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Wasteland Mechanic Ideas

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Kabrinski:

--- Quote from: Silhar on August 28, 2012, 07:53 ---A few questions before I start giving out tips.
1) What do I do with points? How do I spend them and what does it give?
2) How skills relate with anything?
3) What are you trying to achieve, what is the goal and stuff?

--- End quote ---

Answer to 1) THe points are used to build your character. The skills you use will determine just what you are capable of in this world.
Answer to 2) The skills help to define your character-their experiences in the world and like. I guess this bleeds into question 1.
Answer to 3) Your goal in wasteland is simple: to survive-there is a conflict going on over the pollutanite and for humanity's survival-I mean who wouldn't want this stuff. Another goal, and this will emerge once the story is moved along far enough-is to investigate the rumors of the possible reemergeance of the Alliance. If you have your own faction-you basically strive for whatever goal your faction is trying to obtain. Just bear in mind-if it becomes too ambitious someone's liable to take notice.

As for the whole system thing-I've actually designed these things my self-I've actually got a simple one ready: it has four stats-Strength, Vitality, Intelligence and Dexterity. I think its pretty obvious what they are all meant for. I orignally had just the three but added dex about two, three months ago-helped make things less confusing.

Strength Determines how much weight you can handle, what kind of positive/negative modifiers you got to your die roll in melee combat
Vitality helped or penalized resistance rolls and added/subtratced to base HP
Inteeligence is to use knowledge-ie mechanical or medica, it also was used as a resitance roll vs. psi. Was also a modifier in ranged combat
Dexterity is used in missle combat and agility rolls(new)

This work? Reisistances are as follows-Electrical, Poison, Fire, Plasma, Psi.

Reef Blastbody:
I think what people are trying to get at are what kind of guidelines and limitations do these mechanics follow.

For example. If I put 10 points into Medical Training, what exactly does this correlate to in-game? Do I get a +10 bonus on my roll, ie, roll 1d20, add 10 to my result? Do I get a +1 for every 2 points in a skill? Do you need to beat a certain "score" when rolling to achieve success, or is it against an opposed roll?

Can I just put 50 points into Medical Training and become Blackjack and House rolled into one? Is there a hard cap? etc.

It's all well and good to make mechanics, because it helps future homebrew, but no one knows exactly how things are interacting yet.

We have 50 points for 5 Skills, and we have Strength, Vitality, Intelligence and Dexterity, but how are those determined? Do we spend part of the 50 points on the stats too?

You did state that the more points you put into something, the more expensive it becomes to use, which I take to mean that each additional "level" of said skill or stat costs more points than the one that came before it, which makes sense too, however there is a clear point where the extra cost is not worth the +1 gain, and it would be fairly easy to determine an optimal build.

No one is trying to bust your chops or anything, but I believe Silhar was looking for more concrete mathematical answers to his questions instead of abstracts. It is my personal experience that play by post games work a lot better with very rules light systems / point based resolution or something like Amber Diceless. It is entirely possible to do a mechanically full bodied campaign but it is very, very slow and will take a long time, especially if confirming dice rolls, and having players roll, wait to find out if they succeeded or not, and then post their success or failure accordingly.

Just my two cents!

Kabrinski:
Hmm...good point.

As for the skill points-I've been debating on just how much the points it costs to put into goes up-one idea is that the level you have, that's the amount it costs.

As for the skill medical training-let's put it this way-you can save people's lives. A lv. 10 skill-which is extremely expesnive mind you-would enable you to do a triple heart bypass transplant with common household tools. You roll against a difficulty check-here's an example-if your trying to bring someone back from the dead-tha't be a difficulty check of about 50-you are not allowed to take a ten or twenty-you'd have to make an intelligence ceck of at least 30-you add the average of your medical skill and your intelligence-or perhaps just half-and you'd better hope you'd succeed.

I'm trying here dude, I'm trying.

Reef Blastbody:
I'm not trying to discourage you; homebrew and mechanics are one of my most frequently indulged in hobbies. I love getting into the nitty gritty and figuring out averages, what works best, etc.

I just caution against trying to start a game and inviting players in when you don't have the mechanics ready yet!

Usually you build the mechanics and "acid test" them; this is rolling them out yourself to make sure they work and make sense. Doing some mock combat examples, skill checks, etc, by yourself. Then you do a playtest with some people to work out the kinks, then you layer your story and background on top, and then you open chargen to potential players.

It's a lot of work, which is why I'll usually just crib someone else's system if doing a PBF, instead of a new engine each time.

Lesser of Two Heresies, for example, is run off of a modified version of the Dark Heresy table-top game's mechanics; they didn't need to invent a plausible method of resolution for combat and skills because one already existed.

As it stands, your system most closely resembles the Open SRD for d20, so don't stress yourself out trying to re-invent the wheel! You might want to take a look at it :

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd

They already have mechanics for Modern and Future as well. I willl say that d20 is good at being easy to learn and pick up, but the resolutions can be a little wonky in terms of "stability"; for a lot of prior and current gamers, d20 was the first engine they learned (unless they're old school and started out on 1e or 2e, or possibly Traveller), but not the one they stuck with. Tabletop RPGs are a lot like programming languages apparently; once you learn one, it's easier to understand the other ones!

Kabrinski:
New news everyone-system is nearing completion and is currently undergoing testing. Also story revised and tech limit will bem removed-rules for devlopent. Sorry for the long wait-the RP will be up soon.

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