Welcome to My (Flat) World

[Legendary Sidekick]

Ruby and Aspasia seem to be very busy with school. I haven't heard from them via PM, so I decided to auto-pilot their characters for now. (I offered them two rolls last turn, which is why I rolled twice for them.)

In the interest of finishing this play-test, I'll keep Fenella and Dila on the smaller orc so Mariya and Ariel can finish the big guy. I was going to leave Lily out for one more turn, but her roll was too good—and in fact, my only good roll. The bad guys had the worst rolls!

(Hopefully, I used up my bad luck here so I can roll better in Dragon's Egg.)

 

[Ireth]

I think my good luck in Dragon's Egg just ran out. >_<

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

@Noma, Keep the roll if you want to. Rolz has been kinda funny lately.

Also, I heard from Ruby, so I'll hold off for another day or two to give her time. (I expect to be swamped tomorrow, so Friday is likely my update day.)

 

[Devor]

Okay, I swear I'm here now. I just read through twenty pages here to get up to speed, and I still need to read up in the main story thread. In three years at Mythic Scribes I think this is the first time I've run out of "Thanks." I must not be doing it enough.

I'm sorry to see Fate go, but I'm happy that it's settled. One thing about Fate's skills was that Furtano could be a pirate with magic just by the skills, without breaking any balance issues. Is that going to be an issue with the new system? I haven't hit up the d20 thread yet.

PLACES:
You can make them up, really. I left it a blank slate so Fenella can come from the Zanderlands and such. The ones that came up in-game so far are…

Roku-Roku Island (ep.0)
Asahi Beach (ep.2)
Mount Neverest (ep.3)

TECH LEVEL:
This side of the world is typically medieval.
The Other Side is more of a post-apocalyptic future kind of world.

OTHER INFO:
Flat Earth is pretty much Australia blown off the regular round Earth in the year 20X6. The chunk of planet is floating through space with two moons orbiting it—one of which is a ball of fire, and is called the sun. (But technically, it is a moon since it orbits the planet.) On one side, which was once the underside of the Earth's crust, humans live. On the other, demonic creatures hang out in old human buildings. How life and water and not-knocked-over buildings can be on Flat Earth is unknown.

Likely, the life and water has to do with some angels sent to watch over the Flat Earth. These angels and their first-generation offspring came to be known as the thirteen gods and goddesses of this drifting chunk of planet. The not-knocked-over buildings has to do with my inability to go online and get photos of knocked-over buildings in Australia.

^ This is fun.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

No, I don't see it as an issue. My latest thought is to allow the purchase of skills as you level, which is sort of inspired by Fate and something we had before. Not using Fate dice doesn't mean we throw away the concepts.

For me, I don't care which randomizer we use, but as you say—best it's settled.

Devor, if you want to roll the d20 you can have your guy pop out on the map wherever you please. Maybe Brother Lorenzo and Furtano were delayed aiding a survivor. (That was going to be my in-game excuse for why the NPC healer isn't with the group yet.) There are two caves, so either of those would make the most sense—if making sense is a must.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Post #899 includes a list of 50 "skills." I still need to work out what classes start with at level 1, but I think this is a decent way to keep simple d20 rolling with Fate type skills. "Personality" can be provoke/deceive/empathize, etc., depending on what your character is like. Buying the skill represents the character knowing how to use her personality to her advantage, so a nice guy making nice or or a jerk purposely PO'ing an NPC could produce the same results if you mean to manipulate and NPC.

 

[Devor]

I will get to an in-game post later tonight (I promise! No, my wife promises. She will make me . . .).

I had run through a number of game designs a while back, after the last Mythgate effort ended, and one of them worked on a very simple skill system. In a nutshell, each character card would have four unique skills listed on it and a rating for each. Like the Paladin could get through a challenge using either "Smiting" or "Smugness." Some of those skills would be for "Fighting" and some would be for "Influence" and others might be for "Burglary" or other purposes. It's on the player to explain how Smugness gets through the Influence challenge when he or she rolls the dice. And if the Paladin didn't have any Burglary skills, then he couldn't face a Burglary challenge.

I mention it now because 50 skills looks like a lot, and I'm a little confused what they do if they don't add to the dice. But if players were to make up a handful of few of their own skills, it might be easier to give them a bigger impact on the dice.

But I'm just babbling because I think about game design way more than I should. 50 skills are fine with me.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Skills don't add to the dice in a way that the player has to add a number. Basically, each "skill" is really a set of skills that you're good at.

For example, anyone can cook a meal, but if you have the skill, you might be able to make food that heals or enhances reflexes. "Smugness" could be part of the Personality skill, so to an extent the player is making up stuff. You define how you make use of the skill. You can even try to justify how to combine skills. For example: If you want to be a master of disguise, Personality and Perception might justify your ability to impersonate someone you've observed. If you also have Magic: Trickery, the disguise could be made magically.

