Project: RPGSTUCK

[FowlJ]

I feel that what the system is based off of doesn't matter so much as what it ends up as, really. That said, I think that something related to a D20 system would be easy to work with and modify to suit your needs.

A suggestion about what is done with the system when it is finally decided what is will be:

Someone mentioned the idea of creating one's own class, which was promptly shot down for some reason or another, and it suggested instead that only canon classes should be allowed. I had the idea that instead, perhaps classes could have two parts - The title, like Knight or Heir or whatever, and then the element. The two parts would each contribute different attributes as a character leveled up. That may sound complicated, but think about it - If you have 12 titles and 12 elements, that's 24 level up schemes you have to work out, but it makes a possible 144 different classes as a result. I'd say that sounds like a pretty good middle ground between the two extremes.

On another note, hi everyone! I look forward to hanging around on the forums.

[tom cruise]

Having two sets of character advancement schemes you move along, one for the element and one for the title, would be an easy way to do that. Or something like having Title govern more base attributes and mundane abilities, and Element governing what kind of special powers you get (windy thing, time fuckery etc)

[FowlJ]

Very much what I was thinking, yes. On the subject of time-fuckery, does anyone reckon there is any reliable way to actually handle that? I personally have no idea how that would work in something like this.

[Rikushadow5]

Very much what I was thinking, yes. On the subject of time-fuckery, does anyone reckon there is any reliable way to actually handle that? I personally have no idea how that would work in something like this.

Yeah, have the player declare that they're going back in time to do something, and act as if they do it now. If they fail to do a Time-Loop within a certain amount of in-game time, they die and whatever they were trying to accomplish is cancelled out.

For instance, say a Time player is about to get killed by some Guard. The player would declare that he's going back in time later to save himself now, so he gets to act as another "Him" had appeared and stopped the killing blow somehow. If, within the next 24 hours of gametime, that character doesn't take the time to go back and save himself, it will be as if he'd never been saved, aka: he dies. The DM would assume from there what the chain of events would be.

The thing about Time players is that, yeah, they can go back and fight with 5 of themselves or something, but they've gotta take the punishment for 5 times the usual workload, and have to do many more times the work to make sure they stay alive with Stable Time Loops. It gets evident when Dave talks about what he does. Especially in Davesprite's timeline, where he's about ready to crack under the strain.

[causticlyOptimitious]

(hey, double post)

[causticlyOptimitious]

Ah, time shenanigans. The nightmare of GMs everywhere. Given that predestination is such a big theme in Homestuck, I think a pretty hefty block of rules should be worked out to regulate these things. I think the best way to go about it would be to take the Schrodinger approach; that is, certain abilities can create "dangling scenes" where we're not entirely sure what happened there, but we'll come back later and fill it in. Additionally, there should be a way of going back and retroactively changing details or adding scenes in between previously established events (with the flavor that yeah, it's always been like that, we just didn't mention it 'til now). Of course, you also have to fit within the constraints of future details already revealed by the GM (through cloud visions, dream bubbles, etc.). Mismanagement will naturally result in doomed timelines and other bad stuff.

How do we go about implementing something like this? ...not sure. Almost certainly there would be some kind of resource (which I'll tentatively call Time Points) to represent your capacity for new shenanigans, though we'd have to hammer out a bunch of details about exactly how to earn them and what they can be used for. Personally, I like the idea of a sort of psuedo-combat system, sort of like you're wrestling with the timeline itself, trying to get it to fit into place. If that seems incongruous with the predestination motif, consider this: if the GM (effectively playing Skaia) could map out the entire adventure in advance, then why are we using dice in the first place? It's a game, and certain allowances need to be made to keep things interesting for the players.

[tom cruise]

Thinking of how to impliment time travel in any meaningful way hurts my head. I mean, in combat it'd be easy enough to abstract the hell out of it so it's just a bunch of special abilities relating to using timeselves, but outside of combat, giving timetravel any sort of mechanical benefit to the game.... Yeah my head hurts.

Honestly it may be worth it (and just plain neccesary) to keep a lot of the powers as raw narrative stuff handled between the GM and the player. It's basically impossible to boil a lot of the mechanics seen in Homestuck into, well, actual mechanics. Stuff like almost flawless precognition? Yeah sure write up some mechanics for knowing what the GM is going to do before he does it, that's totally doable. Except the opposite of that thing I just said. A lot of the perks of classes will just have to be more minor, easily abstracted stuff.

