Posts made by Seraphim73

@ganymede Oh yeah, I've run scenes with 10-12 PCs and 15-20 NPCs (in FS3 2)--they took 5ish hours, but yeah. I just wanted a one-to-one comparison and I don't think anyone would be crazy enough to run 12 PCs and 20 NPCs in Saga/WoD (yes, I'm sure there are those who have done it).

@lotherio said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

I should have logged the test runs of airships vs naval ships battles while balancing then for the steampunk place we attempted.

Ooooh. That does sound like fun. I put together some smaller-than-frigate ship stats for T8S, and ran them at each other and at sea monsters a few times and had a heck of a lot of fun. Vehicle Combat can definitely be fun.

@faraday Yeah, I've been really impressed with that you've been able to do with the web portal to make it look like wikidot/mediawiki/whatever implementations. I'm sad we haven't been able to get things up to date with the web portal, because the logging/autoposting functionality in particular is awesome.

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

How do people feel about turned based more automated combat system (like FS3 and DSS) vs more GMed types? (the various WoD places out there)

I'm strongly in favor of automated combat systems, with the same caveat that @faraday mentioned: if you're going to have things that work "differently" from weapons, it's going to be a lot harder to implement them in any automated system.

But man, I've been totally spoiled by automated systems, because while a 4 on 4 fight in WoD or Saga might take 6-8 hours, it takes 2 most of the time in FS3, maybe 3 if one or more players is slow.

ETA: I think that "automatic vs GMed" is a false dichotomy, however. I think that you can easily have a GM who does creative things with automated systems.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Yes, money sinks. Only two are semi-obvious; troops (which to everyone but specific organizations such as whitecloaks will cost money), and crafting (for materials, and depending on how deep the rabbit hole goes, recipe research). But more will be needed, perhaps tied to the other pools.

I need ideas here, folks.

Money for favors, housing, influencing NPC rulers, messengers across long distance, um... um... eyes and ears?

I like social skills but they will definitely only work on NPCs. Same as all mind-controlling weaves and those a'dam thingies - I don't need the grief, and I definitely don't need the jerks who'll use them on PCs.

I might suggest "unless both parties consent," because some folks like being damane, or even Compulsion. But yeah, only-on-NPCs is good, although it does break the "just as valuable as combat skills" idea that you had.

Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind, minus the 'primaries' and 'secondaries'

Yeah, my turn to not phrase things properly--I didn't mean anything like WoD primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries, just like people who are primarily fighters but can also do command stuff.

Yeah, the balance would be my issue here. To be honest my original reason for this system was to try and recreate that Gateway adept Asha'man - I like the idea that weird edge concepts like those can be perfectly doable. And if people want to create a pretty decent combatant who can occasionally bust out some channeling why not? As long as they're not as good at either as those who specialize in those things.

Always going to be the hardest part, yup.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time mechanics:

Yes, that'd be great. But (and this isn't WoT-specific), what makes it worth it for them? What can they do, in practical terms?
Crafting is easier in a way - they can make cool swords and staves. Trading requires an economy, and we haven't discussed that at all, but I'd very much like to. Finally... lore.. I don't have anything here. What's going to come in as handy as the stuff we've been discussing already?

Non-combat and non-magic (combat magic in particular) things are always hard to incentivize (include social combat in there if there's a hard system for it), because what it comes down to is: what are you gaining from the skill? In combat, you gain winning the fight, killing the enemy, and staying alive (plus looking badass). With crafting, unless you're a combat character too and are crafting cool gear for yourself, all you really get is money. Which means that you need an economy, and you need lots of things to draw money out of the economy, or everyone is just going to be rich.

It's making sure every single choice on the tier is, at least roughly and within thematic reason, equivalent to the other. I'd love social skills to be a real thing since it's such a strong trope in fantasy, but can I provide players with returns for those purchases that can compete with stabbing people really well? I'm not saying I can't, or that it can't be done, but we're missing the other piece of the puzzle - the economic and military resource management.

I would actually say economic, military, and social resource management systems, actually. Because using social skills on NPCs in scenes (or for investigation requests or whatever) is all well and good, but if you can gain resources (favors from NPCs, information about plot, economic resources, military support from NPCs, etc) with social skills, they'll be valued.

