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[Toaster]

Are you thinking more RTD, more D20-based, or something else entirely?


I wouldn't mind seeing a Mario Kart RTD area where Crank shows up.  He always needs more spotlight time.

[Tomcost]

I have an idea: if we need two words to define our role, maybe we could choose a "profession" and a "role" words. For example, I may say, engineer marksman, which will put me in a crafting and scavenging profession, and in a DPS role.

[freeformschooler]

I have an idea: if we need two words to define our role, maybe we could choose a "profession" and a "role" words. For example, I may say, engineer marksman, which will put me in a crafting and scavenging profession, and in a DPS role.

Ehhh. Feel free, but like I said, it wouldn't be two words. You'd have to give an actual class description.

EDIT:

Are you thinking more RTD, more D20-based, or something else entirely?

I wouldn't mind seeing a Mario Kart RTD area where Crank shows up.  He always needs more spotlight time.

I'm thinking either D20 or flat. Flat's something I don't have a lot of experience with balancing, though.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Sounds interesting. Is there more info on the setting or have you not yet fleshed it out properly yet?

[freeformschooler]

Sounds interesting. Is there more info on the setting or have you not yet fleshed it out properly yet?

Did you see the giant intro and the "who are you" segment?

[IamanElfCollaborator]

...no. :/ Reading it.

[IronyOwl]

How will stats work? Will it just be HP/MP, or will there be things like Agility, Fortitude, etc. too?

Undecided. I don't even know what kind of off-ship game mechanics we'll be looking at yet.

You want us to throw ideas at you for that as well?

When you say all your old games, is that including you must accelerate?

Oh God.

And I don't just mean mine, either. As you can see from the picture there, it will probably be knockoff worlds from other video games and forum games, too. Each mission should be fairly small on its own with only a finite number of areas to explore.

I was more worried about the Con-Off myself.

Though I've never read You Must Accelerate. Better go fix that.

...

Oh. Oh god. That was beautiful. That was so beautiful.

[freeformschooler]

You want us to throw ideas at you for that as well?

That would be awesome. Come up with your most ridiculous horseshit ideas for RPG mechanics both combat and exploration.

[monk12]

Alternatively, everyone produces the same resources but flavored by whoever finds/harvests them. So if someone manages to figure out that there's a gem hidden behind a rock, the type and uses for that gem will be wildly different from a Necromancer to a Paladin. The main trouble here, aside from figuring out what everyone can get, is that it might add an "oh we need more holy stuff so make sure our Paladin harvests everything" meta-strategy that might not be desirable.

Ehhh. Both of those systems go back to my whole personal preference of wanting every player character to have a very special part to play and feel like they're contributing in a way their teammates need them for. But the point is it's a role chosen by them that the player chose to play from the very start at the exclusion of some other playstyles (like a Bone Crafter isn't going to be as combat oriented as a Warrrior, so they'd be better for on-base stuff and might actually enjoy it more).

I do like the idea of Everyone is a Miner, but I think mining Supercharginite should not be possible for someone who only has experience with taking rocks out of open quarries.

It's also a thing that could be interesting on a meta game level. Like, the guy who has Woodcutting would be a must-have when you're on a forest shard, but he's not going to be as interesting on Leaking Lava Land.

Yeah, the idea as I envisioned it was that exploration abilities do not come at the expense of combat abilities; ideally they are one and the same, but don't have to be.

Okay, so, when I said "as I envisioned it" I meant "as I ripped straight out of Golden Sun since I happen to be playing that RPG right now." All of the puzzle mechanics in that game involve manipulating the environment in some way; the Air guy can cast Whirlwind to blow choking weeds out of the way and use crazy divination powers to reveal hidden doors and items, the Rock guy can move the giant blocks for the block/jumping puzzles around (and break some of them,) the Water guy can make towers and platforms of ice to aid in the jumping/navigation puzzles, the Fire chick... uh, burns things? Some of them are tied to class, and some of them are tied to item (the Fire chick doesn't have any by class, so she's carrying around Items of Random Usefulness to fill out her puzzling niche.) The point is, apart from costing a trivial amount of mana none of these abilities hinder the player's effectiveness in combat situations. It's not like "the Air geek is only good for finding secret chests and doors and stuff" because he's my main cannon; he just also happens to spend his down time finding secret chests and doors and stuff.

