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[Remuthra]

Well, I have to look into playing this, don't I? The studio is called Evil Hat.

[Kadzar]

FATE isn't combat-centric, so even if it did slow down PbP, it wouldn't come up very often. Unless you wanted it to. The combat system isn't exactly interesting enough to build the game around, though.

The kind of excellent writing you did with IGYNPADCA RPG would be perfect for a FATE game, come to think of it.

Well, even if a game isn't about combat, you have to consider it somewhat since you can't usually just gloss over it and say that the players automatically win or lose against their opponents (well you can, but I'd rather not have to arbitrarily decide the outcome of all battles); even just having combat be down to a single roll is enough to make it a game about more than just the GM's whims.

Also, another thing I like about Fate is that the game encourages and makes it easy to get players involved in world building, and the character creation encourages them to make their characters have some sort of relationship with each other. This is something I would have liked in IGYNPADCA RPG, since it was sometimes hard to figure out what kinds of things people would like, and especially there was the problem with most of the players not really having much of anything to do with each other, so that I had to write several different concurrent plots at once which eventually caused me to burn out.

[sjm9876]

 I have an idea for a game, but not the time to run it yet. To fill the gap I'm gonna stick it here. Feel free to steal the rules, just not my game world. After all, I kinda stole some of the rules myself

Spoiler: Context (click to show/hide)

The players take the roles of nobles in a city, embroiled in a web of politics and intrigue. they have the ability to hire units to carry out missions, or carry out tasks themselves. RP heavy and rather freeform. turns would be ~ 1 month.

Spoiler: System (click to show/hide)

For any task the roll is a number of d10's = the total of the 2 most relevant personal attributes.
For a mission, the roll is a number of d10's = most relevant single mission attribute + unit's rating in that attribute.
Every d10 rolled over a difficulty rating is a success.
Every 1 rolled is a failure.
Total successes - failures = X
X > 0 == success. magnitude of X = magnitude of success.
X = 0 == failure to succeed. minimal direct consequences.
X < 0 == botch. consequences.

Spoiler: Attributes (click to show/hide)

Mission - affects mission rolls only
Stealth
Force
Diplomacy
Social - personal attributes
Charisma - appearance and ability to impress through display/speech etc...
Manipulation
Wit - outwitting opponents, planning etc...
Self - Personal attributes
Physical - Combat ability, endurance, etc...
Perception
Subtlety - ie. how little notice you attract when slipping poison into someone's drink.

Points are allocated by category - one has 7 points, one 5, one 3 (7/5/3), and these further divided between the attributes by the player. The player chooses which category gets which point pool.

Spoiler: Traits (click to show/hide)

Each player gets to choose two non-attribute traits which grant circumstantial bonuses. Subject to GM moderation. Eg. Contacts, poison training. May apply to missions.

Spoiler: Race (click to show/hide)

Each player has a race, which is mostly cosmetic, but grants a choice of 3 single point attribute increases. One of these is taken.
Humans: Highly adaptable, and found almost anywhere.
 Perception/Wit/Diplomacy
Drow: Naturally stealthy and deceitful, politics comes easy to them.
 Subtlety/Manipulation/Stealth
Orc: Warlike, but honorable, the rare war chief builds enough leadership to rise into politics. RARE.
 Physical/Charisma/Force
Ogre: Savage, brutal, and primitive, they have little reason to play the Game. VERY RARE.
 Physical/Manipulation/Force
Dwarf: Sturdy and honest, the people respect them.
 Physical/Charisma/Force
Troll: Peaceful shepherds normally, some adopt a more scholarly lifestyle. RARE.
 Physical/Wit/Diplomacy
Mira: Beautiful and graceful, the mira are natural socialites.
 Subtlety/Charisma/Diplomacy
Elf: Usually found in their forests, they fit in well in high society regardless.
 Perception/Wit/Stealth

Any race with RARE next to them will require justification as to how they are a noble.
It is worth noting that the races do not typically obey their fantasy stereotypes, and as such Q&A on them may be necessary - for example, no races are evil.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Non-attr stats are simple.
Fame/Notoriety: ranges from -10 to 10. higher/lower fame offers both advantages & disadvantages. Players start at 0.
Wealth: In Cr. 1 Cr is the average wage of a single unit with no skills for a single month. Every attr point the unit possesses raises the cost by 1 Cr. Players start with 10.

