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[Radio Controlled]

Dangit people, teamkilling is not a competition.

You've been around since M7.  You should know better.

It's a normative rather than descriptive statement.

[AoshimaMichio]

Psychic contamination seems to be rather common occurance. STD of the multiverse?

[piecewise]

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the future of ER, specifically the system. After ER as it is finishes, I see two possibilities: go and do an entirely new game, or do a time skip, keep everything in the ER universe but insert a new system.  As our current system has a definite power level problem. RTD was never meant to handle elevations in power like we see here; characters become basically invincible to everything except rather cheap tactics, and thats no fun. I could just nuke carpet bomb super vets until they stop moving, but thats not interesting for either of us.

I've been thinking more and more about a way to do progression while still keeping the d6 and the spirit of RTD's "roll for success" rather than "Roll to try and beat a certain number", which the D6 system uses. Especially since I think I'll probably be handling a rather big group of people again, huh? Mechanical simplicty is gonna be paramount for that sort of thing.

But you also have the problem that we're playing through forum posts, which means that it needs to not only be mechanically simple, but also quick, so things don't bog down for a literal week with each fight.

A scalable, simple, d6 based system that is quick to resolve combat without being underwhelming or lacking depth to make choice of weapons and gear matter.

Such is the terrible, unfathomable goal I have wrought for myself.

[Kedly]

Sooo, basically DnD?

[piecewise]

Sooo, basically DnD?

Jesus, ER in DND would take years.

I sat in on a friend's DnD game once and one fight lasted an hour.

[TheBiggerFish]

Aye, that's just...Not going to work.

[NJW2000]

I have an idea.


Really terrible weapons. Make using powerful weapons meaningful because the targeting, safety or skullfuckery involved is so godawfully crap that you have a massive chance to hit yourself and everything else in the room.

While low level weapons are just pretty badly made, and can be used safely with high stats.


That way you keep the RTD system, handle power elevations, can scale via power and skill needed to use power safely, resolve combat fast and horrifically, and have some depth (risk management, how you get yourself killed).

[Harry Baldman]

I have an idea.


Really terrible weapons. Make using powerful weapons meaningful because the targeting, safety or skullfuckery involved is so godawfully crap that you have a massive chance to hit yourself and everything else in the room.

While low level weapons are just pretty badly made, and can be used safely with high stats.

Actually, you could make the high-level weapons have an element of random generation to them. Make a specific creative fuckup generator for them, so that they never mess up in a way you can predict.

I mean, it's the logical endpoint of the Hephaestus administration being in charge of all research and development while simultaneously possessing very little in the way of resources.

[kj1225]

Why not rely more on tools instead of a character's personal skill? Like, a everyone is about the same amount of skilled and there's very little time to actually progress notably, so they have to either start getting creative with tools they have or they get better ones. Like say, there's a mission where you have to take out some platoons with your small squad, obviously it's a bad idea to go in guns blazing so you have the characters come up with traps of varying effectiveness, like, someone brought some rope, so there's a number of traps you can make with rope such as a net thingy trap. Someone only brought a gun, so they set up a sniper nest in the trees.

[Egan_BW]

I'd been thinking of an RTD system where you roll two dice for each skillcheck, and you get the one that's closest to your skill level.
So for each skill, you have a number from 1 to 6, which is the most likely result if you were to roll that stat.
Both fairly simple, and a good means of progression.
Ish.

[Radio Controlled]

I kinda feel the power creep is more due to equipment and ridiculous suits and armor, and less due to roll related mechanics.

As for rolls, I think a system where you go to a d60 (or even d600, though that's stretching it) might work. 1-10 on the d60 equals a 1 on the d6, 11-20 for a 2 etc. That way, you can easily apply smaller bonuses and penalties, both from equipment and 'environmental' sources (eg. +3 to con due to superior position, -11 to dex due to a sprained ankle, +5 to charisma rolls due to pheromone genemod) while keeping the interpretation easy and straightforward.

[NAV]

I like Egan's system.

[Egan_BW]

I kinda feel the power creep is more due to equipment and ridiculous suits and armor, and less due to roll related mechanics.

As for rolls, I think a system where you go to a d60 (or even d600, though that's stretching it) might work. 1-10 on the d60 equals a 1 on the d6, 11-20 for a 2 etc. That way, you can easily apply smaller bonuses and penalties, both from equipment and 'environmental' sources (eg. +3 to con due to superior position, -11 to dex due to a sprained ankle, +5 to charisma rolls due to pheromone genemod) while keeping the interpretation easy and straightforward.

if you roll a d60, but only periods of 10 matter, and you give yourself a +5 to your roll, essentially what you're doing is just removing a 1/12 chance of getting a 7, and adding a 1/12 chance of getting a 7. It doesn't really have that much of an effect on the roll, just moves it over a bit.
This is the same reason why we created decompensators, and eventually moved away from straight bonuses and maluses to our current system.

And this is also why the system I suggested uses multiple dice, to offset probabilities while keeping every possibility possible, at least in theory, because the best thing about RTD IMHO is that each possible roll means a distinct possible outcome, rather than simply succeed/fail like most d20 systems.

yay probability and statistics are fun

[Ozarck]

Sooo, basically DnD?

Jesus, ER in DND would take years.

I sat in on a friend's DnD game once and one fight lasted an hour.

*spittake*

they finished a whole fight in an hour?

[spazyak]

Sooo, basically DnD?

Jesus, ER in DND would take years.

I sat in on a friend's DnD game once and one fight lasted an hour.

*spittake*

they finished a whole fight in an hour?

I had one fight that took 4 hourson its own. I've never seen so many crit fails. Only reason we won and it ended that quickly wasbecause we used the crit fumble chart. Still wizard got his eyes poked out by trying to use his wand as a last ditch melee weapon and the barbarian chopped his foot off. Oh, and my char, the rogue of the group, lost his right eye for the 6'th time.