Or to bring it back to a plausible character sheet, you'd have your "Active Gonna Murder Shit" ability, your passive "I'm Just Better" ability, and your "This Is How I Find Loot" ability. Everyone has all three; they might have to choose between Murder and Loot on a case-by-case basis if those abilities use the same resources, but every class has the same combat potential (regardless of whether their role is damage or debilitation or healing or whatever.)

You want us to throw ideas at you for that as well?

That would be awesome. Come up with your most ridiculous horseshit ideas for RPG mechanics both combat and exploration.

Combat is done by directly comparing Power scores + modifiers. Power is accrued by braiding flowers in your hair (or hair-equivalent.)  Modifiers are determined by the color and species of the flowers in your hair. Color provides flat bonuses if certain preconditions are met (rainy weather activates Blue, speaking in a British accent activates Off-White, etc) Species of flowers involves an Elemental Rock Paper Scissors mechanic where favorable matchups add dice to your Power score (so Power + modifiers + d6 or whatever.) After all is said and done the flowers explode at one another until somebody's hair has no more flowers in it and they DIE. Then the winner recovers any usable flowers and moves on to the next victim.

...you DID say horseshit, and there's very nearly a system in there!

[Furtuka]

Will there be someway to request to be placed on a mission, or for the on base players to communicate with the off base ones so as to give people a better chance to be able to apply their knowledge if a particular setting they know very well appears?

[freeformschooler]

Now that I think about it, I would only have twenty days to run this... two jobs, three maths classes and one history unit are going to occupy most of my time soon And then I move to a new city after that.

[IronyOwl]

Augh! Another glorious thing, lost to the maelstrom of reality.

...could you run it anyway? You do like insane workloads, and I'm sure the players would prefer an update once every two weeks to none at all.

Especially the ones on base.

[freeformschooler]

That has not been my experience

I could certainly try, but I'm sure it would come at the cost of running Warrens for a semester.

[freeformschooler]

Or to bring it back to a plausible character sheet, you'd have your "Active Gonna Murder Shit" ability, your passive "I'm Just Better" ability, and your "This Is How I Find Loot" ability. Everyone has all three; they might have to choose between Murder and Loot on a case-by-case basis if those abilities use the same resources, but every class has the same combat potential (regardless of whether their role is damage or debilitation or healing or whatever.)

Too braindead to respond to the rest, but I've decided this is an amazing idea. You know, compacting everything into one ability like that. However, I've got a few different concepts in mind for each.

Active Gonna Murder Shit Concept One: Ability Slots. So! At the start of the game, the Active Combat ability has only one use. Maybe it's like, a Big Fireball that you can use instead of attacking at some cost (SP? Time?). Either way, if we narrow down all a character's combat abilities into one thing, it doesn't allow a lot of room for advancements. That's where Ability Slots come in! Think Path of Exile's linked abilities: on-base characters can craft certain items that can merge with your active ability to add an effect. One idea might be a Phase Gem that teleports the enemy away from you in a random direction. This would be awesome for a fireball, letting a ranged character continue their kiting, but not so much for a melee strike, giving weaker enemies a chance to run.

Active Gonna Murder Shit Concept Two: It's literally your sword! While I'm not sure compacting the game even more is a good idea, your chosen Active Ability could just be your normal attack, and any modifications made to it modify that, too. If combined with Ability Slots, too, I would likely let the player change out slotted items on the fly so they don't get stuck doing ONLY one thing ever.

Passive Ability Idea: Actually I forgot my idea for this!

This is How I Find Loot Idea: Oh, oh God. Okay, here's my idea for this. Each character's loot-finding ability is linked to a specific type of puzzle component. Maybe it's pushing really heavy boulders or creating wind storms. Either way, every shard would have multiple puzzles that could only be solved using certain combinations of these abilities. Basically, when you choose this, you choose what type of video game puzzle you're good at solving

[IronyOwl]

Too braindead to respond to the rest, but I've decided this is an amazing idea. You know, compacting everything into one ability like that. However, I've got a few different concepts in mind for each.

