For the opening post in our Discussion Thread, I'd like to say a couple of things to those who might be observing:
Hello and welcome to our observational playtest for both The Metro campaign setting and the Power Core RPG that fuels it.
Please feel free to post here (or message me directly) if you have any questions about the game. I'll answer them directly, or indirectly (by repeating them here in the thread) for you as soon as possible. Questions about mechanics ("Why are skill specializations handled the way they are?" for instance), setting ("What's the story with Cultures?") or anything else related to the game is fair to ask about. If I can't answer it for non-disclosure or similar reasons, I'll say so.
A lot of this game is going to be exactly as you would expect a forum-run game to be: The GM (that's me) setting the scene and describing the scenario, the players posting actions, the GM (still me) responding, and so forth.
When mechanics need to be used, such as a skill roll, or combat and damage, or healing, or what-have-you, I'll make an OOC entry in the relevant post, explaining what needs to take place. The players will then follow through on their end as necessary.
Power Core is designed to be a modular, expandable system, enabling it to adjust to the need of the GM and players. For The Metro we're using it at something of a "Medium" setting - the rough default from which other types of play are derived - and so we will be using nine Primary Attributes, several Figured Attributes, a Beat Chart, Skill Specializations, and Fixed Wound Values (meaning all major characters have the same number of Wounds) for player characters.
Okay! I hope we have your attention, and I hope you enjoy what you see.
Next up, a note for the players.
Players!
Remember to post in the first or third person, present-tense, when possible.
So:
"Damn it, where is she?" I mutter, pacing back and forth on the bare floor and checking the time on my AR HUD. "Doesn't she know we're on a deadline?"
Is acceptable.
AS well:
"Damn it, where is she?" Johnny mutters, pacing back and forth on the bare floor and checking the time on his AR HUD. "Doesn't she know we're on a deadline?"
Is also acceptable.
Please don't use past- or future-tense unless absolutely necessary, as it can lead to confusion about when a character has performed an action.
1 - When speaking, Please Bold Your Text.
"Hey, gaucho," the young woman says, smiling. She thrusts out her right hand, which is clad in a well-worn leather glove. "Good to meet you. I'm Shavv."
Is fine.
"Hey Shavv," Bob replies, brushing his unruly mop of curly hair out of the way before taking her hand and shaking it. "Bob-999, they call me."
Is not fine.
As you can see, one is much easier to read. The other gets lost in the uniformity of the text on screen.
2 - When communicating via your AR comms or radio, ::Please Use Double Colons And Bold Italic Your Text:: for the same reasons as above.
3 - When using internal monologues or your character is speaking/thinking to themselves, Please Italicize Your Text.
4 - When speaking out of character . Try to keep OOC chatter or questions out of the Gameplay thread as much as possible - one to four sentences is fine. Larger discussions should be referred to this Discussion Thread.
1 - When rolling your dice, remember to use the {dice=What You Are Rolling}2d6+(whatever modifiers){/dice} tags.
2 - Always Preview your post before you submit it when you're rolling dice. This will let you know if you've gotten a critical success or failure on your roll, and allow you to make your follow-up roll as well.
For example, if I rolled:
{dice=Perception, 2d6+15}2d6+15{/dice}
And got a 1 and a 1 on my dice, I would critically fail. I'd then need to add the following:
{dice=Perception, Critical Failure, 17 - 2d6}17-2d6{/dice}
to find out what my new total was.
3 - Similarly, if I used an Action Point and added +1d6 to my total, I'd roll:
{dice=Perception, 3d6+15}3d6+15{/dice}
If I got a 6, a 5, and a 6 on my roll, I'd critically succeed, and would need to add a line:
{dice=Perception, Critical Success, 2d6+29}2d6+29{/dice}
And get whatever massive result I had just granted myself.
3 - If you don't remember to preview, that's okay, just edit your post and add the line where necessary - the forum's scripts are smart enough that your initial roll won't change.
That's it for now!
See you tomorrow for the opening of play!
If anyone's interested, The Headmaster's Primer - the GM's Guide for I Want To Be A Wizard! is now up and available at Drive Thru RPG for the very reasonable price of $4.99.
Full color map (including a separate download with full key), adventure generator, and more! :D
The GM needs to take a moment and ask the players if he's being too vague in delivering the action and updates to the players.
Zerin has pretty handily explained that the only way that Mr. Kaplan's gear could have "failed" is if it was tampered with ON SITE, which would map to the supposition that Ms. Mendez didn't "fall" so much as "had her neck broken deliberately."
This further ties back to the group concluding that there's a serial killer out there, and that something must be done, even if that something is alerting the authorities.
I'm not entirely sure why these revelations led to the need to break open the card reader, obtained from a trusted source, and look for tracking hardware?
If I'm not being clear enough, please let me know.
I don't want to get SO clear, however, that I'm just handing you all the answers, as that kind of goes against the point of the game, y'know?
