Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[Shatner]

...More powerful creatures and arcanotech get more circles, and avatars just keep going forever inward down to the microscopic scale.

I'd like to second this as a cool design for use with some color of arcanotech. The concept of it being an infinite regression, or at least that it extends longer as the thing it's slapped on grows in power is very cool, in addition to the fact that it looks neat.

[kzt]

The problem here is that we're looking at a game with harsh tiers that pushes people off the RNG altogether fairly often. And for that, variable TNs against dicepools really do work extremely badly. Look at, for example, the vehicle rules in 1st edition Shadowrun. It's... bad.

That kind of sounds like what HERO does well. The problem is that it doesn't do the low end stuff particularly well.

[Username17]

Hero does high-end scaling very well, and you'll notice that they use a curved RNG to do it (3d6). Of course, there are many facets of Hero that don't fit what we're trying to do (super accuracy vs. super dodging arms races, stun damage from below-tier weaponry, etc.); and the real bottom line is that civilian tier characters and the skills they have are pretty much afterthoughts in Hero and we're trying to make them a fully implemented part of the game.

But yes, bottom line is that while we are not doing a Hero hack, there are a lot of things from Hero that we are going to want to steal. Physical/Energy/Ego Defense reducing incoming damage in those three attack modes, for example. Also Presence Attacks are an extremely good fit for the kinds of ooga-booga that mythos monsters are supposed to do when they appear. These will probably end up having different names, and people will probably have Willpower and Resilience rather than separate Constitution, Ego, Presence, Defense, Stun, Endurance, and Recovery stats, but Hero is definitely a book we want to look at from time to time.

Hero also has a number of great maneuvers, and is probably the most complete list of those things in a game. Things like Move Throughs and Move Bys are absolutely going to want to be adapted, especially for Mech Combat. Really, when the hex map gets unfurled the game is going to look harder at Hero than it does at Battletech. Even though the locational criticals are of course going to look a lot more like Battletech than anything in Hero.

-Username17

[Grek]

Wasn't aware we were using the Elder Sign for blue. Red it is for the infinite circles sign.

[Username17]

One thing that Hero does that is very interesting is that it allows people to buy access to martial arts maneuvers that are superior to regular maneuvers. ''so anyone can do a grab or a punch, but martial grab and martial strike are more better versions available to martial artists who know them.

This is something we should probably do. First of all, it gets people to differentiate combat styles, because every fighter type is automatically getting themselves a list of what D&D would call Improved X feats (and prevents people from becoming boring TripStar fighters because everyone has more than one). Secondly, by giving these maneuvers a Discipline requirement to use, it creates an emergent way for characters to become confused or thrown out of their element and reduced to flailing wildly (a very genre appropriate predicament).

Another thing this gives us is the ability to have inherent accuracy and dodginess not vary much. We definitely don't want Hero-system style OCV/DCV arms races. Super dexterity is all well and good, but we're trying to do giant monsters on the high end, and Godzilla doesn't spend a lot of time passively dodging things. If you want to get more accurate, learn disciplined aiming that lets you hit more often. If you want to dodge better learn defensive strike that lets you protect yourself better in combat. If defenses come mostly from maneuvers, it gives an emergent flat footed penalty that you don't have to elaborate on.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

So what are the touchstones for combat at the different scales? I get that Kaiju combat is riffing on Eva and Magical Girl combat is Sailor Moon, but what does man-to-man combat want to look like? Is it a tactical cover shooter? Is combat meant to be highly lethal and therefore occur very rarely or is it a staple problem solving method and something the PC's are expected to regularly survive?

In committing to using the same basic system for mecha and people you would seem to be either ensuring your mecha feel more power-armor style rather than lumbering machines, or forcing your human level engagements to use facing and locational damage and other accouterments that might be at odds with the tone of an investigative horror game. Is there a way around that?

[Lokathor]

Human level combat is largely about detectives against cultists, and the "original work" is about 1920s detectives with revolvers. We'll have detectives in the future with laser guns and stuff, but we can still look to detective stuff in general to work with this. Things like machine guns or rocket launchers will exist of course, but they're not really "normal" weapons that a person can just carry around to any scene. They're the sort of stuff that a detective pulls out when she needs to blast a super monster but there's no magical girls that can make it in time to help. I think a good touchstone here would be something like X-Files, where the mains are assumed to have a handgun available in almost any scene, but that a lot of the time the problems are things that a handgun isn't big enough for, even though other stuff might be (eg: helicopter, enemy SWAT, etc), or problems that a gun of any size can't possibly solve (eg: lost in the woods, weird mystery puzzle, etc)

One thing in terms of combat is that Toughness should scale up and down more quickly than Damage as you move between tiers, so that at the high end you're shooting godzilla with a megalaser several times before he goes down, in the middle you're throwing lots of punches but one big hit is still dangerous, and at the low end a handgun can easily kill someone in a single shot.

