Dice A Time of Monsters - OOC

[Grey]

OOC here.

Ask questions, pitch ideas, chatter. More threads with lore, character templates, etc. to come soon.

 

[Random Word]

Hi! Do you have your current draft of the rules and setting info up somewhere so we can get a feel for possibilities? Should we just pitch story concepts and you'll present mechanical options we choose from for character creation?

 

[Grey]

Hi! Do you have your current draft of the rules and setting info up somewhere so we can get a feel for possibilities? Should we just pitch story concepts and you'll present mechanical options we choose from for character creation?

I'll have base mechanics up in a bit, and then we'll figure out how the template applies. If it helps, this will not be unlike handing a peasant an Infernal Exaltation and telling them to save the world with it.
I need to draft up the modified setting stuff, but the short version is there's a Holy Roman Empire having shitfit in the midlands where most of the game will happen, an industrializing scattering of city-states to the north brutally repressing their nomadic pastoral population, and a collection of colonies to the east declaring themselves sovereign states.
Things are complicated to the west and south, characters will probably not be from those places, but we'll see.

 

[Grey]

Character thread up with raw mechanics. I'll add a link to the one-page rules reference I use for cons soon, too. You can ask questions about anything which is unclear, though.

Lore soon, work has been unexpectedly hellish recently.

 

[Random Word]

Defence
Defence: Dexterity + Defence
Parry: Defence + Parry Focus, etc
Evade: Defence + Evade Focus, etc
Block: Defence + Shield Focus, etc

I'm guessing defence is not recursively defined, and this is actually the Defend skill + Dex? But are the others Defend or Defence? Sometimes you do define derived values in terms of other derived values, like speed -> initiative.

These look like character creation rules for mortals. Do we gain any supernatural powers in play?

What do the dice rolling mechanics look like? Just so I understand the marginal benefits of a dot in an attribute or skill.

 

[Grey]

Yeah I really need to find a way to make that easier to parse.
Defend Skill + Dexterity = Base Defence
Specific Defence Type (Parry, etc.,) is Subskill + Base Defence.
Need to collapse that somehow...

So let's say you've got Dex 3, Defend 3, Parry 4
Base Def would be 6, Parry Def would be 7
Base Def, barring special modifiers, caps at 6.
It's basically a bit of extra hassle at creation so you can just glance at it later.

You'll gain supernatural powers in your opening scene and I'll cover those a bit more when the lore goes up. They don't directly influence your stats for the most part - a lot of them let you ignore or subvert existing rules, or just give you bullshit special effects like converting wound penalties into bonuses.

This is the setting primer I use for most convention games:

Dice - Quick Rules Reference

System Primer Rolls are made using a pool of twelve-sided dice {d12s} equal to the relevant Attribute. The default Difficulty is 11, which means any die rolling 11 or higher is a Success. If a die rolls a 12, it explodes and can be rolled again. The default Difficulty is reduced by 1 for each...

www.rpnation.com

 

[Grey]

Added some patron related stuff to the character page.

 

[Tachyon]

If we will be in the middle of HRE, then perhaps my fisherman/naval officer concept is a bad fit? Not a lot of high seas around me thinks.

 

[Grey]

If we will be in the middle of HRE, then perhaps my fisherman/naval officer concept is a bad fit? Not a lot of high seas around me thinks.

Fisherman is fine, they have a coast and some fishing towns.
Their neighbours do have better navies, but I'm not opposed to your character surviving a shipwreck due to a voice in the depths and washing up conveniently near Bone2Pick's character whether they're from the Kelene Empire or one of their neighbours.

 

[Grey]

Typing up setting info now. If anyone has any specific things they'd like to know about, it'll help keep me on track and not wandering down tangents.

 

[Random Word]

I'm interested in secret societies and mystery cults! Or maybe important political movements.

 

[Tachyon]

I think general spirituality (both mainstay religions and more cults/folklore), state of the world, what kind of headwear is in style

 

[Grey]

Adding to this over the evening. Next post'll be about cults and secret societies.

