[Game] Bakuhatsu High

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Post by Whipstitch »

Aww, I was hoping some people might go "haha, sweet, Mario brothers" instead of realizing they had gigantic furry balls on campus. There goes my trojan horse.
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Post by Koumei »

You know the last Mario game I liked? TRICK QUESTION, NONE OF THEM.

So this was my "when it's quiet at work" project. I'll probably finish the basic descriptions of powers by the end of the week. Then I have 1-2 weeks of work, but don't worry, I'll keep working at it through the holidays. When the powers are actually done, the game will be playable.
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Post by Chamomile »

So something has just occurred to me: Party formation is kind of a trick when the game is balanced around playing the Breakfast Club. Granted, houses are defined by abilities and thus cliques could hypothetically form across house lines, but students will have more in common with and be spending more time with their own house as opposed to any other. If cliques don't form along houses, they're virtually guaranteed to form along clubs instead, where again few if any players will have one in common.

Have I missed something where the party is arbitrarily grouped together by authority figures in the default setting? If there isn't, there probably should be.
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Post by Koumei »

That's a good point. There probably should be something to handle that - perhaps by not literally placing the Houses in their own buildings but instead mixing the dorms so that the player characters just so happen to share the one room - IT IS DESTINY. Then the teachers can more or less keep them in dorm-based groups to encourage their teamwork.

Indeed, the staff would want students to mix their abilities up - when an Abomination attacks (this is their "job" after all) they need to counter whatever it can do and beat it using a variety of strengths.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Dorms, classes and authority figures baked-in mitigates a ton of my usual worries about party integration. The dorm setup is a good toggle to play with and just about any layout is justifiable by pushing a few numbers around or having a few buildings getting renovated and there would almost certainly be some divvying up by grade level and gender anyway. Given that the powers are a matter of inheritance and the possibility of Mysterious Incidents or a program in decline it wouldn't be hard to write in having few students in a big facility either.
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Post by Koumei »

Well, I have never been to a boarding school, but my impression was that dorms were sections of building filled with small rooms that each housed 2-4 people. Anime tells us that each person has their own ensuite set-up, but I call bullshit. Am I on the mark there, and it's small groups?

But yeah, keep it mandated by an authority figure. I'd go into more detail, but despite just being a volunteer, I'm "part of the SSO team" and got invited to the SSO dinner where I got drunk enough to make typing and thinking at the same time a bit of a pain.
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Post by Maxus »

My sister's dorms sometimes have suites.

Three bedrooms--two double-occupancy, one single-occupancy, sharing a bathroom and a living room.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

The expensive dorms out here are 1-per-person (shared bathroom and kitchenette), but we also have 2 doubles sharing a kitchen/bathroom, 1 double sharing a bathroom, and triples with no benefits.

That sort of stuff can vary wildly, and I figure it'll be easier on a story for everyone to have a single.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Yeah, that stuff varies a lot, particularly since in most countries dormitories are mostly a college thing. For kids older than thirteen no more than two to a room is terribly likely, and boarding schools for kids younger than that are very much a UK and India thing that I don't know too much about. You may as well just do whatever you want because Japan in particular doesn't have much of a history of elite boarding or military schools--their dormitories are typically just a student housing option rather than some Gryffindor bullshit.
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Post by Whatever »

I think the best way to keep PCs together is to keep the overall population down. If we assume an average of 4 boys and 4 girls per house per year (since that's what they have in Harry Potter), that's 42 students in each year, or 168 total students. 42 is enough for 1 large class or 2 smaller classes, which helps justify keeping all the player characters together.

With 26 clubs plus the Student Council, that's an average of ~6 students per club. "Struggling" clubs would seriously have only 1-3 people in them, and very popular clubs would cap out at about a dozen.

