Disclaimer: this is all Kelpies fault, she set my mind in motion.

Because all the cool kids are doing it. System thoughts for CUTT replacement in 2014.

From the Insurrection mould, and taking the advice I have given other people - sitting down and working out a set of principals for the system, then writing rules and setting with respect tot hose produces a much better result. Therefore, system concepts/goals.

You are welcome to comment and add opinions, particularly if you think there are important things I have missed. Note: I may consider you to be wrong.

System

The system should not require a degree in maths to create a character. why, it puts people off, it makes it harder to balance

The system should not require GCSE maths to play. why: for most people maths in battle is hard..

The system should not try to be all things to all people. why: too many compromises

The system should try to be most things to most people. why: practicality, I couldn't get scarred lands or insurrection past the vote, also as a uni society it is trying to bring in people to larp.

The system should support most archetypes and play styles. why: the above point. People should be able to be as many character tropes as reasonably possible, ball-gowners should be as happy as hit it monkeys.

The system focus on having many viable builds, and few optimal builds why: optimal builds are boring, ideally they should be not much better than a viable build.

Everyone should be able to be awesome. why: follow on of the viable builds principal, any viable build should have something that they do really well that the others don't.

The system should be about character stories. A story has a beginning a middle and and end - when they arrive and are new and comparatively weedy, though their growth, to the point where they are Teh Awesome, at this point the story must end, so new stories can happen. why: the characters story is basically what we remember, each phase is suitably different, but the key point is that one way or anther, every story ends.

Ideally the gap between a new character and an old character should be small enough that they can viably adventure together. why: this makes life easier all round if the relatively levels matter less for linears. (CUTT had one of the best examples I ever saw of the opposite of this which was Galwyn adventuring with a starting/low level mage. Galwyn had 3-4 times the body hits and 8 times the damage output of the mage. ShatLeg? managed it in the last event with some characters who were basically Average Joes and some who were immortal avatars of death.)

The system should give reasons for conflict. why: games where everybody has a love in are boring

The system should allow PvP?, but should not make it easy. why: PvP? is a natural extension of conflict, but "just stab them" should not be the easiest option. There should not be the 1 stop PvP? build.

The system should not support instagibs. why: they are boring for all parties

The system should account for the fact that it will run on GranchesterFuckingMedows?. why: because it will unless someone can find us somewhere better.

The system should avoid resource depletion. why: grenade syndrome, everyone holds onto their grenades until the very end. See: the 3YGB which had 3 party wipes yet not one priest UFed. 3YGB before that: party wipe but not one priest UFed. Also they make it harder to stat later encounters - if the party has no resources and 1 hit between them, they are unlikely to win against the final demon.

The system should support the players cocking up. why: linears where the party are handheld are boring. A viable option should be "screw this, we are going home" and there be consequences for it, but that it was a viable and correct choice.

The world should be small enough that the players can effect it, but big enough that they can't control it. why: games where what PC's do has no meaning are unfulfilling, similarly, having the PC's running the world makes it hard to seed plot / run things out.

The game happens in Uptime, any downtime exists solely to support uptime. why: it's called Live Action roleplay for a reason.

The system should use as few calls as possible and those it does should be as self-explanatory as possible. why: easier to get people into

The system should enforce flavour and variation. why: back to the "viable builds" point. If everyone can pick from everything it encourages a bland centralist mix. A Barbarian who is primarily a warrior of his tribe should be different from one who is the tracker for his tribe. A warrior who dabbles in magic should be different from a mage who has learned a bit of the art of fisticuffs. A rouge should fight differently to a warror.

The system should be able to die. why: systems are like characters - beginning, middle and end. If they keep dragging on then the weight of plot, rules changes and characters eats away at them. They should be allowed to arrive, be new and shiny, do some cool things, have an awesome ending, and then we all move on.

Setting

Any racial pysrepping should take account of the needs of putting monsters out in interactive. why: CUTT has taught me a lot about this - monsters that are hard to pysrep, don't get pysrepped

The Setting should have a distinct social class "adventurer" which all PC's fit in with no exceptions. This should be roughly equivalant to middle class/skilled tradesman. why: this makes several other points fall together. The setting for whatever reason has given rise to this class of people who go out and Solve Shit for other people. It also works well for the PC's not being the biggest fish in the pond : the reason the archmage is the archmage is he spends all day studying magic for 50 years, similarly the politician or guild leader spends his entire life politicking and running his business. The PC's may do that as a hobby or background activity, but that means they will never reach the top. It also provides a getout strategy for PC retirement - if a PC wants to take over a guild, they retire from adventuring. It also opens up that there are more powerful people than the PC's there - the archmage has SUPER WIZZY DEATH spell that the PC's cannot access, why? because he spent the last 10 years researching it. Gets away from the classic "PC's take over everything/have all the advanced abilities" problem of many RPG's - if you could obtain super cosmic power by a few months of bashing rats why would anybody bother studying?

