The OOC Thread

Ask me anything.

What kind of characters are we expected to make? It sounds like from the scene 0 description that we're all in the same group; does this restrict our species and/or tribe choices?

No restriction. Though there are 3 species and 9 civilized tribes from those species, players may choose from any. In an inhospitable environment clans (small groups of the same tribe) reside in small habitable pockets of the badlands. For convenience, whatever species and tribes are chosen by the players, their original clans will be within proximity and use the same Oracle, Seer, and Atoner. Sure, not every person is agreeable with every other person, but clans must work together for survival, even if they prefer to remain separated most of the time.

Characters of the same tribe will be from the same clan. Characters of the same species will already be acquainted, even if not friends. Characters of differing species will know of the other local clans and will be introduced as actual play starts.

@Triasen, I've got some previous experience with prior versions of this game. I'm not talking about making weapons out of the stinger or the claws or the exoskeleton or anything like that. The claws and the stingers could possibly be talismans that would carry magical properties that they would confer to someone who was wearing them on their body as a necklace or a charm or something like that.

Yes. That has not changed. I only adjusted the mechanics to better fit PbP.

I have had some storms roll through for past few days, causing some electricity and internet issues. Hopefully everything will stabilize.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification. ;-)

I changed my last post to be more fitting.

Excellent. I am glad you made the comment here or I might have missed it. Once the new responses are posted I will address new findings and collections.

I'm lost in rules at the moment; please give me clearance on two topics:

Knowledge. I don't understand where Knowledge is coming of - do you mean Mind, possibly?

Tasks. For the Tasks, the skills get divided. Does this means anything with dividing the points in the skills to the three Aspirations or is it that everyone has only one or how do you divide it?
For example: Physical is divided in Combat, Coordination, and Locomotion and let's say you have 4 points in Physical...

I should have added more text when awarding advancement. Basic characters advance to Aspiring Characters. At the Aspiring level Body is assisted Stature, Mobility, and Fitness. Essence is assisted by Composition, Neurology, and Physiology. Mind is assisted by Assurance, Knowledge, and Persona.
"Assisted by" is a better term than "divided." I was not thinking about the mathematical indication of the chosen term. The numeric value for new terms is started at 1, then can be increased through play. The original value is not changed.

That was fast! :-)

Okay, thanks - I forgot about that on the way, as it seems.

So, if a skill reaches 3, one of the aspirations is on 1 - what about both the others, are they fixed on 0 or is there any way to raise them, too?

I edited the Applications of Various Tasks to read "augmented by the Aspiring skills of" instead of "divided into." I see how the original wording can be a misleading.

You are correct. Aspirations skills are at a value of 0, unless they are acquired through game play. Specifically, since your character is now a Defender, the abilities and skills that are not associated with that archetype are not going to be as important.

The mechanics of this system are designed to aid in character intentions. In most other systems that I have played, character intentions are ignored, and actions are dictated by game mechanics. That is why I like this system. It is geared toward PbP where the players do not have to be overly familiar with the mechanics. As GM, it is my responsibility to provide players with the best mechanics that related to their posted character intentions.

That makes sense; it's a little bitmore complicated, but you have what you want, it's a better trade off.

Another question: For a task, why is the basic ability not included? It seems that in the beginning, you have a lower value (2) of the task-combination than in the relevant ability (3).

The idea is to keep the numbers small to better suit PbP. The mechanics behind the scene that players are not seeing now give distinct advantage to Aspiring characters over Basic encounters. Encounters of the same level are on equal footing.

Understood.

Thank you.

What's the deal, folks? Did everybody ghost?

I did ghost everything for the last two days - sorry for not communicating.

Frankly, I'm not sure what I should do with the ants. Couldn't we walk around the mound or is there anything important we have to kill them for?

If they are bloking the way, let's kill them with heat and get over it, I'd say.

Sorry, I'm struggling with the game- I feel lost in both the setting and the system so it's being very difficult for me to get "in"

I may have made a simple issue sound like much more of a complicated problem. Unlike fireants, which are easy to kill but impossible to eliminate, the fantasy ants are plenty big enough to see, being the size of a person's forearm, and much much fewer in number.

The logistic similar to real ants is that the workers are irrelevant to eliminating the colony, only the queen and the larvae matter. If the colony is not eliminated, they will continue to rob the food stores. In modern-day terms, the mound is about the size of a load of dirt dumped by a dump truck.

Because it is made of fist-sized stones, it is fairly easy to physically flatten, only time is required, but that is not really necessary since neither the larvae nor the queen can escape to the outside. Magic is not even necessary to kill these, but it makes it faster.

I was hoping that this might be different enough from most games that it would be an interesting dilemma. Give me some feed back. Games are for having fun.

