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Some ideas (that have been posted before). And remember Revolution guys, just because its obvious TO YOU doesn't mean the average person reading the Core Book gets how to use it.

1. Simplified NPC / Antagonist Creation

Several different options for creating NPC / Creatures quickly, maybe with 3 different levels of detail

2. More simplification options / alternatives

3. More stuff on non-cafeteria menu power construction. I think the system supports a very free-form approach to this kind of thing

4. More stuff for playing supernatural / weird creatures

 

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21 minutes ago, Archivist said:

And remember Revolution guys, just because its obvious TO YOU doesn't mean the average person reading the Core Book gets how to use it.

 

This is goal #1 of all of our current work.

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1. Simplified NPC / Antagonist Creation

Several different options for creating NPC / Creatures quickly, maybe with 3 different levels of detail

Would you please tell us what steps you use for creating NPCs? 

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2. More simplification options / alternatives

Of the kind? And please consider that in some cases, the absence of a simplification is intentional, to encourage users to try some specific rules.

 

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3. More stuff on non-cafeteria menu power construction. I think the system supports a very free-form approach to this kind of thing

More specific please.

 

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4. More stuff for playing supernatural / weird creatures

Examples? So far I have had good results with the creation of weird characters, but it is also true that there are no specific instructions for creating them. 

The issue is that this is context/setting dependent, so it is difficult to insert in a generic book.

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Thanks!

My general comment is i think that what's Revolutionary about Revolution D100 isn't the crunchy parts, but the many freeform and narrative aspects about it which are brilliant (the contests, traits, etc.). So of course I'm looking for stuff in a companion that details how to leverage that (as much as creating more detailed armor types). 

Antagonist Creation:

I have a copy somewhere translated from the French COC 6e - I've also seen this approach in Ubiquity and Fate, where when you make an NPC/antagonist you first pick importance - e.g., mook, important, full. Maybe for the full level you build them as a character, but for the Mook and Important levels they only have a handful of statistics - where one stat serves multiple functions. e.g., Combat 50%, Social 50% or whatever. So you can generate for these guys a very short stat block. You only need a big full stat block for something you're going to be interacting with over the long term in a complex way.

So the last three would be covered by things you have helped out before with on the list. One default way to create a setting where characters have special abilities (e.g., Vampires, Werewolves, Psychics) and interact with weird stuff (gates to other worlds, infrastructures) is the cafeteria-menu style, which is used in most superhero games. You have an explicit list of powers in the core game, then you just reskin them for your setting. This would certainly be okay for the companion - you could have a section (like they do in the new Cypher System Horror Tookit book), where you would talk about "here's how to set things up if everyone is a certain type of thing in your setting" (e.g., all vampires).

However, I'd love to see something where you talk about using all of the cool abstract, narrative bits in Revolution D100 to achieve the same thing. 

I'd also like OPTIONAL rules for stuff like simplified armor / weapons.

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23 hours ago, Archivist said:

I'd also like OPTIONAL rules for stuff like simplified armor / weapons.

Let us start with the bad news.

As I said, there are variant rules that it may be reasonable to use at the table, but we will not include. A "simplified" version of armour and weapons would be more or less what you have in OpenQuest, and I see no reason to insert pieces of OpenQuest in the Revolution D100 companion. Our message has always been clear: if you want less crunch, use the equivalent subsystem from OpenQuest - it will work. We will not, however, do the hybridization ourselves. We know that many people have a "sweet spot" which is less crunchy than RD100 Advanced Combat, but we will not start a race for the middle ground. Revolution D100 has its own identity and level of detail, different but compatible with that of Legend, Mythras, OpenQuest and Renaissance. If each of these games tried to offer the full spectrum of variations, trying to identify the "comfort zone" of the largest number of players, then they would end up being all the same!

Revolution D100 offers two combat models, narrative and crunchy. Our job as authors is to keep these two models coherent, not to make them transformable into other combat models that are already present in other percentile games. That one is the readers' job, called houseruling.

More to come...

