In response to the WS thread

[Wooster]

Stop being pessimistic, Vorn.

[Vornmusion]

Stop being such a bully, Wooster.

[Bacon]

Originally Posted by Vornmusion

You should use a set of established systems and modify them to suit your purpose. We saw what happens when the forum tried to create its basis (you spent 3 years making something that would of taken me a day to make using an established system; and it failed on top of that).

You could start playing tomorrow if you used something like d20 and modified it. Most of the things you want can be implemented instantly with the d20 stat system.

Although frankly I highly doubt the forum is willing to learn how to use it or willing to work with so many numbers. So I'm still pondering on whether I'm naming this a doomed venture or not.

I'm going to try both ideas in one post sometime in this upcoming week because D&D rules really do most of the thinking part and would speed this up in an instant,but it feels like plagirism, which is worse than failing.

[Vornmusion]

The basis of d20 is OGL (Open Gaming License).

Originally Posted by Wiki

Much of the d20 System was released as the System Reference Document (SRD) under the Open Game License (OGL) as Open Game Content (OGC), which allows commercial and non-commercial publishers to release modifications or supplements to the system without paying for the use of the system's associated intellectual property.

Basically you can do anything you want with the basics (which is everything you'll use, and a whole lot more you won't).

You don't need anything more than the stats and modifiers system really. That will be the basis to work off of, you can use the rest of the systems as inspiration if nothing else, though I recommend taking as much as you can and modifying them to your purposes.

[Maikeru D. Shinigami]

Bacon, you should work on doing what I've already started doing; Coming up with specific questions regarding what you want to do. Why do I say this? Well, I have already created a working Chunin Exam this way and have actually the basic ideas for a system down. I think it would be good to ask yourself questions about your system idea. For instance:

What exactly does the Speed stat do? How does it work with dice?

What are the subsets of Strength?

What is the benefit of being a genjutsu specialist from the standpoint of RPing or battling in the system?

[Bacon]

I have an idea for most of those,but nothing so concrete as to put up an entire wall of text explaining every little thing. As I said, I don't want to be the only one working on this as this was to get people motivated to discuss their own potential ideas.

So far only three people have actually offered anything in that regard.

Edit:

@ vorn I'll take a closer look at your links.

http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/basics...escription.htm

I spent most of my forum time today using this link to the official rules or at least an iteration of them if they've been updated since. There's a lot of good ideas I didn't even think to use,but so much to take in e.e

[Vornmusion]

That's got everything you need as far as d20 goes. And yeah it is quite a bit to learn all in one lump.

I'll say this in regards to not wanting to do this alone; you really should limit the amount of people with a say. The WS was bogged down with too many people trying to push their ideas and the whole "democracy" garbage. Nothing gets down in the US because of it -- nothing got done in the WS because of it. Bring a select few people at most onboard, and at the end of the day make it clear that shit needs to be done - not debated over for two weeks. I did this when I made my own RP systems; I got feedback from a couple of people (players, not people that run the system, people that will be playing in it -- they give you the most vital (and sometimes most biased/worthless) feedback you can get) and implemented things if they worked and made sense. At the end of the day though things were made regardless of whether anyone liked it.

Don't fall into the same WS trap of development limbo. If you're using d20 as the base it should take you no more than a weeks worth of effort to create a fully functional system, and I give you a week only because you have to replace things with Naruto related entities.

[Maxtone]

I had a longer post, but Firefox crashed

It is a little bit upsetting to see so few people saying anything, not even a sentence or two how "It would be cool if [X]" but I see some people with actual experience and knowledge showing up so...Iguessitsalrightbutnotreally

Vornmusion seems like he knows what he's talking about, more so than I as I previously stated, I will take a look at the suggested system when I'm on a computer that can do so easily.

On Genjutsu: I think it is common knowledge Intelligence factors into this highly, so that should likely be the point of focus statistically speaking.
-For example, Shinobi A has 5 Intelligence and Shinobi B has 3
-Shinobi A casts IllusionaryMists no Jutsu on Shinobi B before slashing Shinobi B with his sword (Costing [X] chakra and requiring 3 Mind to escape)
-Shinobi B notices mists appearing despite this being a desert and uses Genjutsu Kai to escape (meeting the Intel requirements)
If for some reason Shinobi A casted a stronger Genjutsu requiring say, 8 Intel to escape, Shinobi B could only have a slight chance to escape (3/8 maybe? I don't know.)

