Rpgs

I knew this would happen.

My brain goes through phases. I tend to get interested in something, and then as my excitement starts to wane, a new idea drives me in a new direction. In some cases it’s a whole new subject or project. In other cases, its a fundamental rework of the project I’m working on.

To explain: After describing the system to one of my friends, he made a suggestion that grabbed my attention. I liked it enough that I started rethinking the entire Power Roll mechanic. The idea that my friend gave me was “what if the Manifestations give you a pool of dice that you can distribute between them for actions? That way you can decide where to put your energies.”

Now, I had given a fairly bare-bones description of the full(ish) ruleset, so I needed to adjust a few things, but the result is…well, I could say simpler or cleaner, but really what appeals to me about it is it’s different. I’d had a good length of time to get used to the other way of rolling, so this new idea was, if not better, at least new.

Last time I explored the strategic impact Agents had on the game. This time, I’d like to get down to some brassy tic-tacs, and look at one of the most important and fundamental aspects of Manifestation Combat: Abilities.

Abilities are anything from basic moves to special attacks. Each Manifestation has at least 1, possibly 2. They can be active, passive, reactions, stances, or anything similar. They are, in short the possible actions any Manifestation can make.

Each active Ability also has a Sync ability: when a Power Roll is made, any die that shows equal or less than the Manifestation’s Bond level causes a special effect. This can be adding damage, conditions, free movement, or anything that a regular ability can do.

On second thoughts, we could turn Sync from an Ability bonus to a Manifestation bonus: the effect will therefore be the same whichever ability the Manifestation uses.

Last time I discussed how Manifestations “die.” This time, I’d like to develop Agents as a tactical consideration.

Because Agents are units too; They move about the battlefield and engage in actions. They can have weapons, tools, and one of the two actions every turn can be used by them. All that said, what impact do they have on the game?

The obviously simple answer is “a target.” It makes sense that Manifestations are only present because of the Agent, so if the Agent “dies,” then so do the other Manifestations. This would turn every combat into a complex “defend the Agent” combat, but without significant balancing and rule-rewriting, the best strategy is a cross-the-map sniper that kills the Agent in one hit. I think we can do better.

How do Manifestations die?

“Die” probably isn’t the best word for it. In Pokémon, the mons simply “faint.” You can’t permanently lose a Pokémon, and I doubt Manifestations are any more transient. They must be able to “demanifest,” however, else combats will last forever, and all the damage-dealing and condition-applying is so much nonsense.

So, how does a Manifestation demanifest?

The obvious answer is, as always, their HP reaches 0. That’s not a terrible metric — there are reasons why cliches stick around — and a lot of systems will naturally fit into it. While I may find a more interesting ludo-narrative later, this is a good place to start. Let’s play with some numbers.

Last time, I looked at Abilities and what sort of “Special Effects” Sync could add to their basic attacks. One of the more obvious options is conditions, so this time I’d like to look into what kind of conditions Manifest could have.

Luckily, I have two great sources of inspiration: Trespasser and Demon Crawl – Gothic.

Demon Crawl – Gothic, similar to its spiritual sequal Steel Hearts, has a small number of conditions, one for each damage-type. Designed to be a quick paced action game, these conditions aren’t the more narratively focused conditions like prone or grappled. Instead, they are closer to the hinderances of an action-adventure video game. Burning, for example, causes you to take three damage whenever you deal damage to an enemy. Rotting means you take an extra 2 damage whenever damage is dealt to you. Being Hexed causes you to receive 1 damage every square you move.

Last time, I decided that abilities have both a basic effect and a Sync effect; a bonus that becomes stronger the higher your Manifestation’s Bond is.

But what kind of bonuses could a Manifestation have? For that matter, I’ve been talking a lot about tactical combat, but I haven’t really done anything with it, have I?

Let’s fix that. We can look at D&D along with any number of other systems to get a feel for a “baseline” tactical combat system. Everything from Lancer to Zafir, Strike! to Voyager: Tactics has some ideas worth exploring.

I don’t see a problem with starting with the most common assumptions: a battle map, miniatures, movement and areas-of-effect…fairly standard stuff. At its most basic, each unit on the board has a certain number of spaces they can move each turn, and a certain number of “actions,” which can be either attacks, special abilities, extra movement, etc.

Last time, I decided that the Manifestations will make all their actions with a die roll based on their Tier and Bond ratings: XdY, where X is their Bond, ranging from 1 to 5, and Y is their Tier, ranging from a d4 to a d12. I also decided to place a limit on leveling, such that a Manifestation will only ever level up 5 times.

But the math on that is a little squiffy. If a Manifestation focuses on leveling their Bond over their Tier, they are, in effect, hamstringing themselves. Take a look at this Anydice program:

output 1@2d12 named “2d12”

output 1@5d6 named “5d6”

If you look at the “at least” tab, you can easily see how the 5d6 Manifestation has a higher chance of rolling better than a 3 or 4 than 2d12, but 2d12 has a far better chance of rolling 6 or better than 5d6 has of rolling a 6. Both Manifestations have about an equal chance of rolling a 5 or better, but for one that means a 5 or a 6, while the other can go up to 12. That’s hardly balanced.

Last time, I looked into a core “dice-roll” mechanic, and decided to link each Manifestation’s roll to their Tier and Bond stats, their level and friendship scores, respectively. I liked the idea that both of these stats decided what dice you rolled “to hit” with any Manifestation, so I explored three different possible rolls: XdY, 1dX+Y, or Xd20+Y

At the moment, 1dX+Y is the simplest of the three. It’s linear, low-effort, and familiar for most RPGers. Since there isn’t too much to explore with it compared to the other two, I’m going to leave it in my back pocket for now, and see how interesting I can make XdY and Xd20+Y.

For both, we can require the Player to roll multiple dice and pick the die with the highest number showing. Since both roll multiple dice, the major difference is whether the size of the die changes or not. Therefore, I will call these two options the Static option, (Xd20+Y) and the Dynamic option. (XdY)

Last time, I looked at Emotional Types and Stats, and gave myself quite a bit of things to think about. Today, I’d like to go back to the two “stats” I had come up with earlier: Bond and Tier. Tier is akin to level in Pokémon, while Bond is closer to Friendship.

Okay, but what does that mean?

Emotions are tumultuous things. Narratively, our culture is rife of stories about how people lose control of themselves, their emotions getting the better of them, and similar turns of phrase.

If Manifestations are embodied emotions, then the idea of a spectrum between “controlled” and “powerful” makes sense. Bond is a representation of how attuned you are to the emotion, how in-control of the Manifestation you are. Tier is representational of its core “power,” its strength and maximum power output.

Does this mean it makes more sense to have Bond and Tier as a spectrum stat, or as two separate numbers? Or, Bond could be a spectrum while Tier is a static number?

Last time, I broke down a few of the requirements that a Manifestation could have in game. I also decided on four “Types” of emotional Manifestations.

So, going off of the basic four Emotions of Fear, Anger, Delight, and Grief…how do they interact?

Working with the assumption that an Anger Manifestation is fundamentally different than a Grief Manifestation, how deep do those differences go? They could be as simple as limiting some of the available actions/abilities a Manifestation has, or as complex as having completely different rules for rolling dice and taking actions.