Chameleon: Prototype TLHH RP System

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Okay, so here's a write-up of the system, in more formal language.


Why "Chameleon"?
This system is designed to "blend in" with any setting, and it's designed to flow seamlessly into any set of rules that the GM (the person running a game) may introduce. This also means that any Chameleon characters are theoretically able to "shift" into any setting, with its own unique rules.

The Core Mechanic:
You roll dice. More specifically, you want as many dice as possible to land above a certain number, called the "Target Number". What those dice look like, what that number is, and how many dice you roll are all determined by other rules, but no matter what, you always want to get as many dice above the Target Number as possible.


Character Creation:
When you create a character concept, you absolutely need the following areas...

Physical
This is where you describe the physical capabilities of your character. Are they strong? Fast? Agile? Try and keep this simple.

Sturdiness
This is where you note your character's resistance to harm, of any type. Should be simple, but note any particular resistances a character has.

Intellectual
This is where you describe the ability of your character to think clearly, make rational conclusions, and examine evidence. Again, simple is good.

Emotional
This is your character's response to other characters, how they interact with other people. Are they empathetic? Social? A loner?

These are the primary areas that games will use to generate Attributes from. Other areas that could be helpful...

Background
How'd your character get to where they are now? What's their story?

Personality
How does your character react to the world? How do they solve problems? Are they decisive? Brash? Nervous? Out for vengeance?

Goals
Big things your character wants to do, like...conquer the world


Once you have those down, it's time for the GM to look at your character, evaluate it, and then make up Attribute scores for them...


Attributes
An Attribute measures the raw force you can bring to bear on a situation in one area. Attributes are categorized according to the categories above (Physical, Sturdiness, Intellectual, Emotional), and just how many Attributes (and which ones) depend on the game. A combat-heavy game might have Attributes for Strength, Agility, and Speed under the Physical category, while a survival-oriented game might merely have Strength and Evasion as its Physical Attributes.

An Attribute is a single-digit number (double-digit Attributes are beyond superhuman) that determines how many dice you roll when you try to succeed in a task. This represents the pure strength of that Attribute coming to bear on the task.

The GM will derive your Attribute from your descriptions in those categories, and ask you about any nuances.


Abilities
It doesn't end at Attributes, though. Abilities further define your character's capabilities, by determining just how good your character is at utilizing a specific skill or technique within an Attribute. This may be something like Longsword Combat, or the more mundane Underwater Basketweaving. An Ability is measured according to a size of die, something which depends on the number of sides.

This is the progression of dice, from smallest to biggest (the number indicates how many sides are on the die...and yes, those of you who'd recognize this, I do believe I ripped this from D&D)...

d4 -> d6 -> d8 -> 2d4 -> d10 -> d12 -> 2d6 -> 2d8 -> d20

So, a d4 is the smallest die you can have, and a d20 is the biggest. What a normal die is differs, depending on the game, but a d6 or d8 is usually average.

When you attempt to complete a task by using an Ability, roll dice (according to your Attribute) and use the die specified by your Ability. By default, roll d6's. (Note: you can be forced to roll d4's, if you are either penalized by conditions or you are horrendously bad at a specific Ability, because of a character Flaw)


Other Modifications
Your character will also have Equipment, and perhaps personality Traits. Equipment is simply that. Stuff that your character carries around. Unless it's noteworthy, don't pay attention to it. Major gear, though, like a weapon or tool of the trade, should be noted. The GM will specify just what equipment does, but it should usually be something a bit useful, and nifty, sorta like a TCG card's gametext. For example: a weapon might increase the size of your die for a specific Ability.

Traits are similar, but they're found in the actual character. A GM decides how many Bonuses a character may have in a game. A Bonus is a positive trait, like Natural Diplomat. Just like Equipment, it gives a nifty bonus to the character in a game. A Flaw is a negative trait, and while theoretically you can take as many Flaws as you want, the GM should cap this. For each Flaw you take, you may have an additional Bonus. A Flaw is something like Bad Breath, which negatively impacts a character in a game. But don't just add it into mechanics, roleplay it!