Let me know what's what and I'll try to adapt.
Discussion threads are highly useful for making sure that we can be clear on rules, etc. for when things get weird.
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HEY! I literally just found this section.
OK, to answer the GM's question:
Personally, I think I need to spend more time rereading previous posts before I post. I'm fairly certain I misremembered and caused the confusion myself.
The GM has been dealing with getting his novella prepped and available for sale on multiple sites, as well as tackling interviews for a job, and has been a wee bit behind in his posting.
I'll try to have a plot advancement post up sometime tomorrow.
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Apologies for my tardiness. I keep forgetting this section exists and life has been chaotic of late.
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Hi everyone,
Just wanted to say that the next game update will be coming this week.
I've been working on getting "A Broken Sky" ready for Print, as well as updating some of the rules in the Power Core RPG to correct a few issues with game balance.
None of these changes will affect the playtest, but the playtest (specifically the example character builds) have affected these changes.
Some of the changes are:
*Abilities can now only be purchased to a maximum of 6 ranks, as this means they are adding +6 to a total of 3 other skills, thus giving them a grand total of 18 points of influence across a character.
*The starting cost for Abilities has been increased.
Again, these don't affect the playtest characters. We can proceed as normal for now. But the changes are in the next draft of the rules.
The next update from me should be out by the end of the week, Sunday at the latest.
Could you do a quick tl;dr on crits?
Sure.
If, when you roll 2d6, you roll two 1's, you have critically failed. You roll an additional 2d6 and subtract the result from your original roll.
If, when you roll 2d6, you roll two 6's, you have critically succeeded. You roll an additional 2d6 and add the result to your original roll.
When using Action Points, you're rolling 3d6 instead of 2d6.
In this case, you only critically fail when you roll three one's on your dice, but you critically succeed when you roll two sixes on any of the three dice.
And there you have it.
The last GM post says we've been earning XP and to spend it.
Is there anything beyond the post a few months back saying "take 3"?
You picked up 30 in this post.
IT's too late to edit my original post, but you have also earned an additional 30 from finishing the first chapter, so you're at a total of 60.
ok, I am a little fried atm, so I will try and get XP taken care of tomorrow or Teusday night.
I have in game questions and I will post those on the other "tab"
OK, decisions have been made.
I'd like to raise:
Trustworthy to 5: 20 points
Conversation to 3: 9 points
Leadership to 3: 9 points
Deduction to 3: 9 points
Total 47, I'm going to sit on the rest for now if that's ok.
Looks good!
I would like to propose the following improvements for Avryl:
Monkeywrench (ability): from +1 to +2: 8 pts
Adv. Tech (H): from +2 to +4: 21 pts
Programming (H): from +1 to +2: 6 pts
Security Systems (H): from +1 to +2: 6 pts
Electronics: from +2 to +4: 14 pts
TOTAL: 55 pts
That leaves 5 pts remaining.
Howzzat?
I would like to propose the following improvements for Avryl:
Monkeywrench (ability): from +1 to +2: 8 pts
Adv. Tech (H): from +2 to +4: 21 pts
Programming (H): from +1 to +2: 6 pts
Security Systems (H): from +1 to +2: 6 pts
Electronics: from +2 to +4: 14 pts
TOTAL: 55 ptsThat leaves 5 pts remaining.
Howzzat?
Looks good!
Question for the GM - have we accrued any Reputation Points? The book says we gain points similar to XP when we interact with different groups, and those specific points are what we use to up our Reputations. I believe we interacted with 2 groups in the first chapter - the Law and possibly which ever group the junker with the device was part of.
Question for the GM - have we accrued any Reputation Points? The book says we gain points similar to XP when we interact with different groups, and those specific points are what we use to up our Reputations. I believe we interacted with 2 groups in the first chapter - the Law and possibly which ever group the junker with the device was part of.
Yes: As well as gaining Reputation Points when you interact with another group, every 1XP also nets you 1 Reputation Point. This is spent in exactly the same manner as you would spend to improve an Ability, meaning that it requires 4 times the new rank to improve.
Purchasing a new Reputation costs 4 points, for example (to get to +1), while raising an existing Reputation from 3 to 4 would cost 16 points (4*4).
The Law and Flashbacks are the two groups in question, and your interactions earned you 2 points each, so you have a total of 64 Reputation points (60 XP + 4 Rep) to play with.
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Thank you for that update - and sorry for the delay on my end. Things have been a bit off the walls here and I'm learning that WFH doesn't mean more time so much as there's this really bad creep between work time and free time especially when one does tech support.
Working on an update.
It's okay to need more time. There's enough going on in the world to worry about.
