Director Awards: The Game

You can find the basic idea for the game here: RPG board game with shifting GM

Here is the list of cards.

Set up: every players picks a Director. Currently they are just called Two, Three, Four, Five and Six. (Use normal playing cards.)

Now every player picks three random Profession cards, plus two Advantages, two Disadvantages, one Item and one Connection. //Gender card??///Motivation card??//

He places one Profession in each of his three Cast areas: Protagonist, Support and Antagonist. The player puts two of the other cards in each of the three areas, whatever way preferred.

Example: Players gets Scoundrel / Rogue, Gun Nut and Prostitute. Also: Advantages: Tough, Rich, Marksman; Disadvantages: Slow and Phlegmatic. Item: Secret File Connection: Mafia //Stud, Girl, Female//The player goes for: Protagonist: Gun Nut, Tough, Phlegmatic Support: Prostitute, Rich, Secret File Antagonist: Scoundrel, Marksman, Mafia

Next he picks 2 Location cards and plays one in the centre of the table. The 2nd one the player keeps in his hand.

Example: Laundry, Motel. The player puts Motel in the centre of the table.

After every player has set up their cast, each player picks a Relation card. And plays it to one of the players' Cast members on his right. He decides who of his cast is related that way to whom from the other cast. And keeps the card next to his cast member that it relates to.

Example: 2nd players gets Ex Asylum Inmate, Detective, Soldier; Charismatic, Fighter; Short Fused, Brainwashed; Map; Corporation 

The player goes for: Protagonist: Ex Asylum Inmate, Short Fused, Fighter; Support: Soldier, Charismatic, Short Fused; Antagonist: Detective, Map, Corporation; He also got the locations Police Station and Prison, and decides to play Police Station. 

Now both players pick a Relation card: Player one gets _______________ has been a friend to me when others were prejudiced. He decides to play it from his Protagonist to player 2's antagonist (the Scoundrel). Player gets _______________ saved me from certain doom, and I must repay them. and plays it from his Protagonist to player 1's Support (the prostitute).

After this set up phase, the director for the 1st Act is decided randomly, by picking a card with the Number of the director.

The aim of the game is create the most exciting story with the current set up (and hopefully not pissing off any of the players). After every Director directed an act, the game is over and an anonymous voting for the best director and winner takes place.

The director picks specific antagonists and their connections as well as Moves! to attack the Protagonists and Support. He sets scenes at locations and sets the Motivational or Drama Framework that lures the Cast in.

The Director also decides at this point, which Locations (from all the players' played out cards) will be featured in which act/phase (one per each of the three phases) and what Characters and Events are featured there. The Director does not need to note this down or prove it by card. He should be able to change and improvise during the game, if he comes up with a more stringent development. But having a set up before the game really starts gives a good framework as starting point.

The Non Directors of the Act play their characters and get (or spend?) points for invoking their cards.

Protagonists have plot immunity, but can lose cards while support characters can potentially die, as can villains. But the role of a character can shift. Still someone is always gonna be the a protagonist.

Example: A Move! card played by the the Director can have the outcome on Actor failure that the protagonist has to shift role with antagonist or support, or that the support dies.

All three roles can be banned for the rest of the act. For example through injury or imprisonment.

The Director plays all the Support and Antagonists, he can also play his own Protagonist. Support and Protagonist of the same player have a special Bond that gives a bonus on reaction rolls (card picks??) to each other. Antagonists collect bonus points (experience or spotlight points) that make them stronger, by showing up / foreshadowing.

Romance scenes gives bonus points?

An RPG Board Game: Everyone has a turn as Gamemaster

I have never in my life encountered a board game that was able to simulate the open structure of an RPG. Lately I came up with a new approach that maybe can solve this issue.

One of the problem those games encounter is that they require preparation of a GM not to stay very static. While in an RPG being the GM is the reward in itself, this breaks down in a board game simulation of an RPG.

My approach is to make every player the GM in each session of the game.

My basic idea was: elements are randomly shuffled around before the (sub)game starts and the GM of that section tries to create a story/ an adventure based on this card.

After half an hour his turn is over and the next player, becomes the GM. There are two different ways for it to play out: a completely new story starts, or the new GM continuous the current one.

At the end of the game - after everyone took turns - the winner is the one who gets most votes for his or her adventure. This voting process should be anonymous. And it should be split in to multiple categories. Additionally voting for best "normal" player can take places. Even splitting it up, for best actor, strategist, etc.

