The Official OTC TBRPG Planning and Organization Topic

[Archer Vonn]

He said rolls it doesn't count

[Alex Humva]

I pondered briefly using d20 rolls to see if someone's runic experiment failed.Then I realized that if I need dice to figure out if meddling with a heat rune exploded in your face, that probably says things about me being the GM of the Arcane. So I'll just be sticking to gut instinct to see who loses what digits.Speaking of which, with any luck I can draft the overview of the magic system. I'm currently investigating options about pictures, because pictures would be nice to go with the overview.So no one's been too vocal against risking their digits getting blown off, so I think I'm good about that. The common sense rule and all that.

[Light]

Okay, so I am recruiting staff for ME: Division. Already have a co-host, but I would like to have a couple of assistants.

[Flex Lord Splash]

I pondered briefly using d20 rolls to see if someone's runic experiment failed.Then I realized that if I need dice to figure out if meddling with a heat rune exploded in your face, that probably says things about me being the GM of the Arcane. So I'll just be sticking to gut instinct to see who loses what digits.Speaking of which, with any luck I can draft the overview of the magic system. I'm currently investigating options about pictures, because pictures would be nice to go with the overview.So no one's been too vocal against risking their digits getting blown off, so I think I'm good about that. The common sense rule and all that.

I actually prefer it if my digits get blown off, only way to live.

[Alex Humva]

Yeah. Just keep in mine that I'm a huge fan of the Gamble Factor, that oh-so-good principle Teebs blessed us with. If you're experimenting a bit too quicky and a bit too riskily with, say, a heat rune and set your house on fire, there is a very good chance your character will die.Similarly if you try to wrest power away and fail, you're neck is going to have a bad day.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

However, I do not think that it should be "okay you made a failed attempt at a coup you're dead end of story," nor do I have any intention of making it like that. It will only be in situations where you have screwed up so badly that certain consequences are inevitable that they will be presented as being, well, inevitable - similarly, the consequences will obviously fit the situation. With runes, however, I feel the need, as the de jure GM, to remind the apparent de facto GM that, if they are made too impractical, players - and this includes myself - will opt to just shoot their enemies instead.

[Alex Humva]

Of course; saying 'you failed, time to die' every single time is stupid. If you make your daring escape and go to a country that doesn't hate you, your business. That's the whole point of the Gamble Factor; it's not the GM abusing players, it's common sense being applied to a greater level than what you usually see in RPGs, though it's more apparent in BRPGs of the past.Dangerous=/=impractical. The diesel engine is arguably better than a horse, doesn't mean Diesel didn't lose some of his fingers along the way.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

The process of inventing the diesel engine was dangerous. If it had continued to extract a pound of flesh for every mile driven, bicycles would be very popular.Moreover, the diesel engine only had to be invented once. Every time a new idea is tried with runes, by the sound of it, players are risking life and limb.

[Alex Humva]

Only the dangerous ones. If you want to not risk your digits, take an easier route like life runes or light runes. Alternatively, simply practice safe research practices.I'm just saying if someone is stupid and rushes things (and I've specifically said the word rush/ing numerous times now), there's going be risks involved. If you simply sit in your alchemist's basement and patiently spend a few hours drawing out your rune, feeding a tiny amount of power to it so that it doesn't rip a hole in the universe, then study it's effects, you'll be fine.If you're escaping some muggers and decide to invent a new rune on the spot though, that might end badly for you.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Well if it really is just common sense, is there any need to emphasize it? I get that some people are likely, without a warning, to do some pretty silly things, but a name like the "gamble factor" is a bit ominous. Maybe just a line of fine print in the rules?

[Havelock Vetinari]

Common sense is, unfortunately, rather uncommon.

[Alex Humva]

I believe the Gamble Factor was invented by Teebs because, over in that distant realm of BRPGs, people would often raid enemy bases and, because of the 'player will not kill a player' rule, be able to get away scotch free. Teebs was annoyed by this and dubbed the Gamble Factor, which said that if you go into a situation and it's quite obvious you should die, you are going to die.Of course plenty of people used logic and sense to avoid death, and Teebs was perfectly fine with this. I share his opinions on the matter, mostly. But yes, as Vahki put so well, common sense unfortunately needs to be spelled out in RPGs because people tend to loose sight of it a bit.It's like you telling people that in IL3 you will slap them silly if they don't follow the rules. That's general knowledge that GMs can slap you silly if you break the rules. Still needs to be said though.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[Lara White]

For the record, I recall CJ inventing the Gamble Factor to punish people for trying to invade zombie hordes.

[Havelock Vetinari]

For the record, I recall CJ inventing the Gamble Factor to punish people for trying to invade zombie hordes.

....You use artillery for that. Everyone knows that. Or bombers. Seriously how did they think this would end well?!.....Oh. Metagaming. Duh.

