A Dice Based Roleplay System - Discussion

[Rigwyn]

A Dice Based Roleplay System - Discussion

So a few of us (Allena, Roled and I ) have been tossing around the idea of trying out some dice based RP within Planeshift. The idea here is to run events large and small using a D&D-like point system instead of the stats and abilities that the game offers via the mechanics.

Why?

Because it would be interesting to try. It's difficult to incorporate the game's stats directly into role play for various reasons that I won't mention here. Let's not digress.

A brief overview:

So the basic idea here is to structure an event like this:

* One player acts as a DM. They will design a campaign or quest for others to play. It could be short or long, it could be made for one sitting or multiple.

* Each player would make a character ( preferably a new one ) following the system that we will outline, then submit a character sheet. The character sheet basically shows your charcter's starting stats and tells a little bit about them.

* The DM would then try to tailor their campaign or quest to the participating players.  You really need to have a good match. The campaign should be palatable to the players, and the players should have working chemistry and a common goal or reason to partake in this quest.

* When actions arise and players attempt to do things, the /roll command is used to determine success and so on. The DM would have the final say as they could include their own judgement.

* The DM would also award experience points and money which the player could in turn use to increase their stats or buy new items.

This so far is just a rough overview. I'll defer to Ascomanni for the specifics. Give her a few days to reply and fill in the gaps. She knows much more about this than I.

[Ascomanni]

Hey guys,

For those of you who do not know, I am Allena's player. I am happy and willing to answer questions anyone has on this subject. For a brief idea (Besides what Rigwyn already touched on) what we are thinking is to use DnD's v. 3.5 as a base and mold it to fit our needs. In short, depending on your character's strengths and weaknesses you will declare what you intend for your character to do (i.e Attack, steal, bake a pie) and roll a 20 sided die and add some modifiers to it to come up with how well you did/succeed or failed. The DM has complete authority in this matter.

I am short on time here so I will deffer to your questions and in the coming day or two I hope to post some basic characters (Stats, not back-story or motivation, etc.) for people interested in trying this out with us to use for a dry run. Once we work out some of the troubleshooting and issues, we will open it up to building our own characters and then maybe opening it up further to existing characters. I am planning on a fighter, rouge, and mage template. let me know if you what something added to that, but simple might be the way to go to help get people introduced to the system.

If everything goes well, the DM will have challenges that are difficult to overcome as individuals and more roles will need to be played. Teamwork and communication and all that.

[novacadian]

This sounds like a wonderful idea to me. Would a pre-existing character be all right to introduce? The character has been played on roll20.net campaigns and the stats are earned not made up. It was created for a Pathfinder campaign if that is exceptable.

Ballisk Darkeyes : http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=465871

[Adash]

A Dice Based Roll System is fine to add into the game BUT should not be required. 

http://illarion.org/general/us_startpage.php  is a great example of this.  When players do meet up and want to RP, they sometime agree to a dice based system to determine end results to keep things fair among members in more sophisticated events created by the players spontaneously in the game. 

BUT personally, I like my hard work and stats to determine whether I am rewarded or not.  I prefer to control the outcome through focused training and self discover of character development as I venture around the world.

[Suno_Regin]

These were always fun systems to try. I'd be down for it. I'm familiar with 3.5 rules at the most, and I have a new character I've been bringing up that could participate (no stats trained from base )

Looking forward to something!

[Zalya]

I've actually been thinking of doing something similar for awhile. If I where to do anything though, I'd use the Cortex System. The Cortex System is far more flexible than 3.5, and offers a tool kit approach that would easily transfer to PS. Its light weight, and intuitive, and it relies on the story instead of the rules. As much as I enjoy 3.5, players who aren't familiar with it can be a little intimidated. Also, Dungeons and Dragons assumes your character is a hero that fits into a number of heroic archetypes (or classes). In Planeshift, not many players fall under "Human fighter" or "Elf Rouge". Most of the characters I've seen are far more rounded. While you can certainly stretch 3.5 to allow you to play a fighter who can cast spells, it you would still be fighting the system.

Also, the Cortex System also encourages RP more than the D20 system. With mechanics like plot points, and complications to go along with assets, it is far easier to bring your characters to life. The D20 system has similar alternative rules, but they always feel like they have been added in as an after thought. Action points, and Flaws are only added in supplements. In addition, combat is often the focus of many D&D games, and a battle map is almost always present. How would things be measured in game? Would combat take place on another platform like Roll20?

I'm unsure how D20 mechanics will factor in to the setting as well, particularly when it comes to magic. Would Ways be considered schools of magic? Or would each class have access to different spells? And what of the characters who would likely be stuck with NPC classes, like dear old' Zalya? Would she be stuck being a level 3 commoner?

However things play out, count me in for this one. I've been playing Pen and Paper games for a long time now, and I pick stuff up pretty quickly, no matter what system you choose to use. I'm very familiar with 3.5, and plenty of other games. I'd love to be a player, or a GM if you need me. Send me a PM with more details if you'd like . Good luck!

[Mariana Xiechai]

Typically I'm not really for dice-based, but I've never actually tried it, and I've always been the try-before-you-choose sort. So I'd certainly be willing to give it a go. It might make combat more interesting. (Usually I just lose.  ) If you're up for it I'll make up a character!

[Mekora]

I really like this idea. It would be a refreshing change to other types of PS roleplay. I've never actually played these types of games before, however Zalya did a great job a while back creating a one night sort of Dungeon Master based RP.  I'm looking forward to it.

[Ascomanni]

Wow, well that Exploded quickly!  That is really exciting that we have a discussion going on this.