A potential title would be: Storyteller Power Hour, although something based on the theme of the cards could also make sense.
"The Oscar goes to" would be a title if you want to make it more mainstream. In this case creating a random title for the story/ movie would also be fun. Another option would be "Director Awards".

Actually you don't even need cards: a set of tables should do the job as well.

Categories for cards or tables could for example be:
Profession
Strength
Weakness
Location
Items

Here you can find a list of attributes for random generation.

SeedBoneMeat: Turning collaborative story telling into a non RPG game

I am wondering why I put my creative energy into RPGs instead of - say for example - writing stories.

The answer is really simple: RPGs give instant gratification and feedback. There is an audience. And this audience is even rewarded - by participation as well as by score tracking system and by rewards for building their characters.

They also don't need a lot of written preparation. You can plan the game under the shower or while doing  a hike and those little splinters of ideas - which can be replaced later by other ideas while just daydreaming - or just put in practice on the gaming table.

RPGs provide a lot of tools to structure the plot and character creation process. There are random tables and die rolls. There are backbones of a setting laid out that can be used to support creators.

So how can we transfer these features to a non synchronous medium? Sure: there are online forum discussions and even online forum games. But the later does not really work so well in my experience. Most of the games take too long to take off and die quickly.

We need a short set up period. There should be the possibility to drop in and out quickly. That can be done best, if there are standardized elements - like character archetypes - that can be used across different realizations of the narrative - different game sessions.

It is also important that there is no need to do too much preparation work, like reading long pieces of text. Contributors would be further motivated by getting score points for every piece of text created - as long as it is a deeper development of a collaboratively designed element - as well as special acknowledgement - karma - for pieces that are well received.

All the elements - setpieces - should be small though. A collaborative writers worst nightmare is the person who starts adding more and more stuff without collaborating any longer. Somehow this energy some people develop has to brought to good use.

What I envision now is a three layer structure: SEED - BONE - MEAT

Seeds are just ideas thrown out on the gaming/writing table.

Bones are created the moment when the seeds are connected to the work already done.

Meat is turning the bones into real text.

Meat has a style texture (skin?) that can be decided on, on the bone level. But probably that is only a suggestion.

There can be different manifestations of the outer layers created from the lower layers - done by different contributors, or even by the same person. In the end it is decided in the group which of the manifestations is
made canonical.

To make all of this work. It is most important that there is a limited time frame. People are not supposed to feel that any of their ideas rejected will take the spotlight of them for too long. This creates frustration and would turn the collaborative effort into a something similar to trench warfare.

Potentially even a randomizer (dice, cards) could be used to take some tension off the cherry picking.

One question that remains is, if there is need to structure the seeds even further. For example into:

characters, locations, interactions, plot twists, scene exits, scenes, etc.

Currently I think about being pretty lose with that. Probably it is best to give a category to each seed. That way contributors can work on in parallel on the same kind of seed. E.g. "everyone creates a location seed now!" Those parallel created seeds can than be ranked and put into categories like "Needs to Be Used", "Maybe" or "Vetoed". As people are forced to rank, it is to be taken less personal.

(Having seed categories should also help to solve the issue of creating too much of one category.)

On the bone level creating connections should be rewarded - but also questioning connections or adding a twist to connections.

The question is whether the connections can be seen as seeds themselves. Maybe they are similar but they definitely belong to the 2nd level. Except for that there is probably not much left for the bone phase anyways.

One issue that comes up is that while everyone is creating seeds (and connecting bones?), is that there will not be much talk. RPGs live from the constant chat. But they also don't create text and are synchronous. The seed-bone-meat(-skin?) game is not supposed to be that. Therefore that should not create issues.

But if it asynchronous, is there a need for a session structure? Would it be possible to just provide a big tool box? I feel that there needs to be a certain pressure. A deadline - an guaranteed end helps with that. The tighter it is, the better. The issue is that asynchronous deadlines are hard to make happen. My best hope is that the reward (karma) structure will help with that.

Karma should expire, creating an urgency to use it. But it is still undecided what Karma actually allows you to do. Probably you are given something like director rights: e.g. what seeds are created next? what bone category do we need now? Probably the Karma can also be used to gain an extra vote in the ranking process.

