Again, you seem to have missed one of my posts. I have it quoted and spoilered below:Laertes wrote:This is sort of what I meant when I asked what characters in the game do, because these are the things that your mechanics need to support, and the things that you need to dedicate the bulk of the character sheet space to.Primarily the game is Monster Hunting, Investigation, and...Urban Politics? I want there to be games that aren't basically just gang warfare, where it's totally viable to defeat the mind flayer's plot by preventing him from taking over B(r)ain Capital through corporate measures, rather than running into his penthouse and Highlander-ing him (I'd have said "Colombian Necktying him, but do mind flayers even have tongues?). I mean, I want both styles to be viable, and maybe the endgame of Urban Politics is chopping off Mr. Brain's head, but if a group wants to play lawyers and corporate spies and go after shadowkin trying to take over Mundus through businesses in the boardroom and the courts, that should be something they can do and be supported by the rules in doing.
So, yeah. That's really the question, isn't it? Tides of Shadow is really meant to emulate shows like Buffy and Angel and Grimm and Special Unit 2, and to a much lesser extent, Supernatural. But at the same time, it's also meant to facilitate scenes like a spider-themed drow band playing a rock show, or tiefling and aasimar gangs fighting turf wars, carefully making sure that their big flashy magic stuff isn't seen by the mundies, but totally having enchanted pistols and monstrous spider silk lined leather jackets.
So there's really two things that Tides of Shadow is trying to do-
1- Monster hunter shows. Typically the protagonists of these are human, or nearly so. Angel is actually something of an outlier, but even then, the rest of his team is human (I will point out that Lorn is a supporting character, not one of the hunters)
2- Fantasy critters hiding in the modern world, trying to keep their fantasy culture alive while also trying to not stick out and bring the wrath of an uncomprehending modern mob down upon themselves.
Now, while the protagonists of monster hunter shows are typically human or specially chosen empowered humans, there isn't much that requires them to be. There's a precarious balance to be struck here, especially if you play with boring people, because if everyone coming to the table decides to play a Mundus-native human, then... well, all the fantasy has to come from Mister Cavern. On the other hand, if you make the shadowkin too enticing, very very few people will play Mundus-native humans, and you do want those characters to be in the party. Imagine playing a game based on Harry Potter, where all the characters are purebloods, but they're running around in muggle New York. There'll just be this overload of fantasy naivete which is fun in moderation, but game stopping in overabundance.
Finally, there is a desire to have Mundus-native shadowkin. That is to say, the children of shadowkin. I need a better term for them. Or I need a better term for first generation shadowkin. Or I just refer to generations like that. There's a huge opportunity to play up the immigrant experience that is somewhat lost in that this game is being written by a guy whose great grandparents were immigrants, and is so far removed from Ellis Island that he's never had to worry about being of Polish and Italian descent in America because it's just not a big deal anymore.
But, to actually answer your question, the PCs are, ideally, a mixture of shadowkin and in-the-know mundies, and what they do is undertake a mixture of classic fantasy and urban stories, typically in urban environments. By mixture, I really mean fantasy stories that use modern urban trappings and modern urban stories that have fantasy trappings. So one story might be a fetch quest given by a powerful arcanist, but what you're fetching is motor oil from James Dean's car and it's in possession of an orc mechanomancer gang, and the next might be moderating a turf war or corporate hostile takeover, where the main players just happen to be drow priestesses and mind flayers that have hot rods and zip guns.
I definitely want it mechanised, because it's actually a lot harder for people to adjudicate diplomacy and politics without rules than combat. Seriously, if combat has no rules, people can go steal another system, or break out nerf swords, but diplomacy and politics are highly dependent on the actual players' abilities if there's no system. Call me a bad RP'er, but I'd much rather roll some dice to convince an NPC to do what I want than MTP it because I suck with people.In my experience, Monster Hunter style games are a lot of fun but are at least 80% investigation and will normally involve some form of fear mechanic. Investigative games are mostly legwork but also involve breaking & entering and background research. Urban politics... you can make a strong case for it to be MTPd, but if you want to mechanise it then an influence- and reputation-based system might be best.
Ideally, people will be able to convert D&D monsters quickly and easily. This means that things won't be entirely accurate, but I feel in the venn diagram of Quick, Easy and Accurate, it's the former two that are most important. Also the things that will break down are the broken parts of D&D so I'm ok with that. I want magic to be viable, but not the one true path to real ultimate power (also not suffer horrible page bloat).Start with the monsters. What sort of opposition will people face?
- Monster Hunting: There are, obviously, monsters. They are trying to get away from the PCs and do their monstery things. Defeating them will involve physically tracking them down and overcoming their attempts at stealth and trail obfuscation. It will also involve research to discover their weaknesses and to give clues as to where they may be headed next. Lastly, it'll involve combat to kill or trap the monster.
