Ewok Nazis
The Premise of the Game Explained.
habnabitmkiii : I've been meaning to ask you... what system is the RPG you DM?Bryce : SimpleRPG. It's homebrew. I can send you the rules, but they're up for a major revision (to correct problems that we've found in playtesting.) It's very simple though. Basically, characters have six stats: Strength, Dexterity, Resiliance, Intelligence, Knowledge, and Perception. To do a stat check, you roll d20 and add it to the relevant skill. For instance, to break open a door might be {ST 20}, which means d20+ST must be greater than 20 to succeed. (So if you have ST 10 you would have to roll 11 or better.) Skill checks work in a very similar way - skills are based on a particular primary stat. Take Swordsmanship - it's based on DeXterity. So if something has a Hit Difficulty of 25, and I have DX 7 and Swordsmanship 10, then I have to roll 8 or better to hit it when I try to attack. The hit difficulty is just dodging (a skill) + DX.
habnabitmkiii : So, pretty similar to the d20 system?
Bryce : Somewhat, although I haven't studied the d20 system in great detail. The basic mechanic is apparently pretty similar, although character development is more different.
habnabitmkiii : And the things in the game world are all things you came up with?
Bryce : Came up with, or took from the general canon of science fiction and things that happened in real life. It's a semi-humorous setting so cliche is tollerated. You can just combine two or more things and get something totally appropriate to the setting. For instance, if you want bad guys, you can take something that many people dislike from the world of science fiction - e.g. Ewoks, and something from real life - like Nazis - and combine them, yielding Ewok Nazis. And there you have a quest. Especially if they try to steal the Ark of the Covenant.
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha.
Bryce : Actually it is a bit more original than that, but the point is that it doesn't have to be :)
habnabitmkiii : Well, I was arguing with a friend about the possibilities of balancing firearms vs. melee weapons in a futuristic, non-post-apocalyptic setting.
Bryce : interesting
habnabitmkiii : How are you doing it in your game? I know you've mentioned having both.
Bryce : The truth is, not very well - it being a lighthearted game, realism wasn't a priority. However, swords can be psionically imprinted, whereas blaster bolts can't (generally). Which means that you can have cool lightsaber-type swords, but also ones that freeze/burn enemies (ala Fantasy artifacts), inflict diseases, etc.
Dune had an interesting solution though, that might be of use for a more serious game. There were these personal shields that people had that could explode very violently if shot at. So it was preferable to kill the guys that had them with swords or other physical weapons so that hopefully you wouldn't die as well.. In game mechanic terms, for my game, melee weapons really are somewhat weaker than firearms for the practical adventurer. The players tend to have both. For instance, a well-outfitted adventurer might have a longsword with a psionic imprint that made it glow and burn the enemies it touched, and a long-range repeating blaster. The sword is more reliable, but the blaster can be used farther away.
habnabitmkiii : So, then, why wouldn't you always use the blaster? Also, how common/expensive are they?
Bryce : You wouldn't use the blaster because the sword has better dice :) The question is "Why wouldn't you use the sword?" and the answer is "Because they're too far away." Blasters are more expensive than swords, but not by orders of magnatude. They're both reasonably common, although imprinted items tend to be less so. In this case the sword will probably cost more than the blaster.
habnabitmkiii : By better dice, you mean to hit or damage?
Bryce : For to-hit it is always d20, but the sword usually has a better bonus. There are so-called autoswords that are very easy to use because they are "guided", but also in our party sword-inclined PCs are more common. As for damage, it depends... generally, swords have less maximum damage, but are more reliable. E.g. a sword might be 4d6, and a blaster 3d10. (for damage) That isn't a particularly drastic example though. I think one thing that needs to be remembered in design is that they don't nessicarily have to be balanced... there can be legal, religious, economic, or cultural reasons to prefer a weapon that is not the best one you could create. Maybe (for a fantasy setting) wizards have staffs because it's a tradition, not because they couldn't do more damage with an Uzi. In a sci-fi setting, maybe the Nazi Ewoks of Planet Fuzzyevilion IX use guns instead of blasters because their dictator doesn't like blasters and they don't want to be politically unpopular.
In my particular game, there is at least one religion that teaches "swords are a sin", although that might have had to do with the Preacher character getting fed up with Josh going on and on about how great and cool swords were.
habnabitmkiii : Haha.
Bryce : Speaking of my group, one of my friends started GMing a second group.
habnabitmkiii : Where's that based out of, then?
