Challenge of the Star Knights: Delta Academy Beginings

Once their were a thousand schools for training the Star Knights. Eager students, the best in the galaxy, entered those hallowed halls of learning. Each was a beacon of hope and learning. During the war many schools fell to the forces of the Maggedon. Others were abandoned or hidden, lost to the sweep of ages. Now all that remain are fifteen, each hidden away through unity technology and remote locations. Delta academy is hidden away in the Marconi Traverse, on the very periphery of he civilized galaxy. While the Star Knight Academies still accept only the best of the best the politics and petty grievances still crop up. Delta Academy is where they send those students and teachers who are too much of a problem for the more prestigious academies.

If you want to read previous posts before digging into this one:
The Pitch
Rules Part 1
Rules Part 2
Ikhai
Species

Now your caught up. Lets get started on the problem at hand.

A big part of any school setting is the teachers and the headmaster(call them what you will) as well as the ancillary characters in and around the school. When setting out to make characters it is important to showcase and highlight these characters. They will be expositions characters primarily, though they can add more to the game than that. I would like to see them as sometimes adventure hooks, and complications, as well as being quest givers and those who explain. I was having a real rough go of it trying to sort out how I could make them work and make the players care about them.

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the school setup. I want there to be a bunch of teachers and for those teachers to have a set of mechanical effects in game. I was reading through some of my other games and the answer presented itself. I think I will do something like Icons from 13th Age but tweaked to fit this setting and fit the tropes I am aiming for.

When starting a new campaign/game the players will look over the list of teacher/mentor archetypes and get to set some relationships with them. Those relationships will be positive, negative, or conflicted. And they will be rated from one to three dice. I do not think they will have to have relationships with all the mentors/teachers, but they should each have relationships with two to three so that way you can get a solid idea of what each player is looking for in play and who they care about.

Those dice maybe used in game to gain social advantage, or a moral boost to a roll(through memory of encouragement or some such). How this works is this. When you are in a situation where you are acting either in accordance with the wishes of your mentor(for a positive relationship) or against the wishes of your mentor(for negative) you may roll the dice against a set difficulty. If you succeed you may use your relationship dice as an add on to your roll, or to gain access to something you might not have gained otherwise(I am still working on this and so it is less clear right now). If you fail the roll you may choose to still use the dice, but your relationship dice will decrease by one. Conflicted relationships could be used in either case, but the ramifications will be different depending on how you use them.

Right now this is just the very basics of the idea, so expect it to change as I try it out in playtesting. I would love to hear any thoughts on these mechanics as I am not entirely sure that this is the correct mechanical path to suit my game.

The Current List of Mentor Archetypes
The Uncaring Stickler
The Schemer
The Kindly Mentor
The Gentle Meddler
The Mother Figure
The Father Figure
The Chaotic Mess
The Social Climber
The Washed Up Master

I will probably add more and make alterations to these archetypes as I go.

I would also like to work out a method for building a relationship web so that the the players and GM would have a method of easily seeing possible ramifications for actions. I have thought about using the method in the Smallville RPG, or maybe something else...I am not really sure on that one if it is even needed. Other things I am working on in the setting are Orders, which are like houses in Harry Potter, groups you are all in together to bind you and give you rivals. I am still working out the details of those as I don't think a sorting hat type situation would sit all that well with some players. My current idea is that students are assigned to orders at random and the players are all just part of the same order, but I am not sure that would be all that great either. I need a way to get people to agree on an order while still allowing for all sorts of personality types and problem solving methodologies. I want to avoid pigeonholing people into certain types of behavior within given orders, but I also want the orders to feel unique and have personality.

It is an issue. I will probably do a whole post on it as I keep going round and round on it and can't seem to make it fit. So that is it for now. I had a decent idea(I think) and I think I am aiming in the right direction. Let me know what you think.