Now comes the tricky process of meat creation: I never enjoyed turning ideas into final, detailed text. But I think that this process can hopefully gain something by turning into micro competitions. Everyone creates the meat for the same section and then this is ranked. As reward for winning you can create the follow up meat or give it as assignment out to some other players.

The most important part about the meat is that it has to stay SHORT. Probably there should be a strict limit around 500 characters - with the option of "follow up meat" (or "meat bridge"?): another 500 characters. That way it stays modular and hopefully playful.

It would be also great to tag the meat pieces so that they can be recycled to be used with other seeds. E.g. action sequence, or first kiss, or whatever. Meat transformation would be another process: it rewrites a current peace of meat. The director / Karma holder could request a rewrite.

Maybe it would make sense to turn this into a game about the "writers's room" on the set of a TV show. This is an interesting idea - taking something like Primetime Aventures one step furter: you don't play characters: you play writers, or parodies of writers: the melodrama king, the hand grenade action guy, etc.

But this is another interesting idea I will discuss in another post.

The distribution of SBM should be handled via a pyramid structure. For each two Seed decisions there is one Bone created and for 2 Bones there has to be one Meat, before more seeds are allowed to be created.

Just one afterthought: SeedBoneMeat is based on a voting process. Every time there is a stalemate a randomizer is used instead to come to a decision. This way SBM can be even played/used by a single person: just always put two elements out, and let the randomizer pick one. I think this option will make testing the structure for me much easier.

Here you can find a first SBM test run.

Roundbased Conflict Resolution

I was reading some 90ies Thunderbolts comics yesterday and issue #2 (the fight with the Wrecking Crew and the sudden final twist, to be exact) gave me the following idea.

Comic books don't have unlimited space for their fight scenes. They need to be resolved in a few pages. So wouldn't the same be handy for fast RPG conflict resolution?

The conflict would have a certain number of rounds that you would decide before hand, depending on the importance of the conflict. Let's say 2 for fighting some minions or 5 for the dramatic final battle.

Each round is resolved either group based - if it is suppossed to be fast, e.g. against minions, or character based, if you want more detail.

So in every round everyone does their action and each round has its outcome. Something along the lines of.

Victory and
Victory
Victory, but
Loss, but
Loss
Loss and

You see where I am going here, especially if you know the new Doctor Who RPG...

The "but" gives an advantage to the losing side? I have to think about that...

Roll Right Under System Alpha Version 0.2

I changed some details of the stuff I have so far. New stuff is bold. Designer notes are in italics.


Stats and Checks

We have the following stats between 5 and 15:

Fighting/Close Combat (=base for Parry (better call it Evasion?)
Courage/Willpower
Smarts
Charisma/Social
Agility Used for Shooting and Throwing
Strength/Body (= base for resistance and cap for maximum melee damage and maxium carried weight)

Designer note: While I started with the stats from The Dark Eye 1, I realized I would need to weighten them in another way instead, because there is no space for stats in RRUS.

You create them by spending 50 points. 10 is an average human and default.

Skill checks are done by rolling a d20. If you roll higher than your stat, your character fails.

The difficulty of a check is decided by a Difficulty Number. If you roll below that number you fail as well. (An example for that is the Defense score of an opponent.)

If you roll 10 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve a great success.

If you roll 15 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve an amazing success.

If you roll 20 and you have a stat of 20, you achieve a legendary success.


Traits Character Focus
Each character starts with one Trait: a Talent Trait, an Origin Trait or an Supernatural Trait. If a Checks falls under a Trait, the player can roll 2 dice (d20) and choose a result her prefers. Traits are not cumulative. You never roll more than 2 dice in a Check. (Only important characters have Traits??)
Supernatural Traits are the exception, because you can not roll without the Trait and with Trait, you can roll only 1 die.

Talent Traits:
Fighting
Shooting
Athletics (Climbing, Swimming, etc.)
Social
Tech

Origin Traits:
Nature
City
Sea/Coast
Nobility/Elite
Caves/Mines

Supernatural Trait:
Magic
Blood Magic
Psionics
Nature Religion
etc

Designer note: The traits are superpowerful, nearly doubling your effectivity (as far as I can calculate), so the game needs a weaker category as well. I renamed Traits in Character Focus, as you will have only one and make Traits something different: little rule modifications. E.g. Ninja: your Damage Roll caps with Dextery, not Strength.
Another option would be to make Traits less general. E.g. not Fighting, but Backstab etc. Generally the second d20 should be granted by lots of dramatic and cooperative situational modifiers.


