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View Full Version : How Would You Handle a God of War RPG?



Chainsaw Hobbit
2012-08-16, 11:17 PM
I suddenly have a burning desire to adapt the mechanics of the video game series God of War to a tabletop RPG. I don't mean exact things, but the core concepts: chain-attacks, epic combos, climbing huge monsters and then executing them, wearing foes down and then finishing them off in brutal ways, and the like. It would also be nice if the characters were very powerful.

Since I don't have time to build a system from scratch, I shall adapt one. However, I am unable to think of one that would be suitable. I can think of two that come somewhat close: D&D Fourth Edition, and Savage Worlds. I have also heard that Exalted does this sort of thing well, but I have never tried it.

What would you do?

douglaswalkers
2012-08-17, 12:54 AM
I suddenly have a burning desire to adapt the mechanics of the video game series God of War to a tabletop RPG. I don't mean exact things, but the core concepts: chain-attacks, epic combos, climbing huge monsters and then executing them, wearing foes down and then finishing them off in brutal ways, and the like. It would also be nice if the characters were very powerful.

Since I don't have time to build a system from scratch, I shall adapt one. However, I am unable to think of one that would be suitable. I can think of two that come somewhat close: D&D Fourth Edition, and Savage Worlds. I have also heard that Exalted does this sort of thing well, but I have never tried it.

What would you do?

As you have mentioned I think you should go for core stuffs like epic combos, climbing huge monsters and executing them, this stuffs will keep game interesting and I am damn sure you will not get bore with this game.

kardar233
2012-08-17, 01:40 AM
Monte Cook's Iron Heroes book is built for this kind of thing, but I haven't been able to play around with it enough to see if it works well.


You are not your magic weapon and armor. You are not your spell buffs. You are not how much gold you have, or how many times you've been raised from the dead. When a Big Bad Demon snaps your sword in two, you do not cry because that was your holy avenger. You leap onto its back, climb up to its head, and punch it in the eye, then get a new damn sword off of the next humanoid you headbutt to death.

A main feature are "stunts" which are mid-combat skill uses to do dramatic things like making a swinging charge off a chandelier. Instead of using specific feat prerequisites it clumps similar effects into feat mastery trees, the availabilities of which are determined by your class's feat mastery progression. It uses building/consuming token mechanics to try to model combat flow and these vary by class.

Worth a look.

jaybird
2012-08-17, 09:37 PM
What about Exalted?

Hiro Protagonest
2012-08-17, 10:04 PM
What about Exalted?

Iron Heroes would work better. You never play Exalted for the system itself.

Doorhandle
2012-08-20, 07:21 AM
This seems like a good idea: keep it up.

Siegel
2012-08-20, 08:04 AM
Wushu or Feng shui. Stuff that makes you narrate crazy stunts and doesn't make dice go to much in the way of awesome violence.

IncoherentEssay
2012-08-20, 08:52 AM
I think you could do this in just about any system that
1.) has multiple attacks
2.) has a skill system of some sort

You can encourage combos with abilities that give increasing bonuses to attacks as long as you don't miss, combined with some that sac all the accumulated successes for some big effect proportional to the amount sacced. Call it momentum or the like.

For the inventive violence part, allow players to make skill checks to augment their attacks, provided that they describe what they are doing to earn it. A success gives a bonus to all subsequent checks including the final attack, and a failure voids all bonuses from the previous checks. Think of Aid Another, but on self. Ordinary attacks can have one or two such checks while extended action can have as many as the player can fit in. Do note that failed skill checks don't void momentum, and generally shouldn't costs actions as adding an extra chance of outright failure would discourage their use something fierce.

Combined, the two encourage wailing on things for a while with some clever tricks thrown in before finishing off with a big showy execution move. Requires a bit of homebrewing to hammer out the specifics but could potentially be tacked on to any system. It's something i've been intenting to add to my 3.5 games.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2012-08-20, 09:54 AM
I think you could do this in just about any system that
1.) has multiple attacks
2.) has a skill system of some sort

You can encourage combos with abilities that give increasing bonuses to attacks as long as you don't miss, combined with some that sac all the accumulated successes for some big effect proportional to the amount sacced. Call it momentum or the like.

For the inventive violence part, allow players to make skill checks to augment their attacks, provided that they describe what they are doing to earn it. A success gives a bonus to all subsequent checks including the final attack, and a failure voids all bonuses from the previous checks. Think of Aid Another, but on self. Ordinary attacks can have one or two such checks while extended action can have as many as the player can fit in. Do note that failed skill checks don't void momentum, and generally shouldn't costs actions as adding an extra chance of outright failure would discourage their use something fierce.

Combined, the two encourage wailing on things for a while with some clever tricks thrown in before finishing off with a big showy execution move. Requires a bit of homebrewing to hammer out the specifics but could potentially be tacked on to any system. It's something i've been intenting to add to my 3.5 games.

This sounds ... amazing. I must build this. Not for D&D 3.5, though. I will never play that again unless someone awesome is running it at a convention.

kardar233
2012-08-20, 07:40 PM
I think you could do this in just about any system that
1.) has multiple attacks
2.) has a skill system of some sort

You can encourage combos with abilities that give increasing bonuses to attacks as long as you don't miss, combined with some that sac all the accumulated successes for some big effect proportional to the amount sacced. Call it momentum or the like.

For the inventive violence part, allow players to make skill checks to augment their attacks, provided that they describe what they are doing to earn it. A success gives a bonus to all subsequent checks including the final attack, and a failure voids all bonuses from the previous checks. Think of Aid Another, but on self. Ordinary attacks can have one or two such checks while extended action can have as many as the player can fit in. Do note that failed skill checks don't void momentum, and generally shouldn't costs actions as adding an extra chance of outright failure would discourage their use something fierce.

Combined, the two encourage wailing on things for a while with some clever tricks thrown in before finishing off with a big showy execution move. Requires a bit of homebrewing to hammer out the specifics but could potentially be tacked on to any system. It's something i've been intenting to add to my 3.5 games.

This is pretty much exactly what Iron Heroes' Stunts system is.

Kymme
2012-08-20, 10:20 PM
This is pretty much exactly what Iron Heroes' Stunts system is.
Don't you mean Book of Iron Might? :smallconfused: I have Iron Heroes and the Book of Iron Might, and I am rather sure that the stunt system is in the BoIM, not Iron Heroes.

UserClone
2012-08-21, 07:29 PM
I'm going to echo the Wushu comment.