I'm all for stats and points as long as they don't totally get in the way of RP, then they're fine with me. As was said in the OP they can break to roleplay but they can be good as well. Neither a bunch of numbers nor the power of SpacialWarp no Jutsu should win. Stats to define limits and roleplay to define actions....or something like that.

So this is what I think before looking at any d20 stuff.
Strength - to define things like punching and kicking and
Speed - to define things like how fast you are and the distance you can cover
Dexterity - to define skill with weapons or how many hits you can perform at a time
Perception - to define reaction and noticing things (traps laid, multiple strikes, genjutsu)
Intelligence - to define thought processing and knowledge of jutsu (allowing one to perform and understand more complex jutsu)

With the addition of modifiers like the OP mentions....

Spoiler:

Shinobi A
~~~~~~~~
Chakra: 75
~~~~~~~~
Strength: 3 (-2)
Speed: 2
Dexterity: 4 (+1)
Perception: 5 (+1)
Intelligence: 5

Genjutsu Specialist: Shinobi A is a genjutsu specialist, smarter than he is strong, giving him +1 Perception but decreasing his Strength by -2.
Kenjutsu User: Shinobi A completed kenjutsu training, giving him +1 dexterity

And then you'd have a character, as for jutsu....

Spoiler:

Illusionary Mists
A mist of genjutsu appears, obstructing the only the opponent's vision. Useful for attacking while the opponent wanders through mists or hidden escape
~~~~~~~~~~
Effect: Lowers the target's Dexterity and Perception by -2 while active
Chakra Cost: 20 (10 for each turn it continues)
Required Intelligence (for escape): 3

.....eh I'm not too sure on the Chakra and Jutsu stuff but that could be cleaned up I suppose. Also there could be a Stamina stat for Taijutsu.

All together though, using d20 as a basis seems like the best idea, mainly because it sounds like it gets you a lot further than things seem to go naturally around here.

[Vornmusion]

You're going to need a Chakra (mana) system, unless you want to use d20's way of spell casting (which is awful and horrible and you should not use it ever), otherwise there won't be any point in having lower ranked jutsu. You could probably replace Charisma with Chakra and then use that stat to reflect how much you have to work with (thus ensuring build compatibility, i.e one can specialize in melee combat or heavy jutsu combat at the sacrifice of the other).

I myself use a homebrew mana system for my D&D game (because again the spell system is awful) which uses the spell modifier for a class (typically Intelligence, in this case it would be Chakra) to determine how much mana they have. First you would need to decide how stats are going to work though, especially the values for modifiers and if they will stick to the established system of d20 (10 is base level for a stat, +0, every two points above that adds +1, every two points below 10 adds -1 -- you use a pool of points to add, with the cost per point increasing as a stat gets higher, allowing specialization builds without being overpowered in other aspects).

[Bacon]

Admittedly I've kinda fallen in love with the innate simplicity of d20's base rules,but I don't follow you on the spellcasting system. Here's my basic idea for combat and jutsu( haven't read d20 rules)

2d10+ intelligence modifier + Dexterity+ jutsu rank

Defender bonuses: 2d10+ wisdom+ Dexterity = Defender check

Essentially certain stats would affect how people defend and how powerful their attacks are if we just base them on stats alone. What's more is there are other stats to consider when defending and attacking differently with constitution affecting channeling jutsu such as flamethrower types or if the defender decided to use a jutsu, he'd also need to account for his own intelligence stat.

Jutsu's themselves while rough in my mind are going to be defined by their ranking and given their own modifier based on intelligence just as melee attacks would get their own based on strength.The difference is jutsu, especially genjutsu after affected potentially by 3 different attributes before the base roll.

I hope that's not fail because the alternative would be to use stats by their sheer numbers and judgement to decide if an attack hits.

Example: player 1 has 100 speed and 50 dex
Player 2 has 99 speed and 75 dex

Technically player 2 is more accurate and could potentially land far more hits than player 1,but player one has the same speed.. With this site's history, that'd be a complete standstill.

[Vornmusion]

Originally Posted by Bacon

Admittedly I've kinda fallen in love with the innate simplicity of d20's base rules,but I don't follow you on the spellcasting system. Here's my basic idea for combat and jutsu( haven't read d20 rules)

Spellcasting in d20 is based on Spell Per Day. You have a limited number of times to cast different spell ranks (1-9, some classes don't have access to all the ranks though, i.e 1-4) before "Resting" -- sleeping more or less. Since D&D is about complete roleplaying (not arena fighting like the WS) this system works (but I still think it sucks if you're a pure spell caster, woo get to do something 5 times a day then be as useful as a brick) more or less, as in a normal D&D game you have the passage of time taken into account (they have entire systems in place for calculating travel time and fatigue, once you go deeper into d20) and they use maps and other things to physically mark those systems.