That's everything i can think of atm. May have missed something. Oh, and this takes place in my persistent world.

[Rolepgeek]

I like it. My games tend to be incredibly complex: I find complexity fun.

I'm in the process of making a game, but it's still on paper and having exact numericals and ratios worked out. It's got a crapton of stuff though. Just needs real mechanics, instead of basic 'you need wood and people to make a mine'. I'd rather have 'you need x lumber and y people to make z mine.'

[sjm9876]

Ah. balancing can sometimes be it's own special hell.

[Furtuka]

So uh... would any of you happen to know a quick way I could procedurally generate 297 sword techniques and spells?

[freeformschooler]

Write a script. Any language. Real easy, just look at your mechanics and give yourself enough variance.

[Furtuka]

I guess.

And suddenly I realize I did my math wrong. It seems I would actually have to make 72559410 possible skills >_<

[freeformschooler]

Okay. I'm going to take a guess and say it's a combinatorial thing. Every possible combination of [things], [things] and [things].

Let's say you're using a system. With game mechanics. That kind of thing. What you'd do is assign properties to each [thing] in a way that you could simply have a script that prints out the mechanical result of those two or three or however many things based on their properties alone. Python? Javascript? Z80 assembler? Up to you. Prevents you from having to make them manually.

[Furtuka]

Mmmm. Yeah I can see how. I'll probably have to save this for when I have to time to actually make the property lists and do the coding.

My idea was inspired by some PS2 JRPG my cousins showed me once. The plan is that everyone would have the same abilities, but instead of learning skills/attacks, on their turn they would input up to 10 commands, those commands being Up, Down, Left, Right, A, and B. Each command input would cost some amount of some sort of points, and each combination would have a different result.

[freeformschooler]

What would it take to create a PHOENIX WRIGHT forum game?

The Phoenix Wright series of visual novels are a wholly different genre than most forum games or even video games. You play as the titular defense attorney, facing off in a courtroom against corrupt witnesses, evil prosecutors and a three-day guilty-until-proven-innocent deadline. The games are dramatic, intense, and often hilarious. I've studied the difficulties in creating a forum/tabletop adaption and present them to you here.

Spoiler: Difficulties in Translation (click to show/hide)

There are two stages of gameplay in the Ace Attorney series:

Investigation! Before a trial, you run around talking to people and collecting evidence to prove your client innocent. A problem in translating this to forum game format is the Phoenix Wright series is fundamentally railroaded with infinite retries. In the games, if someone misses a key piece of evidence or fails to get the right dialogue choice, they could just restart and keep trying. In a forum game, if the trial is over, it's OVER! Since each trial in the Phoenix Wright game takes place over three days (and the court can be adjourned each day except the final one), I believe one solution is to let the players learn from their mistakes in the trial and go back to investigate each day they fail.

Trial! During the trial, players face off against a prosecutor and listen to witness testimonies. They press different parts of the witness' testimony for details and present evidence and/or common sense to poke holes in these testimonies in their search for the truth. The problem here is fundamentally the same as above: one goal, one solution, railroaded with little deviation. This problem, however, solves itself by way of the RPG format: since players can say whatever they want during OBJECTIONS, there may be many "right" choices or at least one with a large degree of deviation accepted.

Spoiler: Leveling the playing field (click to show/hide)

Here's an issue with the forum game format I wouldn't have if it was a suggestion game (and I don't want to do this as a suggestion game if it ever happens):

In the video games, there are four parties. In forum games, there are often two (GM and players)

