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Author Topic: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)  (Read 415673 times)

_DivideByZero_

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3330 on: July 24, 2018, 02:34:23 am »

Here's a concept for a magic system based on radio electronics. As for what the magic spells actually do... well, it's another Magic University game so I suppose players will pick them up as they go.

Magic types are divided into Wave Magic (programming of staves and magic guns and all sorts of equipment), Wind Magic (using your nervous system as a staff), and Ghost Magic (listening to spirits), although there are three other types of magic in the system that aren't directly tied to the mechanics (yet) called Ignition, Harmony, and Artifice. Perhaps I'll end up writing a spoiler for each magic type and just explaining the mechanics independently, to make the system easier for players to learn.

Radio life is basically a silicon-based biology that grows in the setting. It is the dominant lifeform on the planet.

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for neatness (click to show/hide)
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3331 on: July 24, 2018, 02:42:15 am »

Woah, that’s a pretty original take on magic. May I ask how this idea came to you? Radio waves and magic don’t often get mentioned in the same sentence.
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_DivideByZero_

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3332 on: July 24, 2018, 10:33:43 am »

I was taking a class on antennas and I saw a picture of a radio mixer, like this one:



I thought it reminded me of some kind of figure that would go on top of a staff. That's where the idea started


I realized that radio communication has a lot of properties that are desireable in magic systems. Such as the benefits you get from a complex coding system (your intelligence stat) and the whole concept of SNR, which is integral to some schemes that prevent eavesdropping on signals or jam other people's stuff. You can, for example, broadcast noise everywhere BUT your target, making the channel capacity really low for everyone else. If your channel capacity is too low, your error rate becomes exponentially high.

So to me, it's a really natural way of allowing meta magic shenanigans like jamming and tracing magic use, without resorting to fiat.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 10:35:37 am by _DivideByZero_ »
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3333 on: July 25, 2018, 11:17:50 am »

Have you ever wanted to be an amoral arms smuggler? How about an alien? Do you also want to give people superpowers? Now you can do all three, in Caveman's Arsenal. Superpower smuggling has never been so much fun!

Basically, you control an alien smuggler of superpower serums - little distilled powers and capabilities of species and... things from across the galaxy. Now, unfortunately, the galactic authorities are on your tail, and you're not getting away this time. This leaves you with only one course of action. You're going to pull off a Caveman's Arsenal.

This takes only a few things. You need a little time, a primitive inhabited planet, and the best poker face in the galaxy. See, the native non-interference laws say you can't interact with any cute little pre-spaceflight sapients you come across. Now, you don't care much for the law, but the cops will, and that's what you're counting on. You're going to dump your entire cargo on the primitives and claim they just went and manifested these abilities on their own. They'll never believe it, but they can't prove it didn't happen either.

So you've found this out-of-the-way, fairly boring system with a single inhabited planet - named, in a typical display of originality, 'Earth' by the locals. Taking into account relativistic time, you've got a century here before the authorities arrive. You've got hundreds of serums in your cargo hold, and all of them have to be gone by then. So better get to work - but you're not just gonna drop all of them in one go. That'd leave too much in the way of evidence. Naw, you've gotta feed them into the population over time, one by one... and you might as well have some fun along the way. Of course, once you're all done and the heat's died down, you'll just return, round up the natives, and distill them back into neat little serums to sell on.

Tl;dr: be alien smuggler. Give superpowers to humans. See what happens.

Essentially, you can play Worm's Cauldron or God or whoever you like. Want to empower ordinary animals into kaiju and see humanity try to fight back? Go ahead. Want to hand out powers to strictly monitored and carefully chosen individuals, running your little scientific experiment? Sure. Want to develop your serums further by putting humans in the kind of situations where they have to test the limits of their powers? Fine. Want to just randomly splash serums over different areas and people? Go wild.

You'd have a choice of arrival times: ancient times (bring the myths of great heroes and monsters to life!), the Industrial Revolution (all the marvels of science in a vial!), the Cold War (two superpowers? that's way too few!) or our modern day (woops, I gave them too much and now they've got spaceflight and they've spotted me and oh no they're invading my ship).

Some serums would be safe, with specific and known effects - others would be experimental, with random power levels and only roughly known effects. I'd probably use some random generators like the one by Fniff to come up with some of these.

Inspired by other spins on the concept I've seen elsewhere, and that scene in Lord of War where Nicholas Cage's arms smuggler unloads his plane full of guns in the middle of a wartorn African country and every single weapon has disappeared into the hands of the locals by the time the authorities reach him. Only, you know, in space.
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Tyrant Leviathan

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3334 on: July 25, 2018, 11:43:33 am »

That I would play. Partial tonancient times or even Cold War.

IronyOwl

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3335 on: July 25, 2018, 03:19:25 pm »

Sounds pretty hilarious. Terrible People With Too Much Power tends to be a good setup for interesting times.
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The kitchenette mold free, you move on to the pantry. it's nasty in there. The bacon is grazing on the lettuce. The ham is having an illicit affair with the prime rib, The potatoes see all, know all. A rat in boxer shorts smoking a foul smelling cigar is banging on a cabinet shouting about rent money.

