Dogs in the Vineyard Thoughts
Just in case the real game doesn't work anything like what I'm imagining, here are my current thoughts about using something like the Dogs in the Vineyard system for Nuclear Beasts.
- Stats would include an Animals Instincts rating, which would be 5d6 for 1st generation, 3d6 for 2nd and 1d6 for 3rd. It applies to the sort of tasks that your species is good at and to social interactions with other members of the same species.
- The penalty for "No Hands" would be that whenever you spend dice to perform a task (whether actively to do something or defensively to save yourself from some effect), you have to sacrifice one extra die (that contributes nothing towards the total) to perform a task where hands would be important and two dice to perform one where hands would be essential.
- The bad guys in the setting would include human spirits of rage and death that can influence or even possess Beasts who become vulnerable to them. These should get a cool name. Not "psi-demons"... and probably not "demons", although that would work (especially if most Beasts don't know what these evil spirits are). Maybe Murders? Malignants? Maligns? They're basically the rage and dismay of humans who died in the Last War, and whose spirit is still restless.
- Performing a normal action entails rolling all of the dice and using the sum of your highest two dice as the result. Penalties force you to lose dice, starting with the highest ones. The difficulties assume that you have d6s to roll... so 7 is an "average" task, 12 is really hard, et cetera. Since you can have dice larger than d6s (just not for stats), a task could theoretically be as hard as 24 and still be beatable, but it's not bloody likely. Crits probably occur when you can beat the task multiple times with your dice or if a single pair of dice can produce twice the total necessary.
- Stats might have funny names, but they'd probably basically be Strength & Toughness, Agility & Speed, Charm & Psi and Smarts & Perception. Then Instincts. Maybe Strength, Speed, Spirit & Smarts. Plus Species. Except that being all "S"s would be annoying to abbreviate.
- Psi should have some funky system, like dropping a die code each time that you have to roll it during a session or dropping each die that comes up "1" in a contest. You get lost dice back by abstaining from the use of all Psi for a few days.
- Equipment would grant bonus dice in appropriate situations... or big penalties if it's absolutely necessary and you don't have it. e.g.- fighting in ranged combat if you don't have a gun would entail a 2-die penalty (or outright forbiddance) to actually attack anyone back, although you can still dodge. Most items (especially spiffy ones, anyway) get a rating of their own, usually one die, although it's possible to get a gizmo with multiple small dice.
- Cyberware effects would vary by device; psychic powers generally just get a rating of their own, like "Sixth Sense d8".
- It could use a system where the more dice it takes you to perform a normal task, the longer it takes your character and the more likely it is to have problems. e.g.- if it takes you one die to beat the difficulty of climbing this wall (7), then you just leap over. If it takes two die, you climb it normally. Three, you climb it really slowly, but you get there. Four or more, you'd run the risk of hurting yourself or suffering other long-term malign effects such as breaking your rope, embarrassing yourself in front of important NPCs or making enough noise to attract the guards. Should failure occur if it would take five or more dice to do it? e.g.- one die (or being able to do it twice because you have so many dice) is a crit, two is a success, three is a partial success, four is failure and five+ is botch?
- Stats are rated in multiple d6s. Other ratings tend to be a single die, but can be larger than d6. Unimpressive but generally useful stuff might grant a handful of d4s.
- There's an expensive Silvering that entails robot arms being grafted to the shoulders of a First Generation Beast. This would reduce the hands penalty by at least one die and might eliminate it entirely, depending on how "cool" I want the robot hands to be. Other generations might be able to get some additional benefit from an extra arm or two as well. There's probably also the equivalent of the Mechadentrites: tiny mechanical add-ons that can't help in combat, but do help analyze and repair ancient tech.
- Races consist of describing what you're good at, then giving a list of stat adjustments and special abilities. If you get too much cool stuff, you may also get flaws, where you lose dice when performing certain tasks (e.g.- Elephants are lousy jumpers).
- Penalties could also be handled by increasing the difficulty... then they'd be harder to get over, even if you have a lot of dice. If all jumps are +4 difficulty, a 7 task would become an 11 for you... much harder. And a 12 would become a nigh-impossible 16. It wouldn't matter how many d6 you had to roll, you'd still be toast if the difficulty went above 18 or something (even 3d6 can't do it).
- There could be various types of human spirits, named according to the effects they have. Obsessions, Furies, Malignants. Maybe even Whimsies. As a whole they could be called demons, ghosts, shadows or maybe Black Spirits. Or Dark Echoes.
- "Luck rolls" would just be 2d6, giving a range from 2 to 12. I might have a Minor Luck psi-power that adds to this... and a Major Luck that can add to almost anything. Actually, make that Luck (only adds to Luck rolls, but it's not a Psi power so it doesn't get reduced by use) and Probabiity Control (can influence pretty much anything, but it's expensive and it grants no special powers).
Posted by Kiz at August 27, 2004 03:34 AM