Attacks

A great success means 2 dice for Damage (and take the better), or hitting d4 additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).

An amazing success means 3 dice for Damage (and take the best), or hitting all additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).


Damage

If someone gets potentially hurt, you also roll a d20. Each source of Damage has Damage Rating between 1 and 20. If the result of the roll is higher than this stat, no damage is done, but the enemy is Shaken.

If the result is the same or below (but not the same or below the Resistance, see next paragraph), it causes a wound. If the result is 10 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 2 wounds. If the result is 15 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 3 wounds. If the result is 20, but still not higher than the Damage Roll, it causes an instant kill.

The Resistance of the victim is used as Difficulty Number for the Damage Roll. That means that Damage Rolls that do not top the Resistance are just shrugged off and cause no effect.
(Armor is part of Resistance.)

Roll Right Under System Alpha Version 0.1

This is a follow up from the last blogpost. In the meantime, I created an alpha version from the sketch for a simple not experimental RPG system.


Stats and Checks

We have 5 stats between 5 and 15:

Courage
Smarts
Charisma
Agility
Strength

You create them by spending 50 points. 10 is an average human and default.

Skill checks are done by rolling a d20. If you roll higher than your stat, your character fails.

The difficulty of a check is decided by a Difficulty Number. If you roll below that number you fail as well. (An example for that is the Defense score of an opponent.)

If you roll 10 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve a great success.

If you roll 15 or above, but still not higher than your stat, you achieve an amazing success.

If you roll 20 and you have a stat of 20, you achieve a legendary success.


Traits

Each character starts with one Traits: a Talent Trait, an Origin Trait or an Supernatural Trait. If a Checks falls under a Trait, the player can roll 2 dice (d20) and choose a result her prefers. Traits are not cumulative. You never roll more than 2 dice in a Check. (Only important characters have Traits??)
Supernatural Traits are the exception, because you can not roll without the Trait and with Trait, you can roll only 1 die.

Talent Traits:
Fighting
Shooting
Athletics (Climbing, Swimming, etc.)
Social
Tech

Origin Traits:
Nature
City
Sea/Coast
Nobility/Elite
Caves/Mines

Supernatural Trait:
Magic
Blood Magic
Psionics
Nature Religion
etc

Attacks

A great success means 2 dice for Damage (and take the better), or hitting d4 additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).

An amazing success means 3 dice for Damage (and take the best), or hitting all additional opponents near you (all with the same Damage).


Damage

If someone gets potentially hurt, you also roll a d20. Each source of Damage has Damage Rating between 1 and 20. If the result of the roll is higher than this stat, no damage is done, but the enemy is Shaken.

If the result is the same or below (but not the same or below the Resistance, see next paragraph), it causes a wound. If the result is 10 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 2 wounds. If the result is 15 or above, but still not higher than the Damage Rating, it causes 3 wounds. If the result is 20, but still not higher than the Damage Roll, it causes an instant kill.

The Resistance of the victim is used as Difficulty Number for the Damage Roll. That means that Damage Rolls that do not top the Resistance are just shrugged off and cause no effect.
(Armor is part of Resistance.)

A simple RPG system - Another Sketch: Roll Right Under System

I was thinking about using a simple RPG system for a potential game of Nightspawn/Nightbane. Generally you could use it for everything anyways.

So the game would be based on 1st edition The Dark Eye/DSA (a simple d20 roll under system with 5 stats), but there would be one big difference:

Instead of an active parry or modifiers to make ability rolls harder, difficulty would be expressed, by a a value that you are not allowed to roll under.

So if an opponent has a Parry of 4 in this system, you only hit him if you roll above 4, but below your attack value (e.g. 10).

But to make things more interesting, the higher you roll (but not above your value!), the better the result is. Therefore someone with a really high ability can get special successes. (This aspect could be similar to the the Dragon Age system, but I did not read this one yet.)

If you know Unkown Armies, you will notice certain similarities.

The system would also include Tricks (based on any stat/ability), like Savage World does. This could also be influenced by page 42 of the D&D4 DM Guide.

(Something else I like a lot are aspects from FATE, but I am not sure, if they fit this system or make it too complex.)

An auction-based character development system

We could give this the fancy name ABCD for Auction-Based Character Development.