Another thing is a key concept from tv/movies that After Sundown calls "Locking On". It's kinda like DnD's Readied Action. You declare an attack on the target, and then instead of resolving it right then you get to reactively make an interrupt attack if they do anything you don't like. Unless they manage to out-bluff you: then they can break the Lock On without getting attacked. This mechanic can be used at all levels actually; there's at least a few scenes in Gundam where one mech shouts to another mech, "freeze!". If you combine this mechanic with the above idea that toughness will scale up rapidly, humans will very frequently have to submit when someone gets the drop on them (or at least talk until they see a chance to get away), supers might chance it and try to heroicly attack anyway, and kaiju would usually just eat the attack and keep on fighting.

In terms of a "cover based shooter", that's not the worst metagame to have shake out of your fighting system during extended fights, because that's what happens in real life, so most genre stuff has a similar deal, so that would end up emulating the genre.

[Username17]

Since the agency can requisition more cops more easily than they can requisition a new giant robot or magical girl, low tier combat can just go ahead and be deadly. Low tier characters are expendable and replaceable, and they can be expended and replaced. It really is OK if a low tier character who takes a plasma torch to the arm just loses the arm. It's like an X-Com team, and losses are acceptable. Maybe even expected.

One thing that's needed thus is something that Ars Magica has always wanted - a fast semi-random to way to spit out replacement Grogs.

One thing in terms of combat is that Toughness should scale up and down more quickly than Damage as you move between tiers, so that at the high end you're shooting godzilla with a megalaser several times before he goes down, in the middle you're throwing lots of punches but one big hit is still dangerous, and at the low end a handgun can easily kill someone in a single shot.

Basically this. High tier monsters have a lot of ablative armor. Normal humans do not.

-Username17

[Grek]

If that's the case, then we have a lot of hidden complexity in our goals for a agency requisition mechanic. We want civilian tier characters to:

• Be quick to generate.
• Be randomly generated.
• Be generated during play.
• Be mostly interchangeable within an agency.
• Be highly distinct from agency to agency.
• Have a short list of personal traits.
• Have a long list of possible traits.
• Not take up pages and pages of Bestiary.
• Potentially be deep ones or ghouls.
• Potentially be psychics.
• Potentially outdo higher tiers in some areas.
• Never outdo higher tiers in some other areas.
• Potentially get promoted to higher tiers.
• Allow players to recruit for quality or quantity.
• Allow players to recruit for specific roles.
• Have equipment that matters on some level.
• Cover cops, doctors, firemen, repair crews and more.

This says to me that we should not be using a point buy system for civilians or rolling down the line for attributes. Instead, we have a human resources minigame. The player gets access to a bunch of agency policy options, which modify a Recruitment DC. Every ingame month, you roll dice against your Recruitment DC. Failure means that you fail to recruit anyone that meets your standards; success means that you find someone and exceptional successes mean that you find many people to recruit.Each player would get some number of recruitment profiles, and each recruitment profile gets to take different policy options, allowing the player to have "standard" and "elite" recruits with appropriately differing abilities and numbers, or to recruit doctors, nurses and paramedics who all have meaningfully different stats. And yes, these recruitment profiles get to shift over time, allowing the player to either tighten standards if they become overstaffed or loosen them if they're desperate for new recruits.

[Shatner]

Are we going to use the same combat system for all three tiers of fights (detective, magic girl, kaiju)? If so, are we going to have locational damage for cultists shot by detectives or at some point just give out abstract wounds/hp loss?

[Username17]

This says to me that we should not be using a point buy system for civilians or rolling down the line for attributes. Instead, we have a human resources minigame.

Certainly an advantage of 2d10 as a resolution system is that it lets you use them as d100s and roll on big charts when called for. Getting the basic traits of a Class II Technician and rolling on the crazy features chart could be entertaining for fast chargen. Getting higher success on a recruitment roll could let you roll on the features chart more than once and then select the one you want - indicating that you literally got multiple applicants and got to pick the one you wanted.

Are we going to use the same combat system for all three tiers of fights (detective, magic girl, kaiju)? If so, are we going to have locational damage for cultists shot by detectives or at some point just give out abstract wounds/hp loss?

I think we're going with locational damage for cultists, although for the most part if you get a head shot with most weapons a Cultist or Zombie is going down.

