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[Hastur]

what system? character generation system or task resolution system combat systtem or crafting system?

[IronyOwl]

Task resolution/combat/crafting. Anything players might conceivably do in the prologue, like make a stone craft, try to climb into a window, or get into a streetfight with a hobo, I'll need some kind of system for.

[Hastur]

ok here goes...

Crafting. (probably not the best place to start but oh well stream of consciousness go!)
Everything crafted has a value. a man-hour is worth 10$ so to make an 80$ hammock should take 8 hours. Theoretically.
This is where skill comes in. If you make your skill roll it is made in 8 hours, if you failed your skill roll you ruined it or if i feel generous you contributed 5$/hour towards completion. if you beat your skill by 5 you get a 50% bonus towards completing it and if you beat your skill roll by 10 you get a 100% bonus towards completing it for that shift. So a really good stonecrafter could make 20$ worth of mugs per hour.

Wood is gathered at a rate of 30 minutes for one wood, assuming you have a decent axe.
stone is complicated, i'll calculate it for you, its based off of strength and endurance. I should probably simplify it.

Task resolution.
start with the number 5, then add the relevant attribute rank, then add the relevant skill level, then any bonuses (i'll list these later somewhere) to get a number. Finally take 3 dice and roll them and try to roll under your number. if you suceed you suceded, if you fail you screwed it up.

Potential Bonuses;
nonstressful situation +4
basic tool +0
fine tool+1
Toolset+1
Fine toolset +2
workshop based off a boulder +0
Block/table workshop +1
well furnished workshop +2
assistant+1
ect...

basic Combat.
you start with hitpoints equal to your strength +10. you try to to hit with a skill roll. if you hit you do 1 dice of damage plus your strength. the target subtracts damage equal to their toughness.
heres where it gets complicated, some weapons are better than others. If it is bigger/heavier/longer lever it hits harder and you add damage, if it is a crappy weapon you subtract some. here is a list
-2 to damage; untrained punch, wooden mug, flimsy stick
-1 damage; decent punch, puny knife, elbow strike
+0 damage; rock, knee, gauntlet punch, knife
+1 damage; brick, combat knife,
+2 damage; baton, shortsword, hatchet
+3 ; small mace, sabre
+4 battleaxe , scimtar
+5 mace bastard sword
+6 2 handed weapons
+7 big freaking glaives
+8 halberds

additionaly there are damage types, cutting, impaling, and crushing (and fire and corrosive ect. but those arent basic)
cutting gives a +50% damage bonus cutting through living flesh, applied after armour but before toughness.
impaling gives a +100% damage bonus if it hits the torso neck or head with vial organs and stuff in it.
crushing weaposn typically do one or two more points of damage over cutting/impaling, plus they can cause knockback and KO

Defending yourself.
Dodge skill = 7 but you add one for every 4 points of agility +dodging skill, but you get a bonus depending on what you do. Leap back gives you +3 if it takes you out of the reach of the weapon. Sidestep gives you +2, Slip gives+1 but you take more damage if you get hit anyways. Holding a shield gives a bonus from 1-3 depending on the size of the shield.
Parry skill = 7 + (weapon skill) You can still leap back, sidestep, or slip. shields still give their bonus
Block skill = 7+ blocking skill. meaneuvres still give their bonus.

Fatuige
after a number of combat turns equal to your endurance +10 you become winded and suffer -2 to damage and defence rolls
if you are under 1/2 hitpoints you suffer 1/2 dodge and move
if you are under 4 hitpoints you halve dodge and move again

Damage
Limbs are crippled if they take 1/2 your hitpoints in damage
extremeties are crippled after they take 1/3 hp in damage.
head is -5 to hit. roll a dice, one a 1 it hits the brain, 2 the eyes, 3 the nose, 4 the ear, 5 the mouth, 6 the jaw
groin -5
after you lose all your hitpoints you roll versus 10+your constituition every turn or every time you are hit. if you fail you pass out and probably bleed to death without help

Moves - anybody can try moves, just not everybody can pull them off in the thick of combat sucesfully
Combo. 2 attacks at -3 each
wind up - +4 to hit enemy gets +2 to defend
Reckless - +4 to hit, you get to defences untill your next turn
feint - quick contest of skill, winner gets margin of win as a penalty to their targets defence, or to their defence if the target won

i guess thats the basics i dont like writing it down in case i contradict myself later and theres sso much more aditional information and modifiers given situations but whatever, just add bonuses and penalties on a whim.

