A Test of Chaos - Genericum Test Game (Inactive)

Game Master JonGarrett

OK, folks. First order of business - do you wanna know each other at the start, or do you wanna form a party of strangers to do the test?

I think if the main point of this is to test the system that having the party already know each other could help speed up the testing.

Knowing everyone already works for me.

Works for me. You guys can work out a loose background and such if you like.

We're just waiting for everyone to report in, and I'll start poking people Wednesday if they haven't.

I'm still having an exciting time breathing, but should be good to go.

Checking in here too, Jon, is that psionic warrior I built good to go?

I'm very happy to see Zanbabe and Simeon in this game! Also, looking forward to playing with Elbowtotheface!

Curious, though, who is "Shada" mentioned in the Recruitment thread?

Also, Jon, where would you like further discussion of the game system to be held, Discussion or Recruitment? Or maybe start a separate thread somewhere?

Curious, though, who is "Shada" mentioned in the Recruitment thread?

A young woman of obviously foreign origin watches this exchange with interest. She wears a simple, wrap of dark, sheer cloth over baggy black pants and a one-shouldered black top. She carries no weapons, but holds her small, youthful form very confidently. She doesn't approach the group yet, but she is not hiding her interest as she watches.

Oh, okay! Hi!

Shada's player is a really cool GM who has been putting up with my crap for like 7 years. They deserve a chance to torment me.

Jon, where would you like further discussion of the game system to be held, Discussion or Recruitment? Or maybe start a separate thread somewhere?

If you have discord, he has a group for that.

Discord would be good, otherwise probably the recruitment thread, to keep things in the public eye.

OK, some of the magic talents have gotten a bit of a damage bump. Some more may also get an upgrade.

So, tonight's plan is to make two things - a Master List of Talents and what they can do, and an extended example of how to do different things linking to the various talents that you can use to do them.

Do you guys think those will be useful?

That sounds very useful.

I'm assuming a potion takes up 1/5 of an equipment slot?

Yeah, they're pretty small.

Got part of the 'How do you do the thing' list done, but the last remnants of this cold saw me sat staring into YouTube, slack-jawed and barely functioning, at work last night rather than doing stuff like this (which keeps me awake and alert and is therefore 100% Boss Approved) so hopefully, I'll get it done tonight.

OK, slow going as this thrice damned bug and working all the hours has left me exhausted, but here's the start of the How Do You Do The Thing? section. Only got Weapon Skill so far, but I'll try and do a bit more.

Thoughts so far?

OK, we seem to be stuttering a little, and a few folks aren't posting much.

Two questions, therefore:

Where do you wanna go first? Is there a consensus?

And whose still around to make such choices?

I was pretty sure at least Zandora and I had said wait until the time for the quest she found at the map to occur and after that move on to one of the other ones after.

Yup, it was two votes for the Test of Knowledge, I believe.

Ashermerain found the puzzle, and then when we figured it out I asked if people wanted to go there, and Shada was the only one that answered, so I assumed that is where we were going. Just Jeremy was having a conversation first.

Sorry I missed most of that. yes, I'm good with Test of Knowledge.

OK, just so folks are aware I've made a second version of the Google Doc character sheet. It's mostly modifying the Talents section to try and include all the info you need. See what you think.

For those not on the Discord, I've added a number of advantages to character creation. It might be worth perusing them as I will be allowing character tweeking between Tests, if folks wanna.

Finally, it's been suggested that I might wanna throw in the Perception talent as a freebie and add a drawback to remove it if people wanna play an oblivious character. Thoughts?

I like the perception as a freebie. How about cantrips? Have you thought about how to incorporate them? A cantrip talent where you start out with just a few and then progress to more?

Finally, it's been suggested that I might wanna throw in the Perception talent as a freebie and add a drawback to remove it if people wanna play an oblivious character. Thoughts?

I would say either that or make an except to the 1/2 "unskilled" rule for Perception the action, since it's just something people naturally do, and then make Perception the talent more about bonuses and special things you can do.

I was thinking of one of two things for Cantrips - either making it a Talent tree and letting people select a couple of effects every couple of ranks, or adding a bunch of effects to the General social talents.

The link for the map doesn't work, FYI.

I'm taking my family camping, this weekend. I won't be back until Sunday evening.

Thanks. I'll get the thing working, and add anything Jeremy's scent would pick up on if you happen to be in a scenty area.

OK, here is the How to Do The Thing list as it stands. Suggestions for more esoteric suggestions would be great, as I'm tired and having writing blocks with the thing. Is it useful? If not, what'll make it useful?