-Username17

[rampaging-poet]

I had thought the plan was locational damage for basic humans (including cultists), but humans can only take a small amount damage to each location before it overflows to the torso or head. Hit points sort-of arise from hit locations that don't do anything or "extra space" at the low end of a hit location damage chart. Shooting a human in the arm for 1 net damage causes and "arm injured" result that imposes a penalty, while shooting Godzilla in the arm causes "scales chipped" result that does absolutely nothing.

And I was ninja'd. Oh well.

[Occluded Sun]

The Yellow Sign is supposed to cause people headaches and confusion when they look at it too long.

Most symbols will cause headache and confusion if you look at them too long.

[Lokathor]

In terms of keeping each Agency a little more unique feeling, your Agency could act as a template, allowing for some guaranteed stats because your special operations unit only accepts people that have already had the proper departmental training. So, FBI always has +1 Diplomacy and +1 Martial, CIA always has +1 Intrigue and +1 Martial, things like that.

Of course, you might also recruit from outside the department if you're looking for a special skill that you don't normally have. Particularly useful for technical skills (hacking, medic, etc), but also useful if you want to add an Esper to the team.

[Grek]

Certainly an advantage of 2d10 as a resolution system is that it lets you use them as d100s and roll on big charts when called for. Getting the basic traits of a Class II Technician and rolling on the crazy features chart could be entertaining for fast chargen. Getting higher success on a recruitment roll could let you roll on the features chart more than once and then select the one you want - indicating that you literally got multiple applicants and got to pick the one you wanted.

Could also be used as a replacement for "You find nobody." as a failure result. You find someone, but have to roll for negative traits in order to represent a substandard or poorly trained candidate.

[Username17]

The substandard recruit chart could have some things on it that really aren't that bad. It is a staple of genre fiction that substandard recruits grow up to be the Big Damn Hero all the time. Some things like "too young" would have their penalties go away automatically after a few missions, and other things like "cultist family members" would be as much plot hooks as actual penalties in the first place.

Anyway, most character growth and development for Grogs (and we do need a better name than just using the Ars Magica term) would be retroactive. That is, you find out that Agent Mikkelsen is a movie buff or a cellist or something, and from that point, Agent Mikkelsen can contribute to the team with bonuses based on that fact. This is of course how ensemble cast fiction pieces are written, but it's important that this be how the game is structured.

We don't have time to do an introductory fiction piece for each character in the Agency, so we just don't. Low tier characters just have names and occupations until they get some story focus. And once they get some story focus they develop backstories and interests and become better than generic characters of their rank.

One thing is that I think characters should have a different chart for their first transition to a proper named character with broadly sketched background than they do for subsequent delvings into their backstory. I regard it as a feature if 1 in 100 magical girls turns out to be a teenage mom, but I would find it "too soap opera" for a magical girl's longstanding motherhood to be exposed in year 3. On the other hand, the first officer can reveal that he plays the trombone at any time.

In terms of keeping each Agency a little more unique feeling, your Agency could act as a template, allowing for some guaranteed stats because your special operations unit only accepts people that have already had the proper departmental training. So, FBI always has +1 Diplomacy and +1 Martial, CIA always has +1 Intrigue and +1 Martial, things like that.

Agency wide perks are totally something that could be done. There are a couple directions I could see going with that. One of the things is that the Union has an absolute alphabet soup of agencies (staring of course with the All Africa Arms And Armor Authority), especially when you consider regionally sponsored agencies. So you could plausibly pick any set of perks you wanted off the list and set you standard recruitment list to any available option.

Inter-agency transfer characters could not have the basic perks of your agency but have automatic story focus background and be allowed to come from non-standard recruitment lists.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Anyway, most character growth and development for Grogs (and we do need a better name than just using the Ars Magica term) would be retroactive. That is, you find out that Agent Mikkelsen is a movie buff or a cellist or something, and from that point, Agent Mikkelsen can contribute to the team with bonuses based on that fact. This is of course how ensemble cast fiction pieces are written, but it's important that this be how the game is structured.

How would that look character-sheet wise? Would it be like After Sundown 'backgrounds' but you just have X amount of spare backgrounds to write in during the campaign?

[Username17]

Anyway, most character growth and development for Grogs (and we do need a better name than just using the Ars Magica term) would be retroactive. That is, you find out that Agent Mikkelsen is a movie buff or a cellist or something, and from that point, Agent Mikkelsen can contribute to the team with bonuses based on that fact. This is of course how ensemble cast fiction pieces are written, but it's important that this be how the game is structured.

How would that look character-sheet wise? Would it be like After Sundown 'backgrounds' but you just have X amount of spare backgrounds to write in during the campaign?

I think it would end up looking like a Necromunda gang roster. When a character got story focused on them to elaborate their backstory, they'd get something like "divorced" and maybe their skills would go up a bit. But then you'd also have the "divorced" tag that would allow a player to ask for a small mother-may-I bonus whenever the fact that the character had been through a messy divorce might seem to be helpful. Like to resist Abyssian siren-sirens, for example.