Challenge of the Star Knights: Ruminating on Rules Part 2

Part 1: The pitch
Part 2: Rules discussion part 1

There was only supposed to be one post on the rules mods I would be looking into for my game, However when writing up the last post I finding or inventing so many interesting ideas that I decided to split the post in two. In this one I will be delving a bit further in to rules mods and trying to explain my mindset a bit as I go through my options and choices. Lets get started, yeah?

Attributes and Skills
I could just go with one of the standard groupings of attributes and skills used in the various iterations of the D6 system throughout its long history. In looking through them, I found that I did not care for how they break down so much and I feel the need to work on a set of attributes that will fit my game a bit closer than the current sets do.

I ran across this post from the Walking Mind, and it is a fascinating look at how attributes are chosen and what that can mean for your game. I want to keep the number of attributes manageable, so I want less than seven, however I am not sure that three or four would do enough for what I want. I wan a game of rollicking space adventure focused around a group of students coming together to save the galaxy, or at least their section of it. Social stuff will be very important in that kind of game gaining and losing influence, the ability to work well together, and building networks of friends, rivals, and enemies all seem important. However at its heart the game is about playing Star Knights, so I think that there would be a lot of physical obstacles and confrontations as well. Though it is a school setting, I really don't see a need for a boat load of mental skills, as that is not really core to any activities they will be doing...maybe. So I think the breakdown on attributes that I want is two social attributes, three physical, and one mental. SO here are the ideas I have for the list:

Physical: Strength, Speed, Endurance(will probably change all of these names, but this gives me a solid starting point)
Social: Social Awareness, social control(less sure on these ideas)
Mental: Education(any Traveller fans out there?)

That is my current thinking on attributes, now to skills. Skills are both easier and harder for me. On the one hand I could just use them as they exist in the system and I know that will work. However I have had a few thoughts on this for a couple of different options for skills rather than just using the existing method.

Option 1: Don't have set skills but instead use something a little more freeform, like backgrounds. When a background would be useful in a situation add its level to the attribute dice for a roll and there you go. I am not sure I like this method, but it could lead to a lot of interesting stuff. I thought it worth mentioning.

Option 2: Instead of skill dice, you just have a rating with the skill which alters the difficulty(either subtracts from the difficulty number, or reduces the opponents die pool) of the roll. Again not sure if I like this, but it is interesting and would alter the way in which people look at the game...maybe.

Option 3: You have a maximum skill level(three or four dice) and you skills can never go beyond that. This is just a way to get around that huge dice pool people have mentioned many many times. Not sure I like this either.

Point of fact I am leaning toward a standard skill list with this game, though I will definitely be altering what skills are in the list and all that. I want the skills to feel more futuristic and also more school oriented. So any ideas on how to make that work by renaming existing skills would be appreciated.

The Basic Sketch on Ikhai Powers
This is currently very sketchy as I have a couple of different ways I could go with this and I am not really sure which is best or if I want to do any of the ideas I have had yet. My current thoughts are:

1. You have an Ikhai attribute with 4 skills however you choose one skill as your primary two as your secondary and the third is your opposition. Primary  skills cost the normal amount to advance and master. Secondary cost twice that to advance. And your opposition skill costs quadruple to advance.
Reinforce/buildup
Sense/hide energy/minds/thoughts
Manipulate objects
Create energy constructs

2. Your Ikhai abilities are an add on to existing skills and allow those skills to be temporarily boosted beyond what is possible. This is more nebulous even that the previous one as I am less certain how this would work other than increasing the scale in which that skill operates and maybe using skills without the needed tools...though that could get weird with stuff like vehicle operation...

I would love any thoughts on how to implement this as I think this particular facet of the game will be my biggest hurdle.

Vehicles
In standard D6 there is a bit of an issue with vehicles. The maneuver rating is added to the pilot's skill roll for dodging fire. By itself this is not such a huge issue, however it can lead to a massive disparity between the attackers roll and the defender's roll as the attacker does not get the same kind of equipment bonus. I have a solution to this that should work(I think).

When under attack you compare the maneuver ratings for each vehicle. If the defending vehicle has a higher rating then it gains a bonus d6 on the roll. If it has a lower rating then it has a penalty -d6 on the roll. That should reduce the number of dice added and all the odd results that follow while still allowing for maneuver ratings to matter.

