So I wanna run a SBURB campaign at some point. But none of the existing homestuck D&Dish things are quite what I'm looking for, and I'm an incorrigible fiddler anyways, so I'm kinda building it from the ground up off the stock D&D baseline (6 stats, HP/AC/saves, d20 to hit then damage, &c.). No existing monsters or classes, so it doesn't really have any ties to existing D&D editions, although my general approach to games is very much OSR/DIY D&D (I read more dnd blogs than is probably strictly healthy). Anyways, I could use some people to bounce ideas off and @Lazarae suggested a thread, so. Here we are. What I've got so far: Spoiler Basically classless (in the D&D sense) most early powers come from alchemized weapons, then classpect powers later on. - I'm gonna make these up as I go along, because like hell am I gonna make 144 classes :T Doing shit is mostly checked directly off stats (mathematically equivalent to roll under stat, except flipped so 1 is still crit fail and 20 is still crit). If it fits an INTEREST you get best of 2. All the stats give you +/- to certain things (I'll post the list if people wanna see) so there's no dump stats. Some sort of system to determine if you have x kind of random junk in your house for alchemizing, modified by your and your guardian's INTERESTS. Also, everyone gets one feat-equivalent kinda thing to start, like fetch moduses that are useful in combat, or some sort of external game guide or another strife specibus. Drafts of automated random generators Carapacians Underlings Books table (no promises about the comprehensibility of these to anyone but me :B Also, apparently the google sheets thing throws a hissy fit about excel syntax ) I've got some under-the-hood game stuff I'd like to sort out, if anyone likes messing around with that part of RPGs, and I'd also love to toss ideas around for more Underlings and exploration stuff. I can also go into more detail about all that stuff under the spoiler. I have no idea what people are interested in/want to chatter about, so... ask me shit! Please! I've also got some plot/setup ideas, but I'm not sure if I wanna share those, because I might recruit on here when I actually run the game. *shuffles feet awkwardly*
AAAAAH CHARTS. I LOVE CHARTS FOR GEN. We could totally make gens for enemies based on prototyping: a roll for each part to see which sprite it comes from. I don't know how to do code-y shit but I've made plenty of percentile-die tables. (SO many tables.) Also suggest something akin to Rift's Horror/Awe Factor for things like horrorterrors and the Kings/Queens. It's basically a save on a d20 against whatever the entity's horror factor is, to see if you're frozen in terror or not. Failing the save means you lose initiative (don't even bother rolling for it), loses one attack/action that round, is the last person to attack/take action, and cannot defend against the entity's first attack that round. They snap out of it pretty quick: they can attack in the same round (with the aforementioned issues) and by the second round they're back to normal. Some classes/backgrounds give bonuses/weaknesses to Horror Factor. Maybe we can work that with Derse/Prospit, certain classpects maybe, if there are trolls then higher castes have more resistance? Wait, you said SBURB specifically so it's probably humans. Gimme a moment to get my brain together/dig through my books and I'll see what else I come up with.
The bones of that are actually already in there, just blank because I obviously won't know the prototypings until the game starts. The Horror/Awe thing sounds good to me! Probably denizens have it, too, although they wouldn't start attacking right off the bat. I may also bring in a stunning rule I've seen that looks cool, where anything that loses a quarter or more of its current HP in one round loses its next turn. I'm planning humans, yeah. I'm also debating whether I should go fort/reflex/will for saves, or like the old-school setup where it's by category of thing you're saving versus (death, magic, explosions, etcetera) The current stat setup has just will as +/- to saves, so. Actually, I might as well put up the whole stat setup Str +/- to movement per round Dex +/- to AC Con +/- HP Int +/- to damage rolls Wis +/- to saves and then not sure quite what to do with Cha it's always the odd one out (I should mention that stats are on 3d6, maybe roll 2-3 sets of 6 on 3d6 and pick one. (4d6 drop lowest is lower-variance. less interesting bell curve.) bonuses/minuses for the above are probably about +/- 1 for every three points away from 10 (+0))
I am Here For This! Question barrage incoming! How many players are you thinking? I would like to hear about your plans for the prototyping chain. I like the idea of starting with abilities mostly tied to weapons and one special feat-equivalent per player. When you get into the classpect special abilities, do you think you'll have those be roll-based or resource-based? Are you going to choose lands for the players or let them choose? I will think about the save thing. Maybe Cha could give a bonus/penalty to all actions taken as a group, which would make it extremely useful and give your players an incentive to group up and help each other? *Editing to add: that might create a division between the high-charisma PCs who do best with a partner or in a group and the low-charisma loners. Hmm. I can already guess that your greatest asset here is going to be flexibility - SBURB is a game where changing the rules is part of the game!
