20 October 2019

Unemployed Drive Elemental a Troika! background

Unemployed Drive Elemental



In some savage spheres your kin are imprisoned in engines, forced to labor, slowly dying in both body and soul. Fortunately, you hail from a sphere where such atrocities never happened while still inventing the mechanics of harnessing the power of elementals. Or at least such atrocities are so far past as to have been long forgotten. As such, you are a trained and formerly licensed, bonded, and insured Drive Elemental.

Possessions
1d3 sixths of a mortal soul
Elemental Brethren of Drives & Engine membership card, expired
Intersphere work permit, exired
3d6 unpaid and overdue traffic citations
A body of and shrouded with flame (lightly armored & fists as fire bolt) or wind (modestly armored & fists as maul)

Advanced Skills
3 Astrology
3 Secret Signs - Elemental Navigation Buoys
2 Human Sexology
2 Fist Fighting
2 Golden Barge Pilot
2 Shuttle Pilot
2 Flitter Pilot
2 Spaceship Pilot
2 Dock & Harbor Smooth-talking
1 Elemental Bureaucracy

Special
Assume you have 2 in any flying craft Pilot skill, but track the advancement of each and every such skill separately. (Or don't. It's not my game).
As both your membership card and work permits are expired, you, or a factor, must negotiate with any sphere's elemental court, bureaucracy, guild, or union to function in the capacity of a drive elemental within that sphere as well the duration and other such minutia.
Related to my Eberron X Spelljammer posts.
Part One
Part Two
Part 3

19 October 2019

#troikajam and backgrounds

I wrote a background for #troikajam, then wrote some more inspired by that in a manner, then took them all down, then updated Dead Traveller Character for the jam. Then re-posted the other backgrounds.

<<<<Troika Background Jam >>>> 

Been a wild couple of days.



17 October 2019

Even more Magical Exalted

Even more Magical Exalted

The Life Giving Sun and their companion the Ever Changing Moon are important beings


Possible mechanics:

Each charm has a mastery track (progress clock), and once found and "equipped" this track fills. Until the track is filled, the charm takes up "space." I guess this is experience for the charm. Something like materia I guess.

Related is the idea of each N sessions a MG's charm capacity increases in the same way that characters in Goon hacks level up each session and improve the inventory stat equivalent.

It is likely I'll place a hardcap of +4 from charms to any given move. This is to mirror the spread of attribute scores from other pbta games.

The goal to make/convert charms that grow MGs horizontally not vertically, if that makes sense.

Adjust the move success ranges to account for charm bonuses. Or have the level of a threat/difficulty either modify the move roll or have its own success ranges.

Some musings:

Someone once told me that magical girl is different from shonen fighting anime because in one combat is not how things are resolved. Sure. But at the end of the episode, and this relates to mecha anime, each show leads to a final moment that usually resolved with martial conflict regardless of what the actual build up through the episode was. There is always some kind of personal growth, some kind of interpersonal growth. The main characters are to various extents fueled by the feelings. The power of friendship frequently is what wins the day.

This is like the D&D is about combat argument in that folx get wrapped up in the wrapping paper. Sure, the trappings are important because the way we talk about similar things is what makes them different. So I don't want to be overly reductive, but say that the amount of cross-over in the themes of these genre is negligible feels wrong.

But, just like I've quipped that detailed rules for an aspect of a game form the setting. They provide a scaffold to hang the characters from. This is a long(?) drawn-out way to explain or justify what might turn in an "excessive" emphasis on magical combat for MFXalted.

There are a lot of "D&Disms" I am working against, but I may embrace if only because things like wandering a Nightmare Labyrinth as D&D-esque dungeon is a different take than other folx are probably doing with magical girl rpgs. We don't all have to have the same design goals. Hell, it's probably good we don't as we can filch from each other and other folx can remix our ideas.

I was going to muse through what it actually means to say PMMM is a deconstruction of the MG genre or that Mob Psycho is a MG anime because it is an inversion of shonen anime. Because I don't really know?

I am shooting for a much more hopeful or uplifting base assumption than something like PMMM or even Magical Fury. Such as the companions generally not having deep dark secret/malign goals like Kyuubey. More like Luna or Cerberus.

To-do:
convert a few charms to being a name, one line description, and bonus.

get around to continuing Magic Knight Rayearth and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

16 October 2019

Some more Magical Fury X Exalted Stuff

Illustration from Undine by Arthur Rackham
The broad scope of this mashup campaign.

Part of the reason why I haven't written more on this mashup idea is that Magical Fury (MF) doesn't have stats/attributes/etc or a lot of other traditional things, so I didn't really know what I SHOULD do with the idea of the magical girls gathering charms or spells or whatever. I went from a here is the list of charms or where they come from and what they vaguely do with powers or something, to use them as basically cool things to say during the rolls. It went vaguer because even if you restrict yourself to the charms and spells from 1e Exalted core, that is a LOT of charms to write up for very little payoff because of the way I felt MF was written.