_DivideByZero_

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3336 on: July 25, 2018, 08:26:31 pm »


Sounds like a god game. How strong is the player's ship? Decked out with superweapons (compared to modern stuff)? Capable of orbital bombardment? Or is it just a trade cog with a fancy FTL drive?

That being said, starship drives typically qualify as superweapons given how volatile the reactors tend to be on these things. It's basically a manned ICBM.



Here's another attempt at the radio magic system. This time each magic category is explained in a spoiler, for clarity.
The categories are intended to be less of a "here's this element, here's that element, etc" and more "this is a natural extension of the way magic works," sort of like real technology.

Quote
In magic, your level in the corresponding category of magic determines the number of sides on your die.
Lv. 0 uses a d4
Lv. 1 uses a d6
Lv. 2 uses a d8
Lv. 3 uses a d10
Lv. 4 uses a d12
At Lv. 5 and up, you get extra dice to roll. You can use these on the same action or you can split your actions.
Lv. 5 gets a d12 and a d6
Lv. 6 gets a d12 and a d8
Lv. 7 gets a d12 and a d10
Lv. 8 gets 2d12
...and so on.

All magical actions require a communication roll into the area that you are planning to cast the spell. The amount of power at your disposal depends on the amount of volume you control, but the more spread out your signal, the more difficult it is to overcome noise. You must roll higher than the Noise Threshold.

Spoiler: Range Table (click to show/hide)

The standard noise threshold is 1 (meaning that a 2+ passes), but the further you get, the more spread out your signal becomes. To counteract this, you can amplify your signal -- each doubling grants a +1. You can also focus your signal, and each halving of the focus area grants +1. This is referred to as Gain. However, increasing your gain narrows your beam, and accordingly reduces the power.
Typically speaking, amplification will damage your equipment. Gain is cheaper--but dilutes your power. You also have the time-tested strategy of moving closer, increasing your chance to hit.

If multiple people try to cast a spell on the same volume of mist, only the loudest signal will win. This kind of jamming, in addition to noise sources and metal objects reflecting the signal, all increase the effective threshold that you need to pass.

Spoiler: Wavecraft (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Aircasting (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Spiritseeing (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Harmony (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Ignition (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Artifice (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: July 25, 2018, 10:17:42 pm by _DivideByZero_ »
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Qassius

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3337 on: July 25, 2018, 10:03:50 pm »

A human body is an incredibly complex blueprint, and mothers typically spend years designing and perfecting the blueprints of their sons and daughters.
One funky setting you're making. I would be very interested in playing once it comes to fruition.
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_DivideByZero_

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3338 on: July 25, 2018, 10:06:49 pm »

Looks like I left a hint about the lore before posting. :-X

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FallacyofUrist

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3339 on: July 25, 2018, 10:44:06 pm »

Have you ever wanted to be an amoral arms smuggler? How about an alien? Do you also want to give people superpowers? Now you can do all three, in Caveman's Arsenal. Superpower smuggling has never been so much fun!
I wanna play.
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3340 on: July 26, 2018, 01:59:38 am »

@_DivideByZero_: It’d be pretty much a god game, yeah. The ship might or might not be armed, but your character doesn’t expect any danger from these primitives anyway. Really, the only way they could threaten you is if you accidentally make them too powerful with your serums, so you can only blame yourself.
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IronyOwl

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3341 on: July 26, 2018, 05:24:22 am »

Really, the only way they could threaten you is if you accidentally make them too powerful with your serums, so you can only blame yourself.
Haha, what are the odds of that!
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Quote from: Radio Controlled (Discord)
A hand, a hand, my kingdom for a hot hand!
The kitchenette mold free, you move on to the pantry. it's nasty in there. The bacon is grazing on the lettuce. The ham is having an illicit affair with the prime rib, The potatoes see all, know all. A rat in boxer shorts smoking a foul smelling cigar is banging on a cabinet shouting about rent money.

randomgenericusername

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3342 on: July 26, 2018, 12:45:33 pm »

PTW, the radio magic system looks very interesting.
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Immortality like that would be even more game breaking than four Aaron's in one place.
You're both so obviously scum that this is a surprisingly difficult decision.

Tyrant Leviathan

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3343 on: July 26, 2018, 11:58:06 pm »

Old files:


CAO/ Combat Augmented Organisms. A game your in charge of a top secret unitbthat weaponizes living things.



Think cyborg Pokémon met to kill America’s enemies.


Mecha Platoon: The Mecha are 20-50 feet tall and Tech is on the hard scale side (Energy Weapons arevsuper prototypes) and the world governments are fighting each other for one reason or another though Yeah, the world has really changed.


Players would be mercs for hire and many story branches. Mecha designs, Weapons and so forth.

Tyrant Leviathan

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Re: Gaming Block (Game Discussion Thread) (Totally Not Roller's Block)
« Reply #3344 on: August 04, 2018, 10:07:55 am »

Been reading a Dune some more and came up with this Pangaea game from the Machine Crusade book.

Freedoms Song: You play a escapes slave convoy on a world on the fringes of the human Imperium. Stay alive in harsh environments, locals and would be off worldwrs who try to hunt you down.
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