I was thinking four, although I could probably manage six. The rules for prototyping are gonna be you can put whatever you like for pre-entry prototypes on your character sheet, but post-entry the damn sprite gets to evade your attempts to prototype it with obscenely high AC/saves (unless it "likes" what you're putting in - dead and doomed shit, basically). Which I think should be an interesting tradeoff. Lands are kinda the same idea? Like, I'll give players a chance to put down associated items (like oil is for John) or thematic things when they make their characters, and then I'll build the lands based on those and classpect stuff. (I'm pretty convinced that all Heroes of Light get water planets, fr'instance) Classpect abilities are probably gonna be more "you can do this thing that you couldn't before" rather than "you can do this thing better," so probably more resource based? But there might be some that play off like music rolls ore something. Actually, speaking of music, I might go Sil on this and mush Wisdom and Charisma together into Grace, which also gives a nice music-playing stat. hmmm The synergy thing is interesting, and I might nab it for something else, but I don't want to put it in Charisma, because then if someone puts an 8 or below there, they're making their friends worse by being around. Which is kinda... And definitely with the flexibility, yeah.
Oh also, for mapping stuff I'm planning to make a bunch of hexagonal geomorphs for meteor labs and factories. And then land maps, of course. Not sure what to do about Prospit and Derse, though. Those are some seriously tangled cities.
Would you be okay with people essentially playing as themselves? I would love to get involved and run as page of heart ;u; also have you seen godtierrpg on tumblr? they've run a couple of playtest sessions and might be able to help out with semantics
Yeah, probably. I've seen a bit of them. Their stuff doesn't look quite like what I'm looking for, but I'll go have a poke around and see if there's anything I want to steal.
I would be so in for this. Regarding the classes / aspects, Why not make the 12-14 classes, and have the aspects as spell-related? Like, you can only learn spells from your aspect, and the aspects themselves have a spell-list of applications and a difficulty level in relation to the different classes? (borrowing from dsa here, tho)
Yeah, that was my original idea, but I decided it would work better to have class and aspect more integrated and flexible, rather than trying to work it all out beforehand. I may have some innate things for each class and/or aspect from the beginning, though (as per God Tier RPG, thanks @KathyGaele) (somewhat different things, though) Also, as an aside, dsa? Not familiar with the acronym. I'm glad there seems to be interest in this! I'll have to try to get it up and running ASAP!