Bryce : Same universe... we're working together to maintain continuity, which is a challenge since he has a PC in my game and I have one in his.
habnabitmkiii : I mean, the physical location.
Bryce : Oh. Also down here in Marysville.
Bryce : He lives about five minutes away from me as it so happens, which is why that is.
habnabitmkiii : Ah.
Bryce : My PC is a half-space-gnome, half-mole-person multiclassed Preacher-Bright (a kind of psionist). Her name is Ngekh, which is pronounced [Nex]. The x is as in German Ba_ch_, the N as in English Bei_ng_. So it is a real mouthful for the phonetically challenged members of our group.
habnabitmkiii : Heh.
Bryce : She very quickly aqquired the nick-name "Elfy", which probably came from my attempt to describe what a cross between Yoda and a human would look like. ("A... Space Elf?")
habnabitmkiii : (I know you had done it in Entropy, but do you have kinetic psionics in this game?)
Bryce : Yes, but just weakly. There is a "Psihand" technique that allows telekinesis. It can be used in a fairly broad range of ways. One player used it to bombard an escaping spaceship with rocks.
habnabitmkiii : How do you calculate damage done by an object and the amount of psionic energy it takes?
Bryce : The first is GM fiat right now, except for a few specific situations that come up a lot (falling, and weapon damage). The psionic energy needed for most powers is well defined, but for something as flexible as psihand some GM thinking is required. (To estimate based on examples in the rules or whatever.)
habnabitmkiii : I was arguing with the same friend about the possibilities of using kinetic psionics to use, say, a needle, to kill a group of monsters.
Bryce : heh, if it's going fast enough :) One of the problems with psionics in realistic games is that there are many things that should be possible but that aren't mentioned in the rules. Sometimes, this is benign, e.g. when a player wants to use some combat psionic as a light source. (Can I make a little energy bolt, and drag it off over several turns?) But other times it can be really unbalancing. Why can't my healer, who can repair an aneurysm with his powers, not rip open someone's aorta for a one-turn instakill?
habnabitmkiii : And your solution is simply to not have a realistic game?
Bryce : This time :)
habnabitmkiii : Hehe.
Bryce : I'm not saying there aren't solutions - one of them is to say, "Okay, he can do that." But there are some consequences - e.g. the healer's guild is sworn against using their powers for violence, and if they find out they'll put a price on his head. The other one is to concoct some reason why it isn't possible, of course. But if it is too contrived players may have difficulty accepting it. The unrealistic route is probabl y the easiest. Since this was my first time GMing I went with it. I want to try a more serious game setting for the next campaign, but that's several months in the future.
Another reason why I went with this unserious game, which is fairly derivative of popular science fiction and fantasy, is that the players would already be familiar with the conventions of the genera. In a serious game, where I had been creative and made up things, they'd have had to been filled in on the backstory/world. I wasn't sure if people who had (mostly) never role-played before would be willing to deal with that.
habnabitmkiii : I see.
Bryce : One thing a fellow GM said to me was: "You can never predict what players will do." It's very true... apparently half of being a good GM is being ready to think on your feet and wing it when the players do something unexpected.
For instance, in the last session I ran, the players went on a side-quest to clean out the basement of this psionist, who promissed to give them a moderate sum of money and, more importantly, some psionics textbooks that described how to create imprinted items. Since the players had previously been fairly amoral and self-serving, I assumed that they would have no problem killing off the inhabitants of his basement, which turned out to be sentient beings. (This wasn't advertised - the quest-offerer just mentioned rats and "whatever else is down there.")
But they didn't kill the basement-dwellers, and instead confronted the quest guy (the psionist) about it. At this point I expected them to just back off and go away, calling the deal off. But instead one of them actually attacked the psionist! I could have killed off the party with him right there, but instead I gave him a cowardly streak and, after frying them just _half_ to death, he hasted himself a bunch of times and ran away. Then, the players abruptly returned to their usual selves and pillaged his house.
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha.
Bryce : The basement people continued to occupy the basement, and the players made off with the psionist's rather large collection of books, including the ones they were supposed to get from the quest. So now I have to figure out a way to keep them from getting all the psionics in the game, while not making them feel like they're being slighted, and still giving some reward. Plus I have to figure out a way for them to not all die when the psionist and his buddies return to take back his house, while at the same time making it appear that there is a threat by occasionally letting someone die. It's pretty hard work, but it is fun.
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