With only 7 other people in your house-year, and ~5 others in your club, it's not hard to imagine that your social circle would expand a bit, even if the teachers weren't forcing you together.
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Post by Whipstitch »

That hits me as really low but then my speed dial ran 30 deep in high school so maybe I am just a crazy person. I'd probably prefer to metagame a bit and bullshit reasons to hang out together than have a truly tiny school but I suppose it doesn't really matter that much anyway since it's not like you'll be running real relationships with every pretend person, so most of it is just atmosphere. Still, I wouldn't rule out the advantages of having the school be big enough that some people are relative strangers.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Are the schools being selective about entry, or are class sizes regulated and spread out through various schools so class sizes don't get to be too large? Because my public school class was somewhere between 60 and 80 kids. My brother's class was over 100 (4 years my junior). And since then the class sizes have average about 100.

In any case the Starcraft manga Ghost Academy put students into training teams, which sort of forced a bond between the various students.

Also you can model your dorms anyway you want. These are suppose to be supported by that world-power-conglomerate, right? I imagine they don't skimp on funding all that much. So having suite-style dorms with 2-6 single or double occupancy rooms branched off of a common living area wouldn't be too far of a stretch. Single occupancy, apartment style, rooms would be cream of the crop.
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Post by Koumei »

I'd go larger than the 168 students thing, because that's even smaller than my country bumpkin primary school (which admittedly had more year levels, being a primary school). But yeah, campuses won't be massive, so you'll generally be able to know who is a major player in any year level or House or whatever, and it won't be hard to find out about the big hitters in other campuses.

I like the idea of going semi-Freezing. Everyone gets their own individual nice bedroom that's bigger than a house in Sydney/UK/Japan, and their own bathroom and their own kitchen, but with up to 6 students sharing a common living room, and they're expected to become friends and get along and work as a team. This also means that you don't get murdered for snoring.
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Post by Whipstitch »

In keeping with the militant theme you could also go the boot camp/plebe summer route as well--your intro to the school starts out cramped (maybe even barracks style) and physically strenuous but once you are considered proper Bakuhatsu students the living conditions go back to normal.

You can also stratify living conditions by grade level, as well if you want strong rivalries from that. First years could bunk with someone in a typical dorm room with one shared bathroom per every two sleeping quarters. Everything else is done at some kind of shared facility amongst first years--you know, a cafeteria, weight room etc, and you can expect for hall monitors and upper classmen to be keep tabs on things. Second years get their own room & bath as well as less oversight, third years get your semi-freezing setup and fourth years get the full freezing because it's good to be the king.
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Post by Whipstitch »

BTW, what kind of restrictions did you have in mind as far as what constitutes a Heartblade weapon? Could people seriously start play with a summonable bazooka? Or how about non-sensical crap like the chainsaw assault rifles from GoW? Personally, I'm thinking some kind of variable/combination weapon that can work at range or at melee might make a decent second year option alongside Impossibly Large, Trapping, or Unexpected depending on how strong those abilities pan out.


Granted, I'm biased though since the second I saw Heartblades listed my pet character concept has been some dude who summons a guitar and bludgeons the hell out of people* and/or blasts them with the power of rock.


*Technically, it'd deal Sharp damage since I would take also take Shredding Attack. You know, because of puns.
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Post by Koumei »

Good point, I think I'll put a small limitation there. Bazookas for First Year students might be a bit much. I'll add a second-year option that makes the weapon change so you can have bigger weapons and dual-purpose ones.
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Post by Whipstitch »

You have no idea how happy it makes me that I didn't have to mention that shredding your axe should deal either Air or Electrical damage. No points for guessing what kind of Energy Wreath I am interested in.
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Post by Chamomile »

So I glanced over this for the first time in a while and it looks like it's about 95% done, with just a few abilities that still need effects filled in. Is that accurate, or are there a lot of gaps I just didn't catch while skimming?
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Post by Koumei »

You're right, there are about 50 ability descriptions that need filling (most of those are sub-powers, so not very big - the biggest bit will be the rules for summonable spirit creatures, but even that won't be too hard). After that, people would totally be able to make characters and play - I'll do the NPCs for the assumed setting, but that's really much of a muchness.

I'm not volunteering to run a game of it though. Yet. Basically, all of my days off tend to get busy*, and it's hard to coordinate a group of players at the best of times, let alone at the holidays.

