Post by malice on Feb 2, 2013 16:34:10 GMT -5
To be fair, I never said that Otogi character was Raikoh. I set out to make a character who could exist in that world and pass as one of its protagonists, and Raikoh would obviously be a large influence on that, but I didn't call it Raikoh because I think attaching a name to a character makes it less accessible mechanically.
That being said, I agree with several of the things you said. For starters, I have no idea why I ever gave him 4 durability. That is definitely too low, and in fact it was so low that the character would have barely been functional due to having actions which allowed 18 stones of investment. I didn't go up to 7 because he shouldn't need the energy or the white stones, and odd-numbered durabilities create annoying energy regeneration rates. Toughness I added as well as Damage Reduction, also improved his armor.
Did NOT remove his Reflexive Dodge or max out his energy regen rate for reasons I'll explain below.*
I also didn't account for the knockback effect of attacks in the game, which is much of the fun. I put in a damage threshold (2 white stones of damage = knockback). Since it's a custom rule I tried to keep it simple, that way if someone ever looked at it and said "I want that" it could actually be functional in a game. Consulting the D&R every time you hit someone for their weight and such slows the game down, while the area/leaping chart is easy to just memorize.
As for his Dashing AN, the character sort of functions better mechanically with it at 6. Even a distance restriction would create problems. For this one I'll simply say "Maybe this guy is someone who can dash further than Raikoh could." It's worth mentioning though that horizontal distances seem much shorter than vertical ones, we don't have a good sense of scale in the Otogi games (Raikoh seems like a pretty tall dude), and you don't realize how far you're dashing when the camera follows you. 50' is probably shorter than Raikoh's Dash distance was.
Magical Attacks were equipped for missions, very much like you'd choose a weapon. For that reason I simply gave him a Ranged Combat Action which would allow a player and/or GM to create a series of appropriate magical "weapons." Most of them would be an action granted to you by your "equipment" that could combine its stones with Ranged Combat. (So a basic Magic would perhaps be a 10 stone Force blast, no advantages).
The Reflection/Force Field was placed among modifiers with restrictions appropriate to its ability. I don't know why I ever gave the character Energy Absorption/Reflection.
For Teleportation I just gave him Inter-Dimensional Travel. No need to really go much more detailed than that. When needed you were where you wanted to be, it required no effort for the player.
AP is on his weapon to account for the extremely enjoyable fact that no matter how big an enemy was in the game you could still slap them across the map. Thus a character can't arrive with a certain amount of passive Toughness defense that allows them to ignore your attacks, AP is the only thing that really does that.
The basic Healing Factor is there for energy regeneration purposes. You only heal one white stone an hour with that factor, which is well beyond the length of any Otogi mission. A Healing Factor like that would have no influence on the original video game characters, but in MURPG it allows him to remain functional throughout a Mission.
As for Social Skills, I removed them as suggested, but just because Raikoh never spoke in the game doesn't mean he wouldn't have gotten along well with people should he choose. He was apparently a brilliant general in his original life, which suggests both high social skills and leadership scores. As I've said though, I never said this guy was Raikoh. With that in mind I'd leave the amount of Social Skills and Leadership up to any player that ever wanted to make an Otogi-esque character for play in MURPG. Since they were never used in the video game, this guy won't have them.
For other things you listed we finally get to that asterisk* I placed above:
*Video game characters generally do not have energy reserves and could do any action infinitely until your console burned out.
Similarly, they don't really react, as you said, without player input.
Any time you make a video game character, you're making two characters: The video game avatar that can execute so many different kinds of actions with player input, and the player.
The character CAN act tirelessly forever, but they don't unless the player tells them to, and the player CAN'T act tirelessly forever. Even the most extreme video game nerd fueled by gallons of Mt. Dew eventually collapse.
So when you make a video game character you're also making a player, usually of average skill.
A player executes certain actions reflexively, like dodging, when the action is keyed to a single button push (Like the dash button).
Similarly you do not play at 100% power all the time, you have a limited amount of time in which you can concentrate fully before your brain, eyes, and hands need to relax. I'm not talking about eventually going to bed, I'm talking about a length of time measured in seconds in which a human being can devote their full attention to something before their brain needs to "blink."
All of that is represented with an energy reserve which regenerates only so much and whose regeneration is damaged by taking damage. When you're playing a game you get into a rhythm, and often having your rhythm knocked off (often by getting hit) you derail the whole thing.
So what we're talking about is a lot of things that are lost in translation. You can only last so long in the Otogi video games before your magic runs out and you die, but if you're converting those characters to a tabletop RPG then the duration increases to whatever is required of the campaign.
The reconstitute self you proposed, for example, is the occasional resurrection brought about game-makers, or comic book writers. Raikoh resurrects for two video games that were made years ago, so he's technically dead until you put the game back in your console to play it again. The simple answer is that the character is available when you want to play him.
The question finally becomes "How do I make this guy play like he did in the game?" and for that I did things like remove his ability to allocate to defense with his Close Combat stones. The character suddenly has the limited life he did in the games and has to keep killing people to sustain himself (Combined mutant/magical healing with close combat with disadvantages "self only" "special condition" etc.). He has a high passive defense because he's an offensive character, but he can't get it much higher with his allocations. It's HIGHEST when he keeps attacking.
With some reductions in certain scores the model of the character could be made to fit into a playable game. He's worth too many stones atm, but the idea can make it into a game.