For example I made this for my RP to reflect traveling on the "world map" (in the current area anyway) as it were:

Spoiler:

Since D&D is a persistent game (there is no "complete quest, go back to lobby to await teleportation to the next one", unless the DM decides to do so) similar to an MMO the Spells Per Day are workable, since the party will rest quite often (whether by choice or not; few races don't require sleep). However what you want to do won't be like D&D (it would be impossible to run a true D&D based game with so many people involved), therefore I suggest adding the much better and easier Mana system. Before you do that however you must decide on how stats are going to work (as I previously said).

2d10+ intelligence modifier + Dexterity+ jutsu rank

Defender bonuses: 2d10+ wisdom+ Dexterity = Defender check

Essentially certain stats would affect how people defend and how powerful their attacks are if we just base them on stats alone. What's more is there are other stats to consider when defending and attacking differently with constitution affecting channeling jutsu such as flamethrower types or if the defender decided to use a jutsu, he'd also need to account for his own intelligence stat.

Jutsu's themselves while rough in my mind are going to be defined by their ranking and given their own modifier based on intelligence just as melee attacks would get their own based on strength.The difference is jutsu, especially genjutsu after affected potentially by 3 different attributes before the base roll.

Keep in mind that if you over complicate the systems you will bog everything down and will create more room for player error. Making certain things require more than one stat also allows greater room for balancing issues. Certain builds will quickly become superior to others regardless of balance, but you don't need to create more work for yourself trying to balance so many variables.

I hope that's not fail because the alternative would be to use stats by their sheer numbers and judgement to decide if an attack hits.

Dice decide if the attack hits, and dice use numbers. The WS's primary failing was allowing people to do whatever they wanted "within reason" and didn't have a strict guide line of things that were "within reason". Instead it relied on Judges that didn't have a strict code to follow, leaving their judgement widely up to their on interpretation of what is and isn't reasonable, and allowed bias.

Example: player 1 has 100 speed and 50 dex
Player 2 has 99 speed and 75 dex

Technically player 2 is more accurate and could potentially land far more hits than player 1,but player one has the same speed.. With this site's history, that'd be a complete standstill.

Speed is over complicating it. Stick with Dex; use the Skill System if you want to expand on certain elements of it -- Dex is supposed to be the base. Add a Dodge Skill or something, using the Dex modifier as the bonus to the skill. You would need a pool of points for Skills too of course, and that (should) rely on a single stat to represent, otherwise you will needlessly bog everything down. Indeed using Intelligence to decide how many points you can spend in Dodge seems illogical, but it works and works smoothly.




Always remember that you will require players to do the math and planning on their own. While I find great enjoyment in spending days fine tuning a character, I can assure you most of this forum won't have the tolerance or eagerness for it. There's a reason d20 (and other PnP systems) have character builder programs.

[Obito]

Omg.. I inspired this all.. /can finally die/

[Bacon]

I'll reply and not reply at the same time as my example was bad,but what I have right now anyways isn't flesh out quite yet.
__

In regards to the map and the whole resting thing, I think that's really fun. There's no real way to explain it other than one day I'd like to try a vanilla try through of d20 for that sole reason. The progression of time and aging is oddly unintuitive,yet it's such a basic concept. The when I tried to implement it,I realized what I stumbled upon was a mountain.

That said I'm only going off the SRD for simplicities' sake. It's got all I need as you said and then some.

Now for the fun part:

Keep in mind that if you over complicate the systems you will bog everything down and will create more room for player error. Making certain things require more than one stat also allows greater room for balancing issues. Certain builds will quickly become superior to others regardless of balance, but you don't need to create more work for yourself trying to balance so many variables.

xD Complicated? I'm not even considering multipliers until I have a working a basic set up.If people actually take part in the system long enough for balancing issues, I'll take the #yoloLeague of legends approach to things. That said I actually have a fairly unfocused set up in mind,buut I actually did combine dex and speed because I used the SRD as a guideline.