What if we broke things down into three distinct ... let's call them templates? Then we can see what each can do. And if we can add a forth then let's do it.

• Channelers.
• Non-channeling combatants.
• Military and social prodigies. Let's merge these from a design perspective although they are separate skillsets IC, to keep things simple and not add too many skills - remember, the more selection of useful skills we offer the less power these archetypes will have, since they will need to spread out their spends compared to a physical character who can specialize better.

I don't know that I would work too strictly on closed archetypes like that... because most people are going to want to be some mixture of them. I know that book characters (especially mains) are all overpowered, but Mat and Gareth Bryne are both commanders and combatants (Bryne is a Blademaster and Mat beat two of them at once), Moiraine is an exceptionally powerful channeler and a social expert, Thom is perhaps the best player of Daes Dae'mar in the world and can still throw a mean dagger (and fight a Fade one-on-one with daggers only).

I do agree that the three general "buckets" that most skillsets will tend to fall into are Channeler, Fighter, and Expert (commander, socialite, crafter, investigator, etc). I just think that most PCs are going to want to have a primary and a secondary--most book characters have two primaries. And yes, there'll have to be a good balance that allows someone to have a primary and a secondary, but not two primaries, and for someone who just pours -everything- into one bucket to be somewhat better than someone with a primary and a secondary, but not nearly as flexible.

One obvious way to curtail this - which we'll definitely need to for channelers else we'll have powerhouses on our hands no matter what - is to have XP tiers which can be increased as the game goes by. It's not that radical a notion, and it should work fine.

I do like the idea of a shifting cap. You could also arrange that with a shifting -bottom- cap: characters created after X date start with Y XP. You could even have a combination of the two.

Hrm, so you're saying that instead of spending XP the 'interesting choice' we are asking players to make is to pick a flaw and edge? Be stronger in Water but weaker in Fire at the same time?

I was thinking on a weave level, not a flow level. So you don't have to track what everyone has for their Fireball skill, but if someone is particularly good at it, they can take a weakness (say, Weather Control) and get a boost to their Fireball skill. And then you only have to track that they're strong in one weave and weak in one other, instead of where they're at in every weave in your database. You could even integrate it into every other bucket, so you could take, for instance, a weakness in Fireball (assuming you're a channeler), but a strength in Military Rank and become a Dedicated. That would be exceptionally difficult to balance, but... it would certainly lend itself toward choices.

@wildbaboons Unfortunately, both the Saga Edition conversion and the licensed Wheel of Time d20 edition... leave something to be desired (at least for me). Since in both cases they're adapting channeling to a Vancian magic system, and it's really not a good fit.

@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.

I would be interested in Ancient Greek RP, particularly something like a Trojan War scenario. It could actually be interesting (but perhaps a really bad idea) for the Staffers to be the actual Gods, and interact ICly with PCs. Like I said, probably a really bad idea, but it could be interesting to use them as Questgivers. Of course, the player of Zeus would end up TSing half the MU*...

@wildbaboons I would LOVE the Whitecloak/Aiel War setting. The 4th Age one, a bit less. But clearly there are folks who prefer the opposite, and I'd probably at least give a 4th Age game a try, even if I would sincerely worry that it wouldn't feel like WoT to me.

I also think that the worries about sticking to a canon timeline are lessened a) when you're set in a less-well-known era 20 years before the books start, and b) if you flat-out state from the start that things will go differently.

@goldfish Perhaps because it's a great excuse to care about what other characters are doing and to engage with them? I mean, there could be some deeper psychological reason, but I don't know you from Adam or Eve or Steve, so I'll stick with "great excuse to RP with people."

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

The founding of the Asha'man? ... The cleansing?

I can guarantee that these two things would be attempted by players. The other things... less guaranteed, but you can bet that people will try to draw together a group of male channelers and would-be male channelers into a Tower, and you can bet that people will try to cleanse saidin (likely without anywhere near the preparation/power that it required in the books).

I would not want to have any character be ta'veren or be the Dragon Reborn otherwise you're just doing a find and replace on the FCs from the books and what's the point, plus the usual problems having a small group of PCs of grossly imbalanced importance on a game.