Posting some things I've already worked on a bit in hopes of feedback or more ideas. Spoiler: So here's what I've got so far for Starting Special Things (1 per character) Combat Modus (eg. Hashrap, stack) Can make a ranged attack (1d6 by default?) [for reference, ordinary weapons in your kind abstratus are probably 1d8, weapons out of it might be 1d6-1] as a minor action by shooting something out of you sylladex. Possible secondary effects/more damage if you alchemize dangerous things to launch. Large Capacity Modus (e.g. wallet, puzzle) You can captchalouge items of any size. Pictionary Modus You can captchalouge ghost images of things you don't have to use in alchemy. You get ~30 seconds to scribble a thing and you captchalouge a ghost image of whatever I think it is. Helpful Modus (e.g. chastity, ouija) [not sure about this one] Once per [relevant unit time] you can show me your inventory and I'll pick one thing in it that might be useful to you now or soon (with no further explanation) Eclectic Guardian Your Guardian has 2d4 extra interests, to be decided whenever [basically means better chances of having weird specialized junk lying around for alchemy] Strife Porfolio You get an extra kind abstratus to start Companion (e.g. Lil Seb) Loyal robot/pet/sibling what will help you with shit. Informant (e.g. Calliope, Rose's walkthrough, Doc Scratch) [not sure about this one either] You have an external source of information about the game. [metagaming ho!] Spoiler: and possible starting stuff for aspects Time You can resolve to, at some point in your future, go back in time and put the item you really need right now right behind that rock over there(slipshank, in Cotinuum terms, so if I say that ever, this is what the hell I'm talking about). The item is then, of course, right behind that rock, and you need to go put it there sometime. [there may need to be some limitation on spamming this, as per Cotinuum's frag, which I'm not sure if I'm gonna import. Good way to make a hell of a lot of doomed timelines if you fuck up the loops] Space You saw this situation in a dream on Prospit some time ago and conveniently remembered to bring an item along to deal with it, which is now retconned into your sylladex. [might be once per relevant unit time, not sure] and that's all I've got for now [technically these are just logical extensions of the special stuff around Time and Space players, but I figured I might as well codify them and then give all the other aspects something similar to keep it fair] Can I solicit some Underling ideas from people if you have any you've come up with or favorite fanon ones? I need mooooooore Also, @Lazarae, didya find anything interesting in your pdf diving? (is it okay to ping you about this? i don't want to nag or hassle you or anything)
I'm just gonna lurk here for a bit. >_> *settles into a corner* (beginner DM here. running a first campaign (13th Age) with sibs, we are all Homestucks, would like to do a Sburb campaign after this'un. looked at God Tier RPG's stuff, thought it was cool, but not convinced of utility yet. so. will lurk.)
Haha, this is actually gonna be my first time running a campaign (but then, jumping into the deep end of the pool right off the bat is a family artistic tradition). Feel free to steal as much of this shit as you like for your Sburb campaign when you run it. :D
Also gonna put my to-do list for pre game prep up here, because why not. draw veil meteor geomorphs figure out what the hell to do with Maids, Mages and Rage finish up random generates come up with cool, simple Aspect Things for other 10 figure out some sort of Skaian Cloud Dream generator? UNDERLINGS figure out battlefield mass combat shit (some of that can happen after game start) wound tables? deal with Prospit/Derse exploration somehow Wow that's... a lot less than I thought, actually. e. also leaning increasingly towards rolling wisdom and charisma together into grace
I don't know, that kinda sounds a lot like Vriska and Gamzee's recent contributions. :P I hear "grace" and think "graceful" like dexterity and get confused. Is the combined attribute is more about awareness and ability to work together, and giving a bonus to performance? Could it be named "Harmony" instead?
Oh, that is a fair point against. The idea for Grace is awareness, yeah, but also strength of character, in a way, and presence, and artistry, for lack of a better word, and also going for some of the connotations, if not the literal meaning, of divine grace. (In the game I'm pulling this from, the skills based on it are perception, will, smithing and song (in a Tolkienian context), if that gives some idea of what I'm going for) e. harmony might work, technically, but I am Super Picky about word-sounds, so :B
re grace vs gracefulness - that's really interesting, how we're interpreting the word. I hear "graceful", I think ballerina. I hear "grace", I think...agape in action. This is most definitely sprouting from my Christian upbringing, though. I hear "harmony", I think cooperation and community. words, man...
I'm willing to offer this dreambeast here of mine as an underling: Spoiler: dreambeastie If possible/applicable, I want it to be a guardian type monster. Spoiler: Prospit/Derse exploration more like fuck yeah I want to have a go at the Dersite Queen's throne with a gold spray can