[evilcherry]

So you are following the labor theory of value.

[IronyOwl]

Hm. Crafting seems a bit simple, since there's only four outcomes: $0-5, $10, $15, and $20. Might it be better to do something like [Roll + Modifiers = Value Per Hour]?

This is largely a matter of preference, but I'd also like a distinction between items made with high skill and good rolls to those made with a lot of time spent. With your current setup it seems like anyone could theoretically make really expensive, high-quality items so long as they kept going on them. I suppose failing the roll and ruining it might mostly stop that.


Wood intake would mean 16 logs a shift. That seems a bit excessive for an unskilled woodcutter, and it doesn't mention skill doing anything, so...

Of course, thinking about how else you'd do it I'm not too sure. Using the same value-per-dwarf-hour system sounds best, but then you'd have to make logs more valuable than some of the stuff you make out of them or something.


Never been a fan of "Try to roll lower" systems, but that's just a personal preference thing. Task resolution seems fine otherwise.


Not too sure I understand how combat works. I do note that Endurance seems kind of worthless though, because not many combats are going to last 10 rounds in the first place. Even at -4, I wouldn't think 6 rounds of battle would be all that bad.

[Hastur]

Hm. Crafting seems a bit simple, since there's only four outcomes: $0-5, $10, $15, and $20. Might it be better to do something like [Roll + Modifiers = Value Per Hour]?

This is largely a matter of preference, but I'd also like a distinction between items made with high skill and good rolls to those made with a lot of time spent. With your current setup it seems like anyone could theoretically make really expensive, high-quality items so long as they kept going on them. I suppose failing the roll and ruining it might mostly stop that.


Wood intake would mean 16 logs a shift. That seems a bit excessive for an unskilled woodcutter, and it doesn't mention skill doing anything, so...

Of course, thinking about how else you'd do it I'm not too sure. Using the same value-per-dwarf-hour system sounds best, but then you'd have to make logs more valuable than some of the stuff you make out of them or something.


Never been a fan of "Try to roll lower" systems, but that's just a personal preference thing. Task resolution seems fine otherwise.


Not too sure I understand how combat works. I do note that Endurance seems kind of worthless though, because not many combats are going to last 10 rounds in the first place. Even at -4, I wouldn't think 6 rounds of battle would be all that bad.

i think your right about the wood thing. skill does give its usual bonuses and penalties for failing, but who really wants to be a wood gatherer anyway, theres no wood gathering minigame. I picture it this way, a unit of wood is not nessesarily a log from a whole big tree. I can chop down lots of trees in 30 minutes if they are not huge. and if its a big tree each branch could be a log.

endurance is important i think. In Dungeon Keeper i dont think any of the battles took less than 10 seconds. maybe the one with the beetles if that is considered a fight, plus there are spells that drain the endurance attribute. In "Fortress mode: the rpg" all the battles took at least 10 seconds, the big one with the blendecs, the shambling mound, the wherewolf, the critters with the spines. though im not shure individual fighters all fought for 10 seconds or more each. Defences are pretty high, skilled combatants defend a whole lot without tactical advantages against them like flanking.

i like to keep crafting simple yes, because there is a whole lot to craft. im open to new suggestions if you crunch the numbers and give me an alternate way of doing it and show it is better somehow. But when you have 10 characters tring to craft you wont want to calculate equations for each of them depending on their roll. just 8 hour shift x 10$ + either 50% bonus or not is how my way of doing it usualy goes, after the first week i jsut look at the roll and go "yep that beats it by 5 allright, (+120$) NEXT!"

we could combine endurance and constitution into one stat though

[IronyOwl]

Haven't forgotten about this just still thinking. :x

[elitetaco3519]

Still thinking??

