Tips for my setting?

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Kazu
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Tips for my setting?

Post by Kazu »

So i'm making a game where player are no-powers Heroes. I want it Action Packed, with them jumping from buildings to buildings, or struggling to stay in a car window whle trying to kill the mobsters inside. So i have some questions wich i need help:

1 - How can i make it gritty enough? I mean, in Savage Worlds, the other system i play, there's a system that everytime you get a wound, you roll 2d6 and gets a hindrance, like broken arm or no vision. These are bad, but temporary. I wanted something like that, so i thought that every 5 points of damage you roll for injuries. That would make about 3 injuries before running out of health.

2 - I want to make heroes reputation a thing, like internet videos and such. However, got no clue on how to do that. Any lights?
Malancthon
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Malancthon »

I'll have to let someone else answer your first question, but for your second question, look at the Famous and Infamous ability and weakness. The Rival and Wanted weaknesses may also prove to be of use.
Chris Brady
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Chris Brady »

First off, it's actually pretty simple. There are plenty of anime that do this. First, the hindrances you can actually use for the various stages of health in the basic rules section. You can mimic Stunned for example by claiming there's blood in the eyes, meaning your trying to clear your vision, instead of defending. For injuries that are more visual than actually hindering, you just describe it.

Second, why not use a new 'health' track. Just like the Health/Endurance pool, except everyone Hero starts at 0, and for every good deed they get X amount of points up to a cap of say... 40. For every bad deed, they get subtracted a X amount. If they're under 0, they're Infamous, if they're above, they're Famous.


Just my two pence. And maybe a ha'penny.
"And now my friends, a Dragon's Toast! To life's little blessings; wars, plagues and all forms of evil. Their presence keeps us alert-- And their absence keeps us grateful!" - T.A. Barron
Kazu
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Kazu »

Chris Brady wrote:First off, it's actually pretty simple. There are plenty of anime that do this. First, the hindrances you can actually use for the various stages of health in the basic rules section. You can mimic Stunned for example by claiming there's blood in the eyes, meaning your trying to clear your vision, instead of defending. For injuries that are more visual than actually hindering, you just describe it.

Second, why not use a new 'health' track. Just like the Health/Endurance pool, except everyone Hero starts at 0, and for every good deed they get X amount of points up to a cap of say... 40. For every bad deed, they get subtracted a X amount. If they're under 0, they're Infamous, if they're above, they're Famous.


Just my two pence. And maybe a ha'penny.
Thank you for the tips, but...

1 - Nice idea for some minor wounds, but i was actually thinking about a broken rib or dislocated shoulder. I mean, it's a scenario where you can get hit in the ea by a sledgehammer.

2 - I'll reformulate - by reputation, i mean fame. How well people know your name. How many "views n' likes" you have. Your idea was nice if by reputation i meant "they like you!", however, heroes doing bad deeds, like driving a car into a shop's window to kill some bad guys, make audience go HIGH!
Chris Brady
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Chris Brady »

Kazu wrote:
Chris Brady wrote:First off, it's actually pretty simple. There are plenty of anime that do this. First, the hindrances you can actually use for the various stages of health in the basic rules section. You can mimic Stunned for example by claiming there's blood in the eyes, meaning your trying to clear your vision, instead of defending. For injuries that are more visual than actually hindering, you just describe it.


Second, why not use a new 'health' track. Just like the Health/Endurance pool, except everyone Hero starts at 0, and for every good deed they get X amount of points up to a cap of say... 40. For every bad deed, they get subtracted a X amount. If they're under 0, they're Infamous, if they're above, they're Famous.


Just my two pence. And maybe a ha'penny.
Thank you for the tips, but...