Tasks
Different games will handle this differently, but when your characters have to complete a task, if it's not one that they reasonably could accomplish (or that is rather irrelevant to the story), have them attempt to succeed at it through rolling! Each player may choose one of their Abilities to use (or an Attribute, if they have no appropriate Ability), and then apply any bonuses/penalties from Equipment/Bonuses/Flaws. Then, roll the dice!

How do you determine success? The GM will set a Difficulty for the task. This is how many successes you must roll. A success is anything that equals or beats the Target Number, set by the GM.


What about--?
Any other rules? That's left to the individual games. A GM has a lot of control over their game, and should keep an eye on balance. (i.e., things like Flaws and Bonuses being equal, even if it takes more than one Flaw to balance out a Bonus, and the proper setting of dice, the Target Number, and the Difficulty of tasks)

Things like combat have been left out because not all Roleplay has combat as its central aspect. What about a spy roleplay that focuses on battles of wits between political members?

And so on. Any questions on anything here? Just real rough here, and I don't have a lot spelled out very well, but it's something.

[AgentDrake]

Nice. I can see something like this working quite well, especially if we can get a Dice Roller thing-gummy actually set up on the forum. Something flexible so that we can define how many sides on the dice, et cetera. I don't know what was on the CC boards, but I'm sure we can get something that will work.

[sickofpalantirs]

yep get the dice thing and a good game master and we are ready to rock and roll.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

http://javascript.internet.com/games/dice-roller.html

That's one quick one I found, if it's possible to grab the code for the forum. Mythweavers is a community with a nice die-rolling system. You type in the number of dice and the number of sides, inside [roll] brackets. Like...[roll]1d20[/roll] and such.

Anyhow. The dice, if needed, can also be rolled up by the GM when need be.

[Elf_Lvr]

Well, we definitely need to rig something up for combat, because I'm pretty sure most of the people here won't be satisfied without a little bit of open warfare.

I also think that there should potentially be a set of limits on things like attributes, abilities, and bonuses. We are NOT gonna have god-like characters because someone doesn't write any flaws in their character's descriptions.

For example, if we did an RPG in the LotR universe (which is probably what is going to end up happening at some point), each race of character might have a certain set of abilities/attributes that are slightly customizable by the character's creator, but not so much that we can have a hobbit shooting a bow like an elf, or a dwarf tracking as well as a ranger.

The flaw/bonus thing seems a little out of place to me... some people could just pick off a lot of "useless" physical attributes to increase their bonuses in useful things. Like getting bad breath in exchange for being able to beat their way through a brick wall, Hulk-style.

This sorta stuff will probably be determined by the GM of each individual RP, but we might want some general guidelines on "how-to-make-a-RP-that-doesn't-end-up-god-like."

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The flaw/bonus thing seems a little out of place to me... some people could just pick off a lot of "useless" physical attributes to increase their bonuses in useful things. Like getting bad breath in exchange for being able to beat their way through a brick wall, Hulk-style.

This would be something regulated by the GM. Flaws and bonuses should be balanced appropriately. Having the ability to surge in physical strength would be balanced out by Flaws that penalize you equally, such as perhaps lapsing out of consciousness.

I don't know if you have any familiarity with GURPS, but it uses a similar system. It assigns point values to Advantages and Disadvantages. This is something that, in Chameleon, can either be abstracted or made concrete by a GM.

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG31-0004

This sorta stuff will probably be determined by the GM of each individual RP, but we might want some general guidelines on "how-to-make-a-RP-that-doesn't-end-up-god-like."

Right. That's the way the system is designed. If a GM wants to make an RP with godlike characters and no flaws, they're free to do so, by allowing players to take lots of bonuses, high attributes, and some nice Abilities. That's up to the GM to decide. I'm envisioning an opening post that lays out a game's setting, and then some basic guidelines for power level.

And once I have a look over the rules, and a little extra time, I'll be writing up a guide on that. Once I figure out how it should scale. Also keeping in mind that some of this will only come out during playtesting. However, I think it's safe to say that having Abilities rolled on d20s is probably beyond godlike, for starters.

