warforgedrelic

I am in a slump right now both in my gaming and my game design Iv been taking more notes for Immortal gods as of late and alot of things are changing. It amazes me sometimes how when making something unless you work off of a set blueprint it almost always looks nothing like what you had intended it to be.  I should post more soon  but I cant say for sure.  Well untill next time good day!!!


Relic

I just ran a 2 person test session of a single very simple very rough combat involving an avatar and a person each with a pistol and 15 HP(I plan on doing something other than HP for my game this is only for the purposes of this test )

Also I am using a special crit failure/sucess system  whare 6s are re rolled and added up and rolling a 1 gives -1 to any mod numbers (such as a +2 to fire your pistol) while still alowing you to add the origonal 1 that you rolled .

Example
Avatar fires his pistol and rolls a 6 and a 1 on his 2d6 roll with a +2  mod for his skill.  for this he re rolles his 6 and gets a 4  so far this is a 6+1+4=11 on the dice now add +2  for the mod then subtract 1 from the mod for the roll of 1 on the dice comming with a total of 12

My results proved to be quite enlightening

Notes to be taken into concideration
-How is the Armor or defense rating decided
-What base abilities should be on character sheets
-1-5 scale could be hightened to 1-10 in order to give more room for the 2d6 system
-how hard should it be to raise from one skill point to the other
-could the base abilities determine base skill stats and have them raise from there

I dont know if anyone has tried to comment on anything here but I noticed that they where not set to let people comment so now I have set it so that anyone can comment on any of my blogs. Kinda important since I have this thing up in the hopes that feedback will help me with my game...

In Immortal gods I am tossing around the Idea of making it a Zero to very little advancement game. All stats skills such will be on a 1-5 scale with 5 being almost near the Ancestors and 1 being the average human level.

My thought in this is this. Avatars are more powerful to humans in many ways so there is no way that they would really drop down below the average human level of skill for anything.


With that in mind lvls 1 and 2 are average and above average human level and making the jump in say your computers skill from 1 to 2 really is fairly easy, work at it for maybe a day and you will learn enough to get up to a level of 2.  From 2 to 3 its a bit harder, Maybe it will take longer or something I really should work out a mechanic for skill advancement other than it takes this much in character time to learn because I never liked that idea of imposing an arbatrary timer on something in game.

Now for 3 is about average for most skills an Avatar will have and 4 is where specialization begins. Its hard to reach a 4 in any skill, very hard indeed because this is where you put yourself a step above other Avatars and your enemies

To reach a 5 is a feat that isn't Imposable  but hard to do. The jack of all trades will never reach Computer 5  but the hacker can reach computer 5 at the cost of having 3 or even 2s in other skills



Things to do in this area
-Build mechanics for the advancement 1-5
-Figure out what Average Avatar is how much stronger it is than a normal human so that the rest of the scale can be fleshed out...
-how hard is it to get to 5 upsides and downsides to turning the dial to 11  

-Edit March 31 2009
I noticed that I never really finished the thought so here it is

I wanted to have almost no advancement because as an Avatar the character is already, in the eyes of normal humans almost a god. and so he should not be bound by the same constraints as a human.  He should be doing things that are out of the humans reach because he is in effect a demi-god .  This all came from DnD strangely enough.  I loved the Idea of being a heroic character who could acheve great feats of power but hated the idea that the only thing holding that merchant back from doing the same thing is his fear of death, it just never seemed to convey the idea that your character is something other than them (witch in my opinion if you are doing more than just surviving you should be looked at diffrently than the jester or the idiot who makes his money selling stones carved into animal shapes)

The story of how Avatars came to be on earth as told by one of the first Avatar to exist in our time...

It was long ago when humans developed space travel at speeds faster than light, ironically they called the maiden ship "Einstein" but thats nether here nor there. That ship was the one to find Omega1 on the outskirts of the galaxy. We where amazed to find an entire habitable planet covered in vast sprawling cities that where kept pristine, not a speck of dust anywhere, not a scratch on any surface , not a single article of clothing not a single sign that anyone had ever lived there. As we explored the city witch we dubbed Zero One  (A joke mostly made by a guy who remembered an old movie with a robot city in it) it became apparent that the city was being maintained by an army of, well at first we thought they where bugs because they seemed to be alive. What we found out after capturing a couple of the creatures is that they where a form of bio technological robot witch gained its power form the planets dual suns through amazingly enough photosynthesis. That was about the time the 6 of us that went out on team 1 where invited to visit the ancestors for our enlightenment but thats all boring technical data that I will go into later, lets move on to what happed in our absence.

After searches came up empty  they stopped looking for us, took what they had(Witch was a hell of a lot, they took entire rooms full of stuff back with them) and went directly back to earth. Once there, after a few years scientists began adapting some of the technology with an amazing success rate. 10 years after the Einestine re docked with space station 5 the technology level of the world just shot through the roof. Hover vehicles became common, Oil became cheap because with new technology that added photosynthetic cells to everything from mp3 players to vehicles , and medical technology expanded to such an extent that some forms of cancer are non existent inside of 2 years. All of this prosperity had a calming effect on the warring nations of the world. They all stopped and looked at what they had, how much better it could be if they joined together and so they did.  The world leaders where allowed to keep there status but all governments where turned to democracy and given a voice. It was great for us here on earth, wars all stopped for a long time and we advanced even more.

