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LordHavelock
2014-04-05, 12:58 PM
Hey there! Just re-watched the first season of RWBY and as a fan, I feel like it's a world just ripe for fandom! To which, I've been bouncing around various role playing ideas and potential, and have finally decided to sit down and commit myself to playing in or running a RWBY game (quite possibly here in the Playground).

For those not familiar, RWBY is an action-adventure web-series by the superbly talented animator/director Monty Oum, starring re-imagined mythic and fairy tale characters attending a combat-academy and training to be monster Huntresses and Huntsmen. The show has a nice blend of humor and wit along with some incredibly well choreographed and stunningly animated fight sequences and draws on plenty of everyone's favorite anime/saturday morning cartoon elements and tropes (without being trite or overtly derivative IMHO). Mandatory plug for Volume One and the accompanying trailer incoming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsy7VJheMBI

Now, to the heart of the issue, if I were going to bring this series to the tabletop, allow players to create their own original characters as hunters and huntresses in training, what system should I, or would you, use?

It's definitely not the fare of Pathfinder/3.5, and my personal preference leans away from such classically crunchy systems, as well as d20 as a core mechanic. That said, the variety of powers, weapons, and fighting techniques, as well as the colorful characters and style of combat, did suggest Mutants and Masterminds to a certain degree. I feel though that the Toughness based combat system may have the wrong 'feel' though, and would probably consider alternate rules for damage and resilience.

Fate Core has been literally my favorite game system of the past year, and the romantic, quirky, swashbuckling adventures it's best suited to running does share something in common with RWBY, and it's a readily adaptable system designed to be 'hacked' even by the developers themselves. Stress and Consequences seem like they would suit RWBY just fine, the concern I have is whether Fate's combat system is robust enough to factor in signature weapons and the more dynamic 'wuxia' elements of combat prevalent in RWBY.

Would love to hear ideas from the playground and any systems I might have overlooked. I'm actually not familiar with any dedicated wuxia game system, by which I mean I've heard some things about them, but never played one, so I'm open to any suggestions folks might have.

Lord Raziere
2014-04-05, 01:03 PM
Try.....Legends of the Wulin its all about supernatural martial arts wuxia action, and it would be easy to adapt its light weapon rules to make all sorts of crazy weaponry, and its martial arts can fill in for Aura.

the only problem is that its set in mythical china, but I think you can change the fluff just fine.

Ionbound
2014-04-05, 01:24 PM
Mutants and Masterminds is pretty good for this kinda thing. You'd have to figure out how many points to allocate to replicate the characters' abilities, but once you do that, you're golden.

Forrestfire
2014-04-05, 02:14 PM
Personally, I think that Legend (http://www.ruleofcool.com/)is the best system for it. It has a high emphasis on mobile combat, ridiculously awesome characters, and has a nice modular weapon system.

LordHavelock
2014-04-05, 03:21 PM
Try.....Legends of the Wulin its all about supernatural martial arts wuxia action, and it would be easy to adapt its light weapon rules to make all sorts of crazy weaponry, and its martial arts can fill in for Aura.

the only problem is that its set in mythical china, but I think you can change the fluff just fine.

Legends of Wulin huh? Fluff can always be changed, and RWBY definitely seems more crouching-tiger than action-comics. Doesn't look like the game is free to play though, which puts a damper on further discussion till I can get my hands on the source material.

You could tell me a little more though, especially because one of the things I'm anticipating tackling for such a game is that Aura and Semblance aren't terribly well defined as yet in the series. I'm guessing their'll be more to come in season 2 but as it stands I'd rather not do the writing for them and try to hack a system based on what I think they might do. Would you consider Legends of Wulin to be fairly rule-light? What's the core mechanic?


Mutants and Masterminds is pretty good for this kinda thing. You'd have to figure out how many points to allocate to replicate the characters' abilities, but once you do that, you're golden.

Yeah, and I'd have to put a moratorium on certain powers I'm sure. Looks like kind of a PL 7-8 right off the top of my head, but as long as people are more or less in the spirit of the show in creating characters it wouldn't necessarily be a problem. Might even break my own rule and give people a standard character creation template, telling them they have to allocate their power points according to aura/semblance/weapon, though I wouldn't presume to tell them how much they have to spend on each one.

Problem with M&M is still damage in combat, since it's designed to look like the smash/pow combat of 4-color comics and RWBY is more like anime dueling combat (cause, it is). Something that feels a little more lethal I think would add that touch of urgency to combat.


