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[Sean Mirrsen]

Okay, since this is the place to dump game ideas, here's another one.

===Roll to Independence War: Badlands Cluster===

Who are the players:
- The players are a motley group of independent enterprising free traders, specializing in trade good redistribution. Or, as the evil corporations that have their iron grip on the throats of the honest workers of the cluster say - pirates. Space pirates.
- Each player has a ship. Not in the sense of being the "captain" of a ship, but rather being a "pilot" - most, if not all available ships are primarily small fighters - relatively, of course. Smallest fighters, i.e. those used by the police, measure 20 meters in length, and mass in at 40 tons - just shy of a Boeing 737, though they don't have a wingspan to speak of. Each player is limited to just owning one ship at any one time, but they are free to upgrade it as they see fit, or trade it in for another ship if the opportunity presents itself.

Where does this happen:
- The setting for the game is the Badlands Cluster - a collection of eight reasonably nearby starsystems, loosely populated by people of various callings. Most - indeed, nearly all - events take place in space, since planets are mostly civilian, and have very little presence in the cluster if you don't count the production and consumption of trade goods. The Badlands provide a lot of space for action either way, and there is little reason to go to the planets, even if you somehow find spacecraft good enough to survive reentry and get back into space.
- The Badlands cluster isn't a terribly hospitable place for a bunch of pirates, so this necessitates having a base of operations. Similar to the game the setting is taken from, players will be inhabiting a derelict Bio-Bomber (giant terraforming ship) stuck in the middle of a tumultous asteroid-filled nebula called the Effreet, that blocks all communications and generally messes with sensors, preventing the base from being discovered.

What will the players be doing:
- Generally, there is no overarching goal to this. Not at first, at any rate. Unlike the game, this is going to be a complete sandbox - though certain events will still transpire that push the plot along.
- In the meantime, the players will do what space pirates generally do - hunt corporate freighters, steal their cargo, and trade that cargo in. It won't be as simple as that, of course.
- There won't be a "medium" tradesystem. All trade is strictly deal-based. No trading goods in for "money", and buying goods for "money", with one exception. Normally players, as a group, will need to find other independent groups and strike deals with them, trading giant 50x50x50m pods of cargo for new guns, ammunition, and schematics. Or just skip the middle man and find shipments of what you need - just be aware that weapon shipments tend to be escorted by sizeable fleets.
- Inside the base, the players will be free to engage in creative upgrading of their ships. Ships are pretty modular by default, but changes via cutting and welding are possible - if not exactly easy to make compatible with the autorepair systems. The base can also be upgraded, in limited ways.
- When not flying a ship, players can mostly do anything, imagination and base equipment permitting. Due to having a Bio-Bomber's nano-assembly plant, the base is equipped with a near-limitless supply of expendable drones and flitters, allowing anyone to set up practice ranges for just about anything. This also means that any useless cargo can be recycled into material for this assembly plant, rendering it not as useless, and schematics for ammunition and missiles and whatnot would be quite the sought-after prize.

How will this all work:
- The game would likely use the Advanced RTD system, because it's fairly serious in tone. Player stats will mostly be limited to piloting, technical, and social skills - there is hardly a use for strength and agility when your ship does the fighting. Ships are complex bits of tech, including shields, armor, autorepair systems, power systems, different engines, sensors, and navigation systems, and of course weapons, which will all compound to define several key stats of the ship that will be used as roll values. During combat, the player is "one with the ship", stats-wise, merely adding his skills into the ship's stats pool. Combat would be complex, with overheating, power distribution, sensor signatures, shield covering, and weapon arcs all being important - though not necessarily tracked. Most actions would be resolved in opposed rolls.
- Outside of combat, ships can fly on autopilot, which guarantees success in flight, navigation, docking, and assorted maneuvers, plus provides a decent bonus to automatic collision evasion - though they automatically fail anything related to dodging incoming fire, or flying fast, because they obey established safe speed limits.
- All content and maps for the game will be taken from the source, Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos, but operating more as little fleet than a single ship. Starting players will get a choice of several basic ships, differing by the roles they are intending to perform. There will be a number of NPCs doing various tasks around the players - including being secondary ship crew and flying the cargo-ferrying freighters, unless some player will want to volunteer for flying one.

