Koumei Explains Nechronica

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Koumei
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Koumei Explains Nechronica

Post by Koumei »

Okay, so one chap decided to run Nechronica, and linked the rest of us to the rules. I quickly learned them, because I am just amazingI apparently had nothing better to do than go over weirdly-written rules that had then been somewhat translated from Japanese, and figure them out. Anyway, going by the last session, I think it might be beneficial for me to explain it in depth with examples, despite being neither the MC nor the creator or translator. Just call me a pompous ass.

So, let's look at Nasagawa Tamako for a minute. Honestly I wish I hadn't randomly chosen the classes and that, I'm not that pleased with my load-out, but whatever. With the Nechronica Type of Alice, and the Main class of Baroque and Sub-class of Stacy, she has 1 Armament Reinforcement Point and 3 Mutation Reinforcement Points. I then put my elective point into Enhancement Reinforcement Points.

She has one Type skill, so from the Alice list I choose Undefeatable Heart so I have an easier time resisting Madness. She also has three Class skills, two from Baroque and one from Stacy, and because she isn't Double Baroque or Double Stacy, she can't take the signature skill. So Baroque gives her Karmic Corpse and Super Strength, and Stacy gives her Remain Dead.

Just for existing, everyone automatically gets Fist, Arm and Shoulder parts, which are in the "Arms" category, Bone and Foot in the "Legs" category, Brain, Eyeballs and Jaw in the "Head" category, and Spine and Entrails in the "Torso" category. Remember, you don't have hit points, you just lose individual Parts as you get hit, and some things can just slice off an entire Category at a time, removing all Parts on that area.

Now, for Reinforcement Points, it's like this:
Armament 1 gives me 1 level 1 Armament Part, so I choose Kung-Fu, which is added to the Head (but doesn't replace anything).
Mutation 3 gives me 1 level 1 Mutation Part, 1 level 2 Mutation Part, and 1 level 3 Mutation part. If it were Mutation 4, then I'd have 2/1/1. So I take a Heart (going in the Torso), a Bone Spear (in my Arms), and a Voice Effect (in the Head).
Enhancement 1 gives me 1 level 1 Enhancement Part, so I choose Happy Pills, going in the Head.

So if an enemy hit me in the Torso and dealt 1 damage, I would have to choose to lose either my Entrails (I would choose this first as it literally does nothing), Heart or Spine. For 2 damage I'd have to pick 2. 3 or more damage (or a successful dismemberment) would clear out the whole Torso but excess damage wouldn't carry over to other parts. If I lost my Heart, my maximum Action Points would go down by 2 but my Current AP would not, so it wouldn't "kick in" until next turn.

Remember you only "die" when you lose *all* your parts, you can seriously keep going if everything is mangled except your fist or whatever.

Now about the way initiative and placing works:
Tamako, daughter of Eggman, starts in Limbo, the midrange (and the closest you're allowed to start). Enemies start basically wherever the MC says they start, but this is pre-determined. PCs decide at character creation and can change this between sessions, but you don't just decide at the start of each fight. Think of it like the old Final Fantasy games where you have Front and Back row, and you decide which row you take whenever you're not in combat, and in combat you have to use an action to change it, you don't just decide at the start of each fight.

Now, here's where the AP comes in. Between the base of 6 and my various Parts (3 from basic, 3 from reinforcement), I have 12 AP.

Initiative starts at 15. If nobody has 15 AP, it counts down to 14, and so on. Let's say I have the most (because in this party, I do). When it hits 12, I act. Let's say there are enemies in the next zone over, but not in my zone. I can't hit them from here, so I have to move. Movement is done by using Skills and Parts, not just as an innate thing. So I decide to move in, using my Bones (Legs). That doesn't require a check, but it does cost 3 AP. So I move, and now my AP is 9.

This means Kimiko, who IIRC has 11 AP, gets to act. She quite probably also spends 3 AP moving, and is down to 8.

Now, Charlotte has 9 AP, so if the enemies have 10 AP, this is where they act. If they have 9, they act at the same time as her.

But let's say they're crappy enemies with 6 AP because they have no Heads or are just Legions of mindless zombies. So we count down to 9, and Charlotte can probably shoot them from where she is. That cost 2 AP and her next action is at 7.

But at the same time as her AP 9 action, Tamako acts again, and now she can attack! Her Bone Spear only costs 2 AP, yes that's less than moving. So whether or not that works, she ends up on 7 AP.

AP 8, and it's Kimiko time again! She attacks with her superior katana, which is ALSO AP 2, so her next action is at count 6.

