[The End of All Things] David's Game Thread

[DavidEBest]

I've been tossing around game concepts since the contest started, but I wanted to decide on a direction before I created a thread.

The concept I've settled on is The End of All Things, an epic, Elric of Melnibone via Hawkwind or Blue Oyster Cult last battle to stave off the forces of Death at the end of the Universe.

The players take on the roles of great heroes, real or imagined, who were summoned to the end of the universe to save the Last City from the encroaching desert of nothingness. The great heroes must join forces and journey into the Desert to find a way to save the Last City, and optionally, the rest the universes.

Mechanics wise, I've started with a few things that sound interesting to me:

* GM-less, or at least GM-lite
* Characters are defined almost completed by a list of their exploits. From the exploits, you can derive antagonists, feats they are capable of performing, and flaws they have
* A hubris attribute that increases as they tempt fate. If it gets pushed too high, epic death scene ensues.
* A wagering/betting mechanism for task resolution, possibly with the loser playing the role of the GM for the scene. This also emphasizes the cooperative and competitive nature of the game
* The third ingredient I plan on using is Edge, probably tied to the task resolution mechanism

Definitely overly ambitious, but might as well see what comes of it.

Here are my notes (mostly a mess at this point):


(Cross posted: )

[vulpinoid]

This sounds like the stuff of epic awesomeness, Don't worry if it's over ambitious.

I'm interested by this idea of defining the characters by their previous exploits. That sounds like something a bit different from the average run of the mill game and probably something worth focusing on.

[DavidEBest]

[vulpinoid]

I realise it would detract from the playability, but I could really see this game being played with a d30.

Standard D&D and most knock offs use a d20, but this level of awesomeess needs to up the ante...and the d30 just gives that higher range of numbers to muck around with.

Standard actions, difficulty d10....hard actions difficulty d20...legendary actions difficulty d30.

If the player can justify that their characters might be able to accomplish something, they roll a d10 for their skill level. If the character has specifically done something like this in the past, they roll a d20 for their skill. If the character is pulling off one of their signature moves, they roll a d30.

(sure you could do the same with d4, d8, d12, but it just doesn't seem as "OVER-THE-TOP")

The other way I'd look at laying up the awesomeness of these characters is by using some kind of mechanism that rolls huge handfuls of dice.

[DavidEBest]

I love the idea of rolling a D30 for the epic traits, and I agree, the D4 should not be part of the game at all. I'm still stuck on the idea of playing dice with Death, and having Death take some of your dice when you fail. In order to make that work, I'm leaning to the handful of D6s or D10s approach, probably with exploding high values. My goal is the have the system worked out today, so I can start fleshing things out in the last few days.

As a side note, I love the look of the character sheet concept for Walkabout.

[DavidEBest]

Just had a thought regarding throwing D20 and D30s in a game.
Like you suggested, Vulpinoid, what if you throw a D20 for each edge that is applied and a D30 for invoking an aspect? The ten's digit on the die would represent additional successes, i.e. rolling a 28 on a D30 would be 3 successes: 2 automatic, and 1 for rolling above a 6 (or 7, not sure yet).

This could also be a way to have some really runaway successes for the players- roll a natural 30 and you get 4 successes plus a reroll.

Thanks for the idea!

[DavidEBest]

[DavidEBest]