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[Person]

-shoppers at a department store (the players) are trapped in an infinite mall dimension and have to survive/escape
-basically that IKEA SCP
-weapons are scavenged from stores and combined together ala dead rising
-aesthetic ‘feel’- abandoned malls, dead rising, vaporwave/mall soft

You should really look into Walmart Apocalypse for this. Even if you don't just end up running that, it'll be good inspiration.

Also, sorry I missed all the discussion on the mech building thing. You've given me a lot to work with, so I'll definitely come back to that idea at some point. Thanks for all that. It isn't burning me up anymore though, and I've still got turns to put up for my other games. I want to at least finish Wiki Wars, but life has been a royal pain lately.

[TamerVirus]

You should really look into Walmart Apocalypse for this. Even if you don't just end up running that, it'll be good inspiration.

Digging the setting. Thanks for telling about that. Pretty interesting stuff, though at bit more fallouty than what I originally envisioned.
Ah well, I'm busy with that Kung Fu Man SG game at the moment and I have more than enough RL stuff to deal with at the moment that I dare not do more than one game at a time
I'll place it in the stuff I want to do later category

[_DivideByZero_]

Thinking of another Folstag University of Magic style game, this time with a bit more structure.

The key difference is that it's a world I was working on for a far-future sci fi novel. Society is built around magic, and also dependent on it, hence the central role of magic universities.

The plan this time:
-Practical exam to start off with some action
-Project-based assignments so that players create something of their own
-Progression system based on practical exam results
-Magic based on signals/radio frequency circuits

[IronyOwl]

I have a system I like, but it has a flaw. My efforts at correcting this flaw have been unsatisfying.

Spoiler: The System (click to show/hide)

Players have skills, measured with a numerical value. Each point in a skill grants another point of power in the result. For basic things- dealing damage, harvesting corn- this tends to mean more stuff. For complex things- raising a zombie, knocking an enemy's weapon out of their hands- this tends to mean more features. Examples:

+3 Necromancer tries to raise a zombie. One point is needed to raise the zombie. Another point can give the zombie tough hide. The third point could be spent giving the zombie the ability to sing.
He rolls a [6]. The zombie is indeed a zombie, in fact it's probably a little too strong to control well. It's probably also heavily armored to the point of obstructing its own movements, and likely gives off some kind of macabre whalesong at all times.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick flowers. Probably this just produces 2 units of flowers.
He rolls a [3]. They're kind of substandard flowers.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick... the perfect flower! Though since one point is necessary for the base flower action, he's only got one point left to make it pretty or smell nice or something. He'll choose looking shiny.
He rolls a [1]. He's eaten by a bear.


So that's the basic system. Now it gets interesting.

On a roll of [1][5][6], a player gains a point of Passion in the skill used for the action. Skills can hold Passion equal to their current rating, like so:

+3 Necromancy (2/3)
+2 Swords (0/2)

Passion may be used in actions to supercharge them. Each point of Passion lets you add a quality that's exceptional in some way, beyond the limits of what's normally possible. Examples:

+3 Necromancer tries to raise a zombie. One point goes towards raising the zombie, one to thick hide, one to that infernal singing. He'll spend a point of Passion giving it a caustic bile vomit attack, something normally awfully complex to produce and project for a mindless corpse. He'll spend a second point trying to give it an alluring siren song, but can't think of a coherent way to do that using just Necromancy- if he had some better supporting skills, though, that'd probably work out. Instead he gives it a deathsong, making its wailing literally harmful to living things- again, hard to justify on a plain ol' corpse. Since this covers the singing bit, he could switch the point he put there to something more useful, but he'd like the zombie to retain its ability to sing nonlethally.
He rolls a [6]. The thing is an armored acid-leaking ball that emits a constant dischordant flesh-destroying hum intermixed with what sounds like the mundane wailing of the damned.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick flowers. He spends 2 Passion acquiring two flowers that will keep their beautiful appearance even when dead, something plants normally don't tend to do.
He rolls a [3]. They keep their beauty, but weren't that great-looking to begin with.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick a perfect flower. He'll spend 2 Passion making it outlandishly beautiful- imagine being the kind of chump who only has a one-point-beauty flower!
He rolls a [1]. To no one's great surprise, the outlandishly beautiful flower he discovers growing atop a small hill of rotted corpses is a horrifying trap and he ends up battling the rough necrotic equivalent to an anglerfish.