And I will indeed make some reference to the fashions of the time at some point.

Dice - A Time of Monsters - Setting

This is information presented as most characters would know it. It is biased, likely inaccurate, may contain outright propaganda. (anything I think you as a player should know but your character likely does not will be written like this and can be trusted as factual). The Anointed Empire of...

www.rpnation.com

 

[Bone2pick]

I’ll take a couple of days to polish up my character’s backstory and then send it to you, Grey. With that information you can then build the character however you imagine he should look/function.

 

[Grey]

Cults up.

 

[Random Word]

I notice we saw Illuminators, Nightmares, Avengers, and Scourges in your list of potential patrons, but no Cubii or Integrators. Is that intentional, or just by virtue of you running down the list and calling it quits at some point?

 

[Random Word]

Did you mean to give us 60 attribute XP? 4 is the max, and we can put a 3 in every attribute, and 4 in two more? We're quite exceptional people!

 

[Grey]

I notice we saw Illuminators, Nightmares, Avengers, and Scourges in your list of potential patrons, but no Cubii or Integrators. Is that intentional, or just by virtue of you running down the list and calling it quits at some point?

I've been writing them in order so the Integrators are gated behind the Cubii, who are minor theological nightmare so they're taking me longer to devise to my satisfaction compared with the rest. They'll be up 'ere long.

Did you mean to give us 60 attribute XP? 4 is the max, and we can put a 3 in every attribute, and 4 in two more? We're quite exceptional people!

You may have miscalculated - Rank 3 in an Attribute is 9XP (0 + 3XP for Rank 2 + 6XP for Rank 3 = 9XP total).
You'd need like 80 XP to all 9 attributes to Rank 3, unless I am even worse at math than I thought. It's probably on me not specifying each Rank is cumulative, so the same thing applies when buying Attributes after chargen with newly earned XP.

 

[Random Word]

You may have miscalculated - Rank 3 in an Attribute is 9XP (0 + 3XP for Rank 2 + 6XP for Rank 3 = 9XP total).
You'd need like 80 XP to all 9 attributes to Rank 3, unless I am even worse at math than I thought. It's probably on me not specifying each Rank is cumulative, so the same thing applies when buying Attributes after chargen with newly earned XP.

Aha! Yes, I incorrectly understood each dot to cost 3 xp. Now everything makes more sense!

So the cumulative costs are, for my shopping reference...
Attribute:
1: 0
2: 3
3: 9
4: 18
5: Infinite

Ability:
1: 2
2: 3
3: 5
4: 8
5: 14
6: 23

That sixth dot is a beast.

Could we have short summaries of what each attribute and ability represents? The difference between Craft and Artisan, for example, aren't obvious. Is Investigation usually rolled with Intuition, or could Intellect apply? Oh, maybe Intuition goes with Awareness?

 

[Random Word]

So we roll Attribute dice, with a target number of 11-Ability. Each die that comes up >= TN is a success. 12's explode. Do we sum up the successes to try to exceed a threshold, or does the presence of a single success mean the overall attempt succeeds? Ah, no, if that were true exploding 12s would be meaningless. Okay. So running the math, a world-class expert in their field almost without peer (attribute 4 ability 6) will get 3 successes 64% of the time.

So I'm guessing most tests only require 1 success, 2 is really hard, and 3 is insane. 4 is getting to supernatural.

Ah! But we can fold in half another attribute, so if we're world class twice over, we could get 6 attribute 6 ability. More likely we get 5 attribute from having a 2 or 3 in something relevant. And a 5 attribute 6 ability can get 4 successes 54% of the time. So 4 is pretty crazy for a mortal, and 6 is basically supernatural. Good to know.

What do you call the number of successes required to... succeed? Difficulty is already taken.

 

[Meredith]

Reading through this now, looking to spin up a character before I bed down.