...any other information I can't think of at the moment may be added later. Of course, I won't be able to run the game (unless I dump the Whaler RTD on somebody), but anyone is free to take it up and I can provide universe knowledge, should it be required.

[Digital Hellhound]

This is something I'll hopefully start soon. I'll use Sean's convenient structure above!

Elite Strike Force Investigating the Abomination That Threatens To Destroy All of Existence On Behalf Of a Multi-Dimensional Alliance of Humanities, But No Pressure, Guys: Name Pending

Where does this happen:
- In a lot of places. A few decades ago - the date is unimportant, different for every dimension - a minor humanity discovered shiftspace travel, the technology to cross between dimensions, into alternate universes, alternate pasts, alternate futures. This discovery spread like wildfire across dimensions, connecting countless humanities and different outcomes of history together - but it also awakened something far, far older than any of them... The Abomination has woken, and its vanguards sweep across dimensions, breaking all resistance and preparing them for their master to feed upon. One by one, these realities literally cease to exist, leaving nothing behind. The most powerful and successful of all mankinds, spanning hundreds or thousands of stars and hundreds of billions of people united under one flag, create an alliance to combat this threat. But as more and more dimensions wink out of existence, they begin to wonder if they can fight this foe at all...

Who are the players:
- The players are the best of the best (of the best?), the elite soldiers and specialists of countless different human (and some alien) civilizations, gathered together into a team and given access to an experimental spaceship. Their mission is to investigate the Abomination and its vanguards and find out everything they can by whatever means they deem necessary.

What will the players be doing:
- Each player controls a character with a chosen class, improving and customizing them as they go, acquiring new weapons, equipment and abilities. They roam around dimensions, for the most part freely choosing their missions and the leads to follow. They'll have to work together and use their gear and the battlefield to defeat usually greater numbers of foes and obstacles.
- Combat is a big part of the game, mainly because of the very nice combat system I've cooked up. Rest assured it's nowhere near the only part and the players will have much else to do as well - acquiring new toys, charming, hacking, thinking, commanding their way out/into tight spots, maintaining their starship, learning Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, trying desperately to get funding for their poor neglected team and all those nice upgrades for themselves and their tools.

How will this all work:
- Base system is the usual 1d6, though I'll be honest and say the results of 1s and 6s don't go as far as in lighter games. I've pretty much kept it this way in most of my RTDs. There will still be chances for catastrophic cock-ups or miraculous successes, but for the most part, realism ensues.
- The combat system is extensive, but focused around three types of defenses and the weapons and abilities useful against them;
   *Shields are the fanciest - they soak an amount of damage from every shot, possibly negating all of it, but can be overloaded by too many hits in quick succession, allowing further shots in the     
same turn to go through them instead. This makes rapid-firing weapons such as SMGs the most effective against them. Shields can never be permanently destroyed.
   *Aegises are only produced by psychics. They have a set amount of AP and are destroyed when this reaches 0. Aegises reduce incoming damage by a flat number, making low-power weapons '   
utterly harmless to them. However, Aegises are extremely vulnerable up close, and can be bypassed completely by most melee attacks. This makes close-range weapons like shotguns, pistols and
SMGs best against them. An Aegis can be recreated as a psychic Ability after it's destroyed, though with a cooldown. They are the only defense against mental psychic attacks.
   *Armor is the most mundane protection. Like an Aegis, it reduces incoming damage directly, sometimes completely ignoring low-damage hits. High-damage weapons such as sniper rifles and heavy
pistols are most effective against armor. Armor cannot be repaired mid-mission when it is destroyed.
- All weapons have a variety of stats (such as Damage, Rate of Fire, Accuracy) and possibly special qualities (allowing them to function better at certain ranges or against certain defenses, for example). Most can also be modified with a variety of special ammo and add-ons.
- While this might not seem so amazing (and there's much not mentioned), as a whole it creates a nicely tactical and varied combat system, like srlsly, guys, it's great - for scifi purposes, at least. You can really do a lot of different weapon and ability types and have different ones be actually useful (solving why you'd take a low-damage SMG when you can use a higher-powered rifle, etc).

((Yes, the three armor types were inspired by ME's Armor, Barriers, Shields. It's not a bad system at all, dontchaknow. I might slip every now and then and call Aegises Barriers.))

