Perception

Had a productive conversation with Tim Jensen.  I mentioned that the one skill that seems to be used more often than any other is perception, and he came up with the simple solution of scraping the perception skill all together.  It makes a lot of sense to me, it's more interesting when the the character does pick up on all those details that you may have carefully written.

Now, I'm not saying that all the characters will automatically see everything in front of them, if the character isn't looking carefully he won't find it; but if the character is meticulously searching a room for evidence, he'll find it.  However, I may ask for a Intelligence/Logic check for the character to understand the importance of what he has found.

For example:

GM: You are now in the living room of the Count, the furniture is lavish and there are large family portraits on the wall.
Bob: I examine the walls closely for any hidden panels
GM:  You find what you think is a secret door.  Roll Intelligence/Mechanics to figure out how to open it
Bob: (rolls a total of 7)
GM: This door seems very sophisticated, you can't figure out how to open it without breaking it
Bob:  I take out my axe and hit the panel
GM:  The noise of cracking open the panel alerts the guard upstairs, he rushes down the main set of stairs, sees you and attacks Combat start.




Another advantage is that since I want an equal number of skills in each category in the core rules anyway, it frees up a space in the mental category so that we can have a medicine skill instead of lumping medicine in with the already large science skill.

So, Thank you Tim, I appreciate your help!

 

Barely Success

So Tim and I have been looking through the Doctor Who RPG (which also uses a 2d6 mechanic) and they had an interesting concept about degrees of success.  A lot of points below the DC means uber failure, a few points below is a normal failure, and a tiny bit below is a sort of failure (ie you convince the guards not to kill you on site, but they will throw you in the dungeon).  And similarly for successes (sort of success, normal, and super awesome success)

We've decided to add a new optional rule that says when you get exactly the Difficulty level, it counts as a barely success.  A few examples: John's character is trying to jump from rooftop to rooftop, John's roll plus his strength plus athletics is a 12, which is what the DL is.  The GM could say, "You make it to the other roof, but only barely, and you're hanging on by your fingertips."

Another example is if you're trying to pick a lock and you roll exactly the DL; it takes the character longer to pick the lock and therefore has a higher chance of getting caught.  Or, you pick the lock, but your pick breaks in the lock, leaving you without your pick and unable to relock the door.

Grenades, Hordes, and Armor

Before I didn't have any rules for grenade type things, and I'm working on it. My idea is that the item will have it's own attack/damage stats and different things can have different effects. Such as some kind of grenade that makes them fall unconscious will have the status effect 1 or 2 power, with adding modifiers on the size of the room at GM discretion.

I've been thinking about how to run a mass battle type of thing because of the upcoming raid on the adventurer's guild in Catica. And I've come up with a few ideas.

1. Just use narratives. Since both sides have a bunch of minions and a handful of actually competent people, it would be easy to simply say, "Ok, this group of people and this group of people are busy fighting each other while the heroes are locked in an epic one on one fight in the middle.

2. Each minion on that side's initiative rolls 1d6 (all at the same time obviously), add up the number of 6s and that's how many minions/heavy wounds they have dealt as a group. This way is nice because it makes the battle a bit more quantifiable in terms of which group is winning and losing. However, it does take time, and if the heroes of a side win, it doesn't matter much which group of minions is left standing.

3. This one doesn't work as well with what I have planned for the next game but it is something I'm definitely going to play around with either in the playtesting group or on my own. Treat the horde as a single monster, but with a few differences. Give them a ton of health points (which in this system is like 10) which isn't necessarily representing 10 minions, each health point could be 2 or even three if your super heroic and can toss orcs like Gandalf. And give the horde a damage and/or attack bonus based on the number of HP they have left. It makes them incredibly scary at the beginning but as the battle wears on, they become much less so. I need to play with the numbers before deciding were the balance is with this one.

Armor and Mages: I wanted to have something to discourage a mage from wearing heavy plate armor. But I didn't want it to not be possible for there to be a fighter character or ranger type that can use both. So now light armor takes a -1 attack penalty to magic attacks, and heavy takes a -2.

Guardia Session 2

After a day and a half stuck in Quarantine with only each other and incident reports to keep you company, the three were released. Dr. Adam Gordon claimed that the lock malfunction was due to a softeware update, and the chimps aggressive behavior was probably because of a new chemical they were exposed to during research.

Larry, Derik's computer security friend left a short and cryptic message on his home answering machine.

The next day, the group sat in Dr. Ding's car, blaring music and discussing the situation. Their conclusion: something was up, but they have little idea as to what.

Dan's wound from the chimps is getting itchy and starting to piss Dan off a bit. Doctors think it's simply an infection and nothing to be concerned about.

Larry makes a scene, and claims his computer broke, telling Derik to take it to the basement where the rest of the junk is stored. They manage to use the password Larry gave him, and are able to access quite a bit of information and gather a few leads.

Lead 1: the shift before Ding's, are all fired. When you go talk to them, they all seem to have legitimate reasons for being fired, though the fact that three people working on the same project were all fired on the same day strikes you as odd.

Lead 2: You found the update, and an IP address that went along with it. At a Starbucks, one of the very few places in Guardia City that is not part of the corporation. When you went there, you found a poster claiming that Athena was not all that humane, accompanied with an email address. After some correspondence, you met with Jack, an animal activist/conspiracy theorist. He claims to have gotten some tips, and released the animal cages remotely to free the animals. When you explained to him what had happened, Jack felt used. And while he may be a bit on the crazy side, he could prove to be a useful ally.

******

In terms of rules, I've got a few new ideas for draft #4. Athletics and Acrobatics will be collapsed into one (which will be named athletics), and Mechanics will take up that empty slot.

Also, there will be "critical skill checks" as in if you roll a natural 12 (that's a 12 before you add anything) it will count as a success even if your total wouldn't have added up to be a success. It represents being very lucky and also of you know something specific from your past that applies (like in Slumdog Millionaire).

I'll also be adding some more descriptive stuff as well.

Perception.

I'm changing the skill "intuition" with "perception". While one might think that perception is not something that can be trained, I think that it can. A forensic investigator is much better at finding tiny things dug into the carpet than someone who is not. A skilled doctor can identify a disease where others would not see a problem.

Also, I was unhappy with intuition. It competed with the empathy, and when it didn't, it could be over used. My solution was that intuition/gut feelings, could be an ability. Whether you are force sensitive, have gods whispering in your ears, slightly psychic or whatever.

Abilities

I just added a new feature to 2d6, thanks to Mark's marvelous idea: Abilities.

Abilities are generally non-combat skills/spells that do not fit in any other category. The xp cost to acquire them varies on the ability, as some are more useful than others. If you want a starting character to have abilities, you must take the points away from your skills. Abilities can be anything, be creative! When you have an idea that fits with your character and the game, discuss it with the GM and he or she will assign a cost to your ability. Sometimes the ability could even be free (this is where bribing your GM with cookies comes in handy).

Some examples of abilities are:

Flight (either magic, or your character created some awesome jet pack, or whatever)
Polymorph- being able to change shape, and change others. (She turned me into a newt!)
Water breathing
Invisibility
Race specific abilities- Vampires gaining health by drinking blood, Werewolves infecting others,