The idea behind is that skills and edges/aspect have no cost when you take them, but when you use them.
So the more some aspect of a character is used, the more expensive it get's to raise it higher.
To make the whole thing more interesting, interest in other characters to develop in the same area also boost the development price. Making use of the players willingness to pay for something takes in account a much more intelligent factor than counting only the ammount of uses.

Development should not only happen at the end of every game session or between games, but after every scene.

Beginner characters are mostly blank slates with only one extraordinary trait to define them. Players should assume that they already have more traits, but that we did not see them before. Obviously this does not work to well for a backstory intense immersive play experience. A solution could be that the coming up with the character is already part of play like pitching the series in Primetime Adventures. All the players would go together through the different phases of their characters' lives. This is similar to Spirit of the Century.

You can combine those ideas and you have an RPG rule system set up that could be tested in a board game. A good start would be a simple tree stats system with rock-scissors-paper like mechanics.

Savage Fate - Newest Version

You got the 5 Savage Worlds stats.
Successes are a 4 on the roll. 8 is a great success.

Instead of skills like in Savage Worlds you have something similar to Edges that give you a bonus in a specific field or under specific circumstances.
For character creation you choose:

A +1 environment modifier (e.g. city, wilderness, scholars/university, high society, orc culture, animals, swords, guns)
One primary +2 skill modifier (e.g. fighting, shooting (=throwing), athletics (=climbing, swimming), people skill (= persuasion, intimidation, taunt, streetwise), trace (=investigate, tracking), Stealth, dexterity (=pick locks, pickpocket), vehicles (=boating, driving, pilot), knowledge, arcane knowledge, repair, riding (incl. animal handling), survival (=streetwise), notice, guts.
One secondary +1 skill modifier (same categories as primary skill modifier)
A +1 psychological modifier (Aspect-Spirit of the Century style: friend, loved one, great nation of X, fear of snakes,...)


On each rank you can use one level advancement for one more primary skill and one for one more secondary, one attribute raise and one psychological modifier.

Stack Up maximum for any roll is Rank+3. => Novice: 4; Legendary: 8

[Even simpler solution:
Instead of environmental and skill modifiers, they are all aspects.]

Arcance knowledge is split into Powers and Rituals (á la D&D4).

And there are defined rules for skill challenges (x success vs. 4 failures).

Savage Century Light - New Version

You got the 5 Savage Worlds stats, but there are no skills.
Successes are a 4 on the roll. 8 is a great success.

Instead of skills you have something similar to Edges that give you +1 in a specific field or under specific circumstances.
For character creation you choose:

A +1 environment modifier (e.g. city, wilderness/scholars, university, high society, orc culture, animals)
Two +1 skill modifier (e.g. fighting, shooting (=throwing), athletics (=climbing, swimming), people skill (= persuasion, intimidation, taunt), investigate, Stealth, dexterity (=pick locks, pickpocket), vehicles (=boating, driving, pilot), , knowledge, arcane knowledge, repair, riding (incl. animal handling), tracking, survival, notice, guts.
1 conventional edge (or something else I come up with)

Variant (too strong??):
1 Primary skill +2
1 Secondary skill +1
On each rank you can use one level advancement for one more primary skill and one for one more secondary.
Solution: Stack Up maximum for any roll is +4 (or +6?)

The story board game

I will set an agenda for my story board game.

1. Find artists from the German Manga fan scene or from Deviant Art that can do semi-professional work
2. Decide on a setting

A narratish challenge system

Inspired by 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, a future challenge system could ask for a certain number of success by the group. A certain number of failures, would let them fail. This numbers don't have to be open to the players.
But instead of only taking into account sucessfull skill checks, there shoule also be a possibilty to manage the clever use of items. Basic manouvres like spillling perfume on a monster are maybe not handled by a skill check (although a trick out of Savage Worlds would work perfectly here), but by loosing of resources. The only question is, how abstract resources should be in this context.
She you literally use perfume from the character sheet, just improvize that this kind of character has perfume along or just tick off one (of for example three) abstract pieces of equipment or - even more abstract - uses of equipment.

Narrative about it is that the players themselves come up with skills to use. What counts is only the number of successes. Most of the rest is decided by the narratively empowered gamers.