- Investigation: There are bad guys that have done bad things and may continue doing them in future. PCs need to use many different forms of legwork to follow a trail of clues, giving everyone a chance to shine. Defeating the bad guys will involve hiding the fact that you're onto them while you try to work out what they're doing and where they're headed. Lastly, it'll involve combat to kill or arrest the bad guys. Alternatively, as you point out, it may involve outmaneuvering them legally or corporately.
- Urban Politics: You have a power base. There are other people which have their own power bases. When your and their power bases come into conflict, you fight. Here the enemies are always temporary: you don't necessarily hate them, they're just in the way, and they may turn into an ally tomorrow just as your current ally may become an enemy. As such conflict isn't about killing or arresting your opponent: it's about weakening their power base until they back off. Better yet it's about demonstrating to them that you have the capability to do so.
I might be able to structure investigation and politicking like combats, and I tried to make a social combat minigame already. Ideally, investigations and politics would have statblocks, with things that can happen on "the investigation's turn" or when the organization takes it's turn in poliitcal/social encounters, and a deplete-able resource that declares one side's victory when the other's hits 0.
That's actually an interesting thought, and similar to something that was suggested a while back in a thread about research minigame. So maybe each encounter gives the players an automatic clue for use in the research minigame.These are the actions which PCs are going to be taking and which you need to model with your mechanics. For example, in two of the above genres combat is presented as a climax to the episode; if the PCs meet the monster early on they should either lose or they should be unable to permanently defeat it without knowing its weakness. As such you may want to consider doing what Chill does and giving PCs a cumulative bonus for successive encounters with the same monster.
Kind of a bit of column a and b. I'm looking at characters being specialized, but, say, the Investigation-spec'd Cop can still contribute to Combat and Socials in Cop ways. (which it that case is actually pretty obvious--clues, guns and legal threats, really the cop and similar is the generalist of modern games)Something else you need to consider - and which I can see advantages to doing either way - is how specialised characters will be in their niche. Do you have one character who does all the research, one who does all the investigation, and one who does all the combat; or do you have a magician who does all three with magical skills, a vampire who does all three with vampiric skills, and a policeman who does all three with police skills?
Yeah, I dislike sequential play because it often leaves several players sitting there twiddling their thumbs for long periods of time. This is why I want all players to be able to contribute to all areas of the game.In Shadowrun, for example, the game will often break down into multiple one-on-ones because each segment of the game can only be done by one character at a time. Naturally a good MC will do their best to circumvent this, and you should try to support them by giving other players things they can do to help. By contrast, in D&D every PC will be able to participate in combat and most will be able to participate in exploration scenes as well. This means that every player is involved to a greater or lesser extent in every scene, and it becomes much harder to eyeball level-appropriate encounters without accidentally putting in something which one PC is either very weak or very strong against. Naturally a good MC will do their best to circumvent this, and you should try to support them by making it harder to build a character which falls off the RNG in either direction.
That's fair. I really want redirecting attacks to be a thing, but it can be a feat or something, rather than a standard combat option.zeruslord wrote:I don't think I'd even have parrying melee attacks be a distinct game entity - if you've got something solid enough to block the other guy's attacks, have some room to maneuver, and you aren't flat-footed, an attack made against you needs to beat your Dex + Ancient Weapons + 10 because you're parrying or stepping out of distance or something, but we don't really need to specify which at the mechanical level. Unarmed defense might take a penalty unless you have a skill stunt, but I'm not totally sure.
or a penalty on your role or something, yeahRedirecting ranged attacks is definitely a thing, but I'm not sure exactly what the rules for it would be. Maybe just "you can't make ranged attacks while engaged in melee".
Yeah, I dislike the sameness of type based saves too. Types will probably receive some changes.For saves, I strongly dislike making them based off creature type - most PCs will be humanoids, and it would be good to have some party members have better will saves than reflex saves and vice versa. For HD, it looks like all playable characters except Undead and Fey have a d8 hit die, Undead have a d12 but no Con (if you're going with that?), and Fey have a d6. Not huge differences, especially if HP actually gets rolled, but I'd think about it before making Fey actually take a penalty relative to everyone else.
It also occurs to me that I could create another character creation resource- perks. Basically minor stuff that in the grand scheme isn't worth a feat, and either isn't worth a skill point or doesn't fit as a skill stunt, like, say, save bases. So maybe players can choose three perks from a list of twenty or so. I'd make "Better save" a single perk where you choose which save is better, rather than make "better save" three of the twenty or so perks.
Rather than multiplying? That could work.Skills... nobody should ever get 0 skill points in a category, which is a real risk if certain classes/occupations get just their mod. Maybe give everybody two or three for each category, and then add mod and class bonuses on top of that