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JBPuffin
2015-12-29, 12:06 AM
Since this thread has seen traffic but not answers, I decided to change its purpose some. Instead of just me asking a question about one system for one game, I invite my fellow Playgrounders to ask for the same help with any campaign ideas they're unsure of. With that in mind, I'm adding another campaign with a question, and invite y'all to do the same.

I initially put this idea up on a page where other people could post crazy campaign ideas they had (which is now lost to the bowels of page 3) and while I can't sleep I thought it'd be interesting to see what the easiest system would be for this sort of game. I was thinking FATE Core could work, maybe even Accelerated, but to get the feel I imagine it would be a piece of work.

Here's the pitch:
Two words: psychic. zombies.

Well, okay, it's more elaborate than that. Essentially, a "zombie" outbreak starts when a guy suddenly falls ill with some seemingly benign ailment. Out of nowhere, he goes crazy (albeit unable to leave his bed due to weakness) and while flailing around he touches someone in the room. That person is now carrying, not the illness, but a bizarre psionic pseudo-parasitic being manifested straight from his/her ethos and thought patterns. He/she, realizing what's happened after a couple of days, starts selectively zombifying people - close friends, lovers, children, whomever - by simply touching them. This leads to a what you could call a superhero 'verse - people getting superpowers - albeit with a serious drawbacks, as the power always destabilizes them somehow.

The powers themselves aren't standard powers - no flight, super strength, or lasers. They are certainly superhuman, however; some, who we'll call Carriers, after first being unlocked gain the powers those they infect receive in addition to the one they start with. Carriers don't necessarily always transmit the infection - they can limit it with practice - but for a while they've got to be super careful who they infect as non-Carriers don't have such control. There'd be people who can optimize their actions to achieve the outcome they desire with the least amount of effort, those who can boost the capabilities of others simply with their presence, individuals who can brainwash people into (guess what?) mindless servants, etc. There'd be a lot of infected folk whose only power instills a specific emotion as well as passes the infection - guilt, lust, anger, joy, any emotion under the sun - and Carriers might find themselves loaded with combinations which make absolutely no intelligible sense. The final result being, Carriers cause a lot of mayhem wherever they go.

The best part? The original infected is locked down, so it all starts with that first person, who, guess what?, is a Carrier. Oh joy.

PCs would all be infected, most likely - possibly all Carriers, if we want to get crazy. The plot? Depends. If a mind controller ends up making an ACTUAL zombie army, the PCs might want to take it out or get a piece of that ability. If they're attached to a specific place, they'll act as the local supers squad, able to replace their numbers when needed. They could be villains, mercenaries, champions of a cause - whatever they are, they're among the most powerful of the infected.

Of course, they could start asking where the powers come from; that is, if they aren't preoccupied trying to deal with the mess of a life they're now leading. See, these superpowers? They make your brain go ape****. No joke, every person infected acquires some form of mental disorder if they don't have one. These range from mild Asperger's to extreme schizophrenia, dyslexia to their IQ dropping into the teens, eternal rage to a constant need for encouragement or they'll die. And of course there's the problem that everyone in the party's gonna have these problems, so...yeah. This could be a blast.

4th edition Dungeons and Dragons offered the idea that psionics were a result of the Far Realm(Lovecraftian psychic horror-creatures from being any geometrical design; essentially DnD aliens) bleeding into the Material Plane, and possibly others, because a mysterious deity ballsed up and opened a tightly-shut portal. My take for Psychosis? This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened - more than once, portals have been opened into a similar plane of mind-wrenching horrors. Most of the time, however, a more benevolent extraterrestrial sealed it from the the inside with the help of a champion (after a while, usually months or years). Our "heroes" aren't so lucky this time - the gate was opened, then shut, specifically to release this psionic virus by an ever-hungrier being desiring to take Earth for itself once it's all gone to hell. In other words, I don't want this to turn into a "save the world" setting; I want this to be a crapsack world where the people best suited to save it can't do anything about it - there's no one on the other side willing to save them. It's the end of the world caused by Earth's biggest threat: people.

So, with all that said, does anyone know of a more suitable way to pull this off than a modded FATE? Thanks in advance.

In short, I'm writing a story centered around Final Fantast Tactics Advance, and I was wondering if there's a good system where each player could run part of or, for a single-player campaign, an entire clan. I have no idea where to start, so this needs quite a bit more help than the former.

Bruno Carvalho
2016-01-09, 06:38 PM
In short, I'm writing a story centered around Final Fantast Tactics Advance, and I was wondering if there's a good system where each player could run part of or, for a single-player campaign, an entire clan. I have no idea where to start, so this needs quite a bit more help than the former.

I must say you just broke my heart with this. May I help you with anything?

JBPuffin
2016-01-10, 10:29 PM
I must say you just broke my heart with this. May I help you with anything?

I hope that's not literal - still have FFRPG for less Tactics-based things, after all - but I really need something that a) has a grid, b) gives me some serious leniency with designing abilities, and c) is easy for each player to control multiple people.

On the other hand, I wonder how difficult a grid-based subsystem would be for your game...hmmm.

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-10, 11:12 PM
It sounds like #2 needs an actual miniatures wargame. Like Warhammer Fantasy or 40k. Not those specifically, but ones like it.

You can, contrary to popular belief, have campaigns of these wargames that span multiple battles.

