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Wag
 
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Last Login: Thursday, October 09, 2008 10:34 AM
Posts: 1,161,
Visits: 1,009
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| Its extensively self reffed as a system. Its reliant on the player with the new skill to inform the person he uses it on of the effect it has who then plays along. This relys on honesty and trust between all participants and in my opinion would fail completely in a large scale game. Go to Cataclysm and youll see only the basic skill set and rules and the rules for your character. Nothing else. That guy over there says he's a wizard and for all you know he might well be, you never seen him do anything, but there are rumours he once blinded someone with a spell, or set them on fire with a hand gesture. You'll never know till you see it happen. No checking in a rule book. Maybe your an enchanter.... you know that other guy is as well.... but you only know what you can enchant to do what.... what he might be able to do is completely different... or not who knows.... Im a fire mage.... that bloke over there just blew someone to pieces with a fire spell.... I don't know how to do that.... shall I ask him to teach me or just develop a warding spell.. Some folk say that elves can make really sharp knives from bone.... but have you ever seen one? The level of paranoia is spectacular.... it removes all rule play of the 'I can counter the same number of spells yo0u can cast cos I know exactly what skills you have, its in the books' crap. On the other hand whilst spell descriptors are meant to indicate effect when you cast them you do sometimes just have to roleplay till the player gets a chance to explain exactly what it does do.... But then of course you know about that effect. You want to make a new spell or skill? if you can physrep it talk to the organiser and he'll tell you how much XP you need to accumulate to get the effect. (and sometimes it goes disatorously wrong) Don't get me on there is a system that governs how effects work and it has to fit in the world precept.... but its fabulous. Its also possible for two players to gain the same effect independently. It seems to happen less often than you'd think.... it happens more often wherre an appropriately skilled person sees someone else do something and then attempts to replicate the effect. Of course this means people are rather guarded about what they may be able to do... or just lie IC. you cant really tell till it happens (And TBH the system is far to nebulous for most peoples tastes.... lots of people are deeply unsure of events where you don't get hardly any of the rules.) Basic websites here if your interested. best to talk to the oragniser by email directly if you have queries and want to attend.
www.thetower.net/Cataclysm/ |
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Heroic Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:01 PM
Posts: 165,
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| I'm currently running a very similar thing in a tabletop system - the supernatural powers are completely undefined and I have only a very vague idea of the flavour, then PCs are given XP to buy powers that they think would be cool. I'm somewhat enamoured of the idea of a system set either just after the creation of the world or just after some sort of massively world-changing event, which would fit this quite nicely I think. You would need to give guidelines as to how to *take* effects (a la Maelstrom). You could have a fairly defined world out there to interact with (upon which the paradigm can build). You ought probably to define what sorts of things it was possible to learn (as in, 'weapon skill', 'manipulation of the supernatural', 'craft item'). Then, like was said above, you have a defined research system where you have the barest framework of what's possible to research, the players submit the flavour of what they want to learn and the refs return the mechanic received (and possibly further resolution as to the upgrade path). Unsure how it would actually work out.
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Maelstrom: Auriel, Seraph of Fire and Stone, Lieutenant of the Teacher's Host in the Lands of Hell, Celestial Messenger of Lord Sun.
CUTT Head Ref 2007/08
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Monday, August 18, 2008 4:45 PM
Posts: 195,
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I'm a big fan of the rules working to support the players' creativity, rather than defining it.
You can certainly run a system along the lines you've proposed (hell, even most static systems go through a period of playtesting not unlike what you've described anyhow).
The main thing to strive for is balance and consistency. A disarm power costing a notional 30 character points should cost all similar characters the same number of points (maybe double for a non-combat character or whatever). Putting some structure in place to govern how you categorise characters in order to compare existing system skills is a winner - combat or non-combat, magic or corporeal, divine or infernal, clever or thick, however you want to do it...
I'd also advise getting the meanest sonofabitch to generate the character skills that you can. Someone who won't do someone a favour on their skills because they are a mate, or be swayed to have favouritism for a character class or playing style. Because it's going to be really subjective on the one hand and you want to keep it as consistent as possible, and on the other hand because that person is going to have some players moan at them about how unfair their decisions are at some point.
Having a second person to vetos skills suggestions, or three people on a vote system for skills (with all disagreements being disallowed), could also work.
Either way, it's a heck of a lot more work than creating a relatively static set of skills and occasionally building in flexibility to suit a player by for example giving the enthusiastic alchemist character a Holy Alchemy Bauble artifact in character that then allows him to purchase divine powers from an existing static tree, perhaps at an increased cost.
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Maelstrom - Carl Whitesnake
Scavenger LRP - Organiser
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