Nuclear Beasts

Revised HM Rules

Okay, so the revised rules I'm considering...

Stats are Brawn, Agility, Cleverness, Perception, Drive and Magic.

All stats start at +0 except for Drive, which starts at +2. Then you get another +5 to distribute (you can increase this to +6 or +7 by sacrificing 1 or 2 points from stats you don't want to increase). You can't distribute more than 3 points to any one stat, though. Finally, you can apply your racial template, which will adjust some stats up and some down.

Common NPCs tend to have ratings around +0, including Drive.

Drive gives you Drive Points equal to your Drive rating if it's greater than zero; otherwise you get no Drive Points.

HM Setting Elements

• Ancient ruins that predate the White Lords. Indications that the White Lords were not the first intelligent mice to live in the Fallows, but that some ancient empire predated them... then fell into decay and eventually all returned to mindless barbarism. Heh... maybe they should have been guinea pigs...
• I still need a name/hook for the big, rich, crime-ridden capital city where all urban adventures generally occur. Samsara on RPG.net suggested Haven, which I kind of like.
• The crime network is the Gleaners... a nice, innocuous term for folks who snatch up a little bit of everything. The Black Paw is a mysterious group of assassins associated with the Gleaners... their mark is a paw-print of black paint on the face of a dead victim. Thanks to Samsara again for both of those names.
• I might use Jakatas for the name of the ancient ruins (another name from Samsara, along with Tsarchul, which I don't have a use for yet. It could be the name for those mysterious inhabitants, though: "The Tsarchul".

Generic Cinematic Combat

• Characters can take damage to whatever ability they want to reduce... their movement rate, their fighting skill, their ability to think clearly, etc.
• Minor NPCs generally just have one trait (their job) and take damage straight to it (if their trait applies to combat, anyway).
• To avoid the sillier effects of games like Risus, have a predefined set of standard traits.
• As defined previously, you can use "feints" and such to try and establish a bonus by sacrificing an attack. "Tricks" use non-combat abilities to do the same... but tricks suffer a cumulative penalty every time you try them again during the same combat.
• Rather than having stuff like Chefs take damage to their "chef" trait, you have some default traits that everyone has at some minimal level... basically, if you have no combat-oriented traits, you'll default to that.
• 3 main stats: Brawn, Cleverness and Agility. Eh, Agility, Brawn and Cleverness.
• Presence could be a stat... or just an Ability which adds to Cleverness when trying to lead people.
• A Willpower/Heroism stat which is rarely tested against normally, but which gives you X points to spend on exerting your drive and determination. Really powerful abilities may also cost these points.
• Abilities/Skills add to Agility, Brawn or Cleverness appropriately. Skills shouldn't add multiple times... when multiple ones apply, use the highest or lowest, as appropriate.
• Okay, in Hybris terms, this leaves out Charm (now part of Cleverness), Perception (ditto) and Magic (also cleverness?). Magic could well be an optional fourth primary stat that you can buy at the expense of the other three (but which most people have a rating of zero in).
• I kind of like the idea of naming the stats in alphabetical order... Agility, then Brawn, then Cleverness. No idea what "D" would be, though. Hm. Maybe Drive for the "willpower/heroism" trait. You can take damage to Brawn or Drive. You can also take Drive damage to activate certain powers.
• Heh, then skills could be called "Extras".

Agility: 3
Brawn: 2
Cleverness: 3
Drive: 4

Extras:

• Keen Eyes +2
• Amazing Shot +2
• Charming +2

Hm. That's not too bad. I'm uncertain on what dice system to use, though... stat + extra + 2d10 wouldn't be bad, but perhaps some sort of dice pool would be better.

Combat

Okay, how about 3 different things you can try in combat?

1. Standard attack / defense.

2. Angle for advantage. This uses the normal combat skills, but it's basically a feint... the amount you win by this time gets added as a bonus for next round.

3. Trickery. This uses non-combat skills and gives a bigger bonus than a feint... but every time you use it in a specific combat, it gets harder to pull off. Ideally, if the target is expecting it, you get a big penalty, but I could settle for just "each trick after the first is rolled at -2". It's generally opposed by your opponent's Agility or Perception.

Niche Protection

So, with HM being a fairly typical sword & sorcery game, I should probably think a bit about niche protection. There are several possible approaches.

Character Classes: the traditional D&D method... you'll pick a niche and stick with it. The class could be strict (fighters can never learn magic) or loose (fighters always suck at magic, but can learn it).

Drive/Favorite Stat: everyone gets to pick a stat that they get doubled bonus dice on. Since the stats are arrayed out for 6 niches, you get to pick one of each. Anyone can learn another niche's skills, but they won't get the extra bonus dice.

Point costs: you just can't afford to be good at everything. The difficulty here is more restricting folks to reasonable niches... a character who excels at all kinds of fighting and magic but stinks at everything else is boring and undesirable.

HM: Misc 3

It was Canduss the Methodical who introduced the use of coins as a method of representing wealth, back in the early days of the empire. One of the original White Lords, she combined the work of innumerable slaves, specially made presses and her own magical powers to mint more than a million small coins. Each was formed by melting loose a single drop of pure metal, then stamping it with the emblem of the White Lord that it represented. Over time, those representing Lords of higher power and status became worth more, with the result that in modern times the pale white coins stamped with the symbol of House Luciel are the most valuable of all.

As more coins were created, inflation began to set in and the coins steadily dropped in value. It was a later Imperial Treasurer, Calius III (one of Canduss's many great-grand-children), who shut down the mint to prevent more coinage from entering use and reducing the value of the existing coins further. To ensure that his decision was not overruled by the other lords, he had the apparatus that Canduss had built dismantled completely and the slaves that had maintained it put to death.

From that point forward, no new currency has entered the empire and the coins have slowly grown in value. The coffers of the nobility are kept full by taxing the populace, but enormous amounts of wealth from the early times are still scattered around the empire. As quantities have slowly dropped, there has been talk of minting more, but so far Calius III's belief that creating new coins cannot help but devalue the existing ones has kept any of the wealthy houses from supporting the idea. Instead, very small transactions are carried out with barter or by using crude wooden tokens that can be redeemed with particular establishments. Minting any sort of metal coinage is a crime punishable by death and seizure of all goods.

As a result of this, adventurers who stumble across an undisturbed cache of coins in some abandoned ruin (dating back to a period when such coins were of comparatively little value) can find themselves suddenly quite wealthy.