Blood Dusk, the RPG

General topics regarding the game.

Blood Dusk, the RPG

Postby Ravel » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:07 am

Alright so I had just typed out a very lengthy post about an RPG based on the game mechanics found on Blood Dusk but apparently I was logged out of the forums while I was typing it and lost the whole thing.. So instead of trying to remember everything I've covered I'm just going to summarize.

I started working on an RPG a few years ago based on Blood Dusk to play with my friends who would do tabletops but not MUDs. It started out as a variant D20 system, but because of how closely I wanted to stick to the existing mechanics of the game it proved to be near impossible and I gave up for awhile. I continued to think about it and think about what I could do to make it work, talking with tabletops, other MUD players, and even some Admins. Eventually the idea of trying a D10 system was brought up and I looked into it. It seemed a D10 system would work, but mechanic modifications would need to be made.

I spent about a year and a half working on a D10 version of the RPG to get to the point I'm at now and it looks like I've finally fixed a lot of the early issues. Originally battles had been lengthy and cluttered due to excessive rolling and intrinsic damage reduction. I kept talking to it with my gaming friends and bouncing ideas back and forth. I've finally reached a point now where we can begin play testing and begin the actual mechanic/rule sets. We're setup to do some play testing tomorrow, 2 veteran tabletops, 2 somewhat new players, and 1 player who has never done a tabletop before -- this should hopefully give a good range of feedback as far as how hard it was to understand and get into everything.

For the most part I've gotten the mechanics figured out as far was enlighting, careers, stats, max carried weight, and a few other things will work out. The hardest part of the last year had been figuring out how fighting will work as well as skill and career progression.

I'm completely open to suggestions and ideas if anyone is interested in sharing them. As play testing continues I'll be posting how the mechanics are actually set up in the tabletop; ie: how enlights work, how matures work, max stats, stat modifiers, how battle works, etc.

I'm taking a lot of 'creative licensing' with the tabletop to add in things that weren't in the original MUD but most of it is to streamline gameplay as well as allow for more variety and player choice; and example of this would be that there will likely be multiple religious systems with different gods and prayers later on. Right now we're starting with one, but there will soon be at least a Deity referred to as GOOD and one referred to as EVIL and later on still there will likely be more groupings like God of Healing, God of War, God of Pestilence and so on.

So if you're interested in hearing more, let me know.
Ravel
 
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:37 am

Re: Blood Dusk, the RPG

Postby Ravel » Thu Feb 05, 2015 12:57 am

Alright, play testing went well. We didn't get as far as I had originally hoped but that mostly came from me having to explain a lot of information that is native to Blood Dusk. Battle testing went as I hoped it would, there were a few things on the character sheet we decided to change around and plenty of feedback from other mechanics.

The biggest obstacle is still stuck at being the Endurance/Fatigue system. I feel like having the players update their fatigue every time they attack, dodge, or block is going to result in a lot of writing for every fight. So I'm trying to come up with something that is more closely related to how many attacks or blocking actions they take before they have to rest. Next problem is how to determine whether or not you hit someone -- I want it to be Skill + Agi vs Skill + Agi. So I roll Xd10 for my skill modifer and Xd10 for my agility modifer vs the opponent's Xd10 for their defensive skill and Xd10 for their agility modifier. This results in A LOT of rolling all the time, even when its not your turn. So for tonight I didn't bother using this formula and testing another one I had in place that worked, but didn't account for agility in the chance to hit/dodge nor did it account for critical hits.

Overall, things went well but there is still a lot to work on.
Ravel
 
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:37 am

Re: Blood Dusk, the RPG

Postby Ravel » Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:14 pm

I realize that most you don't really care about the RPG but here is another update.

We had an impromptu testing session last night and came back to work on the Chance to Hit vs Chance to Defend and I think we made some progress in theory; the night ran long and we never did any actual battle testing. What we came up with and what we'll be testing next time around is this:

For the Attacker: Skill Mod + Agility Mod = #d10's you roll.
Defender: Skill Mod + Agility Mod = Armor Score (Armor here is essentially one's Armor Class)
The Armor Score sets the Success Level for a successful attack.

Let's say the Attacker has these stats/skills: Agility 27(2) | Axes 43(4) | Block 39(3)
And the Defender has these stats/skills: Agility 34(3) | Swords 25(2) | Shieldblock 31(3)

The Attacker would roll 6d10 (Agility mod + Axes skill Mod) to try and hit the defender.
The Defender's Armor Score is a 6 (Agility mod + Shieldblock skill mod).
A successful roll is a 6 or above on the D10's. A 10 means you get a success and you get to reroll that die for another attempt at a success. A 1 means you fumbled that roll and you subtract a successful roll.


There is one more step to combat before you finally calculate damage and this is being introduced based off an observation of at least one Blood Dusk player that is not myself.
In Blood Dusk, it doesn't matter where you are wearing your armor as long as you have an armor value. So I'm wearing a Diamond Visor for 4 Force/4 Sharp absorbs as my only armor. It doesn't matter where you hit me, the feet, the legs, the chest -- as long as I have the visor on, I get damage reduction from all your attacks. This doesn't make too much sense. So in an attempt to make combat somewhat more realistic or logical we're going to try and make it so where you have armor on matters.

After we get things decided on I'm likely going to have a custom d20 made for the game. This d20 is going to instead of listing numbers list hit locations -- left foot, right foot, chest, head, left arm, etc. When you make an attack roll, you also roll the d20 to determine where you hit them if you breach their defenses. If you're wearing a steel breastplate which has an armor value of 4, but you're only wearing buckskin pants which has an armor rating of 2 you're more likely to be injured from an attack in the legs and one in the chest.

What we're looking at doing right now, using the information from above, the attacker rolls an attack to hit me in my chest. I have on the breastplate which has a 4 armor value, this means he must have 4 successes out of his 6 dice to actually deal damage. But if he instead hit me in my legs, he would only need 2 successes to deal damage.


So that's where we've gotten so far, if anyone has suggestions, ideas, or feedback feel free to let me know.
Ravel
 
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:37 am


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