Spoiler has everything I go so far. I'm working on point allocation and dice roll after this reply.

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Bacon

Ideas:
For every 10 points in a certain stat, you get a bonus of +1
Remember to consider character size and age
remember to consider health points and leveling

RNG modifier^

Stats gained per mission or task:10 + rank of task/mission+ posts/2
Stats at each interval of 10 give a basic bonus of +1 when doing action checks(ex: strength)
Basic stats
Note: You'll see the word checks a lot below.Checks are values that RNG'd numbers must be equal to or greater than to succeed.

Strength affects everything concerning your body's physical abilities,but it's primarily melee and muscle power. Characters who's specialty revolves around taijutsu and acrobatics benefit the most from this stat. This stat also to a point will determine what type of weapon your character can use.

affected actions
- Melee attacks
- Damage rolls armed and unarmed
- Special martial arts stances
- Whether you can climb, jump to, swim through a certain body of water
- Sheer strength check when breaking objects and certain physical defenses
- Martial arts checks such as knocking someone down, grapples, throwing

Dexterity is your character's measure of their hand eye coordination, agility,precision, and balance. Almost every character benefits from having a certain measure of dexterity to defend against common threats such as shuriken or simply hiding from enemy detection.

Affected actions:
- Ranged jutsu and thrown weapons rolls(If you use a bow too )
- Reactionary rolls such as deflecting shuriken or dodging jtusu
- Reflex defenses such as casting a defensive jutsu fast enough
- Hiding,escaping,treading on ledges without chakra, sneaking, weaving hand signs rely on dexterity

Constitution revolves around your character's chakra pool and by extension, their stamina. Constitution also affects a character's ability to continuously channel chakra which may be akin to a continuous fire jutsu or something along the lines of a chidori. In addition to this characters with high constitution are less effected by burns, direct blows, poisons, and they sport the most health points.

Affected actions:
- Fainting check(Burns,frozen parts of your body, neurotoxins)
- Constitution check(channeling chakra)
- Health and chakra pool

Intelligence affects your character's ability to learn and how adept they are. Characters with high intelligence have more traits and jutsu readily available to them,but they also have greater talent for casting genjutsu in their target's most vulnerable parts of their brain. In addition to all of this, intelligence increases your jutsu powers overall, therefore potentially making a Rank D technique as dangerous as a rank C.

Affected stuff:
- Number of traits at the start
- Number of traits and jutsu per 10(Every interval of 10 gets 1 by default)
- Genjutsu,trap disarming, deciphering,knowledge check
- Available overall jutsu rank
- Jutsu breaking through defenses

Wisdom is the trait which affects your character's awareness of their surroundings,common sense,willpower and perception. Characters who tote this trait have higher senses than others and they typically have a greater understanding of human anatomy.

Affected stuff:
- Genjutsu resistance, listen, see, survival,and healing check
- perceiving what type of jutsu being used

Charisma is your character's personality and ability to interact with npc's,but it also determines when you can be trusted with higher level techniques and secrets.

Affected stuff:
- Chunin exam (Entrance and evaluation)
- Jonin promotion
- Barter, diplomacy, bluff, haggle, intimidate, animal handling check

Sub stats-

Weight
Height

Dice decide if the attack hits, and dice use numbers. The WS's primary failing was allowing people to do whatever they wanted "within reason" and didn't have a strict guide line of things that were "within reason". Instead it relied on Judges that didn't have a strict code to follow, leaving their judgement widely up to their on interpretation of what is and isn't reasonable, and allowed bias.
This is what I was thinking. There's going to be bias no matter what the rp is, but I'm not hiding behind rules. That's why I wanted to do dice too.

As for my basic intent so far, I'm trying to steer the overall direction into simplistic story lines with a gm and a team of 3 people. The trio for the most part can opt to be entirely independent or they can react to a narrator's touch. Essentially they'll do things such as roleplay catching a cat as beginner genin and as jonin execute diplomats in broad daylight before getting caught.

The former is decided by dice rolls once I figure out how to give stats to animals(Which I saw in SRD) and with the sneaking aspect(high dex) will depend on dice rolls to stay out of the sight until they have to strike. If you get caught, it's an instant fail. no ned to worry about pvp or npc fighting.

This isn't to say that pvp arena style will be gone,but I'd like to have non combat rp as well.

[Vornmusion]