Count 7: Tamako and Charlotte both attack, and by now the Legion in that zone are well and truly dead.

Count 6: if the Legion weren't dead, it'd act now. There's probably a Legion in the furthest zone, so it can either wait there for us to come closer, or move in. It's dumb, so moves in, wasting 3 AP.

And so on and so forth. Note that anyone can delay, spending 1 AP each time they do it so as to drop their "Initiative" by 1 point, rather than spending a bunch, and sometimes you might prefer to let the enemy come to you so you can strike first. Also note that various characters have reactions (which take up AP) and augmenting boost things (which take up AP or add to the AP cost of other things).

If your AP hit zero (or below - you can "overspend" and go into negatives), then you are no longer able to use reactive moves and such. You are sort of greyed out until AP refreshes. When the turn ends, if combat isn't over, all players gain 1 Madness Point. Then everyone gains AP equal to their maximum AP - keeping in mind that may have been reduced by Parts being damaged. Also note that if you went into negatives, that affects this new number. So if Tamako had gone to -1, then she'd start with 11 rather than 12. Or even less if she suffered damage to her Heart, Kung-Fu, Eyes or Brain.

I hope this helps.
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Post by Grek »

What is Nechronica and why should I desire to understand its rules? Is it any good?
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Post by Koumei »

I'm explaining it for the benefit of the other players (and possibly the MC - I think he mentioned he actually wasn't too proficient with it). This isn't so much a public service announcement where I tell everyone why you need to know this.

That said, Nechronica is a very Japanese game, where everyone is a zombie. You play as teenage girls, who are also zombies. Although you can take a Mutation that makes you a boy. This gives you a bonus to your "Reduce your Madness by talking to other girls" checks, I guess because you *really* like talking to girls. Anyway, you're mostly teenage girl zombies. You fight other zombies and weird creations, while slowly getting bits chopped off and going mad. You use the power of friendship to resist the madness, and can stitch yourself back together from the corpses of your foes.

Being from the Japanese school of game design, it's weird and also has developed out of different base games than Western ones. So any given session is split into three phases.

In phase one, you set the scene, and then the players can go exploring. During this phase, players can do some conversation to remove Madness points, but mostly it's used to determine what the objectives are (treat every session as an actual mission) and to get the players into position for the combat.

Phase two is the combat. There is one fight per session. Not zero, and not two. Three is RIGHT out. This is where all the damage happens to the PCs. Afterwards there is a small amount of recovery possible.

Phase three is a sort of wind-up, where everyone can again make conversation checks, do more character development and plot-building, and work towards a good point to end things.

The system itself is... you don't have base stats. To do an action, you roll a certain number of d10 (the standard is 1, but certain Skills and Parts give more), and at the base level, it's a coinflip: you succeed on a 6+. If you roll multiple dice, you just use the best single die. Some things can give you a bonus, but I think the biggest total bonus is around +3. On a 1 or less, you fail extra hard and one of your Parts is damaged. On 11 or more, you succeed extra hard (most notably, in Combat you deal extra damage equal to "the amount by which you exceed 10"). Yes, critfail is more common than critsuccess, aside from the tendency for players to roll things when they have bonuses and not roll things with penalties.

Anyway, the core system is basic, and not that interesting. It's basically a dicepool thing with small dice pools and occasionally modifying the TN.

Your Skills typically do things like give you bonuses or extra dice in situations or modify costs or let you recover, substitute one type of damage for another, instantly teleport to a specific Zone or somesuch. Parts are your hit points but also serve to give bonuses and give you your forms of attack, movement and other actions. These can be guns you pick up, or extra limbs you stitch on, or whatever.

So it has a few things that are at least interesting to know about. It's kind of fiddly for something that is as basic and small as it is. It has a lot of "this has no game effect so you could just choose from the list here, but roll 1d100 anyway" similar to Maid. It's short enough that I could do a plain old review of it, honestly. Once I'm ahead in my course studies.

