Logic Cannon
2007-10-31, 10:27 PM
Well it would appear that my hypothetical future gaming group has settled on d20 modern after all (all the same, I'm finding the thread about non-d20 game systems extremely interesting and taking notes on suggestions, so keep it coming if you wish). For a brief peek into my schemes, I'm planning on running a horror campaign set in the end of World War II in the Pacific - all of the characters need some reason to be in the Pacific, on the side of the United States, in 1944-1945. I'm obviously expecting most characters to be in the military, but the doors are open to diplomats, secretaries, nurses, code-breakers, mistresses/wives (hell, even hookers if anyone's interested in it, which I'm not expecting), all kinds of auxiliary staff, intelligence agents, sleazy carpetbaggers/enterprising capitalists, Christian missionaries, and other assorted persons.
There are some elements of other systems that I'd like to incorporate. The first should be fairly simple. I really like the World of Darkness system of morality along with virtues and vices, and how characters who persist in such a horrific environment are prone to developing some mild disorders as they continue down a degenerative moral path. This dovetails nicely with some of the shell shock the military-aligned characters are likely to have experienced prior to the campaign events as well. It should be fairly simple to replace the allegiances system of d20 modern with this system, allowing characters to regain action points (hereby called fate points to keep it more in character with the setting) by indulging in vices and virtues. Before anyone asks, I'm not using WoD as a whole because I find the opposed checks and combat fairly clunky and by not including a clear leveling system WoD gains some laudable character customization at the cost of making it quite difficult to "eyeball" the correct level of enemy resistance to throw at a party. In a horror campaign, I find this an essential tool and I don't feel I can do without it.
On a side note, I'm dropping the reputation and wealth rules. The characters are going to be operating far from any kind of friendly society (or society at all, really) and so won't have recourse to purchasing items or interacting with society at large. Military characters come with standard military kit (provided by Uncle Sam) and any personal effects they wish, and non-military characters will be allowed to use starting wealth to grab what they like to carry on their person.
As the final, and more odd inclusion, I was considering dropping d20 rolling altogether, as the core contention against playing "yet another" d20-related game is that d20 rolls are extremely variable and the degree of exceptional idiocy exemplified by a string of poor rolls strains any kind of believability. In regular D&D I accept this as part of the system, but I don't want my characters in a horror campaign getting killed because of the extremely variable d20 rolls, I want them getting killed because they make poor decisions or simply can't go toe to toe with unearthly horrors and expect to survive.
To this end, I was thinking I'd incorporate something that ran off of more of a bell-curve than the flat randomness of the d20, making exceptional luck at either end less of a problem, and averaging out around the 9-11 range usually. Two d10s seemed the ideal solution, but was lacking the flair I was hoping for in a horror campaign. To that end, I came up with a solution that I feel would achieve both ends: drawing from a tarot deck (as mentioned in one of the games in the earlier thread, and I must confess I was quite enamored with the idea and ran with it).
Now, let me spell out how I planned on making such an idea work. Obviously, the 2d10 system (which, admittedly, results in an average dice roll of 11, rather than 1d20's average of 10.5, but it's close enough for my liking) is fairly similar to drawing from a deck of cards that feature an equal number of cards numbered 1 through 10. However, once you throw in "face" cards, much less the major arcana cards, it gets a lot weirder and less easily balanced. Further, if one is simply going to remove the fancy cards, one may as well just roll 2d10 and get it over with. With that in mind, I conceived of a means of making the system work. When you are prompted to roll a d20, you may choose one of the following options:
1) draw 2 cards from the 'minor' tarot deck. These are the 1-10 cards of various suits. Depending on the actions being taken, you may receive a bonus or penalty (+/-1 depending on suit) for each card. For instance, cards in the suit of swords will offer a +1 bonus each when being used to modify a combat roll, but will suffer a -1 penalty when being pulled to modify a social interaction roll (sense motive/diplomacy/bluff/intimidate), whereas cards from the suit of cups would have the opposite effect (-1 to combat rolls, +1 to social interaction rolls). Add these two together, count in any modifiers, and you've got your d20 roll.
2) draw 1 card from the 'major' tarot deck. These include the "face" cards from various suits as well as all the major arcana. Face cards count as 11s, plus any bonuses/penalties associated with their suits. Major arcana count as their number (ranging from 0, the fool, to 21, the world) but have special effects in given situations, ranging from amazingly helpful to disastrous. For instance, the Tower would cause an immediate critical failure, whereas Death would count as a confirmed critical hit if it was drawn in combat, but an automatic failure if drawn for a saving throw.
In effect, you'd have the option of going for 2d10 with weird side effects or a 0-21 scale with several 11s littered around the middle for especially desperate situations where a larger effective range of numbers, or hope for an automatic success, is worth the significant risk inherent in messing around with the major arcana. It bears noting that with this system implemented, action/fate points would be used to re-draw cards, rather than add an extra D6 to the initial d20 roll. This means you could use your points to re-draw individual cards from your double-draw or, more powerfully, could use them to re-draw major arcana rolls in particularly desperate situations, which is fine by me.