Defense: Obviously player-controlled. You defend witnesses by proving their innocence in courtroom shenanigans. This doesn't present a problem. Players would have the same capabilities as Wright himself: access to character profiles/evidence, pressing/objecting, and the Mistake Meter (or whatever you call it - how many mistakes you can make before losing entirely).
Judge: The Judge is a completely neutral part and the final arbiter of courtroom decisions. I considered both GM control and suggestion control, but a mixture might be interesting: the GM would act when the trial is "won" or "lost" and remind players of the rules, but there could be suggestion-style votes for prodding either party (prosecutor or defense) like the Judge often does in the game.
Prosecution: The prosecutors in Ace Attorney are out for blood (exemplified by Miles Edgeworth, the most iconic PW:AA prosecutor). They do not present testimonies but rather try to distract the judge and the player from the obvious truth. Handing this over to the players or masses would make it, essentially, a PVP game, and that creates a whole mess of issues (both sides would need to know and believe different things, for example). By default, I'm going to say the GM controls the prosecutor.
Witness: The only party that MUST be GM-controlled (because the player actively fights them - verbally, at least). I would have to write every detail and subtlety of witness testimonies beforehand.

In essence, GM and player are spread over the four parties in different ways.

Spoiler: The Investigation Team (click to show/hide)

In the games, two to three parties are almost always present on the defense team (the player character, their assistant [see: Maya Fey], and the accused (?)). Only the player character is actively controlled. This works for a suggestion game (which I may write about at a different time), but not an RPG. I feel the RPG format is best because a big part of the Wright charm is interesting characters and relationships. In an RPG, you can grow close to your character build interesting relationships with other characters.

To adapt the Defense to FOUR player characters, I have some ideas. They are as follows.

TWO TEAMS: The Investigation Team and the Defense Team. Each team would have two player characters, and each team would have a specific job (with little or no crossover). If I went with this idea, I wouldn't have to break up the game into trial-investigation-trial-etc. Once the first trial begins, both parties could operate concurrently.
Player Perks: Each player character, depending on their job, could have a perk or two helping them each mission. Examples include divine/spiritual insight pointing them in the right direction and a larger-than-normal capacity for mistakes.

This is another one of those things that would take far too much time away from my current projects, so I can't (currently) run it. Potentially, I may try a one mission or less playtest (in either limited RPG or suggestion format) to see what issues the system brings. If anyone has any input, I'd love to hear it - such an experimental concept demands Gaming Block brainstorming!

[Fniff]

You should have the Prosecution and Defense be separate teams of players, though that might not be really "Phoenix Wright-ish" unless you have a mechanic for faking evidence and screwing with the judge... Which would also have to be allowed for defense, so it result in a situation where both teams of lawyers are making a mockery of the justice system. Which sounds hilarious, actually.

Unrelated: Since I'm not really sure where else to discuss this, I was thinking of running a New World of Darkness IRC game set in, rather then America as it's typically done, a fictional communistic Eastern European nation. However, I'm not quite sure how to present it. Should I post it here or in other games, should I mention it's a specific campaign, etc, etc. I mention this because my last attempt at making a thread for an IRC game here fell through completely due to a severe lack of players (Which has never actually happened to me except when making Suggestion Games), so I'm wondering what to do.

[freeformschooler]

You should have the Prosecution and Defense be separate teams of players, though that might not be really "Phoenix Wright-ish" unless you have a mechanic for faking evidence and screwing with the judge... Which would also have to be allowed for defense, so it result in a situation where both teams of lawyers are making a mockery of the justice system. Which sounds hilarious, actually.

Unfortunately, this fundamentally changes the game from a single-focused game to a PVP game. Sure, it could fit: only the witnesses are fully aware of what they know. Both defense and prosecution are informed, but in the games, defense is far less informed. Separating knowledge and actions between players is tricky territory that I forgot to write about.

One possibility would be changing the dynamic of the accusations. In Wright, the defense is always innocent. In this, it might be more like a normal courtroom where neither side (prosecutor or defense) truly knows until the end, but they're working off different stories and evidence toward different goals.

