RPG PBP (Design Phase)

[Orzel]

After looking at the pbp drop out thread, I revisited one of my old ideas of a RPG designed for PbP.

The premise is to have a rpg where players can roleplay together but missing players do not stall the game.

I've thought of a few factor that would facilitate this idea.

1) Turnless
RPGPBP would be turnless. All the players actions would be declared at once, then the result of the whole contest/conflict/challange would be determined.

2) Resource based
Because there is only one increment of time in the challenge, luck would play to much of a factor if dice were used frequently. Instead RPGPBP would requiere players to sacrifice resourses directly into challenges and resource management would be key. Resources can be eshausted, damaged, and destroyed. Managing how they are refresheed is the game.

3) DM rolls all the dice
In order in make some suspense, there should be some random element. But in the interest of time, the DM does all the rolls.

4) Overspend
One method of handling missing persons is to allow players to spend more resources than what is needed. Therefore an active player can spend resource that a missing player would be collaborated to the challenge.

5) Shared Resources
Another way to solve missing players is to have a set of resources that all players havve access to. With an extra pool of resources, players can at least replace missing contribution at a penalty.


Basic ideas so far.

There are two types of resources, master and associated. Master resources are spent to increase associated resources. Associated resources are used to complete challenges.

Associated Resources are further split into three more types, skills, storages, and pools. Skill resources represent how many a particular kind of skill the character is proficent in (Athlete- Agility +10). Storage skills determine how many of a particular kind of unique item a character have available at once (Equipment- Vorpal Sword). Pool resources represent an amount of a resource available (Sanity 5/10).

Challenges and conflict would be resolved by comparing a player's skill to the challenges difficulty. Storage skills can be used to increase a skill's value and pool resources can be used to increase it farther.

Depending on how successful or unsuccesful, the status of resources change. Resources can be exhausted and be unavailable for a noticeable amount of time. They can also be be weakened and be reduced to a lower value for a time. Resources can also be damaged and be unavaible until another resource is spent to make it available again.

Proposed Resources

Master Resource:
Strength
Associated Resources:
Athlete (Number of Physical skills the character has)
Weight (Amount of equipment and magic items the character can carry off base)
Stamina (physical energy and immune system)
Health (physical toughness)

Master Resource:
Intelligence
Associated Resources:
Knowledge (Number of mental skills the character has)
Memory
Emotions (Number of major emotions a character can have)
Sanity
Crafts (items)

Master Resource:
Charisma
Assoiacated Resources:
Converstion (number of social skills)
Morale
Followers
Favors

Master Resource:
Magic
Associated Resources:
Mana
Conjurations
Spells
Artifacts

Master Resource:
Wealth
Associated Resources:
Property
Equipment
Money
Employees

Shared Only Resources:
Time
Space
Locals (local tradesmen, experts, and artisans)


Anyone like the idea? Have suggestions? Want to help?

[Samurai Jill]

I think I had some ideas on this a while back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124470). Not sure if it'll be useful. I tried playtesting for a bit, but it didn't really work out. I agree with several of your ideas, though.

My advice would be to make the system as simple as humanly possible, and then some. I've found that most players' eyes just glaze over if they have to learn more than half an A4 page's worth of abstract rules.

Try to focus on the strengths of PBP role-play- the leisure to come up with lengthy descriptions and revise things retroactively- and only consult the dice when two participants come to some obvious disagreement over how things 'would happen'. The GM should mainly exist as a detached referee, rather than being an invested participant: As long as it's plausible, just let the players describe whatever the hell they want and mediate any disagreements.

If you're using pure resource-management as a means of conflict resolution, then Amber Diceless might be worth a look. I've also suggested the Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard system of scripting several moves out in advance to save time during the more elaborate conflicts.

Anyways. I might be interested in playtesting if you can get a few more folks together.

[Orzel]

I looked at Amber and Wushu. They are good games for ides. I didn't want RPGPBP to be too freeform or too rulesheavy. Here's my Idea of a challenge.

The Narrator says a big monster is attacking the town. ItMs a moderate challenge and he's giving them 2 points of Time to defeat the monster.

The warrior's player decides to take the brunt. He has 12 Stregnth and has 3 Althele skills (Combat, Jumping, Climbing). The rest is spent evenly on Weight (for his magic sword), Stamina, and Health. The Combat Skill (12) and his sword (3) gives him 15.

The noble has Elite Soldiers via her wealth and sends all 5. This brings combat up from 15 to 30. Because the GM only gave 2 points of time, she can't call in a Favor.

The wizard (the one who created the warriors magic sword) says he will dump 10 points of Mana into his weaker Buff spells for 6 more combat.

The thief is missing for 2 days (weekend).

Thw wizard sends his familiar to scout in the thief's absence. This costs them 1 Time and gives them back info to know the DC is near 40.

Know this the warior spends some Stamina, the noble enters the fight, and the wizard uses some Mana and the last of the Time to summon back the soilders the noble sent to a nearby town.

Gm rolls and the party defeats the monster. The warrior is now at half his maximum Stamina. 3 of the nobles men all injured and unavailable for a week. The wizard's mana is low and his familiar was scratched up scouting.

[Samurai Jill]

I looked at Amber and Wushu. They are good games for ides. I didn't want RPGPBP to be too freeform or too rulesheavy. Here's my Idea of a challenge.
I couldn't really comment more, though the idea of resource management as a tactical element seems to be logical. It would give the proceedings a certain 'edge'.

The thief is missing for 2 days (weekend).
Part of why I recommended the BW system is that defining personality traits makes it easier for another player to take over for an absentee. Not sure if the players would be happy with it, but it could work in principle.