 

 

Edited by RosenMcStern
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On 4/24/2020 at 8:07 PM, Archivist said:

I have a copy somewhere translated from the French COC 6e - I've also seen this approach in Ubiquity and Fate, where when you make an NPC/antagonist you first pick importance - e.g., mook, important, full. Maybe for the full level you build them as a character, but for the Mook and Important levels they only have a handful of statistics - where one stat serves multiple functions. e.g., Combat 50%, Social 50% or whatever. So you can generate for these guys a very short stat block. You only need a big full stat block for something you're going to be interacting with over the long term in a complex way.

Here I am puzzled. This is already present in the latest supplements of the game line:


highwayman.png.a6d2c9a6737b61ddb83999978eeba95b.png

This is a ready-to-use opponent, which I have used at least twice. It does not get simpler than that, and the system already supports it without any special rules for mooks. A goon is simply someone for whom you have decided to not write down skills, or at least all of them, because he is just cannon fodder.

Here is a "social interaction only" NPC from the same source:

Monk.png.9ce996cfe98db633947a08d92ac3e96b.png

As you can see, skills are already in "groups" of Agility, Communication etc. because the rules already dictate so.

It cannot get simpler than that, and these are NPCS built using the full rules. It is just a matter of writing down only the parts you expect you will need during the game. The core rules already support that, it is just that probably we did not make a big effort of reducing the statblock size in the core book. We will not make the same mistake in the International Edition.

 

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So the last three would be covered by things you have helped out before with on the list. One default way to create a setting where characters have special abilities (e.g., Vampires, Werewolves, Psychics) and interact with weird stuff (gates to other worlds, infrastructures) is the cafeteria-menu style, which is used in most superhero games. You have an explicit list of powers in the core game, then you just reskin them for your setting. This would certainly be okay for the companion - you could have a section (like they do in the new Cypher System Horror Tookit book), where you would talk about "here's how to set things up if everyone is a certain type of thing in your setting" (e.g., all vampires).

Okay, this does make sense. But this is not "instructions for creating NPCs", but rather "guidellines for creating your own packages". In other words, how to decide what items to take out of the cafeteria list, and what to add (powers, traits, stunts etc.).

In my opinion, the OGL sample packages that we have produced, plus the one or two fan-made ones, are already a good guideline, but perhaps a guided example could be interesting. For instance, we could take a public domain IP (not Lovecraft, needless to say :) ) and show the reasoning we follow in building a package out of it.

Noted as possible content.

 

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51 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

It cannot get simpler than that, and these are NPCS built using the full rules. It is just a matter of writing down only the parts you expect you will need during the game. The core rules already support that, it is just that probably we did not make a big effort of reducing the statblock size in the core book. We will not make the same mistake in the International Edition.

 

May be give only guidelines to help those who are not familiar with the system : what level shall have a goon and a moderate important NPC. May be even witout any trait but just an opposition or an expected skill level if you have to create it on the fly ? What the core rules allow may not be obvious for starting players, or may need to understand them a bit more. Note also that not all players will have all the complements, so that it may make sense to gather usefull info spread over these books into the companion.

52 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

In my opinion, the OGL sample packages that we have produced, plus the one or two fan-made ones, are already a good guideline, but perhaps a guided example could be interesting. For instance, we could take a public domain IP (not Lovecraft, needless to say :) ) and show the reasoning we follow in building a package out of it.

 

What about including these packages, and more, like typical settings but more targeted that the generic ones presented in the core rules ?

More equipment ? More creatures ? Travel events depending on the environement/climate to spice the games ? More poisons and diseases ?

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  • 4 months later...

Also a more detailed document w/ examples on how to use other BRP's stuff in Revolution D100.

For example, if I want to use Advanced Sorcery or Enlightened magic, what's a quick and dirty way to do that? I'd want to take advantage of Revolution's special widgets like traits.

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9 hours ago, Archivist said:

Also a more detailed document w/ examples on how to use other BRP's stuff in Revolution D100.

For example, if I want to use Advanced Sorcery or Enlightened magic, what's a quick and dirty way to do that? I'd want to take advantage of Revolution's special widgets like traits.

This would be nice, but it would require a degree of cross-publisher cooperation that I doubt is possible. Such conversion guidelines are better left to fan-compiled tutorials.

Edited by RosenMcStern
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