[anailater]

ROLL TO TRANSFORM

Throughout all time man has known its place, above the animals and below the gods. Man was content, the animals knew no better and the gods, well who knows they might not even exist but this the middle ages and people tend to think they do.
5 people will go off on a journey, a journey after death, learn of the places of animals and of gods, and through it all, try not to lose their humanity. When what’s at stake is your mind, how far can you go before the inevitable?

Spoiler: THE LIST OF CHANGES! (click to show/hide)

 
1: Death
2: Human (Same Gender)
3: Human (Different Gender)
4: Dragon (Same Gender)
5: Dragon (Different Gender)
6: Naga (Same Gender)
7: Naga (Different Gender)
8: Hell Spawn (Same Gender)
9: Hell Spawn (Different Gender)
10: Succubus (Female)
11: Incubus (Male)
12: Slime (Same Gender)
13: Slime (Different Gender)
14: Penguin (Same Gender)
15: Penguin (Different Gender)
16: Meerkat (Same Gender)
17: Meerkat (Different Gender)
18: Fly (Same Gender)
19: Fly (Different Gender)
20: Shark (Same Gender)
21: Shark (Different Gender)
22: Zombie (Same Gender)
23: Zombie (Different Gender)
24: Skeleton (Same Gender)
25: Skeleton (Different Gender)
26: Wolf (Same Gender)
27: Wolf (Different Gender)
28: Bear (Same Gender)
29: Bear (Different Gender)
30: Polar Bear (Same Gender)
31: Polar Bear (Different Gender)
32: Dwarf (Same Gender)
33: Dwarf (Different Gender)
34: Cow (Same Gender)
35: Cow (Different Gender)
36: Pixie (Same Gender)
37: Pixie (Different Gender)
38: Eagle (Same Gender)
39: Eagle (Different Gender)
40: Pig (Same Gender)
41: Pig (Different Gender)
42: Sheep (Same Gender)
43: Sheep (Different Gender)
44: Mouse (Same Gender)
45: Mouse (Different Gender)
46: Horse (Same Gender)
47: Horse (Different Gender)
48: Monkey (Same Gender)
49: Monkey (Different Gender)
50: Godhood (EVERYTHING!)

Stats!
The Game works on 5 stats
Pow: How hard you hit
End: How well you take hits
Int: How well you do the thinking thing.
Dex: How well you do dodging thing.
Wil: How well you keep yourself.
Each body has certain buffs and debuffs to certain stats, and each body decreases the Will stat by at least one. Every death decreases the amount of possible transformations by 5.

Winning and losing
As death is true death is almost impossible the game ends when
a) You get a 1 and Die.
b) You get a 50 and become a god.
c) You lose all your Will and forget you were anything but what you appear to be.
d) Secret ending of secrets.

Combat
Combat works On a D20, by having the two fighters roll Pow with their buffs, the higher one gets a hit in, they then both roll Dex, the hiter to see if they hit and the defender to see if they dodge, if the defender is hit they roll End to see if they are stunned and if they lost any limbs. Fighters can roll Int to try and find enemy weak points to gain +1 to all combat rolls for a turn. Characters have HP dependent on their form, this can’t be raised above max.

[lawastooshort]

Digital I quite like that and I also like the current name.

[Digital Hellhound]

Digital I quite like that and I also like the current name.

ESFItATTTDAoEOBOaMAoH, BNP, G? Yeah, it rolls off the tongue really well. That said, I am open to suggestions, even if they are of obviously inferior quality.

[Persus13]

Digital I quite like that and I also like the current name.

ESFItATTTDAoEOBOaMAoH, BNP, G? Yeah, it rolls off the tongue really well. That said, I am open to suggestions, even if they are of obviously inferior quality.

Soldiers of (Elite Strike group name): Abomination?

Abomination-busters?

[BlasterKyubey210]

Mmm, my mind's trying to think about the board game Talisman for a bit, but not sure how to adapt it to RtD rules, can anyone help me out here?

[Yoink]

So I'm working on that RTD you lazy bastards never reminded me to make when I told you to.
I had an issue I needed advice on but now I've forgotten what it was, so... Nevermind.

[Xantalos]

So I'm working on that RTD you lazy bastards never reminded me to make when I told you to.
I had an issue I needed advice on but now I've forgotten what it was, so... Nevermind.

YOINK YOINK YOU NEED TO MAKE AN RTD
...
Goddamn time machines.

