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YouLostMe
2011-11-14, 10:08 AM
So hey guys, I know the LoL forums and a few other places have been tossing around the desire for a LoL TTRPG, and I'm really into the concept. Making a TTRPG LoL game would be badass, but the game doesn't quite exist to help TTRPG play.

There are a few things I want from a LoL TTRPG:
Non-Field of Justice Encounters: I want to see more than champions playing in the League--there is a war going on, Valoran's got monsters galore, there's an enormous political hubbub. You can do all sorts of crazy crap with that, and the game should take advantage of it.
Summoner AND Champion Activity: Summoners appear to have the power to light people on fire, drain their energy, and heal champions on the Fields, and the important League Summoners are the ones who grant people like Morgana the crazy power to destroy her homeland, so Summoners have some sort of potency. I don't know how to measure it, or how much there should be though.
An Obvious Champion Dynamic: There need to be clear rules on how many champions you can control under what circumstances, how they can act, how much control you exert over them, where you can summon champions, etc.
Customizability: I want to make my own champs!

So, looking at this, I believe the best way to go about a LoL TTRPG is like the pokemon d20 project (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48778&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75) (one of the many, but I'm looking at that one in particular). I'm thinking that each character should have 2-3 movelists, where 1 is the primary movelist (and provides the ult), and the other two support with passive/sustained effects. Both Tryndamere would have "Spin to Win" as a secondary movelist, and both Morgana and Fiddlesticks would have "MR Reducer" as a secondary movelist. Ideally, there would be more abilities in a TTRPG than the video game, because we are sacrificing the tactics of the game (like, y'know, movement) and need something for added draw and complexity.

I'm thinking of having the combat area (like Twisted Treeline or Summoner's Rift) be divided into "Zones", arbitrary areas of combat, and champion abilities will deal damage to units in ranges of "Engaged" (Garen's Spin, Singed's Flip), "Near" (Fid's Life Drain, Nunu's Ice Blast), "Distant" (Xerath's lightning bolts when he's using Locus of Power, Cait's Ult), and "Unlimited" (Karthus's Ult, Lux's Ult). You'd have one of these statuses as to where you are in combat, and it would dictate how well you hit things, how well your abilities worked, and how well other abilities worked on you.

Lastly, I think the most important aspect of this is making a streamlined champion use and creation process. I don't know how to do it, but I'm considering this mana system concept (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52720) for mana-users. Ali's heal could cost nothing, but only work with mana, while his headbutt and pulverize would cost 1 mana or somesuch. Of course, mana regen items would need to be finagled as well. HP could be made into resistance rolls to reduce damage (I'm against straight values for damage), and I don't really know how to work Fury (Shyv and Trynd), Energy (Akali and Shen), or HP cost (Mord and Vladimir). I'm also not sure on how to calculate the difference between Trynd's spin (which moves him) and Garen's spin (which allows him to move and removes slows).

So, give opinions! What belongs in this project, and how do we get it there?

YouLostMe
2011-11-15, 02:02 PM
Ouch... all right, I'll keep on spleerging, then.

So I'm trying to conceptualize time, and I think that it can be done in phases.

Actions
You can have one major action per action phase. No more, no less, regardless of any item buffs. A major action is made of two minor actions, and a minor action is made of 2 swift actions. So Alistar could spend a whole phase to move from 1 zone to the next (a major action), or move from the edge of a zone into the center of a creep battle (minor action), activate his heal (swift action), and begin autoattacking (swift action). Most abilities will be minor actions (if they involve targeting, screw Smartcasting), or swift actions (if don't involve targeting). This is a generalization--something like Galio's ult should definitely take a minor action.

One big thing I want to emphasize, in order to keep a piece of the video game as well as allow splitting up without making things boring, is a quick system. Perhaps not even streamlined. The GM must make his moves quickly, and expects the players to do the same. If a player takes too long, he will be denied a minor action. I'm not sure how to time this, since counting to five seems like it would be bad for the nerves, but setting a timer seems inefficient. It might just be GM fiat.

I think the best way to do phases is to ask if anyone is taking a swift action. If no one is, then you ask if anyone is taking a minor action, etc. When someone declares that they will be taking a given action, those actions are resolved, and the GM restarts until everyone has acted in a phase. Then hit point damage is tallied (yes, you can last an entire phase even if your HP are knocked to 0 in the first swift action) and buff/debuff durations are checked to see if anything is removed. Champions will need initiative counts (based on movement speed and maybe some sort of summoner stat) so that people who both want to take the same type of action at the same time in a team fight or something will have something to avoid any "I stunned him first!" problems.

HP
Just some thoughts: I'm thinking of having everyone start with something like 5 boxes of health (because everyone is squishy early game) and have damage be calculated using resistance tests, where the damage dealt by a given character or attack is constant, and you roll in order to determine how well a given champion soaks the damage.

Papirri22
2012-12-11, 03:00 AM
YouLostMe, I was wondering about the same thing, and the problem with doing so with systems like dungeons & dragons or pathfinder is that there are classes with a lot of spells that kinda... destroy the feeling. Could you imagine Veigar shooting fireball? So, in my opinion, one good system that could satisfy the League of Legends experience is Mutants & Masterminds. In that system you can create a lot of specific characters, some of my friends even created characters like Garen or Riven, and they were neat. In Veigar's case you can pick low health, get his specific spells and abilities, and so on. I know that the game is meant to by played by super heroes, but actually the customization is amazing, and in the end you can create most of, it not all of, the characters from Lol. My group is even going to play using the M&M system in the Valoran world, and we are going to exploit it, of course, there will be no... last hitting, farm, solo top and lanning phases.