Put each player in control of a squad whereas you control an opposing army and, presto, you have it.

You could also use Apocalypse World's Gang rules. Gangs (or amy large group of followers) are treated like a weapon weilded by their commander. You could use that to jerry rig something together in 3.5.

Basically, a Squad would be treated as a Swarm of Humans. To weild it would require a Charisma check, plus the Squad's attack bonus vs the AC of the other Squad. Resolve combat normally from there.

0-25% damage means assorted light wounds. Maybe 1 or 2 fatalities. 26-50% means widespread greivous wounds, serious casualties. 51-75% means greivous casualties. 75-100% damage means catastrophic casualties, almost everyone (or literally everyone) is dead or too injured to fight.

Arbane
2016-01-10, 11:22 PM
It sounds like #2 needs an actual miniatures wargame. Like Warhammer Fantasy or 40k. Not those specifically, but ones like it.

You can, contrary to popular belief, have campaigns of these wargames that span multiple battles.


And so, the circle is complete (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainmail_%28game%29).

(Semi-seriously, maybe D&D4th ed?)

Knaight
2016-01-11, 05:42 PM
Savage Worlds is basically designed for this sort of thing, though if you want to go really large scale (things like clashes between nations), I'd recommend taking the organizational rules from REIGN.

JBPuffin
2016-01-11, 06:59 PM
Maybe I need to clarify - FFTA clans (counting both games) have a max of about 30 people, and usually only send six out into a fight (never did find out why...). Wargaming could work, although it might overgeneralize things to my liking.

@Knaight - I have Savage Worlds already, so I can see this being an option. I'll look into it.
@Arbane - I've seen one or two conversions (wasn't much of a fan), but the level of complexity in a 4e character seems a bit much - this coming from someone who has essentially only played 4e.

Does anyone else have a setting they aren't sure what system they'd like to use for? Do more people plan campaigns for systems they know than I'm aware?

ImNotTrevor
2016-01-11, 10:00 PM
I generally do.

I wanted to run the following system in Stars Without Number, but I don't think it's the best for it:

A bunch of people wake up on a damaged ship, the alarms blaring. As they get finished resolving the emergency, they realize that none of them know who they are...
---
Mechanically, everyone rolls a character and picks a name for them. I erase the names from all the sheets, then randomly redistribute them. Play proceeds...

If you think to yourself "Isn't that the show, Dark Matter?" Yes, basically. I just didn't like how the big mystery was resolved in Episode 1. I want it to be a bigger deal.

I think a more Fiction-oriented system may be better. Like Burning Empires or some PbtA sci-fi system.

Freelance GM
2016-01-11, 10:34 PM
I've seen a lot of talk about running a game where the players control factions, kingdoms, or empires instead of characters. Is there an actual, published system for that sort of thing, or is it all up to homebrewing?

Thrudd
2016-01-11, 10:47 PM
Maybe I need to clarify - FFTA clans (counting both games) have a max of about 30 people, and usually only send six out into a fight (never did find out why...). Wargaming could work, although it might overgeneralize things to my liking.

For small unit in tactical fantasy battles, Mordheim is a game you might want to look at modding. It is set in the Warhammer fantasy world. Players control war bands of a maximum size around 15-20 individuals. The campaign rules lets you track experience and treasure for surviving members, gain new abilities, purchase new recruits and gear. There is no grid, you use rulers/tape measures to determine range and movement around the battlefield( which is traditionally urban terrain, but could be anything you want). The game is played on a 4x6 or 4x4 area with Warhammer miniatures if I remember correctly, but again you could make it any size you want.

In general, I don't find it productive to plan campaigns when I don't know what system to use. I look at a system, and then decide what I can do with it. House ruling and modding are possible, of course, but you need a base to work with. The system is the game.

Knaight
2016-01-12, 04:28 AM
I've seen a lot of talk about running a game where the players control factions, kingdoms, or empires instead of characters. Is there an actual, published system for that sort of thing, or is it all up to homebrewing?

REIGN has both, and while it works better if both are going on at once, it's also one of relatively few places with solid mechanics for the organizational side of things (hence why I mentioned it earlier). A little further out has Microscope, which is a very broad strokes collaborative timeline building RPG, in which big organizations absolutely play a part under just about every concept. Moving in the traditional side, D&D 2e has the Birthright setting, which as I understand it has some hard mechanics for the faction side - of the three, it's the one I haven't actually played, so I can't comment as intelligently. There's also a game called Kingdom by the same designer as Microscope, which theoretically does exactly this, albeit for one organization. How it actually works, I don't know (though given that Microscope is probably the most brilliantly designed RPG I've ever seen, there's some optimism).

Thrudd
2016-01-12, 01:55 PM
For another option, FF Tactics is simple enough in a lot of ways that it might not be hard to almost directly port the system over to table top, extrapolating the calculations and ranges used by the program.

What you want when controlling a small unit rather than an individual character is a small number of simple and abstract stats for each character and a limited number of action options. 1E D&D actually isn't terrible at this, it is normal for higher level players to each control a small squad of henchmen along with their primary character. Easy to use either grid or ruler for battlefield measurement.

For your psychic super power game, it sounds like a generic system would be what you need. Fate probably will work just fine. GURPS could be an option, too, if you want it more crunchy.