[Yoink]

Ahh, I remembered what my question was now. And thankyou, Xantalos.

Does this work okay/make sense as a mechanic: Each character has an 'armour level', which is basically the total 'coverage' of their armour- each piece of armour comes with a number attached, you add 'em all together to find a character's total armour rating, which in turn determines the modifier to their 'armour rolls'.

Basically the armour system I've got so far works like this: When someone loses an attack roll, if they have armour they roll again, applying the modifier from their armour level, and if they equal or beat the winning roll their armour soaks an amount of damage.

Now, what I wanted to ask is: should I have it so that however much the armour roll beats the attack roll by is the amount of damage soaked? (To a minimum of one.) That would keep it simple, and this is quite a low HP RTD that I am planning anyway.
If I wanted to complicate things/make armour more useful I could give each piece of armour a different amount of damage that it can block.

Edit: Oh man, another question- I've decided, in the spirit of keeping things simple, I've decided to squish skills, attributes and what-not into a single thing- probably called traits. The question is, should I just allow good traits, or should I let players also choose debilitating bad traits, allowing them to pick more good traits?
I suppose I should probably go with the former, to keep things simple and easy to run, but what do you guys think?

[IronyOwl]

Does this work okay/make sense as a mechanic: Each character has an 'armour level', which is basically the total 'coverage' of their armour- each piece of armour comes with a number attached, you add 'em all together to find a character's total armour rating, which in turn determines the modifier to their 'armour rolls'.

Basically the armour system I've got so far works like this: When someone loses an attack roll, if they have armour they roll again, applying the modifier from their armour level, and if they equal or beat the winning roll their armour soaks an amount of damage.

In other words, Bob is wearing an Armour 3 helmet and Armour 5 breastplate. An attacker rolls [5] vs [2] on him, so he loses. He now has a chance to make another armor roll, at a +8 bonus, to beat that 5. Failure means full damage, success means armour reduces some of it.

Numbers not to scale, obviously.

Now, what I wanted to ask is: should I have it so that however much the armour roll beats the attack roll by is the amount of damage soaked? (To a minimum of one.) That would keep it simple, and this is quite a low HP RTD that I am planning anyway.
If I wanted to complicate things/make armour more useful I could give each piece of armour a different amount of damage that it can block.

Continuing the example from above, you want to know if:

A) Bob's [3+8] beats that [5] by 6 points, and thus the attack deals 6 less damage than it normally would have.

B) Bob is wearing Bronze, which has a Soak Value of 2, and thus the attack deals 2 less damage than it normally would have.

To answer your question, both have merits. I'd probably lean more towards Option A for two reasons, though. One, I tend to dislike pass/fail style rolls. A [6+3] vs [1] should really be different than a [2] vs [1], you know?

Two, what happens if someone's wearing a +Bronze Helmet+, -Steel Breastplate-, and xXCheap Plastic BootsXx? Which soak value do they use?

The merits of Option B are that armour can scale in magnitude or frequency separately. Option A already lets armour scale because better armour has higher roll values which translate to more damage soaked, but it's a bit harder to control than just declaring X Armour to block Y damage Z percent of the time.

Edit: Oh man, another question- I've decided, in the spirit of keeping things simple, I've decided to squish skills, attributes and what-not into a single thing- probably called traits. The question is, should I just allow good traits, or should I let players also choose debilitating bad traits, allowing them to pick more good traits?
I suppose I should probably go with the former, to keep things simple and easy to run, but what do you guys think?

I'd generally avoid overtly bad traits because they tend to just be powergaming sinks. Usually either they're too crippling to be worth it, free points, or too crippling to be worth it for some players and free points for others. None of those options are usually all that attractive, from a design standpoint.

Now, traits with paired good and bad aspects might be more manageable, because you can control the associated benefits and downsides directly. Strictly speaking they're the same concept, but they tend to be more organic and balanced when they're manually paired like that. If nothing else, it'd probably feel like a more organic and rational method of dumping some stats in favor of others.

Actually, now that I think about it, making sure that all the bad traits are genuinely meaningful weaknesses could also work. Penalizing HP tends to be less avoidable than letting someone dump Charisma, for instance.

[Yoink]

Hmm. Thanks, Irony. That's helpful advice on both issues.
Overall I think I'll go with the first option in both cases.