If someone already has a background element and it comes up again, then obviously you go into more detail on that background. If the aforementioned divorce is rolled again, then you go into more detail about the character's ex-wife and shit.

One thing that definitely happens is that players get a budget of narrative imperative (their "NI") that they can spend to give characters specific backstory elements. So if it's absolutely required for the plot to move forward that someone can read Egyptian, you can just say NI and declare that Technician Borasco studied Egyptology as a double major with Red Arcanotechnology.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

So thinking about it I'm not really sold on locational damage. Yeah it's a mech combat sacred cow, but it really seems to fall down when a fair proportion of the combatants aren't human shaped. Every monster from a Deep One upwards having to have it's own hit location charts for different facings along with armor and damage results for each location seems like it would lead to stat blocks longer than 3e. Not to mention part of the mythos schtick is monsters like Shoggoths and Formless Spawn that don't even have distinct locations.

You can preserve the feel of locational damage without going the whole hog though. Creatures could just have a Critical Chart that referred to specific areas getting damaged that you get to roll on if you beat their defence by a high enough amount, for example. Or you could go the WFRP 1e route and say once a creatures HP are depleted every hit causes a critical effect. Or you could have a 3e/Hero style list of "locational hits" where you accept penalties to hit or damage in return for a special effect like a disarm or trip that gets flavoured as hitting their arm or a headshot.

[name_here]

If we want to do locational damage, we could do the WarMachine thing and have a grid of boxes where each roll corresponds to a column and some boxes have special effects when filled out. It's pretty compact if you have a limited supply of distinct effects so you can just write a letter in each box.

It's pretty much required by law if you're doing mech combat, but we could easily keep down location bloat by saying human-sized entities only get one location.

[Grek]

Deep Ones (and other human sized aliens in the Union) are basically human shaped and use the Humanoid hit location chart. Only weird aliens need a special hit location chart. And those are, honestly, not that big:

Facing	Head	Front Arm	Middle Limb	Rear Leg	Neck	Body	Tail
Front	01-25	26-35	36-45	46-50	51-75	76-90	91-100
Flank	01-15	16-30	31-45	46-60	61-75	76-90	91-100
Rear	01-10	11-15	16-25	26-40	41-60	61-80	81-100
Above	01-35	36-45	46-50	51-55	56-70	71-90	91-100
Below	01-05	06-15	16-25	26-60	61-65	66-80	81-100
Unsoaked Damage	Armor: 5	Armor: 4	Armor: 4	Armor: 4	Armor: 3	Armor: 6	Armor: 3
1	Teeth Broken	Claw Injured	Claw Injured	Limp	Neck Armor Damage	Body Armor Damage	Tail Armor Damage
2	Dazed	Claw Injured	Limp	Limp	Neck Armor Damage	Chest Wound	Balance Upset
3	Unconscious	Crippled Limb	Crippled Limb	Crippled Limb	Back Injury	Evisceration	Severed Tail
4	Dead	Severed Limb	Severed Limb	Severed Limb	Dead	Back Injury	Severed Tail Overflow to Chest
5	Dead	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Dead	Dead	Severed Tail Overflow to Chest
6+	Dead	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Severed Limb Overflow to Chest	Dead	Dead	Severed Tail Overflow to Chest

[Red_Rob]

Yeah, now add all the actual game stats and abilities, plus write out what effect each of those damage results means and imagine that for every NPC in the game. Seems awfully unwieldy to me.

[Grek]

Game effects for each injury can be listed in the combat chapter, in a unified listing. The wound table goes in at the top of each body shape header - it doesn't need to be recopied to the Deep One entry, (let alone the Deep One Submariner entry) because it's already listed at the top of the Humanoids section.

We're looking at one page complete with hit location chart, fluff text, stats, skills, affiliation and artwork for the Lligor. We're also looking at a one page Humanoid Template at the start of the humanoid section, which goes over in broad strokes what a humanoid body shape is good for and where it is weak compared to other possible morphologies. Then maybe 2 pages of sample humans and a page each for the other humanoid race/mecha type, with ~3 statblocks and a picture per page. That's around 10 pages of Humanoids and 20 monsters, for a total of 30 pages of bestiary in a 150ish page product.

I think that's acceptable.

[Shatner]

In addition to being cool and doable, locational damage is great for being pretty intuitive about the slew of emergent tactics it gives rise to. I'm quite pleased with the idea, provided we can stick the landing on combat resolution and keep it from being too clunky or fiddly.

[RadiantPhoenix]

(Boxes with bold outlines are potentially lethal locations)