I think it would be entirely possible to have an NPC Dragon, especially if he was the withdrawn sort--or perhaps Cairhienin, and so liked to work through proxies. They would have to be doing something offscreen to keep them from interfering, but I think that it could certainly be done.

@tempest said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

WoT was never really the "prince played by Jensen Ackles is a badass swordsman" sort of thing. The badasses are the Warders and the scant few other blademasters around. And the "ladies" never really did much...unless they happened to also be Aes Sedai (and the princes who were badass went off to be warders).

Galad and Gawyn both become Blademasters (yes, they were trained to some degree by the White Tower, but they weren't there long, and were very, very skilled when they arrived). Gareth Bryne is one as well. Toram Riatin, Rodel Ituralde, High Lord Turak... just like in real life, those with the idle time are those who can practice. And I think that Caraline Damodred, Colavaere Saighan, Queen Tenobia, Queen Morgase, and Zarine Bashere would all quite disagree with your description of them never doing much.

I do, however, agree with you that it would be best to start in 1-2 centralized areas. I don't think I would go -quite- so far as requiring that everyone be part of the Tower, but if the two areas are, say, Tar Valon and Cairhien, you'll likely have things tied up relatively well, as opposed to if there are people in Cairhien, Bandar Eban, Ebou Dar, Tear, Tar Valon, and Caemlyn all looking for RP. I also think that it's a great idea for App Staff to work closely with new players to try to ensure that their characters have explicit hooks into whatever is going on at the moment.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

What I'd find cool is a strong metaplot detached from the book characters (whether they exist in the time period or not) to give the game direction and focus.

Yes, yes, yes. I think that this is one of those games that really won't do well as a sandbox (it'll limp along, but won't have the same pull) -- fantasy games need metaplots in my opinion, to keep them from devolving into marriage simulators.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

What about the mechanics?

This is another good point. I'd push Ares, but I think Faraday would smack me, and FS3 really, really isn't well-suited for channeling. You could limp along with it, but it wouldn't be good without a system written up to work alongside FS3. D20 WoT is miserable. Very poorly handled, in my opinion.

He helped @Avarice set up Fires of Hope and polished a few things there. I thought I had an email for Dahan, but haven't been able to find it.

@prototart They've had an online presence for well over a year though... since before Trump was elected.

@prototart Particularly Teen Vogue's online presence. Their magazine is alright, but the online reporting has been awesome.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

Since I've no idea how this went over on Cuendillar, what was well done about it? Did 'enough' people choose to play male channelers anyway? Would you call it a successful experiment?

There were 2-4 male channelers (that I knew of) at any given time. Some were well-done, others were not. Most were ICly secret except for a few confidants, most were NOT OOCly secret. I thought in general it was a good way to handle male channelers in a non-Asha'man timeline.

@WildBaboons I would totally dig on a "The Folks Who Make It So The Big Names Can Win" game. But I know that very, very, very few others would, so I've been making alternative suggestions.

As far as Black Ajah goes... it would be really nice if recruitment into it could happen ICly, but I know that would draw all sorts of claims of (and likely actual examples of too) favoritism and clique-ism. But that's the one way to "make sure" it doesn't get out of hand. But yeah... Black Ajah a) takes out the restraint of the Three Oaths, upsetting the balance of the game again, and b) is usually played terribly (yes, I know, that's judge-y of me).

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

True, but the IC power gap between Force-trained characters and other combatants is much smaller than that of channelers and non-channelers in the WoT

Agreed, and actually what I was trying to argue in the first place. I think that the divide between Super and Not is much larger in WoT than it is in Star Wars.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

I'm just not a fan of limiting special playable concepts. I'd rather not have them at all than restrict them - because who ends up with them?

Definitely a reasonable view. In any game that wasn't male-channeler friendly (Asha'man-okay, Age of Legends, etc) I would actually suggest something that Cuendillar did quite well: male channelers are available via application, but they are on a timer from the moment you create them. They're viable for X months (2d6? 4d3? Somewhere that nets you around 5-10 months most likely) and then they're taken off the board somehow, either madness, getting caught, or whatever. Staff knows how long it will be, but the player doesn't (except in that they know what the dice rolled are).