Thanks for the heads up. :)
Providing math doesn't change for Reputation stuff
I have 64 Reputation XP
I'd like to increase the following rep:
Puppeteers (since we have established Zerin does repair work for them now and then): 0 -> 1 (4XP)
Downtowners: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Eggheads (tangential to rep with Hackers and Puppeteers in my mind, more a bump into them for professional reasons now and then): 0 -> 1 (4XP)
The Mob (argument is that she's probably generally known based to holding down her own little corner in the lower levels of the city, and has rep with the Gangs - no plans to raise this beyond unless there are interactions to back it): 0 -> 1 (4XP)
Flashbacks: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Hackers: 1 -> 2 (8XP)
Hackers: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
8 remaining
Working on the other part of it now
Attributes and Skills - 60 XP
Attributes are increased by spending 100 x Attribute... so that's not going to happen for a long time...
Skills are increased at:
Normal - New x 2XP
Hard - New x 3XP
Ability - New x 4XP
Also - should I have been using Deduction in some of our checks with the Police and generally looking at the situation? As I understand that it's a modifier to Perception? I'd like to make sure I'm reading this right before I do increases to make sure I'm increasing it the way I'm meaning to.
Is it OK to buy more skills? I was thinking about adding Lipreading in (Under Perception)
I'm looking at increasing Hard Knocks
Considering adding in Monkeywrench (Mental Ability) and Athletics (Stamina Skills) which tie into the initial concept but I was limited by XP.
Thoughts?
All of those look fine. You might want to increase Monkeywrench as it's part of your character's defining traits over Athletics, if you have the points.
All of those look fine. You might want to increase Monkeywrench as it's part of your character's defining traits over Athletics, if you have the points.
I don't currently have Monkeywrench or Athletics, though both seem pretty key to my initial concept. Hard Knocks I have but was considering increasing. I'll hold off on learning Lipreading unless I have spare XP, I need to do math first.
One question remaining from my post:
"Also - should I have been using Deduction in some of our checks with the Police and generally looking at the situation? As I understand that it's a modifier to Perception? I'd like to make sure I'm reading this right before I do increases to make sure I'm increasing it the way I'm meaning to."
No, Perception is what was called for. You're good with what you've got right now. If you WANT to pick up Deduction, you can, but it's not necessary.
No, Perception is what was called for. You're good with what you've got right now. If you WANT to pick up Deduction, you can, but it's not necessary.
I already have Deduction. I was asking about it's use.
Specifically if it it is a modifier rather than a stand alone ability/skill, and off of that asking if it would have been an applicable modifier for when we were studying the video footage and doing Perception checks.
I'm sorry, I was looking at the wrong character sheet.
These last few weeks have been pretty awful for focus, even for me.
The answer is still "no, Perception was what was called for." Deduction is a modifier for specific tasks. I apologize for the confusion, though, and I'll make sure there's an edit done on the rules to ensure that doesn't happen again.
I'm sorry, I was looking at the wrong character sheet.
These last few weeks have been pretty awful for focus, even for me.
The answer is still "no, Perception was what was called for." Deduction is a modifier for specific tasks. I apologize for the confusion, though, and I'll make sure there's an edit done on the rules to ensure that doesn't happen again.
Nah, it probably wasn't unclear in the rules, more me learning the rules by bashing into them and going "wait what's this thing I have written down that I forgot about?"
Spends! Largely fleshing out things that were part of my initial character concept. This should be complete.
Skills & Abilities
Skills are increased at:
Normal - New x 2XP
Hard - New x 3XP
Ability - New x 4XP
Earned: 60 XP
Monkeywrench (Ability): 0 -> 1 (4XP)
Monkeywrench (Ability): 1 -> 2 (8XP)
Hard Knocks (Ability): 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Athletics (Skill, Normal): 0 -> 1 (2XP)
Athletics (Skill, Normal): 1 -> 2 (4XP)
Advanced Technology (Skill, Hard): 0 -> 1 (3XP)
Advanced Technology (Skill, Hard): 1 -> 2 (6XP)
Edged Weapons (Skill, Normal): 0 -> 1 (2XP)
Hand to Hand Combat (Skill, Normal): 2 -> 3 (6XP)
Shadowing (Skill, Normal): 0 -> 1 (2XP)
Shadowing (Skill, Normal): 1 -> 2 (4XP)
Hand to Hand Combat (Skill, Normal): 2 -> 3 (6XP)
Spent XP: 59
Remaining XP: 1
Reputation
(Including so all my spends are in one spot)
Earned RXP: 64
Puppeteers: 0 -> 1 (4XP)
Downtowners: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Eggheads: 0 -> 1 (4XP)
The Mob: 0 -> 1 (4XP)
Flashbacks: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Hackers: 1 -> 2 (8XP)
Hackers: 2 -> 3 (12XP)
Spent RXP: 56
Remaining RXP: 8
After discussing with the players, and due to the current pandemic issues causing stress and anxiety among the general community, we're going to archive the game for the time being.
The game and the playtest are not as important as people maintaining their mental and spiritual health during this time.
The playtest will continue, just without the need for such frequent posting from the players.
For anyone who's been following along with the game, if you've been interested in what we've been doing, I hope we'll see you when the full game is finally released.