Damage and Consequences
With  the D6 system there are currently two methods of handling damage, that I am aware of. Body Points and Wound Levels. After playing with them for a while I really dislike body points. They just feel off to me, and so I will be sticking with Wound Levels. Though I will be making some modifications to how damage works.

One of the issues that comes up with the wound system is that high strength characters can soak most damage, especially if they are wearing armor. I have a couple of thoughts on how to handle that:

1. When attacking  an opponent every die that is rolled that would be beyond what is needed to hit are added to the raw damage. So if you have four dice for attack and you need a twelve to hit; if three of your dice cover that 12 difficulty, your fourth die would be added to damage.

2. At the beginning of the attack action players may divide their dice pool into "to hit" pools, and "added damage pools", i.e. A character with 6d in Blasters can roll all six dice to hit, 4 dice to hit and add 2 dice to damage, or any variation of those 6 dice. The decision to divvy up between the two pools, gives it more of a tactical consideration.

3. This idea is a little further out there: Steal from Mouseguard and have a set of conditions that a character can mark rather than taking damage. This is kind of nebulous at the moment, but I think there is something to be said for it. It might also allow for social conflicts to have a little more tactical weight without having to construct a whole system for them.

Some Ideas that just didn't fit anywhere else
I had a couple of random ideas that I thought might be worth discussing, but didn't really seem to fit anywhere else so I will put them here.

If I wanted to add in something like Body Points, but I still wanted to avoid them on a systemic level I could add in force fields, like from Dune. Your force field can absorb a certain amount of hits and then it shuts down. I could even have a mystic Ikhai power that does a similar thing so that users of that could spend a turn making themselves tougher. Just a thought, and I will probably not use it. As soon as I did every Player Character would want to get a force field or that power, and the game would rapidly begin to revolve around that. Though perhaps the force fields shunt the damage into the environment and so cause hazards and problems for the heroes? As I said, just a thought that occurred to me.

I would like language and culture familiarity to be handled differently than skills. Perhaps a three tier system that lets you pick up familiarity rather quickly. You would spend CPs on it during the session. You may spend them(one per session) to gain the benefits of it in the moment. Once you have done that for three sessions(or something) you gain familiarity. And if you keep focusing on it like that you can eventually go native. Mind you, his would only be for games where people cared about different languages. Most gaming groups would not, and in fact that would be seen as a useless time sink.

A crazy idea: Seriously this is a crazy idea. I most likely won't use it, but it occurred and wanted to share it. So, if I choose to go with roll dice count successes(rather than normal roll dice add them up) I could do something like this: When you have increased your dice pool to ten(or whatever arbitrary number) rather than increasing it further you your skill drops back to 1d but your threshold for success goes up. So instead of a success on a 4+ you no get a success on a 3+. this would keep the dice pools lover and add in a sense of master(like in Heroquest/wars and Burning Wheel). Just a thought.

And that is the end of m first pass through the rules and the changes I will be making(or might be making) to the game. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter as I am still on the fence on a number fo issues. Comments, critiques, and ideas are always welcome. That is it for mechanics for the moment. The next post will be a bit more on the universe the star knights inhabit and how I see that. Sounds like fun.

Trek to the Stars Part 3: But what do they actually do?

I have been working on a new project for a little while now(her is Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), and I have been enjoying working through the ramifications of the rules and setting so far. I am now at the point where I need to start narrowing the field of play. Those who know anything about my design philosophy know that I am firm believer that play should be focused around a central conflict or theme. At heart I am always asking myself, "what do the player characters do in the game?" and, "how do the games rules help encourage that behavior?"

After I set out the mechanical basics of the game, in the last post, I got into a bit of a discussion about the emergent properties of play. During the discussion I came to a few conclusions about the setting and system. The system is heavily focused on choice(in the dice you choose to keep) and precision(you crit upon getting the exact target number). The system also focuses on pushing yourself beyond the normal limits(you can increase the difficulty to gain extra effect and you can spend character points to increase your number of rolled or kept dice) and seeking to do the impossible(failure grants bigger XP rewards than success). The way XP works also tends to lead to player proactivity and focus on choice(the only way to improve a skill is to find a legitimate use for the skill).