What I mean is, honestly mechanics come into play the most in combat, given the fact that it's the most diceroll heavy. Say, for a Seer, you could have powers alike to stuff like this (taken from Dark Heresy because I'm a lazy asshole and dont' want to retype things).

You may manipulate probability to your own advantage. The threads of your immediate future appear clearly in your mind. You have the power to Dodge projectiles before they’ve been fired. When you manifest this power, you can walk into combat with what appears to be astounding grace (or incredible luck), weaving your way through fields of gunfire without a scratch. Until the end of your next Turn, all Ballistic Skill Tests made to hit you with ranged weapons suffer a –30 penalty.

Casting your perception from the limited vessel of your bodily senses, you gain an unnatural awareness of the world around you. Your eyes roll white within their sockets and your senses roam about you, at once glancing above, behind, before and sideways. You also gain impressions of future events, granting you uncanny accuracy in anticipating them. You gain a +20 bonus on all Awareness Tests. In addition, you add your Willpower Bonus to your Initiative count.

Doing stuff like that for actual mechanics, but keeping the broader scope of the powers as a purely narrative thing. Same could be done with Time, just focusing on use of time selves, say, getting extra hits in combat, or even being able to play extra versions of yourself in the combat for limited timeframes.


And as for alchemising items, I was thinking that it might work to do something relatively abastracted (gonna be using that word a lot it seems). Like, have a large list of attributes that can be applied to an item (extra damage on a hammer, flight on a suit etc) each with an associated grist cost, and basically you can make whatever items you want within the amount of grist you can afford to expend (probably boil down actual kinds of grist to a much, much smaller number than in Homestuck, like maybe four). This would, of course, be roleplayed as actually combining different stuff until you get what you want, but keeping it as simple as possible mechanics wise would be best. Also, having certain items you find (equivalents to stuff like the Fear No Anvil) have their own special qualities which can only be alchemised onto things once you find the item would be a good incentive to actually find things as well as make them.

[FowlJ]

Doing stuff like that for actual mechanics, but keeping the broader scope of the powers as a purely narrative thing. Same could be done with Time, just focusing on use of time selves, say, getting extra hits in combat, or even being able to play extra versions of yourself in the combat for limited timeframes.

Which is also pretty much how we'd have to handle the possibility of someone reaching God Tier, because the powers are simply so ridiculous (Being God-Like, and all).

I mean, it'd take some pretty grand adventures to satisfy a group of players whose powers can affect an entire bloody solar system.

As for alchemy, we should probably make the grist less complicated, but other than that, actually combining items would be pretty good fun, I think. For groups that want to be all serious-business about their campaign it may warrant an alternate rule set, but combining a bunch of objects to make silly gear would be awesome, so long as players don't try to spend forty hours doing nothing but combining stuff.

[tom cruise]

I was thinking about how you could work out mechanics for combining items actually. Having a list of traits on every item that can be carried over in alchemy could work, although obviously some GM fiat would need to be involved because no way could any book ever stat out every single mundane household item in existance.

EDIT: By the way, anyone interested in looking more into Savage Worlds (I really think it would suit this well), you can grab the "Test Drive" rules here; http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf

EDIT DOUBLE REACHAROUND : So I was thinking; powers for different characters (be they like Rose's magic bullshit, powers from the character class, troll psionics or what have you), what is the general consensus on how they'd be used? Honestly I don't think having "magic points" or some equivalent thereof fits Homestuck well, would it make more sense to just have it as a test of the appropriate skill with fitting mods depending on the power you're trying to get off, basically meaning if the dice are playing nice you can fire off as many powers as you have the time to do?

[nobleTiger]

I'm new here, but I registered specifically because I wanted to discuss the idea of a Homestuck RPG.

I think you're taking too much for granted. Or rather, that you have to start on a more basic level.

What is the game going to be about?
Who is the game going to be about?
What is to be the focus of the game?


Here's a dump of my thoughts on making a Homestuck RPG.

You wouldn't be playing characters from the actual Homestuck Comic. I'm not saying anyone suggests that, but wanted to say it. To go further, it's also true that you wouldn't be playing characters interacting with the canon characters either.

When I think of a Homestuck RPG, doing it in the way of a traditional RPG with a basic book of rules, lists of skills, weapons, hidden world information for the GM etc is right out. Why? Because that's not what Homestuck is about. Sure, nowadays it's glaringly obvious that Hussie has a grandmaster plan, but the beauty of the whole first few acts was discovering, along with the kids, how the game worked. In my dream Homestuck RPG, the players have to experience that, at the least. I want the GM to, as well.