You ought to acquire the core D&D 3.5 edition books. They flesh things out and make learning/working with the systems so more easier. The noob book -- the Players Handbook -- is about 200 pages and covers pretty much everything in the SRD on its own. Get them in PDF format and you can quickly search for specifics on the fly; I make use of them in my RP quite often.

Originally Posted by Bacon

In regards to the map and the whole resting thing, I think that's really fun. There's no real way to explain it other than one day I'd like to try a vanilla try through of d20 for that sole reason. The progression of time and aging is oddly unintuitive,yet it's such a basic concept. The when I tried to implement it,I realized what I stumbled upon was a mountain.

Real D&D is pretty fun. Unless you're using another PnP system I don't see the need to create entirely new ones really. D&D has some 30+ years of content and effort put into it by professionals; you'll never make something of equal quality in a short amount of time. Of course that's if you're like me and use all the different D&D systems. d20 is based primarily in D&D 3.5 (the best version by the way, better than 4th at any rate), but different versions (D&D 1st, A(dvanced)D&D (which is what d20 is based on), D&D 2nd, D&D 3rd, D&D 3.5, D&D 4th, and soon D&D NEXT (5th) were pretty radically different from each other and offer their own unique factors.

Of course I do not advise making a mash up of them; I have most of the books and have spent years worth of time going over the systems and get lost sometimes still.

The funny thing is that d20 is one of the more basic systems in PnP. Some of them out there go beyond the limits of sanity in details. I once read up on a system that took into account how matters interact with each other, and the different variables that result from the interactions of all the solids, gases and liquids; and then how those variables would react with all their made up garbage. How to calculate their effects on the air, terrain, etc of the area down to scientific formulas. It was some 50 pages of explantion, and it was only for that one aspect of a single class during a small part of its spell casting.

I NOPE.png out of that one pretty quickly.
Wish I could remember the system though, just so I could read it again for laughs.

That said I'm only going off the SRD for simplicities' sake. It's got all I need as you said and then some.

Indeed it has everything you need to function. Although the later books add some interesting and fun mechanics, but those aren't freely available, legally anyway, and require way more work to make function (one of the books adds a stance system for certain classes, so they can focus on different forms of magical/melee combat and gain different benefits/negatives while using them -- cool, but gets overly advanced/complex quickly).

As for my basic intent so far, I'm trying to steer the overall direction into simplistic story lines with a gm and a team of 3 people. The trio for the most part can opt to be entirely independent or they can react to a narrator's touch. Essentially they'll do things such as roleplay catching a cat as beginner genin and as jonin execute diplomats in broad daylight before getting caught.

In D&D, the DM narrates how events happen using the dice as the fair determining factor. In your example, if they were to attempt to catch the cat and it got away they wouldn't then say how it got away because the cat is not a Player Character (PC); the DM would explain/decide how the cat got away, where it went, what it's doing, etc.

Allowing players the freedom to decide what they want to do is the basis of D&D -- the DM through the usage of dice then tells them what happened when they tried. Another common example is lockpicking. The player picking the lock rolls and if they were to fail they don't say "I failed and the lock pick snaps off, jamming the lock in the process". That's entirely the DM's job, the players choose how to react to it. It's essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure, but with more freedom and dice to regulate actions.

Although at the end of the day the DM has final say in anything. They can decide you didn't roll high enough even if you did, or kill your character at a whim. The first rule of D&D (quite literately used to be the first one, might still be in the books) is that the DM is God and his judgement is final regardless of fairness or logic or anything else -- DM controls all of time and space at all times no matter what, you either accept it or find another group to play with -- which is why you don't play with shitty DMs.

The DM is also there to give the dice rolls a purpose. Without the DM setting down the guidelines the dice rolling means nothing. You can roll a 3 and simply say "GOOD ENOUGH GOT THE CAT"; the DM is there to put a base on rolls "Need a 9 or higher". They're also there to allow FUN; since dice can and many times will lead to bad events at the players expense it is often the job of the DM to realize that everything is simply going wrong with their rolls and as a result they are basically doing nothing but hurting themselves. The DM has to decide where the limit on "This is their fault they have to suffer the consequences regardless if they don't like it" and "This simply isn't fun anymore" is. It's also known as Fudging and is why many DM's do not tell players what they need to roll in order to succeed in an event (I don't tell players either myself). Where they normally would need a 9 you could decide a 4 is good enough, or whatever they rolled is enough. Knowing when the game has gone from "necessary consequences" to "unfun" is the prime and often hardest role the DM has to do. But it's also among the most important ones, because as I said the Players cannot be trusted to do this on their own.