My original idea was to simply represent the character in MURPG, I fell short in a few ways, but revisiting the character after years of playing, running games, and homebrewing my new purpose was to combine rules and create new ones as necessary to make an Otogi-esque character possible in MURPG.
That being said, I agree with several of the things you said. For starters, I have no idea why I ever gave him 4 durability. That is definitely too low, and in fact it was so low that the character would have barely been functional due to having actions which allowed 18 stones of investment. I didn't go up to 7 because he shouldn't need the energy or the white stones, and odd-numbered durabilities create annoying energy regeneration rates. Toughness I added as well as Damage Reduction, also improved his armor.
Did NOT remove his Reflexive Dodge or max out his energy regen rate for reasons I'll explain below.*
I also didn't account for the knockback effect of attacks in the game, which is much of the fun. I put in a damage threshold (2 white stones of damage = knockback). Since it's a custom rule I tried to keep it simple, that way if someone ever looked at it and said "I want that" it could actually be functional in a game. Consulting the D&R every time you hit someone for their weight and such slows the game down, while the area/leaping chart is easy to just memorize.
As for his Dashing AN, the character sort of functions better mechanically with it at 6. Even a distance restriction would create problems. For this one I'll simply say "Maybe this guy is someone who can dash further than Raikoh could." It's worth mentioning though that horizontal distances seem much shorter than vertical ones, we don't have a good sense of scale in the Otogi games (Raikoh seems like a pretty tall dude), and you don't realize how far you're dashing when the camera follows you. 50' is probably shorter than Raikoh's Dash distance was.
Magical Attacks were equipped for missions, very much like you'd choose a weapon. For that reason I simply gave him a Ranged Combat Action which would allow a player and/or GM to create a series of appropriate magical "weapons." Most of them would be an action granted to you by your "equipment" that could combine its stones with Ranged Combat. (So a basic Magic would perhaps be a 10 stone Force blast, no advantages).
The Reflection/Force Field was placed among modifiers with restrictions appropriate to its ability. I don't know why I ever gave the character Energy Absorption/Reflection.
For Teleportation I just gave him Inter-Dimensional Travel. No need to really go much more detailed than that. When needed you were where you wanted to be, it required no effort for the player.
AP is on his weapon to account for the extremely enjoyable fact that no matter how big an enemy was in the game you could still slap them across the map. Thus a character can't arrive with a certain amount of passive Toughness defense that allows them to ignore your attacks, AP is the only thing that really does that.
The basic Healing Factor is there for energy regeneration purposes. You only heal one white stone an hour with that factor, which is well beyond the length of any Otogi mission. A Healing Factor like that would have no influence on the original video game characters, but in MURPG it allows him to remain functional throughout a Mission.
As for Social Skills, I removed them as suggested, but just because Raikoh never spoke in the game doesn't mean he wouldn't have gotten along well with people should he choose. He was apparently a brilliant general in his original life, which suggests both high social skills and leadership scores. As I've said though, I never said this guy was Raikoh. With that in mind I'd leave the amount of Social Skills and Leadership up to any player that ever wanted to make an Otogi-esque character for play in MURPG. Since they were never used in the video game, this guy won't have them.
For other things you listed we finally get to that asterisk* I placed above:
*Video game characters generally do not have energy reserves and could do any action infinitely until your console burned out.
Similarly, they don't really react, as you said, without player input.
Any time you make a video game character, you're making two characters: The video game avatar that can execute so many different kinds of actions with player input, and the player.
The character CAN act tirelessly forever, but they don't unless the player tells them to, and the player CAN'T act tirelessly forever. Even the most extreme video game nerd fueled by gallons of Mt. Dew eventually collapse.
So when you make a video game character you're also making a player, usually of average skill.
A player executes certain actions reflexively, like dodging, when the action is keyed to a single button push (Like the dash button).
Similarly you do not play at 100% power all the time, you have a limited amount of time in which you can concentrate fully before your brain, eyes, and hands need to relax. I'm not talking about eventually going to bed, I'm talking about a length of time measured in seconds in which a human being can devote their full attention to something before their brain needs to "blink."
All of that is represented with an energy reserve which regenerates only so much and whose regeneration is damaged by taking damage. When you're playing a game you get into a rhythm, and often having your rhythm knocked off (often by getting hit) you derail the whole thing.
So what we're talking about is a lot of things that are lost in translation. You can only last so long in the Otogi video games before your magic runs out and you die, but if you're converting those characters to a tabletop RPG then the duration increases to whatever is required of the campaign.
The reconstitute self you proposed, for example, is the occasional resurrection brought about game-makers, or comic book writers. Raikoh resurrects for two video games that were made years ago, so he's technically dead until you put the game back in your console to play it again. The simple answer is that the character is available when you want to play him.
The question finally becomes "How do I make this guy play like he did in the game?" and for that I did things like remove his ability to allocate to defense with his Close Combat stones. The character suddenly has the limited life he did in the games and has to keep killing people to sustain himself (Combined mutant/magical healing with close combat with disadvantages "self only" "special condition" etc.). He has a high passive defense because he's an offensive character, but he can't get it much higher with his allocations. It's HIGHEST when he keeps attacking.
With some reductions in certain scores the model of the character could be made to fit into a playable game. He's worth too many stones atm, but the idea can make it into a game.
My original idea was to simply represent the character in MURPG, I fell short in a few ways, but revisiting the character after years of playing, running games, and homebrewing my new purpose was to combine rules and create new ones as necessary to make an Otogi-esque character possible in MURPG.