Two additional points about Passion use: One, each point has a chance to level the skill equal to [Used Passion] / [Max Passion]. A +3 Necromancer (2/3) using 1 point of Passion has a 1/3 chance to rise to a +4 Necromancer (1/4). A +2 Herbalist (2/2) using 2 points of Passion has a 100% chance to become a +3 Herbalist (0/3).

Two, rolling a [1][5][6] on a Passion-using action gives you a special trait related to the action, with a relative strength equal to the Passion used. The above Necromancer might gain a trait related to singing creations or excessive necromancy, while the second +2 Herbalist might gain the ability to sense beauty at a distance.

In summary:
-Use skills to add points to your actions
-Gain Passion through skill use
-Spend Passion to supercharge actions
-Gain skills through Passion use
-Win fabulous prizes through Passion use

Spoiler: The Problem (click to show/hide)

Leveling is too slow. Using the above system, it takes 22 turns to go from nothing to +5 in a skill. I feel like around twice that speed would be ideal. I have been searching for a way to make that happen, and have come up with several unsatisfying solutions thus far.

Spoiler: Solution One: Double Trouble (click to show/hide)

Just give players two actions per turn. Bam, xp gain doubled.

Two problems: One, it's not very inspired. I suspect a lot of actions will just be doubled, since if your first priority is stabbing a mofo, your second priority will often be stabbing him twice.

Two, the order of things might matter. Supposed somebody tries to raise a zombie while healing himself. Does he try to cast a healing spell while being throttled by his own rebellious zombie? Does he savagely maim himself with a "healing" spell, and then immediately perform necromancy?

Possible workaround to the first and maybe second would be making the actions concurrent and exclusive; that is, if you're stabbing someone, your stab-related skills are tied up in the first stabbing and can't be used for the second. This would mean you could stab someone while throwing a fireball at them, I suppose (or at a second target, if I want to limit actions to multitasking), but I feel like it turns every character and action into some kind of weird wuxia thing. Bake brownies with your feet while healing the poor with your hands! Stab someone with one arm while healing an ally on the other side of the battle with the other! Cast a shield on yourself in the same motion you throw a fireball with!

Silly isn't bad, but this wasn't a motif I was expecting.

Spoiler: Solution Two: Skill Categories (click to show/hide)

Another thought I had was granting xp for actions on top of Passion. Main problem: Tracking both looks hideous. +4 Swords (2/4) [1/4]? Ew. Plus one's a more boring version of the other.

Obvious compromise: Make higher-tier skill groups and apply the xp to those. Maybe Swords belongs to Combat, along with Axes and Lances. I could put Fire, Earth, and Water Magics into an Elemental category. Every time you gain xp using a skill, your skill group gains xp and levels, and then you can apply it to any related action like so:

+3 Elementalism (2/3)
+2 Fire Magic (0/2)
+1 Water Magic (1/1)

The above character would cast Fire Magic at +5 total, and Water at +4 total.

Several problems with this one. To start with, it's kind of clunky; every skill roll now requires glancing at and adding two separate fields. On top of that, it renders skills kind of odd; even someone who's never cast a fire spell before in their lives can be really good at it if they stack elemental magics in general. This makes sense if the skill clusters make sense, but can be wonky otherwise. Example: A Necromancer/Death Mage is more poorly synergized than a Fire/Ice Mage. I could invent more detailed categories (Destructive Magics, Aggressive Combat Skills, Poor Idea Magics), but it still penalized interesting combinations in favor of "you're a frost mage, that means you're good at whatever the system says frost magic is adjacent to."

