I found Nightcrawler's Enochian tattoos/scarification to be cartoony or Angel's big-ass metal wings to be cartoony. Though be warned that there is a sequence involving Quicksilver that... well, think back to Days of Future Past and upscale that. I can see the comedy in it, but it's also really telling of Peter's powers in the past decade since DoFP.
@Kestrel
Your description is normally how I would expect combat to go anyway in that situation (escalation, unless you know going in that you need The Gun Of Kills Men or something or are going in for the purpose of overkill or going in with the expectation of needing use bigger weapons). A number of games I've been on that had coded systems, one of their design setups was 'you have X resource to run attacks, to use your bigger ones you must use smaller ones to build the X resource up to use them'. It led to fights of using lower-end attacks and weapons to build up, and sometimes the larger weapons ended up being unnecessary in the scheme of the fight.
Saw X-Men last night. I was really pleased with it. Looking forward to the next couple now, very much so.
The after-credits scene was nice.
Casting choices were good. Olivia Munn looks like Betsy/Kwannon, and Sophie Turner did a really good job as Jean (I was a bit surprised, but I'm not far enough in GoT to see her as a more assertive Sansa, so that's coloring my views on her). And Nightcrawler was so adorbs.
@Sunny
Actually, I asked. At least on Penn you can set the @odrop NONAME and it won't prepend the name, so you can futz with the messages completely.
@faraday
You'd have to edit the hardcode though wouldn't you? @odrop (at least on Penn) only covers what is after the name, as it automatically includes the name. Perhaps an @adrop that remits to the room.
I started watching a (slightly old) anime last night to alleviate my insomnia called Owari no Seraph.
It was interesting, about 4 episodes in. Post-apocalyptic world where a virus killed 90% of the population, anyone above the age of 13 (though obviously some adults survived). In the wake of this? Vampires come out of the woodwork. Particularly in Tokyo, where this one group declares it their protectorate and take surviving kids to their underground city. It only gets crazier from there, since apparently also monsters followed the vampires out from underground... looks like humanity's presence was suppressing weird supernatural shit.