I'm not so smug as to think I've got this all figured out, however. I'm sure there are some problems inherent in this system that I had not yet considered. Further, I'd much prefer to draw all of the cards from a single pile, to keep the players weary of risky situations (like they should be in a horror campaign), as you never know when some nasty major arcana card will get pulled at just the wrong moment. However, I can't devise a system that allows me to use the entire tarot deck in one pile that still keeps an average roll of around 10-11.
Anyways, I thank you fellow gamer nerds for trudging through all of this and I would greatly appreciate your input on these ideas.
There are some elements of other systems that I'd like to incorporate. The first should be fairly simple. I really like the World of Darkness system of morality along with virtues and vices, and how characters who persist in such a horrific environment are prone to developing some mild disorders as they continue down a degenerative moral path. This dovetails nicely with some of the shell shock the military-aligned characters are likely to have experienced prior to the campaign events as well. It should be fairly simple to replace the allegiances system of d20 modern with this system, allowing characters to regain action points (hereby called fate points to keep it more in character with the setting) by indulging in vices and virtues. Before anyone asks, I'm not using WoD as a whole because I find the opposed checks and combat fairly clunky and by not including a clear leveling system WoD gains some laudable character customization at the cost of making it quite difficult to "eyeball" the correct level of enemy resistance to throw at a party. In a horror campaign, I find this an essential tool and I don't feel I can do without it.
On a side note, I'm dropping the reputation and wealth rules. The characters are going to be operating far from any kind of friendly society (or society at all, really) and so won't have recourse to purchasing items or interacting with society at large. Military characters come with standard military kit (provided by Uncle Sam) and any personal effects they wish, and non-military characters will be allowed to use starting wealth to grab what they like to carry on their person.
As the final, and more odd inclusion, I was considering dropping d20 rolling altogether, as the core contention against playing "yet another" d20-related game is that d20 rolls are extremely variable and the degree of exceptional idiocy exemplified by a string of poor rolls strains any kind of believability. In regular D&D I accept this as part of the system, but I don't want my characters in a horror campaign getting killed because of the extremely variable d20 rolls, I want them getting killed because they make poor decisions or simply can't go toe to toe with unearthly horrors and expect to survive.
To this end, I was thinking I'd incorporate something that ran off of more of a bell-curve than the flat randomness of the d20, making exceptional luck at either end less of a problem, and averaging out around the 9-11 range usually. Two d10s seemed the ideal solution, but was lacking the flair I was hoping for in a horror campaign. To that end, I came up with a solution that I feel would achieve both ends: drawing from a tarot deck (as mentioned in one of the games in the earlier thread, and I must confess I was quite enamored with the idea and ran with it).
Now, let me spell out how I planned on making such an idea work. Obviously, the 2d10 system (which, admittedly, results in an average dice roll of 11, rather than 1d20's average of 10.5, but it's close enough for my liking) is fairly similar to drawing from a deck of cards that feature an equal number of cards numbered 1 through 10. However, once you throw in "face" cards, much less the major arcana cards, it gets a lot weirder and less easily balanced. Further, if one is simply going to remove the fancy cards, one may as well just roll 2d10 and get it over with. With that in mind, I conceived of a means of making the system work. When you are prompted to roll a d20, you may choose one of the following options:
1) draw 2 cards from the 'minor' tarot deck. These are the 1-10 cards of various suits. Depending on the actions being taken, you may receive a bonus or penalty (+/-1 depending on suit) for each card. For instance, cards in the suit of swords will offer a +1 bonus each when being used to modify a combat roll, but will suffer a -1 penalty when being pulled to modify a social interaction roll (sense motive/diplomacy/bluff/intimidate), whereas cards from the suit of cups would have the opposite effect (-1 to combat rolls, +1 to social interaction rolls). Add these two together, count in any modifiers, and you've got your d20 roll.
2) draw 1 card from the 'major' tarot deck. These include the "face" cards from various suits as well as all the major arcana. Face cards count as 11s, plus any bonuses/penalties associated with their suits. Major arcana count as their number (ranging from 0, the fool, to 21, the world) but have special effects in given situations, ranging from amazingly helpful to disastrous. For instance, the Tower would cause an immediate critical failure, whereas Death would count as a confirmed critical hit if it was drawn in combat, but an automatic failure if drawn for a saving throw.
In effect, you'd have the option of going for 2d10 with weird side effects or a 0-21 scale with several 11s littered around the middle for especially desperate situations where a larger effective range of numbers, or hope for an automatic success, is worth the significant risk inherent in messing around with the major arcana. It bears noting that with this system implemented, action/fate points would be used to re-draw cards, rather than add an extra D6 to the initial d20 roll. This means you could use your points to re-draw individual cards from your double-draw or, more powerfully, could use them to re-draw major arcana rolls in particularly desperate situations, which is fine by me.
I'm not so smug as to think I've got this all figured out, however. I'm sure there are some problems inherent in this system that I had not yet considered. Further, I'd much prefer to draw all of the cards from a single pile, to keep the players weary of risky situations (like they should be in a horror campaign), as you never know when some nasty major arcana card will get pulled at just the wrong moment. However, I can't devise a system that allows me to use the entire tarot deck in one pile that still keeps an average roll of around 10-11.
Anyways, I thank you fellow gamer nerds for trudging through all of this and I would greatly appreciate your input on these ideas.