Spoiler: Solution Three: Class Levels (click to show/hide)

Okay, so if skills-above-skills don't work well, what about class levels! You could gain xp in general, becoming a higher level Necromancer or Mercenary (relatively) independent of your skill level in a particular field. What do class levels do, you might ask?

Hence the problem. I don't know.

To further complicate matters, the issue is lack of skills; adding class features or the like is sort of solving the wrong problem. They could grant bundles of skill-leveling or something, but that feels indirect and odd. A possible compromise would be situational skills- double your Necromancy bonus when raising the dead, treat your skill with any weapon as +2 if it's normally lower, etc- but that then feels a little bland.

Help appreciated.

[_DivideByZero_]

I have a system I like, but it has a flaw. My efforts at correcting this flaw have been unsatisfying.

Spoiler: The System (click to show/hide)

Players have skills, measured with a numerical value. Each point in a skill grants another point of power in the result. For basic things- dealing damage, harvesting corn- this tends to mean more stuff. For complex things- raising a zombie, knocking an enemy's weapon out of their hands- this tends to mean more features. Examples:

+3 Necromancer tries to raise a zombie. One point is needed to raise the zombie. Another point can give the zombie tough hide. The third point could be spent giving the zombie the ability to sing.
He rolls a [6]. The zombie is indeed a zombie, in fact it's probably a little too strong to control well. It's probably also heavily armored to the point of obstructing its own movements, and likely gives off some kind of macabre whalesong at all times.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick flowers. Probably this just produces 2 units of flowers.
He rolls a [3]. They're kind of substandard flowers.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick... the perfect flower! Though since one point is necessary for the base flower action, he's only got one point left to make it pretty or smell nice or something. He'll choose looking shiny.
He rolls a [1]. He's eaten by a bear.


So that's the basic system. Now it gets interesting.

On a roll of [1][5][6], a player gains a point of Passion in the skill used for the action. Skills can hold Passion equal to their current rating, like so:

+3 Necromancy (2/3)
+2 Swords (0/2)

Passion may be used in actions to supercharge them. Each point of Passion lets you add a quality that's exceptional in some way, beyond the limits of what's normally possible. Examples:

+3 Necromancer tries to raise a zombie. One point goes towards raising the zombie, one to thick hide, one to that infernal singing. He'll spend a point of Passion giving it a caustic bile vomit attack, something normally awfully complex to produce and project for a mindless corpse. He'll spend a second point trying to give it an alluring siren song, but can't think of a coherent way to do that using just Necromancy- if he had some better supporting skills, though, that'd probably work out. Instead he gives it a deathsong, making its wailing literally harmful to living things- again, hard to justify on a plain ol' corpse. Since this covers the singing bit, he could switch the point he put there to something more useful, but he'd like the zombie to retain its ability to sing nonlethally.
He rolls a [6]. The thing is an armored acid-leaking ball that emits a constant dischordant flesh-destroying hum intermixed with what sounds like the mundane wailing of the damned.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick flowers. He spends 2 Passion acquiring two flowers that will keep their beautiful appearance even when dead, something plants normally don't tend to do.
He rolls a [3]. They keep their beauty, but weren't that great-looking to begin with.

+2 Herbalist tries to pick a perfect flower. He'll spend 2 Passion making it outlandishly beautiful- imagine being the kind of chump who only has a one-point-beauty flower!
He rolls a [1]. To no one's great surprise, the outlandishly beautiful flower he discovers growing atop a small hill of rotted corpses is a horrifying trap and he ends up battling the rough necrotic equivalent to an anglerfish.


Two additional points about Passion use: One, each point has a chance to level the skill equal to [Used Passion] / [Max Passion]. A +3 Necromancer (2/3) using 1 point of Passion has a 1/3 chance to rise to a +4 Necromancer (1/4). A +2 Herbalist (2/2) using 2 points of Passion has a 100% chance to become a +3 Herbalist (0/3).