At the moment, I'm thinking that 2-3 is an average Attribute score, d6 is an average Ability score (most abilities being d8), and 3-4 is an average Target Number, with 1 success being the normal Difficulty. Like, difficulty for a standard task, one that might be slightly tricky.

[FM]

What about percentage dice? You need an "open" dice system, that lets you roll ANY dice you want, like rolling a d100 (for percentage plays) or a d3 (for some effects). For instance, Ray of Frost deals 1d3 damage.
For online play, I think a point-based system would work fairly better, and I'd avoid rolling dice altogether for as long as possible (just imagine a regular D&D combat online, it could take WEEKS for a battle between 4-5 characters to be over). Perhaps your abilities could translate in the number of HD you could take out in a single combat turn (allowing to weaken higher HD monsters by a percentage of that number), instead of rolling dice for attack and damage rolls.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I've hardly heard of d3, and the only major use I heard of for d100 was encounter tables. On top of that...a d100 would be beyond godlike in this scale, I think.

Combat here would be much faster than a D&D combat, and wouldn't necessarily be based in attack + damage. Remember, this is an entirely different system here. What I envision is people posting relevant abilities/attributes they want to use in non-combat situations, and as for combat...that would differ per game.

On top of that, combat itself probably wouldn't be the focal point of this system.

[Elf_Lvr]

Well, combat seems to be the focus of all the Free-Forms we've seen so far, and I doubt that's likely to change just because we move to a structured thing. Combat is going to be a major part of this whole thing, and I'm really struggling to come up with a good system for it.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Actually, I just had a brainstorm on one way you could handle combat. Namely, gunfighting. You get to put Wound Points in three areas: Light, Moderate, and Critical.

Then, you've got rolls by an attacker, and rolls by a defender. The attacker's roll (his ability to shoot straight) goes against the defender's roll (the ability to take cover and avoid a bullet). If the attacker beats the defender, look at the discrepancy between the two. If it's small, the defender loses a Light Wound Point. A minor wound. If it's larger, that's a bigger wound. Take a point away from Moderate. If it's big enough, that's a Critical wound. Yeah, you take a point out of Critical.

Let's say that when you run out of Light Wound Points, all Light wounds go straight to Moderate wounds, and you get a penalty. When all Moderate Wound Points are gone, Moderate wounds go straight to Critical wounds, and you get a penalty. Both of those penalties would probably stack. Anyhow, when your Critical Wound Points are gone, you die or are incapacitated.

That should probably work.

I'll probably actually be cooking up an initial playtesting RP based on my concept of The Hidden, just to see how things scale, and to get things moving. Might even bump the Average die up to d8, to allow for more variety.

[sickofpalantirs]

probably would shoot for 3 light points...2 moderate points and a critical point? or one of each?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, I was thinking maybe it could be based off of an Attribute in Sturdiness. Like, say, an Attribute called Toughness. It has a certain value, and you get to distribute points however you want. So you could theoretically have lots of Critical points (for a berserk type of character), but your character would suffer the penalties for having no Light or Moderate points pretty quickly. So they'd take a long time to die, but their effectiveness would be decreased quickly. On the other hand, you could have an agile but fragile character who has one or two Critical points, and lots of Moderate and Light points. So they don't suffer the penalties, but one big mess-up or hard shot, and they go down.

[FM]

You know, that might work. However, since combat is usually between PCs and NPCs, so as to save the DM trouble for rolling both defensive AND offensive dice, you could simply assign a number (similar to Armor Class in D&D) to minions, and the amount of "damage" the players would do to it would be determined by how much they exceed the given number. Also, to mkae things faster, you could have some rules to larger battles, like treating small packs of Goblins or so as one single enemy for attacking purposes, etc.
Would be even faster, and simpler.
PS: Not entirely sold out on the L, M, C thing, perhaps a straight value for hit points would be smoothier. Given an AC of, say, 12, for a 4 hp Goblin, and a player with no modifier, the player would roll a D20 to attack. Assuming he rolled 13 or better, he struck true. So, if he rolled a 15, the Goblin lost 3 hp and is now hanging on 1 hp only. If he rolled 16 or better, he killed it in a single blow. SOmething like this, to drastically reduce the number of dice rolled.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, all of it would be fluid. This wouldn't be a set combat system for anything, but one that I'll actually probably be implementing into my test game.