Comments

I like this and mostly agree with your aims. I'm not quite sure I agree with having an adventurer social class. Some people do enjoy playing 'normal folk' who then maybe become adventurers or maybe don't. --Joey

Shall go back and look at it, I know what I want out of it, you and Malselene raise things I should look at. --Drac

Because I'm feeling opinionated right now. --Malselene

• I generally feel The game happens in Uptime, any downtime exists solely to support uptime. should come with the corollary of 'Downtime should exist to cover things required for the game that are boring to have happen in uptime'. Mostly from my empire experience so far unriggable elections are a thing that is not interesting in uptime and could be solved by ticky boxes in downtime leaving more uptime for stuff that is not queuing or having to stand around being bored. On the other hand I think skipping these sorts of things is also fine. Like for example riggable elections in uptime are much more likely to be interesting.

Point --Drac

• I'm also not a great fan of the adventurer social class thing as I prefer systems to not have completely obvious differences between PCs and NPCs although I can see instances of it working (I.e. where PCs are basically the Police Force)

see Reply to Joey, you are making me think about that one harder. NPC adventurers are definately a thing rather thna it being solely PCs. It is more a "By hanging out in the Wessex arms" you are saying to society that you are an adventurer, rather than a (whatever else). I'm thinking of it like a dominant gene.

Having done some more thinking on this topic I have come to the conclusion that if an adventurer social class exists they should be generally considered utter scum no one and generally not included in the protection of legal systems and generally blamed for everything that ever goes wrong whether this is true or not (and generally mean that no one would ever consider holding a trial for any actions of this group, it's just assign punishment (along the lines of the authorities going "we know you set fire to the docks, it was totally you, you're adventurers and hence obviously to blame, no we don't care which of you did it, you're all the same to us, you must pay unsummountable sum of money or solve the latest problem/quest hook or we will burn your taven down and confiscate all the booze. Or will just ignore small infractions). --Malselene

PS I may be biased, and have a hatred of trials and a love of being scum. --Malselene

• I also think something along the lines of "where ever possible skills should not require refs. Having to get a ref is a pain for players and gives the refs more stuff to sort when they are already busy" might be worth including

Definately. --Drac

• I think the existence of an adventurer class is an interesting idea, but I dislike the existence of NPC archmages with Super Whizzy Death spells. The PCs should be the people best qualified to solve the kind of problems PCs solve. If you have an adventurer class, it helps solve this - the archmage has spells that can do immensely powerful things, but they're not combat spells - why would he bother learning combat spells, when he's not an adventurer and hence won't need them. --Jacob

Fair point, to be looked at. --Drac

• When you say "the system should allow PvP?, but not make it easy", do you mean "the system should allow killing other PCs, but not make it easy"? I think that Inquisitor's idea of a system that actively encourages PvP?, but makes killing people a very suboptimal way of doing it, is a good one. --Jacob

From my experience PVP without the options of killing characters is not great. It tends to lead to the most effective method of dealing with character you dislike is to either completely ignore them or to take actions to exclude them from the interesting and important stuff and generally make playing them unfun for their player. Killing the character means they can at least roll up a new one and start to have fun again. --Malselene

This is a game by me, so stabbing people will of course be legit, it also may be optimal, but I don't want it to be easy. --Drac

• I absolutely loathe enforced character retirement/death; it's one of the reasons I stopped playing TT. Let players decide when they want to retire a character, don't force them to end a story if they don't want to. If the power differential between new and old characters is small (which I agree is a very good idea) then this doesn't cause nearly as many problems.