Two, rolling a [1][5][6] on a Passion-using action gives you a special trait related to the action, with a relative strength equal to the Passion used. The above Necromancer might gain a trait related to singing creations or excessive necromancy, while the second +2 Herbalist might gain the ability to sense beauty at a distance.

In summary:
-Use skills to add points to your actions
-Gain Passion through skill use
-Spend Passion to supercharge actions
-Gain skills through Passion use
-Win fabulous prizes through Passion use

Spoiler: The Problem (click to show/hide)

Leveling is too slow. Using the above system, it takes 22 turns to go from nothing to +5 in a skill. I feel like around twice that speed would be ideal. I have been searching for a way to make that happen, and have come up with several unsatisfying solutions thus far.

Spoiler: Solution One: Double Trouble (click to show/hide)

Just give players two actions per turn. Bam, xp gain doubled.

Two problems: One, it's not very inspired. I suspect a lot of actions will just be doubled, since if your first priority is stabbing a mofo, your second priority will often be stabbing him twice.

Two, the order of things might matter. Supposed somebody tries to raise a zombie while healing himself. Does he try to cast a healing spell while being throttled by his own rebellious zombie? Does he savagely maim himself with a "healing" spell, and then immediately perform necromancy?

Possible workaround to the first and maybe second would be making the actions concurrent and exclusive; that is, if you're stabbing someone, your stab-related skills are tied up in the first stabbing and can't be used for the second. This would mean you could stab someone while throwing a fireball at them, I suppose (or at a second target, if I want to limit actions to multitasking), but I feel like it turns every character and action into some kind of weird wuxia thing. Bake brownies with your feet while healing the poor with your hands! Stab someone with one arm while healing an ally on the other side of the battle with the other! Cast a shield on yourself in the same motion you throw a fireball with!

Silly isn't bad, but this wasn't a motif I was expecting.

Spoiler: Solution Two: Skill Categories (click to show/hide)

Another thought I had was granting xp for actions on top of Passion. Main problem: Tracking both looks hideous. +4 Swords (2/4) [1/4]? Ew. Plus one's a more boring version of the other.

Obvious compromise: Make higher-tier skill groups and apply the xp to those. Maybe Swords belongs to Combat, along with Axes and Lances. I could put Fire, Earth, and Water Magics into an Elemental category. Every time you gain xp using a skill, your skill group gains xp and levels, and then you can apply it to any related action like so:

+3 Elementalism (2/3)
+2 Fire Magic (0/2)
+1 Water Magic (1/1)

The above character would cast Fire Magic at +5 total, and Water at +4 total.

Several problems with this one. To start with, it's kind of clunky; every skill roll now requires glancing at and adding two separate fields. On top of that, it renders skills kind of odd; even someone who's never cast a fire spell before in their lives can be really good at it if they stack elemental magics in general. This makes sense if the skill clusters make sense, but can be wonky otherwise. Example: A Necromancer/Death Mage is more poorly synergized than a Fire/Ice Mage. I could invent more detailed categories (Destructive Magics, Aggressive Combat Skills, Poor Idea Magics), but it still penalized interesting combinations in favor of "you're a frost mage, that means you're good at whatever the system says frost magic is adjacent to."

Spoiler: Solution Three: Class Levels (click to show/hide)

Okay, so if skills-above-skills don't work well, what about class levels! You could gain xp in general, becoming a higher level Necromancer or Mercenary (relatively) independent of your skill level in a particular field. What do class levels do, you might ask?

Hence the problem. I don't know.

To further complicate matters, the issue is lack of skills; adding class features or the like is sort of solving the wrong problem. They could grant bundles of skill-leveling or something, but that feels indirect and odd. A possible compromise would be situational skills- double your Necromancy bonus when raising the dead, treat your skill with any weapon as +2 if it's normally lower, etc- but that then feels a little bland.

Help appreciated.