But that aside, I'd like to stay clear of a D&D combat clone. It doesn't have the feel at all of combat where you could potentially get killed in one shot at any time, by a normal blow. (Which would be covered by the idea of having a Critical point average of 1 or 2 for a normal person) That's what I don't like about a single HP value. D&D combat always comes down to "wear them down as much as possible". It works fine for what it is (epic sword-and-sorcery combat), but it doesn't give a gritty enough system to do it with. In my mind, the same bullet (which does identical damage no matter where it hits you) could either disable your arm or kill you. Based on how accurate it is. D&D bases lethality in the damage roll, not the attack roll. This would put lethality in the attack roll, and remove the damage roll. (Most weapons would deal one point of damage, with some big ones dealing two)

So actually, as far as GM work goes, it's the same. And maybe less. You roll an attack die and defense die, as opposed to rolling an attack die and damage die. The other thing I like about that...is that it represents that an attack effort and a defense effort are both dynamic. An attack can be well-done or poorly-done, and a defense can be the same way. It's not like Final Fantasy, where you take turns attacking.

[FM]

D&D DOES have combat rules to deal with targetted attacks, you know. Most people simply avoid using it, because most groups will rather use the system as it is, since any set of rules that makes combat more deadly or tricky WILL hurt the PCs more, since NPCs are just that, random minions that can get killed, run away, etc, but the PCs are always the same, taking blow after blow, THEMSELVES being "worn down", thus why most playgroups will usually experiment with the optional rules for targeted combat for a while and revert to the regular way. Also, the way I suggested, damage rolls would be ignored completly, and the attack roll itself would play a major role. In the example I gave, it's fairly common for a trained sword fighter to hit once and drop the opponent, given a rather "weak" opponent as a Goblin, most swordplayers will usually aim for lethal areas anyway, so that way, the better the attack roll, the closest to hitting a lethal area (and hitting it hard enough, of course) you are. I can't see how this relates to the abstract "damage rolls" system of D&D, which makes weapons pretty much obsolete from 6th level onward, since the damage BONUSES are more than enough to make up for a roll of 1 in a d8, for instance. The combat system I suggested is not only simpler than yours, being more fluid and quicker, but it's ALSO more "realistic" flavor-wise, after all, I don't see how "distributing damage points between Light, Moderate and Critical" is flavorful, it's actually closer to the abstract "generic hit point loss" system from D&D.
But hey, I volunteered to help and no one ACTUALLY asked for my help, so I'm just barging in, go on and do your thing. Might work out better, after all.
PS: There are also rules for parrying in D&D, if a character wants to fight defensively. And then, there are feats that increase your defense based on base attack bonus, which pretty much stands for a character ability to parry a few blows. There're also feats for dodging blows, akills for tumbling across the battlefield, etc. It's not at all like Final Fantasy...

[AgentDrake]

Well, just interjecting my opinion in here....
I can see how CG's system is more realistic. Thing is, FM's seems more easily workable.
What about a hybrid system, wherein we have two of FM's system: Disabling Wounds and Critical Wounds.
Roll a die to determine hit type. Some sort of "Attack Control" skill, denoting how good a character is at using attacks for specific goals (ie, cut off Luke's lightsaber hand, so that he's not too badly damaged, but he can;t fight anymore) would be, say, on a d10, 6. Player announces which they want to go for: critical or disable. On a successful roll, they make that form of attack, and strike against that damage set. Unsuccessful, they're rolling for the other.
So two rolls in a row: 1 for damage type, then #2 for damage amount, check against armor.
Sucessful disable attacks check against armor, and once a character loses all their disable hitpoints, the announced goal of the disable attacks (Darth Player: "I wanna try to cut off Luke's hand. I roll twice now....") is achieved. Not 100% realistic, but having a modular, fairly simple system is sorta important, too.