[Alex Humva]

Ah, CJ. I get him and Teebs mixed up quite a bit....Wait, weren't they the same person, just different names? *heads off to check*

[Lara White]

I have no idea.@ Basilisk. it was post-apocalyptic. There was no arty. :w:

[Havelock Vetinari]

@ Basilisk. it was post-apocalyptic. There was no arty.

Then you make some! Cannons don't exactly require extremely high-tech infrastructure! Edited September 13, 2012 by Basilisk

[Alex Humva]

Actually, you'd be surprised. Gunpowder cannons took several centuries to get battlefield worthy due to the lack of proper metallurgy. Even afterwards there was a small chance everytime you lit one of those things it'd blow up in your face.Unless you happen to be a mechanical engineer versed in smelting and cannon engineering, you're more likely to make something that'll kill you rather than the enemy.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[Lara White]

...That being said, it was set in Metru Nui. With Toa available. So there's that.

[Havelock Vetinari]

I'm sure there are numerous books on the subject. The zombies don't find books edible and most forces that survive said zombies have to be fast and mobile. Libraries are stationary. So are archives.See what I'm getting at?It taking place in a formerly high tech city with an entire sector devoted to research just makes it easier.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Basilisk

[Alex Humva]

Set in the bionicle universe, yeah, it'd be hilariously easy. Set in modern real world, probably not so much. Go to the library, get all the books you want, and then go build me a mortar cannon with scrap metal within the month. Time limit because the zombies are eventually going notice you, and building on the go is only going make it harder.It could be done, but building a functional cannon is a far cry from building a good cannon. The great metalsmiths of their era still made terrible cannons back in the 12-14th centuries. It was only a simple idea being accidentally discovered that made it possible to create reliable cannons. For those curious, that discovered was flipping the mold; in blacksmithing, when you melt the metal all the impurities sink to the bottom, assuming they're heavier than the metal you're pouring of course. The explosion is at the bottom of the cannon. See the problem? So one day someone had the brilliant idea to have bellmakers, who had realized this long ago and fixed it, make their cannons. And there, a cannon that only blows you up every few years.Now when the zombies rise up, we all know one important step to making cannons.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[Xomeron]

On the subject of Runes, what sort of runes will be available? you mentioned Light, Life, and Heat so far.

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

Question on the runes, how much groundwork for these already exists in-game? Lets say I'm trying to combine a rune for speech and a rune for binding into a rune for silence, is that a thing that would already exist as it could be pretty useful? Or is any use of runes going to be new and invented by the player?

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Ah, well, those are form-runes, that tell what sort of energy you're dealing with. Apart from them (which I have made designs for, but have not yet made versions that are ready for display), there are also the runes that give the details of what the compound rune actually does.Regarding the types of energy... Let it be known now that if you end up knowing in-game about these when you have no valid excuse for knowing it, the Khanates will unite for just as long as it takes to raze whatever city the offending character is in to the ground, and to mount your character's head on a pike.Ahem: Void, Eldritch, Life, EM Spectrum, Electromagnetism, Kinetic, Thermal, Strong Nuclear Force, Weak Nuclear Force@Power: There will, to my understanding, be pre-existing work on runes, but not a whole lot, and it will have to be found first, as in opening up a tomb or whatever and prying a nice dusty tome from Sir Deadalot's bony dead hands.

[Sisen]

Ah, CJ. I get him and Teebs mixed up quite a bit....Wait, weren't they the same person, just different names? *heads off to check*

Two entirely different people.

[Xomeron]

Could we work Gravity into there as well? Since we're already dealing with several universal forces...

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

One of the big problems with gravity is that it's so much weaker than all of the other forces - a magnet the size of a pencil can pull a paper clip away from, well, Earth. There's also the issue with the nature of gravity being, essentially, distortions in the fabric of space-time caused by the presence of mass - were I to include gravity, that could potentially violate the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, which I'm really trying to avoid.

[Xomeron]

There's always the simple solution of having gravity runes require an energy source to power them.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

All runes require an energy source to power them. With gravity, however, you would be attempting to simulate enough mass to counter-act the gravity well of the planet itself, if you wanted to actually do anything.Therefore, quite apart from my personal dislike for gravity manipulation, gravity runes would be basically useless without a ridiculous amount of power behind them.