 

[Meredith]

I think I'm mostly interested in social encounters... a bit of investigation/subterfuge/espionage with the intention of doing the most possible damage with our high-risk behaviour would be extremely fun. Otherwise, I'm echoing occult/religious sentiments already expressed, and perhaps requesting a bit of a focus on some economic activities. I feel that trading/bartering might be outside of the purview of this game, but I definitely wouldn't mind interacting with a bit of a more settled economic system to visibly disrupt with our shenanigans.

Additionally, I spent a while messing about with tables for my own satisfaction. If any of you want to use them, feel free.

Spoiler: Attributes Table

Attributes
Mental	Social	Physical
Intellect: 3	Bearing: 2	Strength: 2
Intuition: 4	Guile: 3	Dexterity: 3
Willpower: 2	Composure: 2	Fitness: 2

[table]
[tr]
[th=3]Attributes[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][b]Mental[/b][/td]
[td][b]Social[/b][/td]
[td][b]Physical[/b][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Intellect: 3[/td]
[td]Bearing: 2[/td]
[td]Strength: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Intuition: 4[/td]
[td]Guile: 3[/td]
[td]Dexterity: 3[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Willpower: 2[/td]
[td]Composure: 2[/td]
[td]Fitness: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

The table type can be set with table=type in the opening tag . The first included table is default (no descriptor), the second uses the descriptor 'none' to banish the lines ('zebra' and 'dotted' also exist, as well as the elusive 'dotted-zebra').

Spoiler: Skills Table

Skills
Mental	Social	Physical
Academics: 4 (Stonemason's Theology)	Animal Handling: 0	Athletics: 2
Administration: 2	Empathy: 2	Awareness: 3
Artisan: 4 (Tailor)	Mingling: 3	Defend: 2
Investigation: 3	Perform: 0	Melee: 0
Lore: 2	Persuade: 4 (Specialty)	Ranged: 0
Medicine: 0	Subterfuge: 2	Stealth: 2
Survival: 0	Languages: N/A	Unarmed: 0
Knowledge: Investigation, Lore, Academics: Occultist Activities & Literature	Familiarity: Mingling, Persuasion, and Subterfuge: Conversational Investigation	Training: Awareness, Defend, Stealth: Evasion in Close Quarters

[table=none]
[tr]
[th=3]Skills[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][b]Mental[/b][/td]
[td][b]Social[/b][/td]
[td][b]Physical[/b][/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Academics: 4 (Stonemason's Theology)[/td]
[td]Animal Handling: 0[/td]
[td]Athletics: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Administration: 2[/td]
[td]Empathy: 2[/td]
[td]Awareness: 3[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Artisan: 4 (Tailor)[/td]
[td]Mingling: 3[/td]
[td]Defend: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Investigation: 3[/td]
[td]Perform: 0[/td]
[td]Melee: 0[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Lore: 2[/td]
[td]Persuade: 4 (Specialty)[/td]
[td]Ranged: 0[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Medicine: 0[/td]
[td]Subterfuge: 2[/td]
[td]Stealth: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Survival: 0[/td]
[td]Languages: N/A[/td]
[td]Unarmed: 0[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Knowledge: Investigation, Lore, Academics: Occultist Activities & Literature[/td]
[td]Familiarity: Mingling, Persuasion, and Subterfuge: Conversational Investigation [/td]
[td]Training: Awareness, Defend, Stealth: Evasion in Close Quarters                                          [/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

This one's a little stranger - I used the 'side=direction' tag to force it into a smaller container, but it doesn't play nice with the other tables. The piece is intended to go a the top of character posts to quick-reference combat stats. If I were to do this in a larger container, I'd probably double up on the columns from the latter half of the code. Each row has 8 column 'spans' maximum, split as desired- so instead of splitting them into span4 and span4, you'd set up 4 span2 columns in the same row. This is easier to format, because you type everything within a column normally. [Note- columns need a row to belong to, or things get weird.]