This reminds me of another idea: Learnable item abilities. They were in FF... uh, the one with the monkey tail guy.

Anyway, the point is you get an item, let's say a sword. And on this sword is the Critical Strike Passive, or the Wind Slash Active, or whatever. While this item is equipped, you gain access to said ability.

But while said item is equipped/whenever you use said ability, you gain experience in it. Eventually this means you master the ability and can use it without needing the item any more.

The obvious problems are that it can be kind of gamey (I know I'd equip items based solely on whether I could learn an ability from them and not whether they or their taught abilities were in any way useful) and that it's moving away from the simplicity I assume you were going for. Still, I like the notion of learning things permanently like that.

Active Gonna Murder Shit Concept One: Ability Slots. So! At the start of the game, the Active Combat ability has only one use. Maybe it's like, a Big Fireball that you can use instead of attacking at some cost (SP? Time?). Either way, if we narrow down all a character's combat abilities into one thing, it doesn't allow a lot of room for advancements. That's where Ability Slots come in! Think Path of Exile's linked abilities: on-base characters can craft certain items that can merge with your active ability to add an effect. One idea might be a Phase Gem that teleports the enemy away from you in a random direction. This would be awesome for a fireball, letting a ranged character continue their kiting, but not so much for a melee strike, giving weaker enemies a chance to run.

Active Gonna Murder Shit Concept Two: It's literally your sword! While I'm not sure compacting the game even more is a good idea, your chosen Active Ability could just be your normal attack, and any modifications made to it modify that, too. If combined with Ability Slots, too, I would likely let the player change out slotted items on the fly so they don't get stuck doing ONLY one thing ever.

This is kind of interesting as is, though, especially the swapping things out bit. I imagine you'd want to limit the number of Ability Slots, but that'd mean every player essentially had, say, three separate abilities, they were just all the same basic thing their class did (blast things with fire, hit them with a sword, etc).

It could also get somewhat interesting when you consider what happens to utility abilities under this system. First assumption would be that they'd die out; you can't have a healing or wall-jumping ability because you can't do anything that isn't hitting something with a sword. But what about using one of those rush forward sword attack things to jump pits? Or having a healing strike type spell, wherein you heal allies as part of attacking enemies?

That particular last point could also deal with some issues healing tends to have, like where your real HP are some number based on your healer's efficiency or where you heal up after every fight because SP regenerates for free. Which I guess could be a problem if that's how you wanted the game to work, but maybe you could just let them sit down and heal innately at that point.

Passive Ability Idea: Actually I forgot my idea for this!

This one's actually kind of tricky, because you've already got attacking and its associated effects under Active Murder, and you've already got loot and to some extent exploration under Loot Finding. Unless you can swap out one or both, dealing with either would be kind of redundant, since it could have just been an innate effect on your actual ability.

So I guess what's left is defensive, situational, and possibly exploration or movement abilities. Even most of those are in some danger most of the time, due to the possibility of defensive or movement-oriented attack specials, but could still at least potentially come up if you weren't attacking that round for whatever reason.

Situationals are the real option, though, since at least in non-attack terms it usually makes more sense to break those off. Execution-style abilities, for instance, would still be in danger of begging the "why isn't this just on my sword?" question. Benefits at low health could function the same way, but especially if it's a dodge bonus and not something special your attacks do, they might make more sense being character-innate.

Of course, there's also simplicity, and if you can swap out your base abilities and/or passives there's that. Saying Fire Blast blasts things with fire and Executioner grants +1 damage vs heavily wounded targets might be cleaner and would certainly be more modular than saying Fire Blast blasts things with fire and has a +1 damage bonus vs heavily wounded targets.

This is How I Find Loot Idea: Oh, oh God. Okay, here's my idea for this. Each character's loot-finding ability is linked to a specific type of puzzle component. Maybe it's pushing really heavy boulders or creating wind storms. Either way, every shard would have multiple puzzles that could only be solved using certain combinations of these abilities. Basically, when you choose this, you choose what type of video game puzzle you're good at solving

I'd say "Oh, oh God" sums up my reaction to this fairly well.

Also what happens if we get five block pushers in one party? :x

Oh god those block puzzles that need to be done quickly because they reset after a certain number of moves/time. DAMN IT, answered my own question.