Fast-forward to Troika! and Goon Hack Jam. Both are pretty dead simple with what equipment do, if you have a relevant thing it's a +1 to the roll unless specified otherwise. Additionally, Troika! has possessions that aren't physical things like an Exciting Accent or Quixotic Undertaking. So it sets the idea of non-physical equipment in my brain, leading to Extradimensional Friends, by myself, and several other Goon hacks with similar takes on equipment as non-physical things, songs, martial arts techniques, philosophical concepts. Someone even wrote a magical girl goon hack, based on Card Captor Sakura, which did this with magical cards.

So charms in Exalted are magical supernatural powers that cool names and do things that effect realty in a variety of interesting ways. But charm can also mean a cool little tchotchkes. At the moment I don't know I want to have them be physical things or metaphysical, but I do know I want them to occupy a space, grant minor bonuses to relevant activities, and negatively impact rolls if too many are "carried." There are still just so many charms that I don't think I'll ever do really real full write-ups for them, but I will for some of them just to illustrate how simple I want to make this, because for most part any given charm will only be +1 to a relevant roll.

Combos are another important part of how charms work in Exalted and I'm thinking about that as well.

What does this all mean beyond all that shit?

I want to make charms things the magical girls will have to find to aid them in their mission to fight (for whatever that ends up being) (or not) against the growing forces of the Neverborn and the Green Sun witches and magical girls and the sorcerers of the dragon-blooded families.

Also working on the tone I want beyond trying to do as positive of a bend as possible even if things look bleak.

10 October 2019

High Fructose Hyperspace Part One

Decided this morning to release each discrete piece of High Fructose Hyperspace as a zini/pamphlet to keep from getting wrapped around the axle. First up is the map and key ver 1. Hazards have not been placed yet and might be cut. The sphere's are only named in this zine. Subsequent zinis will be on a single system/sphere and maybe its gate station. The way itch is working for this project for the moment I'm leaving this zine at $5 and the $10 preorder placeholder will at some point get all the subsequent zinis and later compilation. There will also be a later physical version.


07 October 2019

Updates for High Fructose Hyperspace will on Itch and Patreon

I'll be doing the "fancy" or graphic/illustration updates for High Fructose Hyperspace in the Preorder doc on my itch page. Things like replacing placeholder text for glyphs with the glyphs on the map, which is the latest update as seen here in the dev log.

Rough notes from my notebooks and wip of illustrations will be updated to my patreon.


05 October 2019

Short Sphere Descriptions High Fructose Hyperspace the last two, Lollipop and Ice Cream

<lollipop icon>: entry/exit gate for the LOLLIPOP sytem. This massive planet is thickly forested with giant lollipop trees inhabited by all manner of sugar sprites. It is ruled by a Fairy Princess. It is encircled by a solid ring of rainbow candy. It has multiple candy disk moons, each shaped to a specific phase of Luna of Terra. The GATE is built in the dark center of the New Moon. The Beanstalk is multiple overgrown and intergrown trees reaching out through and past the Ring.

<ICE CREAM CONE ICON>: the entry/exit gate for the ICE CREAM System. The sole planet is a massive Neptunian ice giant. It is covered totally by a sparkling ocean of sodas of all flavor upon which float ice cream bergs. The sky is filled with fluffy whipped cream clouds. Within the distance Oort Cloud are candied fruits, nuts, cookies and other assorted ice cream toppings from which there are frequent toppings comets and subsequent frequent and regular meteor showers. It has two large moons, one of sherbet and the other of sorbet. The Beanstalk is an ice cream berg so massive it rests on the bottom of the soda seas reaching past the whipped cream clouds. Planetary legends says the mountain is either where the Queen of the system sleeps or that the mountain IS the Queen. It is inhabited by an extremely diverse population, representatives of the peoples of other Candy Space systems have lived there for thousands of years. Notable creatures native only here are the frozen bananafolk, sodaceanids, and licorice krakens battling gummi whales in the deeps.

03 October 2019

Character Traits, Passions, Motivations and other such mechanics NOT rooted in the physical