Mostly I liked the idea of being able to play a member of Babymetal, though admittedly without the idol power of generating a cult of worshippers and feeding off that for godhood. (Which is obviously what idol bands would do in a game.)
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Post by 8headeddragon »

The system was relatively simple to get into-- setting aside the bias of over a decade of 3rd edition making that nearly second nature, anyway. A shame the best the core material can come up with is the Necromancer pitting everyone s/he controls against each other for the lulz, as it requires a bit of creativity to come up with scenarios where the adventure isn't so pointless.
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Post by OgreBattle »

The art for it is really spooky
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Post by Koumei »

8headeddragon wrote:The system was relatively simple to get into-- setting aside the bias of over a decade of 3rd edition making that nearly second nature, anyway.
Yeah, I think a big part of the trouble we had was putting aside the D&D/Western games in our heads. Like, the bit about counting AP down and acting at multiple steps in a round rather than just determining Initiative and everyone having a turn.
A shame the best the core material can come up with is the Necromancer pitting everyone s/he controls against each other for the lulz, as it requires a bit of creativity to come up with scenarios where the adventure isn't so pointless.
I'm sure you'll be able to manage though, especially if you take liberties with the core setting and give the Necromancer some goals.
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Post by codeGlaze »

I kind of dig the AP system.
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Post by Maxus »

codeGlaze wrote:I kind of dig the AP system.
Same. The initiative/AP is actually kinda neat.
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Post by virgil »

The initiative system makes me think of Exalted's, but in reverse.
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Post by Mord »

I'll join the "me too" chorus regarding the coolness of that initiative structure. I for one look forward to an OSSR for this. :)
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Post by JonSetanta »

Let me get this straight here.
You can "become a boy" by mutating?
Or are you just stitching a penis on via the Dark Arts?
JAPAN.
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Post by Koumei »

Technically it wouldn't be an OSSR because it's a core game and not a splat/supplement, and I'm not sure how old-school it actually is. It'd just be a drunk review or something.
sigma999 wrote:Let me get this straight here.
You can "become a boy" by mutating?
Or are you just stitching a penis on via the Dark Arts?
JAPAN.
90% sure that it's the latter. You just find a sausage or a horse's weiner or something and stitch it on.

Image

You knew I was going there.

So it's a surprisingly good game, but it really does feel like it was made specifically for Western audiences to review, ending each section with "Fucking Japan (drink once)"
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Post by shinimasu »

I remember reading an english transcription of an example game which ended with two lesbian lolis stitching uteruses (Uteri?) up inside themselves so they could knock themselves up with sperm they found in a sperm bank.

It looks like it's just that kind of setting.
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Post by Mord »

shinimasu wrote:I remember reading an english transcription of an example game which ended with two lesbian lolis stitching uteruses (Uteri?) up inside themselves so they could knock themselves up with sperm they found in a sperm bank.

It looks like it's just that kind of setting.
That campaign replay is an official supplement that the developer released. You can find it here if you're interested; scroll in the comments thread for the direct DL link. It's my understanding that this "Ewen" guy is in some way officially related to the dev's localization effort, so I'm pretty sure it's legit free.
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Post by shinimasu »

Yep that's the one I'm thinking of. It started out on a fairly interesting note and was pretty normal up until the very end when suddenly sperm bank and stealing other doll's babymaking organs happened.
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Post by Prak »

Koumei wrote:Technically it wouldn't be an OSSR because it's a core game and not a splat/supplement, and I'm not sure how old-school it actually is. It'd just be a drunk review or something.
sigma999 wrote:Let me get this straight here.
You can "become a boy" by mutating?
Or are you just stitching a penis on via the Dark Arts?
JAPAN.
90% sure that it's the latter. You just find a sausage or a horse's weiner or something and stitch it on.

Image

You knew I was going there.

So it's a surprisingly good game, but it really does feel like it was made specifically for Western audiences to review, ending each section with "Fucking Japan (drink once)"
Well, that answers the question I was going to ask as a reference to a King Missile song...

Actually, new question, to reference that song- could you run an adventure that was about trying to find the previously stitched on penis, because it went missing (again)? I guess the real question is, how much can Mister Cavern screw around with your mutations?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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Post by Koumei »

Prak wrote:Actually, new question, to reference that song- could you run an adventure that was about trying to find the previously stitched on penis, because it went missing (again)?
I guess. If a player loses it in combat or whatever, then the Necromancer could make the next mission be about finding it, but:
A) Players don't set the parameters for missions. These are set by the Necromancer, and the dolls are just drawn towards it. Imagine Jenova's re-uuuuu-nioooon...
B) Technically you aren't supposed to give specific parts or whatever as rewards. Instead, at the end of battle they salvage X amount of parts that can be used to replace bits they lost or whatever. And they get XP which can be used to buy new parts (first buying up the maximum by increasing their Mutation/Armaments/Whatever ratings)
C) Losing a part isn't a thing that just happens, you either do it by cocking a roll up, or by getting hit, and you generally choose the part to lose.
I guess the real question is, how much can Mister Cavern screw around with your mutations?
He can't.
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