Power Core Combiner RPG outline

[Dominic]

I am planning to look over those books, especially for "handling damage to a large machine", which will be especially relevant when dealing with merge teams.



Dom
-finding "Space Munchkin" to be suprisingly helpful.

[Ursus mellifera]

Yeah, Warmachine has some great rules for large robot fighting.

[Dominic]

I was looking at the damage scale, and trying to come up with non-weapon equipment. (I am not going to promote sensitive bards walking around a war-zone. But, not every piece of gear should "blow up stuff real good".)

How does a "mobile black box" system sound. For the cost of 150% of the base character cost, a player could equip their character with a way to transport a copy of themselves back to base or to some other safe spot. From there, their character could be replaced with a nearly exact double using the cost of the system as the cost of the replaced character, and using any additional points that the player had earned before they declared the most recent copy to have been made.

The say I am seeing this work is that the player would equip their main character and either a drone or a Minicon with the mbile blackbox system. When things started going south for the party, the player would make a dice role (to represent the Minicon or drone making it home with the copied information). The difficulty of the role would depend on where the battle was happening. A battle right outside of the player's base would not require any dice role because the Minicon would just have to make it to the front door. But, a battle taking place aboard an enemy space station would require a really difficult dice role.

Having this system in the game would also be a good story hook. A moderator could assign players the task of recovering/capturing an enemies mobile black box, or something along those lines.


Thoughts?

I *am* working on this game, albeit very slowly.


Dom
-got the idea while fiddling with TFG Thunderwing actually.

[Gomess]

Is this gonna be like 99% war? That's how it sounds at the mo, is all.

[Shockwave]

I'm also still not a fan of the idea of a campaign with a high likelyhood of losing my character (or my character dying). A good DM would moderate the game and scenarios such that it should be challenging without that threat. I mean, the OCCASIONAL threat of losing one's character is fine but it should not be the normal MO of the game. I guess I'm thinking that if I'm playing a game where I'm likely to lose my character enough to warrant purchasing an item so that they can be resurrected that's pretty much going to kill the interest for me. Maybe said item could be a prototype or extremely rare and claiming that could be the prize for an extremely difficult run.

[Gomess]

^This is part of why I asked my previous question. I've already admitted I'm new to this sort of RPG, but the original one we did here didn't seem as predicated on combat.

[Dominic]

I am planning to split the difference between WarHammer and something like D&D. There is going to be a fair amount of fighting. But, most D&D campaigns have fighting.

Generally, as long as you are sensible and not looking for trouble, your character will come through it okay (or with non-catastrophic damage).

For example, if there are 3 Omega Sentinels are running towards the player characters, and there is a relatively obvious/clear path away from them, the best thing to do is run away. But, standing around and picking a fight with them will probably turn out badly. Similarly, if your character ends up ruinously damaged, but salvagable, it is not unreasonable to assume that a few of the other players would go back for your character so theycould be repaired.


Dom
-think of the item as insurance.

[Gomess]

Ok, so what else is there apart from fighting? I've no problem with a more rigid set of rules in an RPG, but so far they seem to be tailored to nothing but wide-scale warfare. And there's not much point comparing it to D&D, since I know nothing about it. =/

Amused by how well this tallies with what I just said about IDW in another thread. =p

[Dominic]

Fighting and movement are the most basic parts of any RPG. Those details are best sorted out before the characters can run off into the game's world if you want the game to playable.

Some games, like "Munchkin" work when vaguely defines. But, the rulebook gleefully informs players that they point of the game is for the moderator to kill the players while the players do their best to kill and cheat each other. I am pretty sure that is not the game that any of us really want to spend an appreciable amount of time playing.

Being able to work out combat with various types of foes makes thost parts of the game flow more smoothly, which helps keep the plot of the game moving.

[Gomess]

Fighting and movement are the most basic parts of any RPG.

Perhaps the kinds of RPG you play, sure. "Movement" I'll accept, but "fighting" is by no means a prerequisite of RPGs. But, that's ok, I can do fighting if there's a set of rules to follow. But I'd still like to know what the rest of the RPG is gonna be taken up with. Do character interactions that have nothing to do with combat come into play? Do we all know each other at the start? Will we have to earn each other's trust- or enmity?

What you've got to remember is that I have never played this D&D sorta thing before. I'm willing to learn, but you're flying along with these complex rules at 400kmh and I'm still in park.