The setting, what there is of it, also has some implications. In discussing it, I realized that there were a couple of themes and genres running through the potential setting. There is big frontier feel to the setting so far. Humanity has spread beyond earth and have settled all throughout the solar system. This seems to indicate that in general populations of places will be lower per square mile than current populations. Also there are the ideas of exploration and expansion, with travel being somewhat slow and people living in the Kuiper belt and all. The expansion of the human form and ideas about what it means to be human(or sapient) leads to another area for expansion, exploration, and defining the frontier.  So I see several possible campaign frameworks that would work within  this setting(as it stands). I found this thread on rpg.net to be of much use in working out some basic campaign ides.

Potential campaign ideas:

1. You play as frontiersmen who must stand between barbarity and civilization. I see this as anywhere from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance to The Magnificent Seven, but in space. The focus would be on the nature of using force to protect the innocent. I could see things on the Martian frontier going this route, the miners on Mercury would also be a fine place for it, as could the tiny colonies out past Pluto. 
2. A game where you play roving lawmen who deliver mail and justice. Think of it as Dogs in the Vineyard throughout the solar system, or like the second half of Tombstone where Wyatt Earp is hunting down Cowboys with fiery vengeance. You could play as members of a federal law enforcement service keeping the peace throughout the state, or as members of something like Interpol, but for the whole solar system. You would spend most of the game hunting fugitives, terrorists, and smugglers.
3. the political game, where you are back in civilization and dealing with the players and movers and shakers. Whether it is the Genetically Enhanced rulers of the Saturn Baronies or the infighting within the libertarian Free Republic of Rand(still working on names), the idea of this game is to play the elite in their fight for control of power and influence. It is very Dune-esque in my mind. 
4. Rebels still fighting the last war after it has been over for five years or more. I am unsure as to what the war was about, but my view of the setting as a western requires some sort of war to have ended recently. Basically during the war a number of states established a stronger power base and subsumed several smaller nations and rebel states. In this you would play the remnants of the armies that fought in the war. You may have lost nearly everything, but you still have your pride and your will not give up.
5. You play settlers/miners out on the fringe, this would be mostly about dealing with a small community and the struggles of making a living on the edge of livability. The game would focus in interpersonal problems and dealing with unexpected problems. External threats would be meteor collisions, radiation leaks, bandits/pirates, and machinery failure. 
6. Traders/performers/travelling scrap collectors and repair men(for big stuff that is hard for folks to repair on their own) travelling the routes across the solar system would be pretty fun as well. You would travel from place to place trying to make a living through your skills and wits. 
7. Missionaries or travelling priests ministering to the masses throughout the system. I think this would be an interesting one to work with. Again it would be a bit like Dogs in the Vineyard, though with less shooting.  This is a campaign type that I have not seen much of in many games, so working on this would be kind of cutting a new path. That does appeal. Also it would allow for some interesting conflicts related to religion and its role in civilization.
8. The love boat in space, seriously, think about it. It would be an awesome game. 
9. Planetary surveyors on a mission to detail the lands and resources of a region, I think it would be neat to play interplanetary Luis and Clark. I have some ideas on how I would do it as well, so that is a thing. 
10. Artifact investigation and recovery teams. After the last war there were many historical artifacts missing after raids and pillaging. Think The Monument's Men but in space. 
11. Journalists seeking to get the scoop on various big incidents is another type of campaign you don't see all that much in games(or at least, I haven't seen it much). I am unsure how to go about doing it, but it would be a neat campaign framework, or at least a solid character concept.

So those are the basic campaign ideas I had for this project. What do you think? Is there an area you see that I didn't cover? Are there some ideas that you think would just be terrible in practice? I would love to hear your thoughts, comments, and concerns.