What if you are +0? You can't store passion. Do you just gain a level in the skill automatically? If so, that's 2 turns to level 1, then a 50% chance per action for a 100% chance to level 2. The sequence is:

2 actions to level 1
2 actions to level 2
4 actions to level 3
6 actions to level 4
8 actions to level 5

Total is 22 like you said. So am I correct that to gain +1 you just need to roll a 1/5/6?

One immediate solution that comes to mind is to remove the requirement for spending passion to gain levels in a skill: you just always have a flat [1 / Current Level] chance to level up, and you will level up at twice the speed considering you go from a 50% chance to get a [1 / Level] chance to level up, to a flat [1 / Level] chance.. I think this makes your system less unique, though, and it takes emphasis away from that one decisive roll. So I would avoid this if I could.

What if you get +1 additional passion if you roll 1 on a passion-action? Or perhaps just double the passion you get from passion actions. To keep players from simply spending 1 token passion on every action, you could force players to use ALL passion on an action if they specify a passion action. Takes away a bit of player agency, but it cements a sort of theme where "passion knows no bounds" or something.

[The Ensorceler]

How about this for classes?

At character creation, pick three skills, and bundle them as a class, like so:

Spoiler: Starter Character (click to show/hide)

+1 Scavenge lvl 1 [0/1]
+1 Kludge lvl 1 [0/1]
+1 Improvised Weapon lvl 1 [0/1]

From then on, leveling skills in a class add to a total bonus across skills in the class. New skills can be added to a class you already have if relevant or left as classless skills. Pretty much whenever you want, you can create a new class for yourself out of any three skills you have, whether they are class skills or not. The only mandatory restriction is that all classes you have must always have a minimum of three skills in them. Optionally, you could lock in the three skills used to create a class and say they can't be moved to start a new class.

Properly calibrating the skill levels to level up a class should give you a rough doubling in bonuses accrued, but the groupings will be arbitrary and mostly unique to each player. Also rewards leveling general skills early, like Fire Magic so you have a reasonably high level hammer to hit all your nails with, then switching to specializing with new skills like Summon Flame Elemental, because with the baked in modifiers, your bonus modifiers from level and passion stretch further.

Capping skills at a certain level could be useful, to force specialized skills for really high power stuff, but that isn't necessarily good. I'd like to see how the system works in practice, but it looks fun to me.

Spoiler: Late Game Character (click to show/hide)

+7 Swordplay lvl 5 [2/5]
+6 Gunplay lvl 4 [4/4]
+6 Sailing lvl 4 [0/4]
+3 Cannoneering lvl 1 [1/1]
etc.

+3 Salty Oaths lvl 3 [1/3]
+2 Divine Power lvl 2 [2/2]
+1 Therapy lvl 1[0/1]

+2 Baking lvl 2 [2/2]

As seen here, relevant informarion is shown on the left (+bonus from class, class name, +bonus of skill including class bonus, name of skill) and useless stuff in the middle (level has no effect separate from bonus), then passion on the right where you can skip to it.

[IronyOwl]

What if you are +0? You can't store passion. Do you just gain a level in the skill automatically?

I'm uncertain what to do if you exceed your max passion. Particularly in the case of going from +0 to +1, I'm tempted to apply it retroactively to the action. Main problem here is that the player doesn't get a chance to specify, and in testing I kept thinking of the action normally before realizing, oh yeah, I have to apply something fancy to it. Not my first choice, but I don't have a better one.

For having a limit and exceeding it, I'm torn between the additional point being spent retroactively and all of it being spent at once. The former is probably mean, though.

In any case, yes, +0 to +1 requires 1 Passion, as does +1 to +2.

One immediate solution that comes to mind is to remove the requirement for spending passion to gain levels in a skill: you just always have a flat [1 / Current Level] chance to level up, and you will level up at twice the speed considering you go from a 50% chance to get a [1 / Level] chance to level up, to a flat [1 / Level] chance.. I think this makes your system less unique, though, and it takes emphasis away from that one decisive roll. So I would avoid this if I could.