An RPG that pretends to be a board game

While there has been some examples of boardgames that have a strong RPG component all those examplaes I know are taking over the tactical/wargamy component of RPGs. My challenge would be to create a narrative board game. The most ovious influence would be PtA.
Actually the basic set up is quite easy: provide focus for a generic setting by having

• a board that probably can be put together different (for example single rooms)
• cards for character concepts
• even better: cards for character traits (following Spirit of the Century's aspects)
• give antagonist controll to the players: instead of a GM you maybe pass a Nemesis card who has to be the "enemy"
• have the players not only create their characters, but also the antagonists

So I would go for a specific setting (e.g. daily soaps or a space ship).

Hitting more than one opponent

Instead of a specific Edge like Sweep a mechanic that takes extra damage that is wasted on one enemy automatically to the next one seems cool with exploding dice.
Sure you can install this as an edge too. That way it really makes sense to hit an enemy in the 50ies region...

The same can work with trick mechanics.

Another question is what to do with real high hit results. Instead of not using them, they could be seen as straight damage. This raises the question if a second damage throw is really necessary.
For sure it creates a bell curve in the damage. You have to hit twice really well to do huge ammount of damage (or at least the second time).

As we see this mechanic is only somewhat implemented anyways. A logical conclusion would be to get rid of the damage roll.

Initative and damage by strength and weapon type

Savage Worlds does really well by speeding things up.
But there is a way to stay as fast and take Quickness/ Agility into account without giving it such a huge advantage as in Savage Worlds: high Agility characters just receive some extra cards up front before the battle and play them instead of the dealt one whenever they want.
The only question is balance: does Agility become to strong this way?

But then you could bind melee to strength and make damage independent from Strength.

The latter is a question of genre simulation: is it really like this that a hit by Bud Spencer does more damage then one by Terence Hill? The only thing we know for sure after thinking about it for a mere second is that Bud Spencer for sure could stand a hit by Terence Hill, but this is more a Toughness thing then having anything to do with Hill's strength.
One the other hand: a hit by Godzilla should definitely hurt bud Spencer.
Maybe just have size impact damage instead of strength?

Question of the day: Does a sword more damage than a knife? And does a chainsaw do more damage again?
Actually this seems to be much more dependent on the scene than on the weapon. But here the big immersion/narativsm gap has to be worked on.

Why even try to attack the big opponent early on in the game, when you know that he will only be defeated (easily) in the last act anyways? Genre awareness can destroy immersion or even the genre story. Because the writer is not the character, while the player should be the character.

Tactics or drama? Edges or screentime?

So if you want to combine a screentime mechanic like from Primetime Adventures and Spirit of the Century (the aspects) and a more tactics oriented system like Savage Worlds, obviously there are problems.
The question you have to ask yourself is: when do you feel good about an Edge and why? Actually especially more backgroundish Edges like followers or Fame often don't work as well as you hope (and dream about) during character creation or advancement. Here a screentime mechanic opens new possibilites as the player himself (for the cost of a bennie) can decide, when this stuff comes into play and still not controll the whole game.
The more straight mechnic Edges (like Combat), give a +2 most of the time in Savage Worlds anyways. This can also be easily done by Aspects, but here the screentime modification could create some problems.
Generally only something that creates an action should cost bennies (and therefore be an Aspect). Passive aspects (better defense and so on) could be tied straight to the Main Attributes (and skills) and be active all the time.
Another solution would be to make all active action PC action, while the NPC always provide only the difficulty. So NPCs never roll attack, but PCs instead roll actively their defense. In my opinion more active oponents are cooler though.

Extra features from the past

All stats not mentioned on the character sheets are average.
If in the game you never used a weapon yet, you can expect to be an average fighter. Or you can get extra points for defining yourself as bad gunmen and be extraordinary by buying points.

The only question is how to stop players from getting lots of points by defining themselves as weak in lots of unnecessary areas. The answer: Only skills from the skill list can be defined as weak.

If you define a skill as being high, you should explain the background for your training. (Actually SotC offers a possibility like this.)

A new system

This blog is supposed to do 2 things.

1st) Move some basic setting ideas in write ups that could be published in a PDF file and .

2nd) Create an RPG rule set that combines my favorites Savage Worlds, Spirit of the Century and Primetime Adventures.

Additionally the system should offer random character creation with a few life path steps for aspects and the option to choose the latest steps during the first adventure. Skills could also be chosen during the life path phases.

Something like: 2 childhood aspects, 2 youth/crisis aspects, 2 first adventure aspects.

There should be a screen time gauge and fan mail, to empower players on deciding whose players action they like. Aspects and fan mail should be unified with a bennie mechanic.