*I accidentally typed busty at first. That'd be awesome, my days off being filled with big-boobed girls.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Yeah, from here it looks like everything is at least pretty conceptualized but the devil is always in the details.

Things that leap out at me right away despite the 2 am alcohol haze:

Vehicles aren't really fleshed out and in a Supers game with a Piloting skill that begs a lot of questions.

Stealth and getting spotted is largely undefined. It probably should be kept as simple as possible though since writing fast AND detailed stealth rules that are any good is stupid hard if not impossible.

Some clubs and classes could probably be voted off the island or combined--For example, Debate could easily be a club since as a class it just reads like a weaksauce Language Studies. Also, this is apropos of nothing, but the lack of a Newspaper Club seems like a missed opportunity given that getting up into people's business is what being a PC is all about.

Is there anything other than a dress code that keeps Magical Girls from just being transformed most of the time? Which, incidentally brings me to something else: Given that their powers are more or less always on Enhanced Speed Monstrosities & Heartblades have a nasty habit of automatically winning Initiative before other houses can even boot up the Enhanced Speed Power they might not even have. Which, would probably be okay, but I suspect that some Year One Heartblade Darts Club asshole with Pressure Point attacks and Speeding Bullet who decides to block your Chakra or put you in a Sleeper Hold on round one could get super annoying. I may or may not already have a character sheet mock up who does just that. Okay, so I totally do have that sheet written up in notepad. Shut up.

Extra damage is always fun, but Enhanced Strength doesn't hit me as quite doing enough to make me really consider melee over ranged stuff, although Unstoppable and Atlas' Shoulders seems like some pretty decent utility stuff for a second year. Still, as it stands now I'm a li'l leery of abilities like the Greater Weapon super sniper rifle and Mighty Blast because I don't really see what normal speed bruisers should be doing about someone trying to zone them out from over a 100m. Giving Herculean Throwers crazy range might help, particularly since it's not like they'd have much ammo outside of a parking lot anyway and their normal speeds makes them fundamentally easier to trade shots with.

Stuff like the Attractive and Good Student qualities should probably be standardized so they give defined situational Grade Boosts so that players have an idea as to what they're worth to a character--As it stands now I have no idea whether it's the student with A's in Gym & Health that is the hawtest freshman of all or whether it's the one with the B's and Attractive that deserves the bishie sparkles.
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Post by Koumei »

I'll probably try to finish the abilities before I go fixing things.
Whipstitch wrote: Vehicles aren't really fleshed out and in a Supers game with a Piloting skill that begs a lot of questions.
That's a good point.
Stealth and getting spotted is largely undefined.
Yeah, I'll put something simple together. It really will be one of those "You have one opposed roll to notice them, if you fail then they get you" things, not the D&D thing where you get constant checks starting at a certain distance.
Some clubs and classes could probably be voted off the island or combined--For example, Debate could easily be a club since as a class it just reads like a weaksauce Language Studies.
I probably wrote them both down at separate times, forgetting the other existed. They do pretty much exist to cover the same space.
Also, this is apropos of nothing, but the lack of a Newspaper Club seems like a missed opportunity given that getting up into people's business is what being a PC is all about.
Yeah, sounds good to me.
Is there anything other than a dress code that keeps Magical Girls from just being transformed most of the time?
There totally will be >.<
Given that their powers are more or less always on Enhanced Speed Monstrosities & Heartblades have a nasty habit of automatically winning Initiative before other houses can even boot up the Enhanced Speed Power they might not even have.
To be honest, this was partly intentional - not so much for those specific Houses to always go first, but for Initiative to be a thing where you don't need to roll much and can just write the order down. Hence a surprise attack always going first and all that. If it weren't for the fact that the PCs are all of the same year level (and their foes often are, when they're not Abominations), I'd totally make it another seniority thing. "Why do you go first?" "Because I'm older than you."