Not only are both the readers (players) and the characters (PCs) discovering the world, the game and the rules while they play, what they discover follow a certain style. It's silly, rapidly grows over the top, jumps the shark just to later realise that the shark it jumped is also on a bigger shark, and jumps that one too, and so on. Anything combat-related goes into a video-game mode of STRIFE or something, presented as a video game assuming we already know the controls. But we don't. Everything is made up at the spot. When a character finally actually reuses an old attack instead of just bringing out a new "Level 5 Knight Strike: Mortgage Payback Time", that's a comic callback, not a familiarization.

In the Homestuck RPG I'm envisioning, the game system has failed me if I have to use the same attack more than twice during the adventure.



So, what do I propose? Well for starters things like
- what a particular alchemization yields
- what "Land of X and Y" someone ends up in
- what enemies, riddles or challenges they face as part of the games standard procedure
have to be made up on the spot. Made up beforehand by the GM might be okay, but definitely not written down in the rulebook under "Chapter 7: Sburb".
Moreover, the characters
- aren't built to be balanced. I mean, John is a silly kid who likes bad movies and playing pranks, while Dave is proficient with swords from the get-go. And Jade has sci-fi tech and a god dog.
- aren't pre-made. Sure, maybe the four kids equivalent could be, but the exiles? The trolls? No.


Personally, I'd go so far as to propose a carte blanche. The stories from playing this rpg wouldn't be very canon anyway. I'd like to make a game aimed at reproducing the Homestuck type of story for your rpg group, not playing in the actual world of Homestuck. Also, if you were to play "by the book", there would be shitloads of stuff to keep track of. Sure, we're all huge nerds, but still. It is so not important that there's a denizen on every planet, that there are eight gates, that Derse is situatied outside the Veil, the exact rules for entering god mode, what objects are deployable after the cruxtruder and basic alchemiting equipment, and so on. I could go on and on about details that
- are funny
- added a great deal to the world when introduced
- could still just as easily have been completely different if Hussie had wanted to when introducing them
- are easily changed for people playing this game, i.e. different from campaign to campaign.


Thoughts on this? I'm pretty much stream-of-consciousnessing right now, so I might blurt out more stuff in a minute. I plan on posting a "how I envision the game to work" soon, too.

[nobleTiger]

Here's how I envision a Homestuck rpg would have to work.


Say you have five players. One of them is set to play the first character. They name him*, and decide as much as they want about him, and the others can fill in and come with ideas. Then the four other players collectively do the part of the GM, hitting the player with things happening and lulling up a start to the plot. The first character is quirky, but still quite mundane.

After a while, other characters are introduced, through some means of communications. Yes, since it's not recreating the actual Homestuck story it doesn't have to mirror that, but I do believe interacting with other characters indirectly while adventuring mostly on your own is central to the genre. If the characters meet up earlier than they do in Homestuck doesn't matter, but I think it gains from introducing them separated. Also if it's actually going to be Sburb, they have to live in different houses. Anyway as characters are introduced the other players pick which ones they'd like to play.

Then after a while, the next character is formally introduced. The game has some kind of stats, and the rules for subsequent introductions is that characters must have a higher Weirdo or Badass stat than the most recently introduced. Think John being kinda weak and just quirky, Rose upping the ante with a very weird relationship to her mother and generally a strange house, Dave going badass with his swords and mad bro, and then Jade flat out having sci-fi gear...

When one character is "in play", the other players do GM things like introducing new plot elements, playing NPCs like monsters and salamanders, and try to bug and fuss and meddle with them through their own, not-currently-present character. With five players you would have a four-player Sburb session, so one of you would stick to being the GM and never pick up a character of their own, but remember – for the ones who have characters it's still a bit like collaborative storytelling, since you'll get at most around 25% screentime.


The most important job for the GM-players, meaning, the players who are not the full-time GM but currently not in the scene, is keeping track of stuff. Homestuck is built on surprises and weird shit happening, in a strange way connected to the feeling of "it all comes together". Everyone has a notebook in which they write everything down, furiously. It is encouraged to come up with a system of organisation yourself, that nobody else understands. Cross over things, draw lines and scribble "are these connected?" Since everyone has the GM's right to introduce plot elements, bring things back.

