Interest Check: Battle of the Elementals

[Fellow Rabbit]

I have a setting/story idea that I've been working on off and on since 2007 or so. Sort of a pet project of mine that I wanna work into a novel or book series at some point. There have been several roleplays of it already that have always been fun and have given me some pretty great ideas, but they've been dead for some time now. I'm interested in getting another thread going here to get more publicity ideas and such. The original roleplays can be found [here] (for the original concept), and [here] (for my bad attempt at getting a more literate version going several years later).

The idea will be pretty much the same as the second roleplay. All the same elements and no more than the twenty-one that have persisted through both roleplays, although if this does turn into something people get into, I have at least eighteen other position for elemental-like beings that could be turned into Player Characters. The story would be tweaked to a more current version of what I envision it to be. Hopefully I can get a similar level of organization. Really it depends on how much interest I can get for it. I still have a hard time grasping the entirety of DnD-style gameplay mechanics, so for the most part, the threads in this domain would all be freeform. If it goes far enough, I could expand on it and give it some dice mechanics and live session material or something. I dunno.

Anyway, that's it for now. If you have any questions, ask them on this thread. I'll keep track of interest and decide whether it's worth the effort to put this together later on.

[Throndir]

Linwelin should have ideas of what kind of system you want to use. Go with a simple d6 if you ever do it irl.

Anyways I'm interested in it.

[Linwelin]

First of all, interested, and willing to stand in as a co-GM if desired/needed. Second, way to put me on the spot, Thron :P Though you're right, I do have an idea.

I would certainly vote for a d6 dice pool or d% style of play, where each element has number of specific skills relating to their element. I'd personally lean toward d% due to a specific idea I'll try my best to explain. However, if you find d6 more comfortable, go for it. Both would be fairly easy.

So, my thought. You have a number of basic (every character) skills, and then around 3 specific uses of the characters element as other skills. These skills would be either utility (swim, stealth, dodge, stop time, levitate) or attacks (punch, kick, martial arts, ice spike, lightning bolt). Each skill would have a certain % you had to roll under to succeed, with the highest starting value being 40%. I used a similar system while playing Call of Cthulhu and found it very intuitive and straight-forward. The most important point of this system is that you do NOT have levels. There's no experience, only skills. Thus lethality can be fairly high, but you can do some form of progression if needed.

To progress in a skill, you need only achieve a critical success (roll below 10%). When you do this, make a note that you succeeded. These cannot stack, you can only have one crit success per skill, per scenario. After the scenario, roll a d%, if you roll HIGHER than your current skill, roll a d10, and add the result to your skill % rating as a permanent increase.

This method keeps people from reaching 100% in skills (easily, it CAN be done...), but also quickly ranks up lower skills when used often.

Also, as for developing new powers, you can have their overall Element be a skill (starting at like 20%) which they use for general power use, and every 10% gained they can either augment a current power, or gain a new use of their element.

The reason I bring this style up is that every character starts with something they're good with, but can also end up being a jack-of-all-trades, and allows for random and interesting character development.

Anyways, I dumped quite a bit of system info here, so I'll stop there and wait for questions. Plus, if you end up not liking this idea, typing out all the details would be a waste XD

[Fellow Rabbit]

Actually, I really like the idea of having no levels. Assuming that means that even new characters would have a reasonable chance of survival against a veteran so long as they have a good idea of the strategy involved in it. For a lot of it, though, it sounds like you may need to show or explain it in person for me to understand it well. :P Being able to roleplay it in live sessions would be really great, too, although Ella is telling me she's not really interested in the least, so she may not take part in it.

Maybe if there's time tomorrow before or after the roleplay, we can put our heads together and I can get started on some sheets. Out of curiosity, though, is this limited to just the d6 dice and the percentile or does it still make use of all the standard RP dice?

[Linwelin]

That's exactly it. The system was designed around the idea of characters dying and people rolling up new ones. Thus, though they'd be underpowered as far as their skill development, new characters would always have at least something they could do. They wouldn't be "on par" with developed characters, but they wouldn't be like, say, a level 1 vs a level 6 in D&D. The developed characters just have a better chance of succeeding, but both do damage mostly the same (depending on the power used).

And the system would be almost exclusively d%/d10. Damage would be 1 or 2 d10 with bonuses depending on the augmentation of that power. Of course, if you wanted other dice, you're free to use them. I believe they DID use d6 and d8 in Call of Cthulhu. It's your game, after all; but as a recommendation, the simpler, the better. There wouldn't be much use to higher damage simply because health would also not change too much. Thus, powers would mostly be geared toward utility and special effects (360 degree shield, as well as a use that could attack PAST such shields; flight/movement; local environment changes, etc.)

There's plenty of detail work to be done, but overall it's a very simple system that allows for lethality without killing the mood, too. I may have time before the RP tomorrow to talk details/give examples.

[Fellow Rabbit]

As a little bit of an update, recently I made a change to one of the "elements" as well as some tweaks to the terminology. First, the element of Cloth has been removed and replaced with the element of "Heart" which puts more focus on the interactions between people and/or creatures. For example, they can cause two people to become much more friendly with each other or cause them to hate each other. I figure this is a lot less petty than the ability to choke people with their own clothing or hang them up by their hair. That will be mixed with Flora and Body since most fabrics are made from cotton or wool.

Which brings me to the next minor tweak. It's more of a cosmetic change since it has little effect on how I envisioned the ability to work, but "Blood" has been renamed to "Body", which includes blood and such, but is a more broad term that includes pretty much any cellular activity in animals, including humans.

Lastly, due to some confusion that was caused by calling the 21 abilities "elements", for the purposes of making it sound and look more like what it is, I'm replacing the term with "Nature" and "Strain". Both can be used interchangeably, but Strain is generally regarded as the less respectful (but perhaps more scientific) of the two terms, much like how most small people would prefer to be called "dwarf" than "midget". Following this change, some stuff that will mostly be background stuff for much of the roleplay also gets some updates. "Classical Elements" (Flame, Stone, Rain, Wind, Aurora, Temporum, and Void; sort of parent classifications for the 21 existing Natures), as I called them before, will now just be "Elements".


That should be all. Not really huge changes, but perhaps it can help a little to get everyone started. If you haven't already chosen a Nature, you can go ahead and do so. For the purposes of this roleplay, I'm not going to have any kind of rules against duplicate Natures, so you don't have to worry about choosing the same one as someone else. The only exception would be if an overwhelming number of people all chose the same one, in which case I'd consider it locked until it evens out a little more. You can have multiple characters if you want, just be sure you're able to keep up with all of them without too much trouble. The Natures are listed down at the bottom of the post.

You can also go ahead and start on appearances, personalities, biographies, etc. for your characters if you'd like. I'll be fairly lax as far as settings go, but as a basis, I like to imagine it in a world kinda-sorta similar to the one in Heroes, but with technology and architecture more influenced by the mechanical complexity of steampunk combined with the sleek shiny-ish-ness of Apple, however you may determine that to be. And cars are much less common; the preferred methods of transport being rails (including steam trains, maglevs, bullet trains, subways, trams, etc.), ships, monocycles, and airships.

To start off, the roleplays will be largely freeform. However, I will work with a few people who are more familiar with tabletop roleplaying than I am to develop mechanics suitable for this kind of story and setting.


The Natures are Fire, Electricity, Summon, Earth, Metal, Wood, Water, Ice, Heart, Air, Dust, Life, Light, Dark, Flora, Time, Body, Undead, Space, Aura, and Mind. If you have questions about what any of these can do, I'm bet contacted through Skype if you have me there. Otherwise leave a post with your question(s) or message me.