Personally, I think that Legend (http://www.ruleofcool.com/)is the best system for it. It has a high emphasis on mobile combat, ridiculously awesome characters, and has a nice modular weapon system.

Gotta love supporting independent game developers and free-to-play content. Rule of Cool is exactly what RWBY has going for it, so now it's just a matter of me checking out the system.

What more can you tell me about it?

Lord Raziere
2014-04-05, 03:42 PM
yes, I would consider LotW rules light.

the core mechanic basically is rolling some d10's, the results are based on how many matching numbers you get: if you say, get two 1's, that is 21, because the number of matching dice determines the tens digit, while the actual numbers refer to the ones digit, so saying, getting 8 1's is actually preferable to getting a single nine, as a 9 is only 10, but eight 1's means you get 81! and then you apply a modifier to that.

well honestly, Aura/Semblance is probably going to be used as techniques if its going a wuxia route. so they'd be represented well by Internal Kung Fu Styles, which every character starts out with at least one and is inherently supernatural, as well as External Kung Fu styles for the more ordinary martial arts.

Mrc.
2014-04-05, 03:47 PM
I seem to remember GPuzzle was working on one, it looked good too! Sadly I believe that computer problems conspired against its completion, but you could always ask.

Forrestfire
2014-04-05, 04:19 PM
Gotta love supporting independent game developers and free-to-play content. Rule of Cool is exactly what RWBY has going for it, so now it's just a matter of me checking out the system.

What more can you tell me about it?

Legend's a 3.5 rework that grew out of the Test of Spite threads, where they just up and decided to write a game system from the extensive house rules and lists of stuff. Sadly, I haven't played it a ton, but it's been a lot of fun, with a lot of mobility in combat, tactical stuff, and a nicely streamlined ruleset. Also, the character creation system is wonderful. I think the only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't have a monster book (yet), so it's a bit more work on the DM than some other systems. Also, it's supposedly getting an updated pdf with fixed stuff and extra stuff Soon™.

You should check out their IRC channel (https://gamesurge.net/chat/legend) and bug the people who actually know what they're talking about for more information :smallsmile:

Amaril
2014-04-05, 04:32 PM
I was set to play in a game in this setting using Savage Worlds a while back, and from what I could tell, that looks like a pretty good system for this. Also, if you're thinking of running this game here in the Playground, I'd love to get in on it, regardless of what system you decide to use.

LordHavelock
2014-04-05, 04:32 PM
yes, I would consider LotW rules light.

the core mechanic basically is rolling some d10's, the results are based on how many matching numbers you get: if you say, get two 1's, that is 21, because the number of matching dice determines the tens digit, while the actual numbers refer to the ones digit, so saying, getting 8 1's is actually preferable to getting a single nine, as a 9 is only 10, but eight 1's means you get 81! and then you apply a modifier to that.

well honestly, Aura/Semblance is probably going to be used as techniques if its going a wuxia route. so they'd be represented well by Internal Kung Fu Styles, which every character starts out with at least one and is inherently supernatural, as well as External Kung Fu styles for the more ordinary martial arts.

That's an interesting take on things. Dice pools are good though, I like die pools in every other system I've used them with. Still, no open game license means I'll have to do some shopping around before I can make a decision.


I seem to remember GPuzzle was working on one, it looked good too! Sadly I believe that computer problems conspired against its completion, but you could always ask.

GPuzzle eh? A fellow playgrounder? I'll have to check him out, but in the mean time, I wanted to check in see what people might have thought of Fate?

I just did some checking in on Legends and it's class based, 3.X which is definitely not what I had in mind; No matter how else the system fits trying to fit the diversity of potential mythic and fairy tail characters into pegs like 'Fighter', 'Barbarian', or 'Ranger'. Especially since magic in the setting is rather different than 'spells'.


I was set to play in a game in this setting using Savage Worlds a while back, and from what I could tell, that looks like a pretty good system for this. Also, if you're thinking of running this game here in the Playground, I'd love to get in on it, regardless of what system you decide to use.

Not a huge fan of Savage Worlds, but I could see it working. Do you remember anything else about the game?

Amaril
2014-04-05, 05:05 PM
Not a huge fan of Savage Worlds, but I could see it working. Do you remember anything else about the game?

Unfortunately, it never got off the ground, so not much more I can say about it. Sorry.