When everyone's forgotten that the hammer got stuffed away in a strife specibus (a word someone made up) long ago, someone flips back through their notebook when it's time for the first fight and goes "Hey, John can't just hit them with a stick, he's got the hammerkind specibus! He equips his hammer!" Or when John enters the asteroid and the AR? is around or whatever, someone recalls Bro's rocketboard that was a one-time gag at first and it ends up crucial to someone getting to the right place.

Get that notebook shit working well enough, and sooner or later people will start inventing stable time loop and realise that Li'l Cal brought about his own creation.

The mindset I'm in here, is pretty much this: I'm imagining the RPG that, when played, could have given rise to the original Homestuck story. Not an ordinary RPG in that world. Not even a custom-built RPG for that kind of powers and characters. I'm after the story, and how it's told.


After re-reading the first couple of posts, this got me thinking that maybe I'm in the wrong thread. Should I start my own, or are you chill with my weird ideas?


*the first character is apparently male, for grammatical simplicity.

[nobleTiger]

I'm new here and tried to post, and at first it said that my reply was pending approval from a moderator, but then it disappeared altogether. If it was deleted by moderators I'd like to know why...

Anyway, what I wanted to say was I love this idea but think you'd have to build your system pretty much from the ground up, if you want a system that gives a play experience that's actually like Homestuck, and not just adventuring party fighting things and exploring but with the world, classes and gear from HS. I'd like to expand on this but before I write a long post again I want to find out what happened to the one that disappeared.

[tom cruise]

All the things you mentioned can be reproduced (relatively) easily within another system though. The system just layes out the groundwork, not the content itself.

Using a prewritten system knocks out nearly all the background work needed to make things actually function, and is liable to be a lot more balanced and well thought out than anything a bunch of users on a forum come up with (they pay people to make these things for a reason after all)

[nobleTiger]

Yes, things will function, but what kind of play experience will you get? Most of the systems I've seen mentioned here are pretty alike in structure and player-gm-character interaction. Would any of them feel comfortable, for example, starting a game off and after a whole session only having introduced two of the four player's characters? That is, to me, a part of the genre we're trying to emulate here, especially if we're going by the canon of how Sburb work and so on.


To me, a system to determine people's hit points, damage, attacks, weapons, stats and so on that's balance and well-thought-out is about just below the bottom of my list of priorities (important note: to me. if you already here can say that we won't be working towards the same game, I'll probably just shut up about these things, think it over and maybe later start a thread of my own). It's definitely not important, and might even go against the purpose. What fun would experiencing Homestuck have been if we could have looked up the list in the game book and seen all kinds of strife specibi, things you could build through the alchemiter (or even worse, rules for alchemiting), classes and domains, basically everything that in the kind of game you're proposing would have to be in the manual? The only solution there, as I see it, is to have only the GM actually read that, but then can't they just as well make things up?


I'm proposing a game where much of the content has to be created at the table, because I believe that not knowing how anything works beforehand is part of the Homestuck experience. As such I think the system needs concern itself a lot with who gets to make things up, helping people remember all silly shit they've made up, and generally managing the flow of a game constantly escalating and jumping the shark. I mean, for any given reference frame within Homestuck, some character has surpassed it and is crazy overpowered within one act of it, which would be, what, one to three sessions in an RPG?

I don't think there is a system out there that's well functioning and balanced and all that in the sense that traditional RPGs are (DnD, Savage World, GURPS, idk) that can also scale that way. Any refernce frame in which you would try to balance the character against each other and other challenges would fall apart in just a few sessions because one of them learned to time travel, or reached God Tier, or alchemited a superweapon.


I believe a Homestuck game can be made from, say, Savage Worlds, but it would not feel like Homestuck at all. Sorry. You're welcome to try to convince me though, or ignore me as a grumpy old story gamer.

[Rikushadow5]

All the things you mentioned can be reproduced (relatively) easily within another system though. The system just layes out the groundwork, not the content itself.

Using a prewritten system knocks out nearly all the background work needed to make things actually function, and is liable to be a lot more balanced and well thought out than anything a bunch of users on a forum come up with (they pay people to make these things for a reason after all)

I am one of those people. At least I used to be before LOLECONOMY. Now I just do game design and programming as a hobby.

I do agree with both of you to certain degrees, though. We can't just use a preexisting system, give it Homestuck crap, and go "WELP that's all folks, enjoy Homestuck 3.5e". There will be significant alterations to whatever system we use as a base, I'm pretty sure.

[tom cruise]

What systems have you worked on, if you don't mind me asking?