[Digital Hellhound]

I've been thinking on this strike force idea from earlier, and I think it would be more fun as,

HEROES OF THE MULTIVERSE!

Still the same general plot and the same mechanics (though expanded in some areas), but the players are Heroes now, with a capital H. Perhaps they've saved a galaxy or two from omnicidal aliens. Maybe they've led a motley team of misfits to prevent a conspiracy to end civilization as we know it. Or they could just be an elite spy who's thwarted a nuclear apocalypse with nothing but their wits and silver tongue. Nevertheless, they are all Heroes, willing to go to impossible lengths to see their mission done, keeping the world safe, whether the great masses know about it or not, whether their means and motivations are just or not.

The alliance of humanities is still putting together a strike force, but this one is created of even more extraordinary individuals than mere elite soldiers. Facing the most dangerous threat the multiverse has ever seen, they must stop the Abomination before it's all too late. Armed with an experimental starship, their well-honed skills in combat or otherwise, their charisma and magnetic force of personality, they come from myriad different dimensions - from star-spanning empires to post-apocalyptic, dying Earths - to defend humanity and the rest of the universe when all others fail.

The players would submit their characters, with enormous backstories very nearly a requirement, and choose two Focuses (Physique, Tech, Psychic, Subterfuge, Starship, etc etc.) that the abilities and starting equipment of their character would be built around. Then they'd go around finding out how to defeat the Abomination, dealing with their action-filled pasts and presents and generally heroing it up everywhere they go, accumulating allies, retinue members and adoring fans throughout countless galaxies.

I was thinking they might even start with 1 Retinue Member from their earlier adventures, also created by them.

Despite the name, it would still be serious (and fairly dark overall) in tone. The player Heroes could be anything from actual superheroes (within the limits of the system) to secret agents to Chosen Ones.

[Harry Baldman]

I just had another idea, and it is a tad strange.

John Against T-H-E-M: A Conspiracy RTD

John is a man living a fairly normal life doing something. He has a girlfriend, Joanne, and a best friend, Jim. Two of these people lead normal lives - namely, Jim and Joanne. John, well... not so much. He continually suspects everyone around him of creating plots against him, utilizing him for their own nefarious purposes, of his place in some great plan that shadowy groups of conspirators have woven throughout the centuries. He frequently badgers both Jim and Joanne with these ideas of his, and their response is usually varied.

Little do they know, however, that John is absolutely correct. Correct to an absolutely mind-boggling and, to be perfectly honest, rather frightening and mystifying degree.


Now, the idea of this game is that three players take up the roles of John, Jim and Joanne, choosing their last names, occupations and traits (granting a proficiency, perhaps two) as well as defining their personalities and the general state and nature of their respective relationships. These lucky three players would be handpicked by the GM from a set of PM-submitted sheets. They would then be thrust into a world mostly like our ordinary one, except with certain... unusual bits. Such as the rampant conspiracies, of which only John is dimly aware of.

But what would happen to the other willing players or the ones who do not want to be mostly clueless schmucks, you ask? They will be asked to do something else entirely, which is to submit their very own conspiracy that will be perpetrated in some relation to John and, by extension, Jim and Joanne as well. This could be anything - government cover-ups, aliens, sentient phones, eldritch cults, whatever floats your boat. These conspiracies will also have a Person of Focus - invariably somebody John, Jim or Joanne know, perhaps a secret cultist, alien infiltrator or something of that sort. There would be up to four conspiracies active at a time, with John as the only one with sufficient knowledge and paranoia to stop them, yet also being somehow being integral to the conspiracies themselves. It would be the conspirators' jobs to make sure John is the unwitting pawn in their plans, which sometimes involves messing around with other conspirators to make sure they don't use John for a ritual sacrifice for their evil rituals or vivisect him for fun and profit or something. And it would be the job of Jim and Joanne to put up with John's antics in their own ways, making sure not to get sacrificed in evil rituals or vivisected for fun and profit in the meantime and maybe even sometimes believing a single word John says.

What are your thoughts?


And HEROES OF THE MULTIVERSE does seem like a fun idea. Kind of like Roll To Seek The Grail with the retinue members, although they'd probably be a bit less expendable in this case. Which is definitely a very good thing.

[Darvi]

Is John a reality warper or is he just that uncannily perceptive to conspiracies?