[IronyOwl]

Afraid so. I'll put up some of what I've been considering, but the short version is this:

I don't think I want a dwarven copy of the current DK RPG; it's an alright system, but it seems a bit overly/underly complicated (depending on which part we're talking about) and opaque to me, and having basically two copies of the same game doesn't sound very good.

What I'd really like is for this to be sort of a communal/rotating GMs type deal, but I'm not sure there's any enthusiasm for that. Things have been pretty quiet in general, to be honest. Speak up!


Anyway, vague ideas for a new system coming soon.

[FuzzyZergling]

I'm usually on the forums a lot, and I have a bit of GMing experience. If you need someone, I could give it a go.

[IronyOwl]

Well. The crafting system I was thinking of started to fall apart. I knew it was probably too complicated anyway, I guess.

Spoiler: Crafting... ish... Stuff (click to show/hide)

For the curious, I wanted 3d6 +/- modifiers, giving a bell curve with a range of 3-18 and an average of 10.5 at zero modifiers. I knew rolling three dice might get too complex to do on a large scale, but I wasn't counting on not actually realizing where I'd go from there. Also it might need multiplicative modifiers rather than additive ones to avoid getting -6 as a result or needing +40 in modifiers to produce a masterpiece.

EDIT: I didn't explain this well, and maybe it's more salvageable than I thought, if we're willing to roll three dice, add the results, and multiply them.

Anyway, think of it like this for the moment: Your result is the value of the item, so 10 is an Item, 20 is an -Item-, etc. I'm not sure what a 15 would be, but that's just a display issue at that point. So, maybe an unskilled worker has a modifier of *0.5, so they usually produce 5 quality items (10*0.5), and can only make 9 quality at the very best (18*0.5). A decently skilled, equipped dwarf, on the other hand, has a modifier of *1, so they produce normal items most of the time. A skilled dwarf might be *2, so they can produce 36 value items if they get very lucky, or 6 quality items if they mess up, but normally produce 20 value items. In between, you could have *1.7 or whatever the particular combination of skill, tools, and such requires. Still complicated, but makes decent sense and mostly does what I want it to.
[/EDIT]

So yeah, maybe it's salvageable, maybe not, I'll have to think more about it. Maybe some sort of crit system would be better for achieving rare effects, like 1d10 and reroll and add it up if you get an 8 or higher, or something. Or maybe item value could use triangle numbers, so a +1 item needs a (modified?) result of 1, a +2 needs 3 (1+2), a +3 needs 6 (1+2+3), etc?

Anyway, there's ideas. That's a good start...

Spoiler: Battle-ish Stuff (click to show/hide)

Combat I was thinking RTD-style d6 vs d6, also with no particularly good idea what I'd do with modifiers. I was kind of kicking around in my head the idea of dual wielding vs sword n board vs two hander, thinking each style could be good against a certain level of armor. Dual-wielding could maybe let you attack twice but at a -1 penalty to each, meaning it's not so good against armor, whereas two-handers would get a nice damage bonus to help with that. I don't know.

Also, I've probably been playing too much Starcraft, because I was also thinking of giving various characters classifications with corresponding results. So, someone wearing full plate would be considered Armored or Heavily Armored or whatever you'd like to call it, someone with no armor would be Lightly Armored or Unarmored. Then hammers could have +1 vs Armored or whips could have +2 vs Unarmored, -1 vs Armored, or simply have crap damage but +5 vs Unarmored, or something.

Anyway, none of this gives much individual decision to battle, which I don't especially like, but I'm not sure how to pull off making "I chop at his legs" different from "I chop as his torso" without making it all complicated or just winging it.

Comments welcome, including "That sucks do it this way" or "I don't even know what you just said."

I'm usually on the forums a lot, and I have a bit of GMing experience. If you need someone, I could give it a go.

Excellent. What do you think for a system? Throwing vague ideas up might still help us get moving.