Player characters would, of course, be designed to have certain amounts of disable/critical damage as determined by the player and Gamemaster, or whatever, that way you can have characters who are hard to take down as far as penalties go ("It's just a flesh wound!"), but once you get one good hit on them, they're doomed, and characters who get penalties; worn down by fighting, ("Wah! My hand has a blister!"), but take a lot of damage without dieing right off, like CG was saying.

Does that make sense? Would that work? I must confess, I have no clue what I'm talking about. I've never done D&D, and my RP experience is limited to computer games and the DCRPGs. I know some of the basic ideas of dice/stat based off of the old rouge-type games, like hack, larn, Moria, et cetera, but that's about it.

Yep. There's my thought. Hope it's at least somewhat constructive.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

D&D DOES have combat rules to deal with targetted attacks, you know. Most people simply avoid using it, because most groups will rather use the system as it is, since any set of rules that makes combat more deadly or tricky WILL hurt the PCs more, since NPCs are just that, random minions that can get killed, run away, etc, but the PCs are always the same, taking blow after blow, THEMSELVES being "worn down", thus why most playgroups will usually experiment with the optional rules for targeted combat for a while and revert to the regular way. Also, the way I suggested, damage rolls would be ignored completly, and the attack roll itself would play a major role. In the example I gave, it's fairly common for a trained sword fighter to hit once and drop the opponent, given a rather "weak" opponent as a Goblin, most swordplayers will usually aim for lethal areas anyway, so that way, the better the attack roll, the closest to hitting a lethal area (and hitting it hard enough, of course) you are. I can't see how this relates to the abstract "damage rolls" system of D&D, which makes weapons pretty much obsolete from 6th level onward, since the damage BONUSES are more than enough to make up for a roll of 1 in a d8, for instance. The combat system I suggested is not only simpler than yours, being more fluid and quicker, but it's ALSO more "realistic" flavor-wise, after all, I don't see how "distributing damage points between Light, Moderate and Critical" is flavorful, it's actually closer to the abstract "generic hit point loss" system from D&D.

Yeah, sorry, I did miss the bit about scrapping damage rolls. What still strikes me, though, is the lack of an active defense in that style.

I'm not sure how dividing damage into three types is more close to the generic HP system. Could you elaborate on that? Because in this case, it will provide a way for a wound to do damage, but that damage will potentially be greater or lesser. What I like most about the three types is how the collapsing of each type leads to a trickle-through for wounds. Once you reach a certain threshold, a difference of "1" on the attack vs. defense suddenly becomes a lot more lethal. There's also a lot of ways you can die. Like...

If you have 3 Light Wound Points, 1 Moderate Wound Point, and 1 Critical Wound Point, a moderate difference (let's say 3-4 between attack and defense) or a big difference (greater than 5) will kill you. In your system, though, you'd have 5 HP at that point, so a difference of 5 or greater would be the only thing that would kill you.

And yeah, it's more deadly. That'll make characters think more about getting into combat. This RP (the one I'm thinking of) wouldn't be one of "monster, npc, monster, npc". More like, figure out what's going on, make a plan to get out alive, etc. Because as fun as dungeoncrawls are, it's nice to spice things up a bit.

PS: There are also rules for parrying in D&D, if a character wants to fight defensively. And then, there are feats that increase your defense based on base attack bonus, which pretty much stands for a character ability to parry a few blows. There're also feats for dodging blows, akills for tumbling across the battlefield, etc. It's not at all like Final Fantasy...

The thing is, those rules are not general, but specific. From how I've seen it played, anyway. You've got a character, they try to attack and get higher than a static defensive value, and then they let the other character have a swing at them. It's a lot less dynamic than something where you've actively got rules for defense. The defense itself still stays static, being bonused from time to time. When in reality, you have to keep working to keep a defense up.

And I mean, honestly, I'd much rather just toss what I've got out there and see how it goes.