It's also unfortunate in that a lot of skill levels require a separate roll. 1, 2, and 3 are fine, but 1/4 and 1/5 don't map directly to a d6. Needing to roll a separate die every time someone uses a +4 skill would be obnoxious.

What if you get +1 additional passion if you roll 1 on a passion-action? Or perhaps just double the passion you get from passion actions. To keep players from simply spending 1 token passion on every action, you could force players to use ALL passion on an action if they specify a passion action. Takes away a bit of player agency, but it cements a sort of theme where "passion knows no bounds" or something.

I did consider just giving 2 Passion per [1][5][6], but as you suggest it statistically allows players to spend a Passion every single turn, which detracts a fair bit from the special-ness. It also plays oddly with the lower levels, since you go straight from +0 to +1 and 1 Passion to immediately boost yourself to +2. From where you go immediately to 2/2 to boost yourself to +3, where you go straight to 2/3 and then to 4/3, unless you spend at least a point in the interim. Feels odd and chunky to me.

I could indeed force them to go whole hog if they're going any hog to deal with the passion poke thing, but you can still spend it as you get it so I dunno how much that'd change things. Plus everything would be in multiples of 2, which would be odd.

A related idea would be forcing players to max out their Passion before spending exactly that much, but I feel like that reduces agency more than I'd like. If you want to spend as much Passion as physically possible in one swing, that's fine. If you don't, I feel like you should be able to do smaller projects and only spend what you think you need.

How about this for classes?

Definitely interesting, but I'm concerned about players putting all of their skills into one class, or just neglecting anything they can't fit in there. I guess I could try to scale it so that putting more skills into a class required more total expenditure to raise the class (eg Soldier: Swords Shields Cooking is easier to level than Archmage: Every Magic Skill), but then I'd need to fine-tune the benefits of every possible number and level of skills to be balanced with each other.

Another option I like would be applying special abilities to class clusters, so you'd have some incentive to keep skills linked by some rationale. Maybe Swashbuckler has a Sea Shanty ability that improves Swashbuckler class skills on the ocean, so you want to keep your ocean things and only your ocean things in there, while Chaplain blesses targets of Chaplain class skills so you want to keep your supportive stuff in there. But then Swashbuckler becomes an ideal class to put Fishing and Chaplain has no reason not to gain Cooking, so maybe not.

Another thing I was thinking of was allowing you to combine skills, such as using Necromancy+Fire Magic to create flaming zombies. I could potentially limit such combinations to one per class, so a Druid (Life Magic/Plant Magic/Animal Taming) couldn't use both Life and Plant magics to grow plants at the same time, but their knowledge of Life Magic would improve their knowledge of Plant Magic. On the other hand, this would make "custom" classes ruinous; a Flame Priest could never use both his awesome fire and awesome divine powers at once, so ideally you'd want each class to have a "main" skill you actually intend to use, and at least two filler/utility skills you'd like to get stronger with your main skill, but would never consider using together with it. That's... probably not what I want classes do be/do?

As seen here, relevant informarion is shown on the left (+bonus from class, class name, +bonus of skill including class bonus, name of skill) and useless stuff in the middle (level has no effect separate from bonus), then passion on the right where you can skip to it.

Sometimes it's the little things; that formatting is quite good.

[The Ensorceler]

I can solve the "stuff everything into one class" problem: Classes are capped at six skills, and a skill can never be removed from a class. Instead, you can split a full class of six skills into two three-skill-classes, and rename both (previously used names are not banned, but simultaneous duplicates are). This probably lowers your class level, but you get an increasingly wide range of strong tools as you play, and no skill ever loses a level, only its class bonus sometimes. It might play a little bit better to cap at seven skills so you don't have to force a bad split in your skills. I think this might mean classless skills can no longer exist, so you'd end up forced into creating some generalist classes with a mix of your trash skills and overflow from actually good skills... Instead it would be correct play to split as soon as possible to create a class that would always claim trash skills, but that doesn't seem fun. With a cap on the skills in a class, I think it would be more important not to create skills willy-nilly. Maybe it's fine if a player can make a new skill every single turn in exchange for the benefits of never creating an un-asked-for skill? There isn't actually a benefit to having zillions of skills, so maybe the action economy preventing you from leveling if you spam skills is enough disincentive away from grabbing skills you don't want.