Looks like a pretty good set of basics to me.

As far as the investigation, Shada has been letting Zandora lead for a couple reasons:
1. She's not really very well suited for investigation
2. As a player, I'm actually not very good with puzzles like this.

If no one else pops in, I am happy to continue. I just don't want people to feel like I am taking over, so wanted to give some room for someone else if desired.

We seem to have lost some of the other players, although I know a couple are busy or ill-suited to this kinda task and are quiet thanks to that. Thankfully all the other tests are different - one is a dungeon, one is a test of speed and endurance, one is stealth and cunning, one is diplomacy and guile and the last two are fairly general.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting the test right. I've written it so that simply checking the rooms will find the clues involved - no roll needed - with some rolls to get additional info. Oh, and a funny secret encounter. The two complications is one of the witnesses will lie, and there are some (very poorly fabricated) red herrings.

On a related note, it's been suggested that cutting the Attribute in half for anything you don't have the Talent in might be too much. When I did it that way I was kinda thinking of how you can only have a limited selection of skills in Pathfinder 1e and D&D 5e. Heck, there's a bunch of skills you simply can't roll for if you don't put points into them in Pathfinder. But just because those systems do it in such a way that you're gonna really suck in some skills doesn't mean it's fun.

I've got two ideas - the first is removing the penalties, at least on Social talents, and modifying the first rank of each to do something else. The second is to keep the penalty, but instead of halving your score you take a -10% to the attribute.

Apologies for not posting much either. I haven’t really built the character for much investigation, and I’ve been swamped with the end of the semester.

In Pathfinder and D&D you do get penalties for certain things that are trained only... but here, presumably, you get that penalty all the time, whether it is something that you don't really need to be trained in or not (perception?). Also, those systems have separate skill points, so you don't have to choose between spells and skills or weapons and skills. Here, you do... so, I see the similarity, but there are also differences that can make things harder.

I've just been busy, sorry. I don't feel like Zandora's hogging any spotlight. Rather, I feel bad that she's been carrying the scene. :)

I think allowing multiple skills to achieve a non-combat task is great, but relying on that method doesn't guarantee that multiple options for every non-combat task will be available. On the other hand, I feel like character creation encourages at least some mix of combat and social talents.

All that said, I think a 10% penalty is too slight, but I hear you about it not being fun to do be able to do a thing. Maybe a 25% penalty?

No worries Ashermain. Join as you can.

And yeah, it's pretty different. That was why you get Social Talents and Combat Talents, as I was trying to divide the resources so you didn't have to pick Combat or Social. The idea was that there was as much focus on what you chose to do with your non-combat stuff as you would with choosing a class, or picking a feat.

But the penalty might be too much, and too harsh. Hence the above - would removing the penalty on Social Talents and re-doing the first rank for the ones you can do regardless be better, or would a reduced penalty be more balanced? And which is more fun?

I have altered the rules so everyone gets Perception as a talent, so no penalty there. We'll implement the change (and allow rebuilding, etc) at the end of the test, unless folks really want to do a quick change now.

Summing up where we're at:

1. Azana, Ured's assistant, has been murdered.
2. The "culprit is still in the building."
3. The "body" is in room 2, presumably the crime scene.
4. Valeria and Almena, the other two associates, are still in their rooms(the stairwell is to the North).
5. We need three pieces of evidence and the correct answer to pass the test.
6. We found sooty footprints near the murder site, which we followed.
7. The footprints went both up the stairs and to a small door underneath the stairs.
8. The small door was to a store room, where we found a pair of bloody sheers.
9. The footprints lead upstairs to room 14, a bath.
10. The tub was recently used (and has sooty remnants), and had a small bloody hand print.
11. The blood is an illusion?
12. Zandora found a note in the victim's room that read: "I'm scared. Valera is so angry with me, I'm afraid she's going to stab me in the heart, just like she said she would."
The writing is different from the writing on the other pages.
13. The work bench contained "scale models for magic items."
14. Didn't find much in Ured's room.

In fairness, you found quite a lot in Ured's room. It was just 'don't touch, magic will eat you' stuff and nothing murder relevant.

But yeah, that's a solid summary. You have three rooms upstairs you've yet to visit (including the two potential suspects) and three downstairs, plus the garden and greenhouse.

The link for the map doesn't work, FYI.

Still an issue.

Link to the map

Yeah, I've been slow about fixing floor 2. Work has been a pain in the rear. I'm off tonight so I'll try and get it dealt with.

Thanks, Jon.