[FM]

The parrying rules I mean is a different set of those, very close to your attack VS. defense one, actually, and it's to say it works. Thing is, you "roll against the attack" in D&D, when in your case, from what I've gathered, you'd simply roll defense in advance. I didn't grasp it entirely before, so I assumed you'd wait for attack rolls to then roll for defense, but from what I see, you actually give characters a "randomizable" AC, since they roll for defense, and that's their AC for that turn (or whatever measure of time you use). THIS works. Pretty well, actually.
But I'd still advocate to not let too much to the dice, you could merge both systems, and end up with a basic AC (or defense) value, which would be modified for his defensive roll (so a fully-plated warrior would still have a good enough defense on a roll of, say, a 1 on a d6, which makes for a more realistic approach). Damage could follow the same trend, with a basic attack modifier, plus the roll for the turn. And the thing about using HP rather than a wound-type system would be EXACTLY for that reason, lowering the chance of a PC getting killed in a single blow, because believe me, I've been a DM for a long time, and it IS frustrating to players when that happens. So much that some players will quit because of stuff like that. ANd even if the RP is about figuring stuff out, having a good ol' battle IS still one of the most fun parts for a lot of players, and given a battle with, say, a Lord and his 10-14 minions, the amount of dice rolled is almost bound to wipe at least 1-2 guys out of a 4-6 PC party.
My only advice to you, as a DM, is this: if you have to choose between a small lacking in realism and a rule that makes combat more deadly (thus risking the PCs life even more), I'd choose the former. As I said, though, YOU are the DM, so it's entirely up to you what to do. I was just offering some advice so you don't risk pissing of your players, after all, they are the ones that make RP'ing possible after all, and it IS all about them. I'd advise consulting your playgroup as to see what they think about it.
On a sidenote, what I meant was that both our systems deal with a simple rule: higher roll damages lower roll by a figure based on how higher it was. However, since mine is an absolute system, the higher the roll, the higher the damage, until the character drops, while in the system you suggested, when depleted of Light wounds, three rolls of 2 against three rolls of 1 would be enough to outright kill a character, when the blows were ALL poor attacks anyway, while a character with a high toughness (translating into a larger hp) would survive this flurry of attacks with not much more than a scratch, which ends up being more realistic. But I guess it could be tweaked further for allowing damage to specific body areas, but again, as I said, it's bound to hurt PCs more...

[sickofpalantirs]

why don't we just get a prototype RPG started, set out a few rules, use his system and see what happens?

[FM]

Suit yourselves. As I said, I was just tossing some ideas out there, due to my previous experiences (followed a DM's progress for 3 years and been DM'ing in his place for the last 7), but it might work just fine as it is.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

why don't we just get a prototype RPG started, set out a few rules, use his system and see what happens?

That's what I'm planning on doing.

As regards fatalities, there are high-fatality systems out there...and people do play them. Another thing is, the nature of the system makes a big difference. In a game where one of the major incentives of playing is leveling up, getting awesome equipment, and doing awesomely powerful stuff, death is a big deal. Because you lose all that work. But in one where there's no level advancement/equipment advancement to speak of. So the loss is only in the character you've developed. And even then, a GM can easily fudge it into unconsciousness. That's the thing, it's bendable.

I would also be using straight modifiers, it wouldn't be entirely dice-based. Essentially, a modifier is applied after the die roll, and it reflects your ability to absorb damage. For instance, you might have bullet-proof armor that gives a modifier of +2 against projectiles. They roll an attack of 5, you roll a defense of 3. It hits you, but causes no damage because of your boost.

The other thing to make randomness more viable is the fact that I'd be using more than one die. Probably based off of the appropriate stat. The more dice you add in, the more of a bell curve the results have. d20 uses a flat curve (each number has a 5% chance of being rolled), whereas if you rolled 2d10 instead, you'd get different results. (1% chance of getting 2, 2% chance of getting 3, all the way up to around 10% for rolling 5...so you're 10x as likely to roll a 5 as you are to roll a 1) So you'll more often get an average result.

And I'm aware of the potential pitfalls. I'll be working with those. I'm also intending to run with squishy rules. The initial rules are short, which gives a GM leeway to slot in rules.

[sickofpalantirs]

Suit yourselves. As I said, I was just tossing some ideas out there, due to my previous experiences (followed a DM's progress for 3 years and been DM'ing in his place for the last 7), but it might work just fine as it is.

and I at least appreciate it, but I think we should just give it a try, and see how it works out.