So having said all of that I'm curious as to how you're going to handle this. Players can never be trusted to decide how events happen, it doesn't matter how good of an RP'er they are, or how good you're friends with them -- Players are never to be trusted with deciding events that do not relate to their own PC's physical/mental actions (unless under the influence of another). They will always eventually fall to self advancement even if only subconsciously, no exceptions allowed. I've played with Cactus for 10 years and still don't trust him to do this.

This isn't to say that pvp arena style will be gone,but I'd like to have non combat rp as well.

The question is whether anyone will have an interest in doing something besides fighting to any degree of consistency. I have my doubts.

[Maxtone]

In relation to...

Bacon's Spoiler: That looks good to me, I like how the stats are in relation to the....things stats effect.

Most of Vornmusion's post: So...much...knowledge at once. That said, informative and useful insight on the rolling and player choice.

As for my basic intent so far, I'm trying to steer the overall direction into simplistic story lines with a gm and a team of 3 people. The trio for the most part can opt to be entirely independent or they can react to a narrator's touch. Essentially they'll do things such as roleplay catching a cat as beginner genin and as jonin execute diplomats in broad daylight before getting caught.

Sounds really good to me, I'd really like to do things other than pure combat. Keeping it simple starting off may make it more appealing to others.

The question is whether anyone will have an interest in doing something besides fighting to any degree of consistency. I have my doubts.

This is the one I wanted to comment on the most. He's got a point unfortunately Roleplay seems to equate to Fight very often. My biggest concern is that a unique and complex system will be made all for players to be interested in nothing but battle. But trial will of course be necessary before one can truly know....I suppose.

[Wooster]

The Tome of Battle with the Crusaders, Swordsages, and Warblades might have a decent way to make Chakra skills. You select what you want, there are stances,there are magic like skills, which are divided into disciplines(easily changed to natures ) but no use per day and crap like that.

[Bacon]

In D&D, the DM narrates how events happen using the dice as the fair determining factor. In your example, if they were to attempt to catch the cat and it got away they wouldn't then say how it got away because the cat is not a Player Character (PC); the DM would explain/decide how the cat got away, where it went, what it's doing, etc.

Allowing players the freedom to decide what they want to do is the basis of D&D -- the DM through the usage of dice then tells them what happened when they tried. Another common example is lockpicking. The player picking the lock rolls and if they were to fail they don't say "I failed and the lock pick snaps off, jamming the lock in the process". That's entirely the DM's job, the players choose how to react to it. It's essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure, but with more freedom and dice to regulate actions.

Although at the end of the day the DM has final say in anything. They can decide you didn't roll high enough even if you did, or kill your character at a whim. The first rule of D&D (quite literately used to be the first one, might still be in the books) is that the DM is God and his judgement is final regardless of fairness or logic or anything else -- DM controls all of time and space at all times no matter what, you either accept it or find another group to play with -- which is why you don't play with shitty DMs.

The DM is also there to give the dice rolls a purpose. Without the DM setting down the guidelines the dice rolling means nothing. You can roll a 3 and simply say "GOOD ENOUGH GOT THE CAT"; the DM is there to put a base on rolls "Need a 9 or higher". They're also there to allow FUN; since dice can and many times will lead to bad events at the players expense it is often the job of the DM to realize that everything is simply going wrong with their rolls and as a result they are basically doing nothing but hurting themselves. The DM has to decide where the limit on "This is their fault they have to suffer the consequences regardless if they don't like it" and "This simply isn't fun anymore" is. It's also known as Fudging and is why many DM's do not tell players what they need to roll in order to succeed in an event (I don't tell players either myself). Where they normally would need a 9 you could decide a 4 is good enough, or whatever they rolled is enough. Knowing when the game has gone from "necessary consequences" to "unfun" is the prime and often hardest role the DM has to do. But it's also among the most important ones, because as I said the Players cannot be trusted to do this on their own.