Another 10 years pass and we finished our enlightenment. By this time more missions to Omega where sent and some people had begun living in Zero One right about the time that we got to earth. It was a shock that these dead men came back from the grave with new and amazing powers. We immediately went to the world government and explained what we had been taught . Of course allot of people had a problem with it because it challenged this religion or that but eventually everyone came around to warming up to us after the Darkkons appeared on the scene. Just the 6 of us with the help of military took down the first invasion force of only 45. About 2 weeks later even we where surprised when more Avatars had shown up on earth with different powers than us.  We met and where told that the Darkkons are a group of Avatar that had been twisted and changed because they where given to much information and there race as a whole went insane. They had been almost wiped out but many still remained and they wanted revenge on any civilization touched by the Ancestors.  Thats how the first war in 20 years began with earth fighting against the Darkkon and well its been going on for a long time now with more and more enemies coming from all directions. Darkkon are smart, they don't send big fighting forces anymore only little groups who attack key positions trying to ware us down before they send the final invasion witch us Avatars have been getting ready for ever since the first 6 of us where enlightened even if we didn't know it at first...

(Please keep in mind that this is a rough draft and not a finished product)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08VCkyG_C2s
(click the link cause I dont know enough to embed it :P) 


Ya know I don,t watch Battlestar (No you cant have my geek card ITS MINE!!!!) but the man makes very good point. Listen and you will see what I mean...

You know this is harder work than I had thought at first, I am still enjoying it but something is happening that I did not expect. Fear has crept into my mind, well maybe not fear but definitely an acute awareness that what I am doing is going to take more work than anything that I have tried in the past. Its something that almost seems overwhelming  when you play role playing games the thought never crosses your mind that the act of rolling 2d6 and adding or subtracting from the total has been thought of in a thousand different ways before it reaches the version that you now use without a second thought. Also rolling the dice is only the tip of the iceberg, the entire system is built upon that 2d6 game mechanic.  You must figure out how all of those skill checks work, how base stats are figured out  how it all ties together and then  there are other traits and special abilities the list just goes on and on and on .  This is all a very overwhelming and yes I will admit that it is truly adding a bit of fear to my mind, fear that I wont be able to handle it all but this is just to much dammed fun to stop now so I am determined to get things running and I'm sure once I get like minded friends on here It might just get a bit easer when you hear others talking about "your game"...


Also I wanted to recommendd a podcast for anyone looking to get into Table top rpg design, or game design in general. 

Master Plan with Ryan Macklin He offers small 30 min episodes witch really break down parts of the design process in a way that is much easier to understand than reading a book or just trying to figure it out. It has helped me a lot and im sure it will help you ...www.masterplanpodcast.net/ Check it out !

Last night before I went to sleep I looked at the blank pad of paper that I keep there for notes if anything comes to mind and a couple things came to me. Here they are !

 

Core Mechanic

2d6

 

Avatar of the Ancestors

Avatar is set up to be what the characters will be called as a group of the few lucky (or unlucky depending how you look about it ) to be "taught" by the Ancestral Gods.

 

Avatar Caste

Avatar Castes are different levels of Avatar. The term Caste is a bit deceptive. None are really considered lower or higher on the food chain than the next.

Magic User

Techno Savant

Warlord

Tactician

Reality Shaper

Reality Shaper

Nature Guide

Martial Technophile

Technomancer

Are a few Castes that come to mind right now

 

 

 

Ancestral Knowledge

Its thought that everyone on in the verse has in there very essence, an ancestral Memory witch if tapped correctly can reveal everything to them with total understanding of it all. The Average human cannot even begin to see this memory. An Avatar is able to glimpse this memory very briefly and with only a small chance to understand it . When tapped the knowledge comes flowing to the Avatars mind in a chaotic stream that must be pieced together on the spot(2d6 roll) if you are able to see the patterns of the visions (7-12) You succeed in the task at hand automatically with better results than first expected. If you have a perfect outlook on this particular vision (6) you get an overwhelming success if you roll(1-5) while you do not fail outright it dose impose a -1 to your ability roll

 

I will today begin work on a new project entitled Immortal Gods for now. Its going to be a table top RPG and I guess that makes me Lead Designer. Here is my base idea, a group of questions that lead me to this idea witch is still forming in my head. More will come soon but for now here is this to think about for now. Any comments on this would be great(HA! someone actually read my blog thats just crazy talk!)

Immortal Gods(working title)

Aurthor:Michael Hilliard(Relic)

Date:March 29 2009

 

 

The Questions

What if the gods who created all that we know and more, where just a group of aliens who had the technology to create entire worlds and set the universe in motion?

What if the notion of alternate realities and other realms are all a sort of ancestral memory that runs through every living thing in the universe?

What happens if the technology and teachings of the “gods” are found by humans?

What if the “gods” themselves took humans and created avatars to go and teach other humans of the “Gods” and all that they are?

 

The Big Question

What happens in this new world???