The wizard sends his familiar to scout in the thief's absence. This costs them 1 Time and gives them back info to know the DC is near 40.
The problem here is that the players need to consult with the GM again before they can actually decide what to do. Time delays are something I'd be inclined to avoid, though I'm not certain what you mean by time limits here. Is this in terms of actual real-time days?

(One other idea I've been toying with- if the character creation process is straightforward enough- is that you might not require the players to establish everything about their characters at once. They could leave some 'character points' unspent and introduce new traits or abilities during play as different situations emerge. "Yeah, I know lock-picking. I used to sneak into the Bursar's office and nick reagents for experiments back at the college.")

[BarroomBard]

I would prefer setting up the rules so it is mostly diceless, or so that the resolution requires only one step. I think it is best if you make it so challenges can mostly run themselves - players (or even the GM) who can't log on don't slow things down because there is no "turn order".

I would say that you can take some ideas from Wushu... have the players roll their dice at the end of each of their posts, and have the players' actions take place how and when they say.

The challenge lasts until the players have worn down the challenge's value. They do this by spending their resources to roll dice. Successful dice lowers the value of the challenge. Players can post as much as they want, whenever they want (maybe you can limit this by having the players' resources "refresh" in some way, or by mutual rules), and the challenge ends when the value reaches zero.

Perhaps the players only have so many resources they can spend per "round" and this number refreshes either 1) a certain amount of time (say, 24 hours) after the last person posts or 2) when all the players have posted at least once, which ever comes first.

By "automating" a challenge like this, you can deal with missing players in a way that doesn't drag down the game for anyone else.

****

To apply this to your prior example:

The Narrator tells the party that a large monster is attacking the town. The Narrator tells the party that it is a Moderate challenge, with a value of 40 (maybe they will only get to know a ballpark range of the challenge, until they get closer, but they should know the value to an extent).

The fighter's player narrates his attacking the monster. He spends resources to reduce the monster's challenge value by 15.

The noble's player posts next, noting that the challenge's value has been reduced. He narrates sending his soldiers into the combat, and spends his resources to reduce the monster's challenge value by an additional 15.

The mage's player comes on next, and uses his buff spells to further decrease the monster's challenge value (in this case, the buff spells, while narratively affecting the fighter or the soldiers, is applied directly to the challenge value for simplicity). The mage's player notes in his post that the monster is reduced to CV 4.

A day passes, and the players note that the rogue's player isn't going to post. So, one of the other players can post, spending more resources to finish off the monster.

***

The GM doesn't need to roll any dice, and is involved merely as a referee and an instigator. The refresh rate can be more or less, depending on the activity level of your game.

[Samurai Jill]

I would prefer setting up the rules so it is mostly diceless, or so that the resolution requires only one step. I think it is best if you make it so challenges can mostly run themselves - players (or even the GM) who can't log on don't slow things down because there is no "turn order".

I would say that you can take some ideas from Wushu... have the players roll their dice at the end of each of their posts, and have the players' actions take place how and when they say.
Other folks recommended Wushu to me in the earlier threads too. I'd be willing to play that way as an experiment, sure.

The problem I saw in Wushu is you're basically just wearing away hit points from some fixed obstacle or opponent. Player narration doesn't actually mean anything, aside from providing colour/description. The Rule of Veto is supposed to fix this, but the problem is, vetoes by other players could bogs things down just as much as GM consultation. (I dunno- maybe as the players grew familiar with eachother, they'd get a better handle on what is and isn't acceptable, so I wouldn't crop up much.)

[BarroomBard]

Well, there is a certain amount of trade-off you have to have when you want to design a system for PBP. The crunchier and more tactical a system is, the less it is going to work for what you want to do.

It depends on how important roleplaying is to your game. Wushu gets the game out of the way of the roleplaying, so the players are free to just be awesome, and tell a cool story. Its best to think of the mechanics in Wushu merely as a way to pace the storytelling.

I think the idea that you should take away is that a good way to accomplish what you want (a PBP game that avoids problems from absent/ inactive players) is:

1) remove initiative, so the players aren't dependent on someone posting at a certain time, or in a timely fashion.
2) reduce the number of steps in a round as much as possible. Exalted is a bad game for PBP, for example, because each player has ten steps in every action they take during combat, which results in an unnecessarily large number of low-content posts.


I may have gone to far in suggesting that the GM is removed entirely from the resolution system.

[Samurai Jill]

Well, there is a certain amount of trade-off you have to have when you want to design a system for PBP. The crunchier and more tactical a system is, the less it is going to work for what you want to do.

It depends on how important roleplaying is to your game. Wushu gets the game out of the way of the roleplaying, so the players are free to just be awesome, and tell a cool story. Its best to think of the mechanics in Wushu merely as a way to pace the storytelling.
Vaguely speaking, yes. But I think you may be conflating system crunchiness with an inherent focus on tactics and powergaming (the usual role-play/roll-play false dichotomy. It's entirely possible to have a very crunchy system that revolves largely around personality-simulation.)

I agree that crunch has to be avoided here so far as possible, but conversely, one of the benefits of PBP is that you can really, really take your time and think about what you want do/say/write. Another possible workaround to the Veto problem would be allow an objecting player to revise offending posts retroactively (which, in it's way, is similarish to how things work in standard Wushu.)

Anyway, it may be impossible to say whether it works or not until after playtesting.

[Samurai Jill]

Anyone like the idea? Have suggestions? Want to help?
Anyways, not looking to hijack the thread. Just to reiterate, I'd be willing to playtest with whatever system you'd like to use.