Maybe just introduce the Initiative roll, of 2d6 + Enhanced Speed Level, to keep it all simple and reduce the impact of speed?
Which, would probably be okay, but I suspect that some Year One Heartblade Darts Club asshole with Pressure Point attacks and Speeding Bullet who decides to block your Chakra or put you in a Sleeper Hold on round one could get super annoying.
True.
Extra damage is always fun, but Enhanced Strength doesn't hit me as quite doing enough to make me really consider melee over ranged stuff
Keep in mind that this isn't a generic superheroes game, it's actually set in a high school. So the fact that a sniper rifle has a 2km range doesn't actually mean anything because rooms are only like 5-6x5-6m and hallways are maybe 1-2x20m. Essentially, if people do take it outside, then yes, ranged combat wins - but the alternative to that is to have 40k guns. Most fights should be in fairly cramped conditions.

Yes, Abominations might attack (note that they are designed more to be the plot excuse for the whole thing to exist, they're not there to be regularly fought or anything), and when that happens, it stomps up towards melee characters while snipers do their thing from far away. But I'm okay with that - if it's a problem, remember that these can sprout out of nowhere. So the Principal could have it rock up in close combat range, so the melee team lay into it while the sniper spends a round super-speeding away to set up.
Stuff like the Attractive and Good Student qualities should probably be standardized so they give defined situational Grade Boosts
Yeah, I had sort of started on doing system stuff for the traits, but then I got distracted by something.
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Post by Koumei »

Some notes to remind myself and others:
[*]There is now a limit for transformation, but also a sub-power to make it last longer if that's what you want
[*]Getting your weapon broken is bad news now (in a short-term way)
[*]There's also the option for Volt Texture conjuring your armour/clothes, though if that gets broken, so does your weapon
[*]Throwing stuff can be more awesome for the super strong

Shit that needs doing other than finishing those write-ups:
[*]Take a look at how long fights are likely to last, and consider changing Battle Aura stuff (or making all status effects have a save) if it's too short
[*]Vehicles (and basic piloting rules)
[*]Sample Abominations/Abomination Creation Rules
[*]Some basic stealth rules
[*]Specify that when you Focus, you're Focusing on one specific thing, so you can't use your Focus to gain all possible Focus benefits at once
[*]Flesh the traits out a bit
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Post by Koumei »

Okay, the powers are complete (subject to bing fixed), so people could basically make characters and mostly play a game. Still need to do vehicles and stealth and stuff, and I'm willing to get opinions on whether Speed needs toning down or whatever. Obviously I wanted people to be able to do Accel Turn/Tempest Turn stuff from Freezing, and wanted those things to come online early-ish, which meant having to scale up from there.
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Post by Whipstitch »

I'll go over stuff more closely sometime this weekend but here's a few quick thoughts on the Psionic stuff.

I'm assuming they're Major Actions, but it's worth noting that as of now some of the Psi powers don't have Action requirements listed. Plus, one of the Subjugation powers specifies an Easy Test despite that being an undefined term.

Level 4: you can establish telepathic communication with someone no matter where they are, as long as you've linked with them before. Furthermore, any of your Dominance Sub-Powers that typically require line of sight or the spoken word can be used from any distance if you have linked with them.
I'm not fond of the bolded part. All your efforts to keep Psionic resistance rolls reasonable are for naught if people can repeatedly attempt their mind dickery from the safety of their favorite armchair, and as written it sounds like (un)willingly taking a message just once opens the door for that to happen to you at any future point. I'm in favor of longer term effects requiring periodic face time to maintain as well since that favors keeping your number of thralls limited or incorporating other psychics and ol' fashioned social engineering into your schemes if you want to go big time.
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Post by Koumei »

That's a good point, really.

And yeah, I'll go fix the action and difficulty stuff. I now wonder if I've accidentally called Standard Easy elsewhere. Also I think I may have called Enhanced Durability "Enhanced Endurance" or something in some places.

I'm thinking I don't need to list speeds for vehicles. I mean, they're "really fast". And that'd involve research and shit. We only need to know how hard it is to blow them up and (for military vehicles) what weapons they have.
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