So I guess to help give everyone a little more, let me give you guys a little more understanding in our intentions. Rigwyn was toying with the idea of creating a setting/quest/series of quests where the players opponents were NPC's rather than other players. The idea was largely meant as a tool to help the person or people manage the action and such. We are still in the "ideas" phase and the discussion is meant to help see what people are looking at, hammer out some rules and regulations, and also see what sort of interest there was. A lot of this was generated in one night on PS chat. We are hopping for this discussion to generate a lot of the interest and particulars.

So the idea was never meant to be mandatory for players and may not even be used constantly by the DM, but rater as I said, a tool to help manage things when dealing with the NPC's set against the players in the RP.

I think Rigwyn was looking for all new characters for this so bringing in one that is experienced would be not an option. I know pathfinder is similar to 3.5, but this is, as of right now, it's own idea and using 3.5 as a base. To be honest, I was not sure if we were even going to have classes, but rather make archetypes with ability scores and the like. Magic is definatly an issue and will take some time to figure out how it gets implemented. I was thinking about the ways being schools of magic being equivalent to the ways as well, but unsure. If I was more experienced with the PS magic glyphs, I would suggest maybe even just a spell for spell substitution for the standard in game magic and then leave the RP invented spells up to the DM as a simple success/fail, but I don't know.

I am not familiar with the cortex system, but I agree, 3.5 can be a little intimidating at first. I was hoping to streamline it a little here in the discussion. maybe even limit it to combat and a few opposing skills and let the normal RP was of doing things stand for a lot of the minor interactions between characters and some NPC's.

But anyway, this is really exciting that there is interest and with a fair amount of people with experience with something similar. I think this has some potential to be an option for given storylines or individual quests.

[Rigwyn]

I was thinking that it would be ideal to integrate this dice system with the game as closely as possible - giving buffs and de-buffs for racial abilities and so on. For example, settings wise, Enki are supposed to have keen night vision, however, in the game, it's not implemented. The entire concept of illumination, terrain and distance is not really a factor in PS, so their night vision trait is never seen or experienced.  You can account for this in roleplay, but most of the weight is on the players to do this cooperatively. In the same way, Kran should have a natural bonus for armor because of their skin, red way users should have an affinity for blacksmithing, and so on.

Having a method for dicing in a way that does not make RP silly and that takes into consideration, a character's abilities - "which are gained via roleplay" and not via isolated training would be a plus. This might mean borrowing ideas from the d20 rules, or outright using the d20 rules- perhaps swapping race names where possible, tweaking a little here and there to make it fit.

We have all run into cases where you want your character to try something, but then there is question or disagreement about whether they should or could do the action in question. This may make such judgement calls easier - especially when playing with players who have very different ideas of what is plausible within this fantasy setting. Having predetermined rules and or odds for general actions and specific actions might help.

I could certainly help in bringing a little clarity to the settings side of things if others could help with the d20 rules side of things.

[Ascomanni]

Thanks Rigwyn. I was thinking the same and communicating it poorly. Maybe oothers can suggest a better system then 3.5, but one of the reasons I thought of 3.5 immediatly was i thought it matched well I saw stats as ability scores and jobs as skills. I was not suggesting we play 3.5 or ps, but borrow from it to impliment something akin to PS as a tool for RPs.

[Rigwyn]

I believe the d20 rules are also available online

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/getting-started
http://www.d20srd.org/

[Zalya]

I know pathfinder is similar to 3.5, but this is, as of right now, it's own idea and using 3.5 as a base.

Pathfinder is essentially 3.6. It takes 3.5, makes some minor changes, fixes some balance issues, and changes some general settings stuff. It is almost exactly the same.

I was thinking that it would be ideal to integrate this dice system with the game as closely as possible - giving buffs and de-buffs for racial abilities and so on. For example, settings wise, Enki are supposed to have keen night vision, however, in the game, it's not implemented. The entire concept of illumination, terrain and distance is not really a factor in PS, so their night vision trait is never seen or experienced.  You can account for this in roleplay, but most of the weight is on the players to do this cooperatively. In the same way, Kran should have a natural bonus for armor because of their skin, red way users should have an affinity for blacksmithing, and so on.

I actually did some of the work for you in terms of the races if you end up using Cortex. The Cortex system uses what are essentially trait bundles for races. I already put together a list of traits for each and every PS race. I had planned on working out a magic system for a PS campaign as well, though I never finished that. I'd be more than willing to continue it if there was interest in it. Send me a PM if you want to see those bundles.

I'm always skeptical about using the d20 system for anything that isn't Dungeons and Dragons. The d20 system simply doesn't have the flexibility or pacing to use for PS. Its very rules heavy, and that tends to take away from the story, especially for those in PS used to far more freestyle RP's. Classes don't work well in PS, because everyone is so different. Its harder to box Planeshifters.

One of the things I was planning on doing with this kind of idea, was taking a small group out of Yilakum to explore the labyrinths. It would give me plenty of freedom as a GM, as I could make things up, and not have them suddenly become non-canon because of a settings update. It would also make death a far scarier subject, as there would be no DR outside of Yilakum.

I believe the d20 rules are also available online

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/getting-started
http://www.d20srd.org/

The good thing about d20 is that the OGL makes it a lot easier to gain access too.

[Rigwyn]

Questions:

1. Can you explain briefly how this cortex system works?
2. How does one gain adequate knowledge of it?

[KayKay76]

Hello all. I have been reading this topic for a couple days now. And I would be interested as well. I haven't
done gaming like this for a while. So I looks foward to it. Sounds like fun. 

Player of Anysu