[Rolepgeek]

So, me and some friends(but mostly me) have been thinking about fake Pokemon, and a new, invented region. Since Bay12 is kinda a little bit creative and whatnot, I thought of presenting it to the community here, and trying to get a group of people who were interested to help me work on it. Different people can help with different things, since everyone here is pretty talented in some way or another, or have jobs that lend themselves to this sort of thing. Artists can help with concept design, pixel artists can make sprites and whatnot, geography specialists can help with what world area to base it off of and the map specifics, competitive battlers can help figure out how best to balance the 'Mons(when we're caring about balance), people who speak multiple languages/are very fluent in English can help come up with names, history buffs can help with legendaries, biologists can let us pretend we're being realistic, and interested coders might even try to make parts of the game! And of course, the rest of us without any of those talents and too much time on our hands, or with them and not enough, can simply pitch in ideas, comments, and suggestions. Community would probably vote on most things, might even make multiple threads so if you're only interested in one part, you can focus on that, and so that multiple things can be voted on, or discussed, etc., at once, because it would probably take way too much time to do otherwise.

My problem is where to put it. Other Games? Forum Games and Roleplaying? Creative Projects?

Well, that, and an interest check.

Fun Fact: whole idea came about because we were discussing how there should be a poison type legendary. We figured it would probably be in a legendary quartet of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Edit: Also, consider that usually, in reality, the prosecution has far less evidence than the defense. Well, depends on the legal system in your location.

[Nerjin]

Well here's a bit of something on the idea of a legal game  y'know... Get the creative juices going. I'm not ENTIRELY sure how the game-play would work but I know that each player would get a PM telling them EXACTLY what they know [or think they know]. The twist is that two of the witnesses are each given a "Goal" which is their win condition. They win regardless of what the verdict is. The Jury and third witness win if they get the proper conviction. The Defense and Prosecuter win with a Acquittal or Conviction respectively. Obviously the Accused wins if he isn't convicted.

Spoiler: The Set-Up (click to show/hide)

Witnesses: 3
Victim: 1
Accused: 1

Name: Thomas Holten M.D.
Age: 56    Sex: M
Hair: Grey [Balding]   Eye: Green
Height: Short    Weight: Average for Height
Build: Rail Thin
Outstanding Features: Stab wound in the Throat
Status: Deceased, Divorced
Occupation: Medical Doctor [Surgeon]
Outstanding Criminal Record:
None

Name: Harold Holten M.D.
Age: 22   Sex: M
Hair: Black [Short]   Eye: Brown
Height: Short   Weight: Slightly above Average
Build: Slightly hefty
Outstanding Features:
Status: Single, Son of Victim
Occupation: Medical Doctor [Surgeon]
Outstanding Criminal Record:
None

[1]
Name: Anthony “Two-Fingers” McRiley
Age: 30    Sex: M
Hair: Red [Long]   Eye: Brown
Height: Tall    Weight: Average for Height
Build: Heavily Muscled
Outstanding Features: Only Two Fingers on Right hand
Status: Married,
Occupation: Dock Worker
Outstanding Criminal Record:
Vehicular Assault [19 y.]
Grand Theft Auto [20 y.]
Drunk Driving [21 y.]
Possession, Narcotics [21 y.]
Illegal Possesion of Firearm [21 y.]
Assaulting Police Officer [21 y.]

[2]
Name: Tanya Elson
Age: 21    Sex: F
Hair: Purple (Dyed) [Short]   Eye: Green
Height: Average    Weight: Obese
Build: Obese
Outstanding Features: Purple Dyed hair, abundance of facial piercings
Status: Single
Occupation: None
Outstanding Criminal Record:
None

[3]
Name: Harold Crinshaw
Age: 42    Sex: M
Hair: None   Eye: Blue
Height: Average    Weight: Average
Build: Average
Outstanding Features: Missing Right Eye, Various facial scars,
Status: Divorced
Occupation: Independantly Wealthy
Outstanding Criminal Record:
Trespassing [18 y.]

Autopsy Report and Evidence

A large laceration to the jugular resulted in the victim bleeding to death within a minute. Approximate time of death estimated to be around 10 pm. Injuries suggest a lack of struggle.

[1] Leather Wallet
   Content: $20, Identification,
[1] Long Red Hair
[1] Bloody Knife with Partial Finger Print matching the accused
[1] Bag of Narcotics
[3] Blood Covered foot prints
  Matches: The Accused, Ms. Elson, Mr. Crinshaw

How's it look? Needs work and all but I figured I'd toss one out.