EDIT AGAIN:

Spoiler: Shifts and Mood (click to show/hide)

Another thing I was thinking about was to divide the day into three shifts, but assume you would spend one each on Work, Leisure, and Rest. I'm not entirely sure which eating/drinking would fall under, but that's not important. The important thing is that if you don't spend your assumed shift on Leisure or Rest, your mood and/or health suffers accordingly. It might not be appropriate for all characters (though to be honest the Leisure thing might not be either), but your mood could even suffer if you don't fulfill your Work shift either, as you don't feel you're an important contributor to the fortress.

In terms of the exact definitions, Rest would obviously mostly mean sleep. Work would generally mean bettering yourself or the fortress through toil. Leisure would generally mean doing something you like. Situations where someone just likes mining so mining fulfills both shifts would probably be reasonably common, but I would think it wouldn't be totally consistent- sometimes, they'd want to socialize, or get better at fighting, or otherwise do something that probably isn't directly in the fortress' best interests at this particular time.

Anyway, the main point of all this, aside from rough guidelines on what everyone should probably be doing, would be to provide what I think is a reasonable baseline to subtract healthiness/mood from, rather than starting at 0 and adding "managed to sleep." Even if we don't bother with any kind of numerical representation of mood, how someone's shifts are spent is a fairly obvious, important benchmark for eyeballing it.

[FuzzyZergling]

The way I do combat for my Roll to Seige the Goblins RTD is like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Weapons: Weapons usually have either a straight damage modifier (attack) or a modifier against armored/unarmored or small/large opponents. Some, like ranged weapons and polearms, also modify hit chance.

Armor: A creature is either armored or unarmored. Hammers are good against armor, whips are good against flesh. Unarmed strikes take a -2 damage modifier against armor, and armor may raise defence.

Defence/Attack: Certain types of creatures take less damage. This is different from armor in that it reduces all damage, instead of changing damage based on weapon. Other creatures may do more baseline damage, no matter what weapon is wielded.

Hit/Dodge: The attacker's hit modifier is pitted against the defender's dodge modifier. How square a strike hits may influence damage.

Example: A troll striking an armored goblin with his fists. The troll rolls to hit: [(roll)+(hit)-(goblin's dodge)]. Let's say that the troll has a +1 to hit and the goblin has a -1 to dodge. If we're using the RTD system's 1d6 roll, than the final hit roll will be from 3 to 8.
Let's say that the troll is unlucky and rolls a 1, meaning that his final to hit is three. Let's consult a table:
Hit
<1: Total failure; the troll not only misses, but may injure himself.
1: Bad failure; ;he troll misses and the goblin is in a better position to attack.
2: Standard failure; the troll misses.
3: Substandard success; the troll hits, but has a -1 to damage.
4-5: Standard success; the troll hits, doing damage.
6: Good success; the troll hits, doing +1 damage.
>6: Incredible success; the troll hits with +1 damage, and may cause other effects such as bypassing armor.

The troll hit with a 3, and so takes a -1 modifier to damage roll. The troll rolls to damage: [(roll)+(attack)-(goblin's defence)-(unarmed to armor penalty)-1]. A troll has a natural +2 attack, while a goblin has a natural +1 to defence. This means that the final damage roll is [roll-2], because the troll's strength and the goblin's armor's resistance against unarmed attacks negate each other.
Damage
<1: Total failure; the troll's fist brushes the goblin, doing nothing.
1: Bad failure; very little damage, maybe a scratch or bruise.
2: Standard failure; little damage, likely only cosmetic or damaging an extremity.
3: Substandard success; the troll does damage, injuring the goblin in some manner.
4-5: Standard success; the troll does damage, likely causing a large amount of pain or blood loss. May mangle or sever a limb.
6: Good success; the troll does major damage, likely rendering a limb unusable or causing major pain and blood loss.
>6: Incredible success; the troll does major damage, likely incapacitating or killing the goblin outright.

Let's say that the troll has picked up some luck since last time, and rolls a 6. This makes his final damage 4.
The troll punches the goblin [1+1+1] (to hit=3) in his armored chest, [6+2-1-2-1] (damage=4) it's incredible strength sending the vile creature across the room and into a wall! the goblin has suffered internal damage, and is winded!

