Anachrony (Working Title, Communal Project)

[Drakeknight]

There are two things I quite like. Multiversal nexusses and communal projects. So I thought I'd put them together and see what happened.

So the game is set on an infinite world in which all realities sort of blend together to form a semi-cohesive reality all of their own. The intention is for setting to be both pliable, expandable, and, yeah, a little bit mismatched, for lack of a more severe word. If my plan pans out (which, should history be any guide, it has about a one in ten chance of doing) there should be one core rulebook, written by largely by me, and lots of setting books written by all of you guys adding character choices, items, monsters, locations, NPCs, and adventures.

Obviously, you can't really do that without some idea of the mechanics, but since I'm such a newbie I want you to weigh in before I set anything down in concrete. But here's what I have so far;

Everything is based on rolling one type of die, I'm thinking a d4. Rather than concrete attributes and ability scores, it seems natural that this would use a wide, pliable range of skills, and each rank in a skill would equate to 1d4 that you role for applicable skill checks. Characters are defined by one Race, three Niches, and their Individuality. Usually, Race will give general skills like Brute Strength, as well as specific racial bonuses like Night Vision. Niches are like classes, and would give you more specific skills, like Axemanship. Individuality provides skills that make the character special, and would be provided by the player and approved by the GM. When a thing needs doing, a player puts forth what they're doing, then applies whichever of their skills they can talk into being relevant to it. Either the GM will set a DC for the check, or will roll for a character to oppose the action, using their own skills.

So, that's what I got going. If you guys think that sounds fine, then feel free to start contributing immediately, because frankly I'm interested in seeing what, when given limitless options, you choose to create.

[Onix]

d4s don't leave a lot of range for things like stats. If I made a sourcebook for The Artifact (which may as well just be a rules port), there would be problems with trying to balance a lot of the elements in the story. I'd have to see a bit more before I knew if it was even possible.

I'm gonna play devils advocate here. In the end, isn't this a universal system with the intention of mashing the different settings together? It might make more sense to have a book of all our settings set in a well known system like FATE or RISUS. That way players of those systems would be able to pick up our settings and mix and match them.

[J.K.Mosher]

I would suggest for you to consider using d6 as your base dice, and maybe if your feeling
twisted use d4 as the dice rolled for defensive or resisted items.

Conan attacks Kull using a broadsword.
- Conan rolls #d6 equal to his attack attributes.
- Kull rolls #d4 for his attack attributes.
Compare each individual dye against the other. Highest roll wins. Dice over and above the other's side,
(ie Conan rolls 2d6 while Kull rolls 3d4) are instant successes.

Add in some tweaks for if the d6 is a min/max roll vs a min/max roll fro the d4.

Then again watching a bunch of d4's jumping around the table could be fun

[Drakeknight]

Yeah, whether or not to use d4s was a bit of a conundrum for me, the most prominent problem to my mind being "Who actually owns more than a few d4s, this would be ridiculous offline." So yeah, I'm very open to using d6s if you think that would be better.

Or as, Onix suggested, using an established system. The reason I didn't jump right on that is simply, I'm not really familiar with any established systems. There's also the issue of adaptation with the whole wide variety of content. Also, if it wasn't clear, I didn't just mean I'd like people to adapt their own existing settings. Should you ever have the pressing desire to write rules for a variety of gnome composed entirely of cheddar, then now there's a place to channel that desire.

I should point out, I'm not particularly concerned with balance. If two players in the same group want to be a demi-god warrior and a human detective, either the power level discrepancy is intentional or the GM has been asleep the whole time.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Well, if you want an example of an everything and the kitchen sink turned up to eleven setting, look at the published game Rifts. If you want an example of a poorly done and unbalanced setting with rather questionable writing - look at Rifts again.

I actually rather like that game, and its sort of over-enthusiastic presentation is kind of endearing, but its a good example of why you need game balance and a bit of planning rather than just make up a setting where anything can happen.

Feng-Shui is probably a bit better in the lets mash up concepts department. It has an actual storyline of why things are connected, and clear limits on what can or can't get through the multiverse.

Strangely enough, I also had an idea for a mash-up setting to pitch to the community earlier, but I'll create a new thread for that later.

Back on topic - perhaps rather than dice, a system based on playing cards would be advisable. You can do a lot of fun things, like set a standard target number to draw against, and then let each applicable modifier (race/attribute/skill) either determine a trump (you do better if you draw spades, or get +2 if you draw a heart) and character level/ability can give you a certain number of cards in a hand to use in emergencies.

[Drakeknight]

I like the playing card idea. I'm going to hop on the Relentless Enthusiasm Train and write up some proper rules and example setting stuff.

[Evil Scientist]

Maybe it would work better with some sand-box and collective world creation elements, with players voting and vetoing things they want / don't want in the given game. Say, everybody proposes five items, then everybody removes three.

Or look at the Story Seeds in Onix's Steampunkfitters!

[Drakeknight]