So having said all of that I'm curious as to how you're going to handle this. Players can never be trusted to decide how events happen, it doesn't matter how good of an RP'er they are, or how good you're friends with them -- Players are never to be trusted with deciding events that do not relate to their own PC's physical/mental actions (unless under the influence of another). They will always eventually fall to self advancement even if only subconsciously, no exceptions allowed. I've played with Cactus for 10 years and still don't trust him to do this.

I goofed of and went ahead to play lol,but pooped out right before getting rengar :/

It seems like I've really had the DM thing wrong fundamentally because I pegged it as a story catalyst and arbiter, a commander and the chief, the life of the party and the caterer. Knowing now that the DM won't be making up the flow of the rp is a bit troubling since it requires cooperation and independent effort form the layers themselves.

This means I'll have to go back to the drawing board for the most part,but it did put a lot in perspective. You mention the notion of being a hardass as a DM,well I'm the pushover nancy, the enabler to the MAX. Picture a gm who doesn't instill conflict and just lets the player decide all the events and never get hurt. xD

Yea that won't be happening. HELL no

still doesn't change the fact that the fundamental heart for my idea needs reworking.. :/ I trust people to come up with their own stories,but the fear of inactivity because they just stagnate without any initiative is still a real problem. If I can't act as such, then...

The question is whether anyone will have an interest in doing something besides fighting to any degree of consistency. I have my doubts.

This is the one I wanted to comment on the most. He's got a point unfortunately Roleplay seems to equate to Fight very often. My biggest concern is that a unique and complex system will be made all for players to be interested in nothing but battle. But trial will of course be necessary before one can truly know....I suppose.

As far as I can tell, the regular rp base oldies are mostly gone,but they linger every now and then and their biggest pet peeve is everything is just boring with fights. While I don't know how much of the old war system base is still around either,but they were always talking about wanting things done and more things to do. Unfortunately because it's called a war system the default thing to do was often "war", which from the forum's history were teamfights consisting of 1 v 1 challenges.

Now maybe my assumption is completely off base, but the people working on this couldn't think of anything else to do and the user base participating was bored as hell with just fights. Which is why many simply dropped out and others like myself tapered off after 1 or 2 fights.

The Tome of Battle with the Crusaders, Swordsages, and Warblades might have a decent way to make Chakra skills. You select what you want, there are stances,there are magic like skills, which are divided into disciplines(easily changed to natures ) but no use per day and crap like that.

Sounds like an awesome idea, if it weren't 1 am I'd be right on it.

[Vornmusion]

Originally Posted by Bacon

I goofed of and went ahead to play lol,but pooped out right before getting rengar :/

It seems like I've really had the DM thing wrong fundamentally because I pegged it as a story catalyst and arbiter, a commander and the chief, the life of the party and the caterer. Knowing now that the DM won't be making up the flow of the rp is a bit troubling since it requires cooperation and independent effort form the layers themselves.

This means I'll have to go back to the drawing board for the most part,but it did put a lot in perspective. You mention the notion of being a hardass as a DM,well I'm the pushover nancy, the enabler to the MAX. Picture a gm who doesn't instill conflict and just lets the player decide all the events and never get hurt. xD

Yea that won't be happening. HELL no

still doesn't change the fact that the fundamental heart for my idea needs reworking.. :/ I trust people to come up with their own stories,but the fear of inactivity because they just stagnate without any initiative is still a real problem. If I can't act as such, then...

Naw don't confuse it. The DM does all of that. There's different types of DM play. That's just more of the Railroading play style which is seldom used in D&D (because it restricts player freedom, takes away much of the player-random variable, and is considered the lowest form of DM play) for the most part. It has its purpose, especially for more story driven sections of RP but on the whole Railroading lessens the D&D experience. Although you're not going for a true D&D experience, so it may work better than otherwise.

I highly recommend reading this blog post (ignore the name), it covers this aspect in detail. It's a very long read, but a very good one that all to-be DM's should read, and also anyone doing more hardcore roleplaying in general.