[Alex Humva]

I feel for you Xom; I originally wanted gravity runes, with the same justification you gave actually (being part of the fundamental forces), but Rover's argument was persuasive enough that I changed my mind.The magic system will make a lot more sense when I actually finally draft the darn thing. I'm going have to bugger over to my PMs and see about getting pictures of runes shortly, though draft still comes first, because the poor sod (read: Rover) in charge of getting the pictures needs to actually know how to draw them, which requires me getting my draft together. Rest assured that I do have an understanding of how it's going work, if admittedly still stuck in my head.To answer Power's question and speak generally, there will be runebooks. Runebooks are basically catalogs made by runewriters of the past; they don't have to be fancy or special, a runebook could be a scrawling on a cave wall. Runebooks will be found mostly in libraries, assuming you don't live in a nation that burns anything and everything related to witchcraft, old tombs, dusty attics... really, anywhere you'd expect to find a journal or research manual. Keep in mind though that runebooks can be written by nasty buggers and thus someone might intentionally mislabel a rune and then nastiness.Because it'd be absurdly painful starting out without it, players get to have found a runebook outlining basic runic mechanics and a few rune types, which they get to choose. From there forth, assuming you put some brain cells to it, you can riddle out how things work. No, you can't just say "Jim Bob studied and came up with something" and expect me to tell you. You gotta use your deductive skills. Thankfully researching the innerworkings of runes, if you practice common sense, isn't that difficult and actually rather simple once you pick up on the underlining patterns.I feel it should be clearly stated; the world at large does not know about runewriters. Basically, think to the 1860s and their view of magic and the like. That's effectively what we'll have, unless Rover and me disagree over that, but i think we discussed it before and agreed on it previously. This is because runewriters don't exactly have much of a life expectancy. Besides gaining their abilities by a fluke of nature, most never go anywhere with it, and more kill themselves trying. This limits you to a very small amount alive at any given time, and most will never go past petty crime or small scale runes. Now, the few that do prosper and learn the intricacies... those are the ones that are the reason why when you go to the aristocrats and the nobles, you make heads turn mentioning runes and their masters. Obviously it's still a case by case basis, but as a general rule the more in-the-know a person is, the more likely they're aware that all this magic nonsense isn't quite as nonsensical as modern society would like it to be.Sorry if I rambled too much.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

I feel the need to point out that as the weak/strong nuclear forces weren't really known at this time (and electromagnetism wasn't known to be a unified force), if you know about them and call them exactly that, it's a pretty clear red flag for metagaming. I would advise reading the Wikipedia articles on them to know exactly what they mean on a scale that's observable by humans in 1860.

[Alex Humva]

And as a minor arcane intricacy, any runebooks you discover are probably going be post-5th century. Anything older and you're going get runes that no longer work. Why this happens is actually a plot point, whenever someone goes and tries to use, say, an ancient Egyptian runebook and finds that their runes no longer work.

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

So rather than think they're based on modern day physics we're going to think they're based on the four humours, or classical four elements?

[Alex Humva]

Well, 1860 is well within range of Telsa's first experiments, so unless you're playing as Jim Bob the Farmer, I'm pretty sure late Victorian era science was slightly better than that.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

Just because Tesla was doing his early experiments doesn't mean people had a good general knowledge of them. People in 1860 still believed some stupid stuff.You'd probably be aware of electricity and magnets to some extent, but you wouldn't know they're a unified force, and thus you wouldn't be likely to just know that they've got one form-rune. Thermal, kinetic, and life you would likely understand as 'energies', but I'm not betting on anyone just knowing what a life form-rune looks like. Void and eldritch you're about as likely to know from the beginning as you are to know the outcome of the 1968 US Presidential election, and the nuclear forces... well, maybe some alchemist stumbled across one of them, but the chances of you or anyone else understanding them are pretty slim.

[Alex Humva]

I suspect that, as a result, more schooled peeps will have a lot better time at this....Which is hilarious, because so far the character list is a British or Viking librarian, Moriarty, and two Islamic scholars.Only way to figure out void or eldritch I suspect, would be to find a runebook detailing them. How the guy before you found out is probably a whole plot point within itself.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Void Prophet Alex Humva

[BenLuke]

Only way to figure out void or eldritch I suspect, would be to find a runebook detailing them. How the guy before you found out is probably a whole plot point within itself.

Hah.Necronomicon, here we come!

[Alex Humva]

Something like the Necronomicon, yes.Doesn't help that the eldritch tomes are actually one of the sources of eldritch energy. Apparently sticking a bunch of eldritch runes together in the same place creates the very power they need, though sticking a bunch of them together could be, ah, unwise in the long run.

[HeavyMetalSunshineSister]

It should also be noted, while Humva is explaining things that your characters will have to find out for themselves, that energy conversion is a bit tricky with void and eldritch energy. As I understood it, void energy conversions are one-way - you can convert from it but not to it. Eldritch energy cannot, I think, be converted either way, save that void energy can be converted to it.

[Alex Humva]

Yes, void and eldritch have a funny relationship with each other.The results of attempting to convert one form of energy into eldritch energy (and conversion runes, while I haven't entirely settled on a shape for them, are rather elementary once you have the outline) will either end with an Access Denied error, a puff of smoke, or maybe both.