I think it is somewhat important not to let class bonuses become more complicated than a way of rewarding use of similar skills together and padding the +bonuses the way you asked for a solution. The push to create infinite unique passive effects will eventually create a lot of problems.

To me, the best parts of this system you're putting together are the ones that let you endlessly specialize down deeper and deeper rabbit holes without ever stepping on another player's toes. I'll definitely be watching any game that comes out of this system.

[FallacyofUrist]

I was thinking of running a sequel game. Of Roll to Magic.

Yeah. That game. I had a few rules changes in mind as well.

To speed up gameplay and increase murder, players have a deteriorating soul. In order to repair it and not die of broken soul, they need to gather and use Soul Essences by killing other players. When a player is killed, the Soul Essences are divided among the causes of that player's death, with a bonus for whoever landed the killing blow. For example, if Mage A with 5 Soul Essences was killed by Mage B, Mage C, and Mage D, and Mage B landed the last hit, Mage B would get 3 Soul Essences, and Mages C and D would get 1 each. This would make large alliances less viable and smaller ones more viable.

Rituals would be adjusted. Rather than being a way to create a large and powerful spell, they would feel more like proper rituals. For example, a mage could find a Ritual Scroll of Solar Bombardment, and in order to summon that giant sun laser they would not only need to get the sufficient Potency and Competency rolls, but also gather the ingredients needed for the ritual. Mages could possibly formulate their own rituals with difficulty or maybe a sacrifice of Soul Essences.

What do you think?

[Whisperling]

Honestly, that cuts out a lot of the stuff I liked about the original RtM. Deathmatch things were happening throughout, but by the end a lot of the players weren't there for the murder.

Enforcing fights that way removes some of the original appeal, although it's understandable if that's the game you want to run.

All for the ritual changes, though. The previous version had its niche, but it was also pretty boring.

[FallacyofUrist]

You know what this forum needs? Another Looter's Delight game. Maybe less PvP and more a quest to kill Magical Girl Death Queen or whatever. Whatever the world generator says.

Anyone up for it?

[Dermonster]

Hell yes.

[Beirus]

Like a Looter's Delight-fueled quest or like a competition to kill Magical Girl Death Queen first?

Either way, it sounds awesome! Count me in.

[FallacyofUrist]

Prototyping the loot generator! Let's see what we have...

I'm working with a tier system, going from Mundane to Strange to Bizarre to Insane to Awesome.

Let's have some examples. First up Mundane.

The item is a trumpet. When played, it fires blasts of freezing edges. When part of a foe is frozen, the frozen part will turn into dirt and crumble away.

Strange!
 
The item is an amulet that absorbs gasses, especially harmful ones, and turns them into glass arrows which it stores inside it. The amulet can fire the glass arrows at enemies, and when they hit, they spew a stone-disintegrating gas.

Bizarre!

The item is a flute that turns any blood it touches into ash which it absorbs. Using that ash, it can conjure crossbow bolts which it fires at enemies when played. When its reservoirs are full, playing a note will consume all the ash and fire a shotgun blast of brown gemstones which explode into drunkeness-causing gas.

Insane!

The item is a motorcycle made of adamantine painted to look like copper. It has two buttons, one green and grey and one gold. When the green and grey button is pressed the motorcycle will cover itself in poisonous flails which will whirl around it, avoiding the rider but hitting everyone around the cycle. When the gold button is pressed the motorcycle will generate a sphere of golden gas around it. The gas absorbs the power of other loot. If another piece of loot spends too long exposed to the gas, it will explode and the motorcycle will become more complex.

Fun times, yeah?

[Dermonster]

Sounds *excellent*.

Give me the motorcycle. Everybody sacrifice all loot to the god cycle!