As far as I can tell, the regular rp base oldies are mostly gone,but they linger every now and then and their biggest pet peeve is everything is just boring with fights. While I don't know how much of the old war system base is still around either,but they were always talking about wanting things done and more things to do. Unfortunately because it's called a war system the default thing to do was often "war", which from the forum's history were teamfights consisting of 1 v 1 challenges.

Now maybe my assumption is completely off base, but the people working on this couldn't think of anything else to do and the user base participating was bored as hell with just fights. Which is why many simply dropped out and others like myself tapered off after 1 or 2 fights.

Let's just be honest, the WS was a scheme to generate site traffic that was then perverted into a system of power trips from the people running it. That they all had the most powerful characters was testament to that. When you have characters that you admit are broken but allow to remain you have acknowledge that your system is unbalanced and has holes -- and you have acknowledged that you refuse to fix them. In keeping your own broken character you have also shown you refuse to fix them from selfish self serving reasons. It's one of the bigger reasons I never got involved with the WS; it was poisoned and I am still truly baffled the player base didn't see this. But I suppose I had the benefit of talking regularly with a few of the founders and original WC members about it and through that revealed its failings -- some of which had the honor to admit as much at least. It was an entirely convoluted, self serving, red-taped disaster. Even if it could have worked the WC would of prevented it from ever getting there. It used to be a running joke between me and my friends that we would make RP systems in our spare time for fun and they were more complete after 2 days than the WS was after [insert months/years].

Ignoring all of that the WS was trying to be a game when it should of been an experience. That's what roleplaying is supposed to be. Turning it entirely into this arbitrary game ruins the majesty of roleplaying. They brandished the WS as this RP system when it was barely better than all the garbage in the RP section on the forum. As I said years ago and still today: It failed from its core outward. You cannot sustain a game on a forum like that of the WS. Make a game if you're going to make a game.

I keep thinking I can bring the WS down to the very core aspect that made it crap and I almost can't; that's how many aspects of it were doomed. But if I were to really try I know what the root of this poisoned tree was -- PvP.

PvP based roleplay never lasts long term. Bitterness grows quickly, and that is if you have systems that actually function and don't rely on "Judges" or "within reason". When faced against real players in combat people will inevitably make their characters with the mindset of winning and never losing -- power gaming. And that is the death of a serious role play. The long-standing standard for what makes a roleplayer and what makes a good roleplayer, is the difference between someone that will gimp their character for a better experience or not. I watched the WS more closely than people might think, and I have never once seen any one make a character that was intended for a roleplaying experience. Everything served to further them in some fashion. Not that I can entirely blame them of course, when the the whole point of the "roleplay" was to fight each other. In a real roleplay, PnP stuff, PvP is considered either the greatest sin committed by a group and/or DM, or is a fine, fine line to be walked. In D&D, if a group fights each other it is considered either really good roleplay, or a total RP failure.

So when you make a "roleplay" system that is actually just a game, taking into account all of the previously mentioned failures of it, and then make the focus PvP -- you need some legendary direction to make that work. There's people that have been roleplaying for over 40 years and have entered professional roleplaying leagues that stay away from PvP; such is the poison it is to roleplaying. Why people here thought they could make it work speaks of either profound ego or profound nativity.

WH40k is about as close to a working PvP system as has been seen in mainstream roleplaying, and even then that isn't based around 1 Vs. 1 but Army Vs. Army; which in itself alleviates many of the problems PvP RP has.

Anyways enough about the WS. It's dead and done and I believe I have explained enough of what made it fail. You should have enough knowledge to not repeat the mistakes by now.

Sounds like an awesome idea, if it weren't 1 am I'd be right on it.

That's one of the books I mentioned. They're cool, but can get complicated when combined with everything else. I'm not sure if the information online will be enough to flesh them out either, they do have an entire book dedicated to them after all.

[Bacon]

Original post updated

[PrinceofPeace]

I AM in and I will help I guess
maybe we can have different villages