Now, if we give that same troll a warhammer, that -2 damage reduction is changed into a +2! That means that the final damage would have been 8 instead of 4, quite likely to have killed the puny goblin.

That's how I do it , but I'm sure someone else could suggest something better. As you can probably tell, it's very dependant on what weapon you're wielding.

[Hastur]

You guys say you want to continue Shade-os game, but then dont want to continue the fort. If i started a new game it would be YOUR ALL PIRATES YARR. YE STAY ON YER BOAT OR GO RAIDIN OR SHOPPING IN A TOWN ARGH. YE PLUNDER BOOTY AND UPGRADE YAR BOAT AND CRAFT ON YAR BOAT. YARR DWARVEN PIRATES AVAST!
the system hardly matters, i just know what system i like to use if i gm. because ive used it before and it works for me. it simplifies where i think it needs to and it leaves combat detailed and visceral how i like it.

[CoughDrop]

If this is going to be d6 instead of d20 then I don't really want any part in it.

Why? Because of the HUGE bend on reality. On a d6 you only have 1/3rd chance of doing what would happen around 80-90% of the time in real life. Yes, it's faster and easier to understand, but I really, really don't like it.

Seriously, go d20.

I would be willing to implement the d20 system, and no, I won't be backing out if I do.

Irony, I was thinking of maybe having one person do all the math and rolls and giving that information to the GM so one person isn't doing all of the work. I could easily make some excel sheets to do the math for you (although I don't think I've used a random generator on it before, it would be interesting to see what it could do)

You guys say you want to continue Shade-os game, but then dont want to continue the fort. If i started a new game it would be YOUR ALL PIRATES YARR. YE STAY ON YER BOAT OR GO RAIDIN OR SHOPPING IN A TOWN ARGH. YE PLUNDER BOOTY AND UPGRADE YAR BOAT AND CRAFT ON YAR BOAT. YARR DWARVEN PIRATES AVAST!
the system hardly matters, i just know what system i like to use if i gm. because ive used it before and it works for me. it simplifies where i think it needs to and it leaves combat detailed and visceral how i like it.

You'd better be joking.

[IronyOwl]

You guys say you want to continue Shade-os game, but then dont want to continue the fort. If i started a new game it would be YOUR ALL PIRATES YARR. YE STAY ON YER BOAT OR GO RAIDIN OR SHOPPING IN A TOWN ARGH. YE PLUNDER BOOTY AND UPGRADE YAR BOAT AND CRAFT ON YAR BOAT. YARR DWARVEN PIRATES AVAST!
the system hardly matters, i just know what system i like to use if i gm. because ive used it before and it works for me. it simplifies where i think it needs to and it leaves combat detailed and visceral how i like it.

Yeah, I think most of us want to "continue" as in "recreate how awesome the last one was." CoughDrop already tried what Shade-o was doing in a stricter sense and it didn't work out.

Also, dwarven pirates sounds interesting, but I think I'd rather stick with the fort elements. Though I'm now getting pirate RTD ideas, so damn you for that.

I would be willing to implement the d20 system, and no, I won't be backing out if I do.

If it's just opposed rolls during combat it shouldn't be an issue. Using a differently sized die might be better or worse due to the impact each +/-1 bonus has. I was just thinking d6 for a rather compact system, and also because I somewhat dislike rolling separately for weapon damage (I prefer attack - defense = dmg or similar).

Irony, I was thinking of maybe having one person do all the math and rolls and giving that information to the GM so one person isn't doing all of the work. I could easily make some excel sheets to do the math for you (although I don't think I've used a random generator on it before, it would be interesting to see what it could do)

Possibly. Hell, we could even rotate responsibilities or something.

The only issue I have is that having one person do all the math and another do all the writing might not be all that productive, since you've still got one person doing all the calculations and another just doing all the flavor. Having different GMs for the fort/adventure segments would probably be a pretty good idea regardless.