On that one I think we have to disagree, for any system running longer than 2-3 years I think enforced retirement vastly improves the game overall. Exact mechanic to be looked to make it as fair to players as possible - it is to encourage new stories not abruptly truncate running ones. --Drac

--Jacob

Being opinionated. Kinda want to write my own one of these now. -Steph

• With regards to an Adventurer social class or similar, it definitely works (for me at least), especially if there's some metaphysics behind it. For example, in Frail Realities, all PCs are Wastelanders (who can travel between the separate bubbles of reality that formed when the French broke the world. Long story). There are some NPC Wastelanders, but it gives the PCs more of a reason and an explanation to be there as a group. However, I don't know if TT necessarily needs one of these, given we have interactives. Don't get me wrong, I think it would be better if there was one (maybe with some sort of opt-out of not being part of that class but still a PC, but with acknowledgements this will make things hard for you, like not being able to carry weapons around casually or something).
• Agree with Jacob about not needing powerful NPCs. Powerful NPCs should, in my opinion and from a general gaming/plot point of view rather than just a system point of view, be good at one, very specific thing. That is their thing. It moves the plot. It doesn't detract from PCs.
• I am always against things that avoid resource depletion. I love that feeling of "well, crap, we've got nothing left" and that back-to-the-wall scrambling with the crap form of healing no-one bothered with because "oh god there's nothing else" tends to be when I have most fun. Balance between "I have one use of double per fight and five uses of double per day" are IMO (etc. etc.) the way to go. If you need two doubles in this fight, you have to use some of your stock, but if you are all out of your per days you can still do something. Of course the downside is that it makes system design a heck of a lot more complicated.
• Something something difference between lots of abilities and complicated numbers something something fun character design something don't need to be afraid of numbers something something. Need to think about how I want to say this. Ignore me.

On the adventurer class:

• I think this is a quite nice idea. It doesn't necessarily need to be metaphysically supported, but that helps somewhat (in Ragnarok, for example, the PCs are heroes taken to Valhalla). Depending on the game it might work to allow people to play lower - a medieval fantasy game probaly works with having the odd urchin or normal character. What really wants to be avoided is letting people go higher and still be PCs. --Tea
  • In Labyrinthe PCs just are an adventurer class, no metaphysics, and it definitely feels nicer to have there be some metaphysics behind it. But yes, not necessary. --Steph
    • Um, Vitae? I know there are non-adventurer people with vitae, but a standard Laby PC is part of the Special Group of people who can be resurrected, right? --Greg
    • Oh, I guess. But it's never really clear whether you have vitae because you're a PC, or are a PC because you have vitae. It's just not explored because it's there for an OoC? reason. Which is fair enough. But to me it feels nicer to have a "I am one of the descendants of the great magical sloth, and we meet every Friday at the sloth tree home because of this. It is common for non-sloth descendants to bring us their problems".
      • Hm. The potential problem with taht seems to be making retirement work nicely. --Tea
        • Perhaps some way of passing on your magical sloth blood to someone else? --Joey
          • I mean, our current enforced retirement is mostly "you go and gloriously explode somewhere." Either that or there are lots of people with magical sloth blood who don't become adventurers, it's just those that do are more likely to. I don't really see it as a problem unless it gets made into one --Steph

• My thoughts on powerful NPCs --Joey
  • I think that politically powerful NPCs are a good thing in a setting because they can give out missions, do stupid things that cause plot and provide setting continuity.
  • I think that mechanically powerful NPCs are a good thing when they are very distant from the PCs (e.g. gods) or when they are antagonists.
  • I think that powerful NPCs should not be unkillable or undefeatable. Even if they're really important to the plot.
  • I think that mechanically powerful NPCs should not be usable as resources for PCs
  • I think that mechanically powerful NPCs should not use their mechanical power to make PCs do things (some exceptions for antagonists here).
  • I think that in general, NPCs should not be both mechanically powerful and politically powerful.

I think I can formulate my attitude to powerful NPCs thusly:

• NPCs as "good at PCing" as a starting PC should be rare.
• NPCs "better at PCing" than a starting PC should be very rare.

There are a number of reasons, good and bad, to say that someone is not "good at PCing".Being low level is the obvious one; most people fall into this. Being evil is another one - challenging your high-level party with a linear where all the enemies have equivalent stats does stretch credulity, but I think it's a necessary evil and it's OK to just say "don't poke this". "I am an academic/nobleman/stay-at-home and choose not to get my hands dirty" is a bad reason, in my view, because the kind of things PCs do are so important. In general, if someone isn't doing stat-demanding stuff, I'd avoid giving them high stats; if you don't want the archmage to be out there linearing then don't give him any combat spells or hits; why did he bother to learn them? --Jacob

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