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

Not having Aiel around (let alone Asha'man) would deprive the game from too many great options.

Heh, I actually put the Aiel War one up there because it's one of the few other times the Aiel come out of the Threefold Land, so I figured they could be viable character concepts. Just a few of them, no doubt, because they would have to be captives/turncoats/spies/SOMETHING to interact with the rest of the playerbase, but at least they're around. It's problematic to bring Aiel into the playerbase in that era, but at least it's possible.

@wildbaboons said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

The big thing is that the main conflict is over. The Last Battle happened and its on to something else.

Yeah, I think this is what I was getting at. It doesn't feel like WoT anymore, it feels like another series of books that just happens to be set in the same world--except it's not the same world. The Shadow has been defeated, the lands have been drawn into two massive alliances under the Seanchan and the Aiel (sort of), and the Last Battle already happened. I mean, what happens after the Last Battle (besides clean-up)?

@bad-at-lurking I think that there are benefits and downsides to both choices, but if you're just going to slap a label on it and not build what people would actually expect from a franchise, I wouldn't go with a franchise.

This does mean that you'll have to be explicitly clear about the world that you're creating (probably both what's available on the colony and what life was like back wherever they came from, so that people know who their characters were before they went into cold storage, and why they went into it). Daily tech, limits of tech, state of the world around them, all that's going to be very important to write out clearly and concisely.

@bobgoblin said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

I find the issue of the 'balance' between Channelers and the mortals to be the same as Force Users and the average person . How do you reconcile this separation?

Well, PCs aren't the average person. In most Star Wars games (except WEG D6 with experienced characters), Force Users aren't that much more powerful than other PCs. In Saga, for instance, even without a House Rule to fix Skill Focus at low levels (and you should really have one, in my opinion), Force Users are only about 2 levels more powerful than non-Force Users, and non-FUs catch up by level 9-10.

I agree that the Three Oaths are a huge balancing factor for channelers--as long as Aes Sedai are your only channelers. As soon as you get wilders or male channelers involved... poof, there goes that balance.

@Arkandel I actually think that limiting male channelers is GOOD for the game, as mentioned above, because it helps keep some semblance of balance between channelers and non-channelers where fighting is involved.

But yes, if you set the game pre-books, you either have to completely divorce your game from the timeline (which is fine, in my opinion) or accept that the Aiel aren't going to get involved (unless it's the Aiel War) and there won't be Asha'man. That's why I still think that the best course is either a) somewhere Saldaea/Arad Doman way during the book period, or b) Whitecloak War/Aiel War period.

After the books could be interesting but... eh. Something about it just doesn't appeal to me... I guess it doesn't feel Wheel of Time to me. It's post-Wheel of Time, not actual Wheel of Time. But that could just be me.

@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):

Here are some things I consider essential to a WoT game. By its nature, the list is of course subjective.
...
I'd personally either place a MU's timeline in the period of the books or basically right afterwards while the dust has yet to settle.

Agreed on all points, although I would add one more option to the timeline: a decade or two before the books. The Aiel War would be interesting, as would some of the False Dragons that pop up in the years before Rand. In many ways, running a WoT MU has the exact same problems as running a Star Wars MU: you need something familiar to get people readily involved, which means close to the media timelines, but the feature characters have the absolute potential to overwhelm all possible PC actions.

I agree with @Three-Eyed-Crow and @Arkandel that channelers in general have to be unrestricted... I think that WoT without channelers is even more odd than Star Wars without Force Users, and that's saying a lot. I think that most people who regularly play non-channelers have reconciled themselves to the fact that only ambush or poison is going to win a battle against a channeler--they can't play harder, they have to play smarter if they want to take one down (or go to Far Madding, but that's the same thing in many ways). I also agree that better-than-average combat and channeling power should effectively be mutually exclusive. This is actually one of the things that FS3 does well with its limit on "high" skills.

However, I think that (unless you're in an Age of Legends or Asha'man-ready timeline), I think that you should definitely limit male channelers. Madness is something that is (from what I've seen and experienced) very, very hard to pull off. All too often people just take it as an excuse to blow shit up.

@arkandel Because many games don't allow male channelers (or non-Darkfriend ones) until after the Black Tower comes into existence.