The 50-skill list is made up of the following:

• 10 starting class skills - These give players from each class an ability that is unique. It's possible for players to learn from each other, though there are limitations. It might be extremely difficult to learn a mentalist's skill, and no human can learn a pixie skill.
• 10 advanced class skills - Players can learn or earn another class-specific skill. Some of these can be taught to other classes.
• 13 professions - Some professions are tied to a certain god or goddess. You start the game with one profession. If nothing on this list suits your character, feel free to come up with your own profession. (Phil the Drill had "gambler" as his.)
• 7 types of magic - Magic-class characters start with a certain element and can learn more. Non-magic characters may prove capable of learning magic.
• 7 types of weapons - Choose your weapon, and choose which weapon you're good at.
• 3 "interactive" skills - The skills are called Stealth Mode, Perception and Personality, but all three cover a broad range of abilities. For example,
  • Stealth Mode: hide, move silently, pick locks, hide in plain site, escape without being followed
  • Perception: notice, investigate, automatically detect secret doors or an ambush based on location on the map
  • Personality: use your personality to bargain, intimidate, charm, deceive or get a skeptical NPC to see that you are truly an honest person

For all die rolls, there is a target, and that target is not the same for every character. The strong are most likely to win in a grapple, Fighters are most likely to hit with melee/unarmed attacks, Shooters are most likely to hit with a ranged attack, Defenders are least likely to get hit (pixies also have a defense bonus, especially vs. ranged attacks), and Magic users are more likely to cast successfully. (I think this solves the balance issue.)

[SPOILER="non-magic" class characters who learn magic]Roll a 13+ to cast.

If you roll a 4-12, you can opt to charge the spell. To cast a charged spell, simple roll a higher number on your next turn. If you roll a lower number, the spell backfires. If you roll the same number twice in a row, you need to continue charging.

If hit while charging magic, your spell will backfire.[/SPOILER]

When you learn a skill like Personality, which doesn't take any of the above proficiencies (strength, magic, etc.) into account, I'll basically make a judgement call on what the target should be. If you RP consistently, for example, if you're always smug, using "smugness" to manipulate is more likely to work than it would be if your character was normally humble. So for consistent personality, I'm considering a 10 to be your base which only puts odds slightly in your favor (55%).

Now I have to see what, exactly, you're trying to pull with your smugness. Charm a lady? Ehh… I'm not sure if smugness is an advantage or not, so I'm leaving 10 as your target. Odds are minimally in your favor. Are you trying to rally villagers to your cause? They don't care for smug outsiders. If you roll a 13, I'll give it to you. Odds of success are 40%. If you're using smugness to provoke someone to take a swing at you, yeah. Roll 7 or better. 70% chance of success, and if RP'd well enough, you might succeed no matter what.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I found a way to use my tablet in a way that actually comes out like my paper drawings. I was doing a sketch on graph paper today, and my scanner sucks, so I couldn't really do anything with my inked drawing.

So here's what I did entirely in PhotoShop:

I made a graph paper grid and sketched in light gray.

I inked the sketch.

I colored the skin first…

…which admittedly emphasizes what is wrong with this costume. I swear a front view is relatively modest. Would you want to be the guy to tell a 6'9" barbarian that her outfit puts the "bare-ass" in "embarrassing?"

Other Flat Earth characters will cover up better. (I mean, they have to.) But even if you like the costume as much as my wife does, I hope you like the quality of the art. I'm trying to step it up a bit.

 

[Ireth]

That looks really cool!

 

[Devor]

That's pretty cool Ledge. It looks great.

 

[Ireth]

I hope Ariel's roll of 8 was a hit... Great Scott needs to die already!

 

[Ireth]

Awesome roll, Devor! You get to invent a special move!

 

[Devor]

Awesome roll, Devor! You get to invent a special move!

Thanks! Should I have included it in my post or should I post again or wait for Sidekick to respond?

 

[Ireth]

I think you can edit it into your post.

 

[Devor]

I haven't run any games so I don't have any mod powers here. It's too late for me to edit. Here, Mr. Sidekick is my superior.

 

[Ireth]

Fair enough. Why not PM him with your idea and ask him to edit your post?

 

[Devor]

He grabbed me in the chat. Furtano was trying to Flank, I think that was enough for it to just go forward.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I didn't roll for Lily before, so just for fun, I threw in Lily's attack roll. I'll give another day before posting the final map image, in case those on the upper part of the map want to post rolls or actions.

That, and I want to see the Furtano-POV of his lethal strike. Devor can give his own take on Furtano's leap, if he'd like, and can also opt to embellish from where my narrative was cut off (at "wild swing"), if he'd like to tell us how he got the orc head to shoot several yards into the air.

 

[Ireth]

I just rolled a 20 for Ariel finding/using healing herbs to tend to the group. Wish that could've been my final roll against Great Scott, but we can't have everything we want. XD