Other random thoughts with regards to BRP Mecha.
  1.  I think I discovered a disconnect between my assumptions as the assumptions of the author of BRP Mecha, in that melee combat is extremely damaging even in the default rules for the real robot suggested rules, and melee combat seems to be intended to not be a part of RR games for Size Classes 1 and 2. Where as Super Robot games with the default assumption that all mecha are Size Class 3 and the kaiju they fight are Size Class 5 or higher, the armor values due to the way that armor is calculated based on Size Class and the assumed tech level or genre, are higher, and seem to scale faster than damage does, which I guess could be why he suggests that no matter how large a SR actually is, it stays Size Class 3. Like, a rough conversion of a Battletech Atlas, a 100ton mech, had it doing the same damage as a Spartan, a 29 metric ton Destroid, despite being over 3 times the mass and 50% taller, but that larger height was enough to bump it into Size Class 3 vs the Spartans Size Class 2, giving a bump in armor, and the capability of carrying larger ranged weapons.
  2. There is also the whole "fate points" and "motivations" thing. Fate points really being replenishable HP that are used to bump skill rolls during combat and therefore take on the plot armor role that increasing HP have in games with levels. Naturally I have no problem with players dying. To me a situation is much more tense if a character doesn't have some kind of plot immunity. That is not to say that I don't think that a heroic character should be prevented from calling up on some kind of inner reserve of strength to triumph over crazy odds. I mean the PKs are piloting 12m tall mecha. Which brings me to...
  3. Since I am using KAP, I have those lovely Passions, which can be used to become impassioned, giving sizable bonuses to rolls that are pertinent to the situation. The downside is that failing a roll will make the Passion decrease and fumbling one will cause the PK to go mad for one or more years and essentially removed from play until GM fiat returns her to play. But to me this is extremely in genre for Arthurian Romance, and even anime. Along side Traits that can, and eventually will, compel a PK to act against his interests, the Traits and Passions do model the fact that many anime heroes do stupid shit that they know they shouldn't, or are hopelessly mired in conflicting Passions and their innate natures. Like those stupid love triangles: Rick, Lisa and Minmay from Robotech being a good example.
  4. This for some reason flies against the views of author of BRP Mecha. One of his opposing points makes sense in the context of player agency:
    Moreover, the KAP or RQ6 passion system is often used to direct a character's course of action by requesting a roll in order to act. This should NEVER - and I stress NEVER - happen in Mecha, where activation of a motivation is always decided by a player. Once the players have learned how much they need Fate in battle, no one will dare start a game without throwing in his or her in-character scene. At this point, there is little reason to request "rolls to see if you can do this or that": you will probably identify the correct course of action by yourselves.
    And
    It is your game, but personally I feel that compelling a player character's actions is always the worst option. When an ethical choice is to be made, there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable if the GM or a game mechanics tell them what their characters would actually do. If you leave players a choice, those who like rolling on their traits can still do it - the GM cannot prevent them deciding their player choice based on a Motivation roll, even if this is not prescribed by the rules - and this will be fun for them. However, if the GM is given a tool to dictate PC behaviour, then those players who prefer to make their own ethical decisions will feel their characters "taken out of their hands" and cease to have fun. One option is fun for everyone, the other option is not fun for someone: in such a situation, I always choose the way that guarantees fun to everybody.
     BUT KAP Traits don't absolutely compel action until a character has a 16 in that Trait. Granted acting contrary to a Trait should get a check on the opposing Trait. Also, the default for Traits in KAP 5.1 is that Relgious Traits start as 13, Valor is 15, and everything else is 10, which the option to increase one or more Traits during character gen. So to me, in the context of KAP and even an anime game, the Traits help a player remember what she intended with her character without being a straight-jacket against player agency.
  5. And he thinks that Passions would be terrible Motivations because they lack verbosity and specificity.
    Nothing prevents you using Traits and Passions, as they are, as Motivations, save the facts that the suggested formulation of Motivations in BRP Mecha is way more complicate than that given in KAP. And there is a reason for this. If you read the full-page example about Motivations, there is one thing about it that I have not transcribed. One of the players (the one playing Baron) had "Brave" as a motivation, the other had "I never turn my back to danger". As shown in the example, "Never turn..." is way more significant and has many more facets that you can effectively exploit in game. KAP and RQ6 are not as verbose with Traits/Passions as HeroQuest, and Mecha is best played with verbose Motivations.
     Which to me is just silly. A Passion that a character starts with or acquires during play is going to have reasoning behind it. Every default PK has Hate (Saxons), and there multiple reasons why they would, many of them simultaneous: they are invaders is the first most obvious, but there is the implication that everyone will have had at least family member slain by the invaders. Why does a character need a full bleeding sentence with a very specific reasoning?
    We recommend that you phrase a Motivation
    so that it contains at least two major themes,
    so that the Gamemaster and the other players
    have a wider choice of options to interact with
    your Motivation if you activate it. For instance,
    “Hatred for the Zaburai aliens” is an allowed
    Motivation, but “Hates the Zaburai for killing
    her beloved Patrick” is way more interesting
    and useful in game terms. The Gamemaster is in
    charge of asking questions to players about their
    Motivations before play begins (“What are your
    actual reasons to hate the Zaburai? Do you have
    anything personal or is it just that they are the
    enemy?”), and inviting them to better specify all
    details about them.

    I don't understand the need for verbosity with a character's Motivation. Maybe it's because his assumption is that BRP Mecha is going to have pre-combat scenes for each character that has non-combat drama, but I still don't really understand where this concept actually comes from in anime. Also the idea that Motivations need verbose specificity seems to be an attempt to both ensure that the GM can't say no, and to curtail the amount of GM fiat that gets used in the name of greater player agency. For some reason this reminds of the proliferation of narrowly defined feats and combat maneuvers in 3.x and PF.