[ShivaShekaria]

I'll just leave this right here. >:P

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After going through 3 revisions, the Homestucker is now ready for a fully public release, and it is fucking awesome.

HomestuckerV004.rar http://db.tt/mJ1KOEEj

HomestuckerV004.zip http://db.tt/N7uKOMgy


screenshot Page1

Now in under 5 minutes you can make a statistics sheet for your character with this interactive automated Character Creation tool and stat-tracker. Print to pdf and convert to png for upload to TinyPic. Now start some fucking EPIC RP's! Happy Homestucking!

This program is an adaptation of Barralax's (voltaicFactotum) character sheet developed for the HomestuckRPG, for more information about this game and its systems, visit their forum thread: http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread...CK-CREATOR-v-2


screenshot Page2

EDIT: READ THE FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS.TXT YOU JACKASSES! I WROTE IT FOR A FUCKING REASON!

[ShivaShekaria]

And Fuck, why not this too >DD
Use if you like.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BEHOLD! Completed and corrected maps of Alternia direct from the Enchiridion:




AlterniaMap_icons_v002.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51352233/Map...icons_v002.png
or
http://db.tt/0IklOAz6

AlterniaMap_clean_v001.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51352233/Map...clean_v001.png
or
http://db.tt/GxfjMTBh


The full-res maps are PNG images 57 MB each.

Thanks must go to Bellstrom (patchworkObsessor) for his phenomenal work in creating and providing the original map image as well as heavy advising in the process of editing this new edition.

Claiver (snippetClick) for recommendations on Ocean size and continent positioning

Rose (tentacleTherapist) for assistance in irony placement

An unknown canon-handle who noted the issue of proximity in Aradia's and Solluxs' hives

And all of those who lent positive and negative opinions and tested the map out for functionality:
justLulz
karkateVantas
apocalypseArsenic
completeMadman
Ergo (empathicRecluse)
insipidZephyr, when he wasn't trolling around

I'm nameSpewer, and I did the reworking on the image. Cuz i'm awesome B|


"Explore and create, this Universe is Ours and has No Limits, None of Them."
-Troll Dalai Llama
Now let's get some fucking RP's going on in here!

[nobleTiger]

Okay, I got completely caught up in this idea. I wrote the start of a draft of the game. So far it contains an overview of what typically happens in the first sessions, and a list of moves the characters can do (you only roll dice when making moves). The moves and dice system is shamelessly hacked from a game called Apocalypse World.

It's over here.

[Cute_Riolu]

Okay, I got completely caught up in this idea. I wrote the start of a draft of the game. So far it contains an overview of what typically happens in the first sessions, and a list of moves the characters can do (you only roll dice when making moves). The moves and dice system is shamelessly hacked from a game called Apocalypse World.

It's over here.

Hey I just wanted to say that I really like your ideas and would love it if you kept going with this! It seems like the kind of thing I can get behind!

[FowlJ]

Okay, I got completely caught up in this idea. I wrote the start of a draft of the game. So far it contains an overview of what typically happens in the first sessions, and a list of moves the characters can do (you only roll dice when making moves). The moves and dice system is shamelessly hacked from a game called Apocalypse World.

It's over here.

Eh, couple things I don't like so much, but pretty good. Looking forward to seeing more of it completed.

[unvoicedAspiration]

Okay, I got completely caught up in this idea. I wrote the start of a draft of the game. So far it contains an overview of what typically happens in the first sessions, and a list of moves the characters can do (you only roll dice when making moves). The moves and dice system is shamelessly hacked from a game called Apocalypse World.

It's over here.

I really think you have something here. I love the collaborative storytelling aspect, as well as attempting to capture the atmosphere of a story written by the seat of one's pants. I'd really love to help with this.

Also, color me interested if you're ever thinking of doing a playtest.

[unvoicedAspiration]

Whoops, posted that twice.

[Cute_Riolu]

Also, color me interested if you're ever thinking of doing a playtest.

Same on me! I'd love to! Whether forum-based or some kind of voice chat, or IRC.

[tom cruise]

Just read over your rules and your posts that finally went through nobleTiger, they're definetly interesting, and with some expansion could make for some really interesting games. It would definetly require a group who are capable of keeping things interesting, given that GM duties are more or less split between everyone. Definetly interesting if you get the right group for it.

I still would be interested in working out a system more grounded in traditional mechanics, however. Might work on that myself with Savage Worlds as a base and post what I come up with.