U R Gr8t.

OK, Upper Floor is up and linked. I fixed the ground floor link while I was there, as I finally worked out that was the broken one not the second floor one while I was linking stuff.

The game has been updated with a variety of changes, most notably the suggestion to remove the penalty to Social talents. A couple still have a penalty, or can't be used without taking them as before, but most of them now give a bonus to something instead.

I also Did Some Other Editing.

As mentioned, the plan is to let you guys do a rebuild when you complete the current Test to allow for these new rules, so I thought you'd appreciate a list of what has changed.

Hey, gang. It's become apparent to me that I've over-extended myself concerning how many PbPs I can keep up with. I'm going to drop out of certain games, including this one. As a system play-test with evolving rules, it's a prime candidate to ease my PbP "work load."

Jon, if you could mark Jeremy as inactive, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Alright, thanks for the help anyway!

Alright, so first and foremost, other than some clarifying and re-wording - thoughts on this Test? Feedback on the system as a whole? Suggestions or ideas you'd like me to consider?

Second, we do seem to be down to two players. Jeremy has obviously left. Is anyone else still here? I'm gonna go and try and drum up some interest in joining the game here, and possibly doing a re-recruitment, but if you guys wanna bully convince anyone to try things out then I'm open to friends.

Thirdly, anyone who wishes to can do a complete rebuild - race, archetype, etc is free to do so. Otherwise, feel free to update your character with the updated rules - primarily the changes to the social rules where they now no longer have the penalty for being untrained.

Most of the changes can be seen on the front page, although I've also added the Pactmaster Archetype (someone who uses Spirits to do what they need) and made a few edit to this and that. As ever, feel free to ask.

And thank you for helping me with all this. I really appreciate it.

I thought it was an interesting challenge... not too hard in general, but overall if it were someone else DMing and they cared about rolling tests more, we might have failed badly because we couldn't make almost all of the rolls we tried, and they might have based the whole thing on that rather than just normal-person reasoning it out.

In a published adventure maybe it would say that it is an easy challenge so you get +20 or whatever, but even so, psychologically I find it somewhat difficult to even want to roll, knowing that I have less than a 1 in 3 chance of passing. ... I guess that could be a good thing if you are trying to focus on narrative rather than mechanics, and only roll for things that seem really tough or something, so no specific advice... just explaining how I was thinking going through it.

... as for rebuilding, I think I might rebuild at least partially, if I have time. I took some things thinking the would be useful for the future and that it was cool we could get almost anything from the beginning, but I seem to be lacking lots of basic skills and don't have the ability to cast most of that stuff yet anyway. Have to see if I can make a low level build that is more versatile.

However, I really don't know if I will have time, so I'll just move forward as is if I end up not having the time to look through everything again.

Yeah, it's difficult with the points given to have much of a chance at being good at more than one or two things, and by good I mean "okay." It's a hard gear to change to go from being used to having DC created around what a party has a good chance of succeeding at to the somewhat binary nature of having a certain percentage that "feels" like it's hard and fast. Maybe a notation (and if it's there and I missed it, I'm sorry) indicating bonuses/penalties based on difficulty would be helpful in alieviating this feeling. Like if the players got under the hood a little and knew they'd get auto-success for an EASY challenge, +20 for a SIMPLE challenge, +0 for an AVERAGE challenge, -20 for a DIFFICULT challenge, and no chance at all for an IMPOSSIBLE challenge, it might help us feel a basic competence now, with the hopes of gaining increasing expertise as we improve.

The Easy, Simple, Challenging and Difficult modifiers are indeed already a thing. They didn't come up much in this one, because you automatically found the basic clues you needed for the Test.

There is also an 'automatic success' idea for basic tasks that a character would struggle to fail unless the situation is odd. You won't kill everyone cooking breakfast, but if you need to create a gourmet banquet then it's time to roll them bones.

Mathematically speaking, I don't think the d100 system is significantly more unfair than the D20 Difficulty Check one? If you have 50% in an attribute, then you have a 50% chance to succeed. If you have +4 to something in a d20, and the DC is 14, then you have a 50% chance to succeed. If you put more points in and get a +7, then you have a better chance of doing the thing - but the same is true if you got your Attributes higher and got some modifiers.

The biggest difference is there's a hard cap on just how amazing you can be at something. You can never get better than 90%, although again, that's only in stressful situations where failure has a consequence.

I was hoping that getting rid of the penalty for social skills would help with the feeling of not having the skills. Do you guys think it will, or do you think more needs to be done so people feel more competent?