Spoiler: Combat Block

Combat Block

Offence	Defence
Melee: 3	Defence: 5
Ranged: 4	Parry: 2
Unarmed: 5	Evade: 2

Speed: 4
Initiative: 6
Combat Pool: 7

Ranged Pool: ?
Physical Soak: 2
Magic Resistance: 2

Health: 10
Condition: 20

[side=right][Fieldset=Combat Block] [table=none][tr]
[th]Offence[/th]
[th]Defence[/th]
[/tr][tr]
[td]Melee: 3[/td]
[td]Defence: 5[/td]
[/tr][tr]
[td]Ranged: 4[/td]
[td]Parry: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Unarmed: 5[/td]
[td]Evade: 2[/td]
[/tr]
[/table][Row]
[Column=span4]Speed: 4
Initiative: 6
Combat Pool: 7
[/Column][Column=span4]Ranged Pool: ?
Physical Soak: 2
Magic Resistance: 2
[/Column]
[/Row]
[Row]
[Column=span8]Health: 10
Condition: 20[/Column][/row][/Fieldset][/side]

 

[Grey]

Could we have short summaries of what each attribute and ability represents? The difference between Craft and Artisan, for example, aren't obvious. Is Investigation usually rolled with Intuition, or could Intellect apply? Oh, maybe Intuition goes with Awareness?

Honestly Meredith helpfully reminded me Artisan/Craft need adjusting. I'm torn between folding them together or changing Artisan to Art.
The general rule is that Craft is used to produce functional results which can then be decorated with Artisan, and Artisan mostly makes things which are beautiful but not necessarily functional but might be included in a work of Craft.
Investigation usually runs off Intellect, but I will accept justifications for Intuition contextually and it's nearly always applicable fold in half Intuitive.
You are correct that Intuition generally goes with Awareness.

I'll do a quick write up for them all and edit it into the character thread. I have one already on file but it might be a bit bloated.

The Eternal Playtest means any aspect of balance or definition might get adjusted if someone makes a good point about what's there, or in questioning prompts me to rethink something.
Great result of getting new players, nightmare for the eventual Kickstarter, maybe.

What do you call the number of successes required to... succeed? Difficulty is already taken.

I use Degree, usually. One is enough, maaybe with some minor downside.
I also didn't reference Modifiers, which can come up pretty easily - if you tilt the material circumstances of a task in your favour (tools, distracting the guards, etc.) you get an External Bonus which lowers Difficulty by 1 - and once you get to Diff 6 you can have automatic successes, too.
If something about you changes, usually by magic, drugs, a moment of inspiration, you get an Internal Modifier which adds bonus dice.

Also, going back to the question about patrons:
Cubii will go up soon, maybe Wednesday, then Integrators.
There might be two versions of Cubii as they complicate the existing theology but that won't matter too much.

Some patrons will be excluded because the odds them investing in your characters is very, very low. This is most true of Integrators and Illuminors.
To illustrate why, these are the excluded Illuminors:

Spoiler: Ontological Fascists

Lux Tyranis, Illuminor-King, Who Sits The Nuclear Throne, Radiant Blade of The Infinite Horizon, Brooks-No-Shadow, First And Final Blood, Commander of the Endless Host, The Ur-Monarch, The First Symbol of Royalty, Hydrogen Saint of Fusion, Whose Light Severs, Warrior Without End

Tacitus, Illuminor-Prince, The Unblinking Eye, The Pitiless Sun, Shining Lord of the Paper Desert, Thrice-Broken, The Revelation of Time, Mentor of the First General, Uranium Saint of Fission, Whose Gaze Unravels.

Setha, Illuminor-Prince, Queen of Duels, Heaven-Sundering Glaive, Temple of the Warrior’s Fortune, Arbiter of Trial by Sword, The Just Cut, Mentor of the First Knight, Plutonium Saint of Fission, Resplendant Division of Murder and War.

 

[Tachyon]

Will throw a character together in a day or so! Going with a gruff no-nonsense fisherman captain!

 

[Panthas]

Hullo! So there has been fighting and such broken out already from the description. Are there particular areas that occurred in? And is there a particular area our character should be gravitating towards, or is that going to be hand of the GM?