Sasaisen
2014-04-05, 06:12 PM
Thread ran a mini-campaign of this using Princess (http://princesswod.wikia.com/wiki/Princess:_The_Hopeful_Wiki), and aside from NWoD's usual mechanical issues it worked really well. The God Machine update (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/114078/World-of-Darkness-The-God-Machine-Rules-Update) was in effect, which made the combat worthwhile (although it nerfed a good portion of the fighting styles; I'd advise you use the old ones) and the aspirations, new experience system, and social maneuvering were engaging enough. Instead of Transforming you fire up your Aura, you pick two dots of Charms as your Semblance, and you get a free Kensai/Levinbolt; all the RWBY concepts and conceits mapped out pretty well, and fun was had by all.

Hiro Protagonest
2014-04-05, 06:14 PM
Isn't LotW unavailable? I guess there's torren PDFs if it really is...

Weimann
2014-04-05, 07:31 PM
For your knowledge, I'll mention Exalted 3e. It's not out yet, so we don't know how it'll be, butit will be a dicepool-based wuxia system that features, among other things, a "battle advantage" system that allows attacks to be effective without having to represent this as bodily damage, and an extensive system of magical weapons and what looks like a power progression system for letting them grow in power. Worth checking out, if you're still in the planning stages in a few month's time.

GPuzzle
2014-04-05, 09:08 PM
Yeah, I'm here. It is currently being rewritten because I've just changed computers, so rewriting the other one didn't make sense.

Also, my writing sucks, so it's hard to understand what I've actually written (I had it hand-written beforehand).

Lord Raziere
2014-04-05, 09:10 PM
Isn't LotW unavailable? I guess there's torren PDFs if it really is...

What're you talking about? its easily obtainable via drivethrurpg.com if your willing to pay for it.

neonchameleon
2014-04-05, 09:14 PM
Pick a fast playing Supers system. I'd go for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying looking at the first couple of episodes - but whichever rules light Supers system you favour. (I wouldn't recommend a rules-heavy one like M&M because it looks as if stunting rather than tightly locked down powers are very much a thing).

Edit: After watching a couple of episodes, it's more a political game than a combat one. I'm thinking Smallville. Or even Apocalypse World without hacking it that much. Even the Hx stat, representing the history between the characters works there - and if you use the Go Aggro and Seize By Force distinction, with the actual combat as special effects, things work.

Hiro Protagonest
2014-04-05, 10:04 PM
What're you talking about? its easily obtainable via drivethrurpg.com if your willing to pay for it.

Maybe it's just out of print, then.

Grod_The_Giant
2014-04-06, 12:04 AM
(I wouldn't recommend a rules-heavy one like M&M because it looks as if stunting rather than tightly locked down powers are very much a thing).
M&M has stunting rules, and plays quite fast once character creation is done. If you want it to be more lethal, there's an easy houserule: make damage penalties cumulative. So 1 degree of failure on your Toughness check gives you a -1 toughness penalty, 2 degrees gives you a -2 penalty and dazes you, and so on. Fights end pretty dang fast that way. Add in a Fate-style "whoever knocks you out determines if you're unconscious, injured, or killed," and you're set.

Vizzerdrix
2014-04-06, 01:38 AM
I've seen a fan made system for RWBY buried someplace. It is rough, but I'll go digging for it if you'd like.

Aaaaaah I'm gonna go dig for it anyways. I have nothing to do tonight :smallsmile:


Well darn. That didn't take long to find at all. :smallfrown:

Anyways. It is disorganized, messy and unfinished from what I can tell, but I present to you Hunters and Huntresses (http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:47613)

Doorhandle
2014-04-06, 07:25 AM
Gotta love supporting independent game developers and free-to-play content. Rule of Cool is exactly what RWBY has going for it, so now it's just a matter of me checking out the system.

What more can you tell me about it?


Let's see

*Hacked D20 system for the most part
*Class abilities are divided into 3-4 tracks. Instead o picking from your classes abilities, you can multiclass into a different class' track, a racial track or specifically-made multiclass tracks.
*Full by in: an additional track for the cost of a few magic item slots.
* Very combat focused.
*Weapons are, as mentioned, modular, and thus almost any weapons can be represented right from the start with no undue feat expenditure.
* Quadratic warriors: the magic/nomal gaps is very small and in mundane's favor, spellcasters only having a variability advantage.
*There's already a few RWBY-like games going on at their forums.
*It has kamen rider as a multiclass option. If you don't want to play it now there's little helping you. :smallbiggrin:

Soarel
2014-04-10, 01:21 PM
I can't believe nobody has mentioned BESM yet. It's built for running anime games and an anime inspired series fits very well with it.