1 - Nice idea for some minor wounds, but i was actually thinking about a broken rib or dislocated shoulder. I mean, it's a scenario where you can get hit in the ea by a sledgehammer.[/quote]

Well, that's just it. Assuming you're trying to mimic an Anime style show, a lot of damage IS just visual. Even with dislocated shoulders and broken limbs. But... You can just hit them with penalties, though. -2 dice whenever you try and do anything extraneous with broken ribs. A dislocated shoulder means you can dual wield or use a two handed weapon until you're limb is re-set. it's very much a judgement call. And if your players trust you (and why shouldn't they? You're friends) then you can pretty much adjudicate however you want it to.
Kazu wrote:2 - I'll reformulate - by reputation, i mean fame. How well people know your name. How many "views n' likes" you have. Your idea was nice if by reputation i meant "they like you!", however, heroes doing bad deeds, like driving a car into a shop's window to kill some bad guys, make audience go HIGH!
So general popularity, not actual reputation. Easier. You make a single track, start at zero. You, the GM, decide at what rank players get some recognition, and actually the basic Reputation stat in the game can help. Ignore the how much people like you, but instead focus at how many people have heard of you. So rank 1, it's a small neighbourhood, or a forum somewhere on Reddit. Rank 2 is there's been blogs and small new sites articles. Rank 3 is citywide. Rank 4 is State/Province (depending on which country you base it in.) Rank 5 maybe National or whatever.

But you need to figure what the 'ranks' are, and what they mean. And how many 'points' it'll take to get to each rank.
"And now my friends, a Dragon's Toast! To life's little blessings; wars, plagues and all forms of evil. Their presence keeps us alert-- And their absence keeps us grateful!" - T.A. Barron
Kazu
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Kazu »

I really liked the idea of a -2 Dice for broken ribs and such. I made the table:

2d6

2 Minor Wounds (-1 to all rolls)
3-4 Arm (Master decides wich one - It's unusable until healed.)
5-9 Guts (Broken rib, knife stab, etc; -2 to all rolls)
10 Leg - (Master decides wich one - It's unusable until healed)
11-12 Head (Rol 1d6 - 1/2 (Stunned), 3-4 (Confused (-1 to all rolls)), 5-6 (Brain Damage (-3 to all rolls))

What do u think?

Also, about popularity, i'm thinking about rewards. Should i make it Roleplay only, or maybe throw in some minions and such?
Chris Brady
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Chris Brady »

A suggestion, roll on that table only when the player takes a total of at least half their health in a single blow? Otherwise, you might end up with a 'death spiral' and that's never fun (well, OK, some people are OK with it. Hopefully your guys/gals are.)
"And now my friends, a Dragon's Toast! To life's little blessings; wars, plagues and all forms of evil. Their presence keeps us alert-- And their absence keeps us grateful!" - T.A. Barron
Kazu
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Kazu »

Sorry for my lack of information but what's a death spiral?
Clay
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Re: Tips for my setting?

Post by Clay »

I agree with Chris that you can use the existing Complication system for this purpose instead of engineering something new. The advantage of this is it still works with all the current Perks and Flaws.

What I would do is rewrite the Complications to work as follows:
Stunning: Lose your next action and roll on the injury table.
Impairing: The opponent may choose an injury from the table.

If you use the advice on page 109 in the sidebar and drop Health/Endurance by half, you’ll also see a lot more complications being inflicted and characters, in general, going down faster.

That said, as Chris mentioned, even serious injuries tend to a cosmetic issue. The grittiest mercenary that ever dared to grit may be bleeding all over and wincing and limping, but he can still whip out some serious hurt most of the time. I would (personally) cut health/Endurance by half and stick to the Impaired complication for abstractly representing various hurts. (-1 Penalties can add up quickly, too.)

But that’s me! You should do what works best for your game, and there is a fun element to critical hit tables that can’t quite be replicated with narrative gusto.

As for popularity, have you thought about using Famous, but rolling your Famous dice if you want to see if you get a result from it? It might be easy to impress a young adult (Difficulty 4), but you might have less sway with an elderly farmer out in the boondocks (difficulty 10 or 12).

Getting more famous is just a matter of increasing your Famous Ability between adventures.

(Sees latest post) "Death spiral" is a term for games that feature a health system that, by their nature, make characters increasingly unable to act as they’re injured. The result is that a character gets hurt, makes poorer rolls, making it easier to get hurt, which results in even POORER rolls, and so on until the character is an unsalvageable mess of penalties till a good hit puts them out of their misery.

Arguably OVA’s Impairments make a sort of a mini-death spiral. But because they’re not inflicted often, and the Penalty is relatively minor, it shouldn’t devolve into characters being useless in combat.
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