The setting is stone-age. If you have seen the movie 10,000 BC, it should give you a good visual. The original Conan the Barbarian is also a fairly good visual, except for the use of steel.

The system is numbers light because it is specifically designed for PbP. Unfortunately, I only had it published as a hardcopy, for a sense of nostalgia. I may be printing too little or too much, but your character uses magic by charging a stone and launching it at a target.

He can cause physical damage by the use of heat or shock. or stunning damage by using light. The numbers are the same, only the appearance is different.

After advancing, your character also sees better than the normal person, giving him a bonus to anything related to investigation or wariness.

I've been playing this game for several years now, under previous incarnations; this is the most rules-light version I've seen yet. And that's a good thing, because (in my experience) the more rules-heavy a system is, the harder it is to do anything. Also, the more rules a game has, the more detailed the gamemaster's recordkeeping has to be.

My Advice: Dont worry about the rules. Let the gamemaster handle it. Just say what you want to do, and MaConnell will tell you how to do it, and what's involved. Treat it like a LARP; the story's the important thing.

For a standard party, it would be a great idea.

For this situation, it's more about discovering my character, but at your pace, not in mine, which is surprisingly difficult for me. So I'm feeeling unsteady the whole time, can't get my footing so I hesitate before I jump in any direction...

Solution in my eyes would be probably a larger group of players or a kind of complete system overview - I'm not sure, probably both. :-D

Well, the problem with that would be that MacConnell has most of this stuff in his head. This is the newest revision of the rules set. Previous editions were available in written form (via privately shared Google Docs) but the rulebook was large and comprehensive, and a lot of the players from that era complained about how complex it was. So when Mac started posting here, his idea was to throw out his old system, which was very rules-heavy, because his intent was to make the rules so simple that they would be an afterthought, and players could concentrate on just playing the game, and telling the GM what they wanted their characters to do. The plan was for the GM to handle the mechanics side, or at least 85% of it.

Think of this version of the rules as the Red Cover Tom Moldvay Dungeons and Dragons Basic Rules. The previous version of Mac's game was more akin to D&D 3.5, if all of the supplemental books were integrated into the Player's Handbook. i.e., a beast of a book, by comparison.

The one thing you should keep in mind is that in Mac's game, there are NO restrictions. There are NO limits. Just figure out what you want to do, and Mac will show you how to do it. There are no "classes" per se, just a series of skill paths, that lead to the character choosing a specialty. It really is an awesome system. But I get it; not knowing how the game mechanics are structured can be scary, if you are used to plotting your character's actions based on what you know the probability of success will be, based on your knowledge of how the mechanics are constructed. It's the whole "optimized build" mentality; LET GO OF THAT. It took me a while to realize it, but in Mac's system, optimization takes care of itself. In Mac's game, there is no way to build a weak character. I know. Scary isn't it? Ha ha.

Oh, I don't have any problems with playing free style, as you surely saw in my posts so far. ;-)

But if there is a system, I want to grasp it. i don't like it when rules disturb play. So far, the subtleties of the skill system have completely eluded me.

And the main problem is still this:

---

I started as late as '84 and I walked a different path than you, preferring free style play, leaving mainstream games, writing my own and so on.

Basically, I like the system, so I fear your arguments are heading in the wrong direction. ;-)

Ok, so let me clarify: Mac's game has been simplified to the point where there are almost no written rules anymore. He's just taking the old rules and simplifying the math in his head as it goes along. But there is a core concept:

There are different levels of skills, such as basic, intermediate, adept, and master (I might've switched the order on intermediate and adept. I'm not sure) and skills have a related physical ability. Basically, you add all these things up and add them to a die roll and that's your score. Then you compare your score to some other number, which is opposed to it. (The way a to-hit roll is compared to armor class in D&D.) But ever since the rules were simplified no one but Mac knows what the formulas are.

It is difficult to introduce a new idea, because it takes a lot of time to develop a good sense of understanding. To give some insight toward epic status: An Internalist is like a super martial artist who is also able to generate magical damage. Your character and Tellerian's character are better suited to dealing with people who become problems. Elzian and Shaethon are better suited to deal with animals.

Oops, me and my ineptitude at computers. I just accidentally deleted my entire Character Creation thread instead of a single post. I will put it back up. Maybe I will even do a better job of conveying information... Now, if I could only figure out how to make tables...

Tables? It's with the vertical slash: |

Cool. Thanks. It will take me some time. Spaces are evidently particular. I also want the grid to be visible. I used to know how to do this with BBCode but I just cannot remember.

This post may be helpful for you, perhaps?

Guide to Gamers' Plane BBCode

Cool. Thanks, guys. @Alordis RL is more important. Enjoy the kids while you can.

Thanks. I had looked at this guide but I could not remember where to find it. Having a link posted here is super helpful.