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The Riddle of Steel
2011-11-27 11:42:31
edited 2011-11-27 11:42:31 in Roleplaying
One foot in front of the other, every day.
I'd like to play a game where wizards are mysterious, powerful beings beyond the ken of most, where magic items are rare and powerful. A game where you don't leave the path for fear of the Fair Folk. A game where a dragon can ravage a town and leave it in fear.
And yet, a game where a knight in shining armour can vanquish the dragon. A game where a cunning rogue can slip in and steal richest beyond his wildest dreams, without the dragon ever having known he was there. A game where after a long, hard battle, the warrior can break the hydra's neck against the haft of his axe, where the mysterious temple warrior is smiled upon by God, where the charming herald can trick the Faerie Queen into a bargain she did not intend.
Enter the Riddle of Steel.
This is a game where being outnumbered may well be a death sentence, where magic is a mind-shattering rarity and where wit, strategy and planning are better than the strongest arm or darkest sorceries. Its baseline is an earth-like world based upon medieval history, with the combat system being based on the known martial arts of the period. Magic is usable by PCs at a cost, but is not a complete answer -- there are no fireballs, but one can light oil with a click of one's fingers. Perhaps most importantly, there are no classes. Each PC must choose two starting "skill packets", defining their initial skills but no more. A skill packet might be "swordsman", "academic", "craftsman" or one of many more. All but the least skilled PCs will be a combination of two -- one could be an academic thief, a woodsman monk or a swordsman learned in ritualism. Furthermore, your character's wealth is taken into account. One from a family of landed nobility might begin the game with a base of operations, providing a safe haven for the party in times of need. Conversely, a character could be a refugee slave, hated and reviled for the magicks at their disposal.
Essentially, the game provides great character diversity while making both combat and magic risky, fast and brutal. The best way to survive is not to fight, but good luck avoiding every battle. One wants to be very careful, or to have a backup character planned out. It's that danger that lends the game (or so I hear) something approaching a survival horror tone. Any round of combat could be one's last.
So, would anyone be up for something like this? Timezones are, as always, quite the bitch, but I'd be willing to answer some questions, see if I can't run someone through character creation, ect.
And yet, a game where a knight in shining armour can vanquish the dragon. A game where a cunning rogue can slip in and steal richest beyond his wildest dreams, without the dragon ever having known he was there. A game where after a long, hard battle, the warrior can break the hydra's neck against the haft of his axe, where the mysterious temple warrior is smiled upon by God, where the charming herald can trick the Faerie Queen into a bargain she did not intend.
Enter the Riddle of Steel.
This is a game where being outnumbered may well be a death sentence, where magic is a mind-shattering rarity and where wit, strategy and planning are better than the strongest arm or darkest sorceries. Its baseline is an earth-like world based upon medieval history, with the combat system being based on the known martial arts of the period. Magic is usable by PCs at a cost, but is not a complete answer -- there are no fireballs, but one can light oil with a click of one's fingers. Perhaps most importantly, there are no classes. Each PC must choose two starting "skill packets", defining their initial skills but no more. A skill packet might be "swordsman", "academic", "craftsman" or one of many more. All but the least skilled PCs will be a combination of two -- one could be an academic thief, a woodsman monk or a swordsman learned in ritualism. Furthermore, your character's wealth is taken into account. One from a family of landed nobility might begin the game with a base of operations, providing a safe haven for the party in times of need. Conversely, a character could be a refugee slave, hated and reviled for the magicks at their disposal.
Essentially, the game provides great character diversity while making both combat and magic risky, fast and brutal. The best way to survive is not to fight, but good luck avoiding every battle. One wants to be very careful, or to have a backup character planned out. It's that danger that lends the game (or so I hear) something approaching a survival horror tone. Any round of combat could be one's last.
So, would anyone be up for something like this? Timezones are, as always, quite the bitch, but I'd be willing to answer some questions, see if I can't run someone through character creation, ect.
Comments
What I'd want to know in advance is what kind of characters anyone interested would want to play, though. If someone is, say landed nobility, that alters the resources the players have access to and where they'd go to regroup and plan, as well as the responsibilities beyond their control. Or if one character was a slave and one was landed nobility, I'd probably have it so that the slave character is a servant in the noble's employ and so on and so forth.
Not sure if it includes character creation.
Question: Can skill packets involving swords and magic be used together? And magic that is more mundane yet rare but still deadly if used right really appeals to me
So another example might be throwing a handful of sand, super-heating it in mid-air whereupon it becomes a glass projectile.
What.
- d10 system where you throw a pool of dice. The number required is defined by whichever attribute is relevant to the test. For instance, most swords need a 6 or more on a d10 for an attack to be considered successful.
- Combat is done via opposed tests. The aggressor rolls their CP (combat pool) against the defender's, and then the potential damage dealt is altered by the degree of success.
- Magic works on the same concept, but using different attributes.
- There are special attributes called "Spiritual Attributes". You have five of these, and while they fall under different types (such as Drive or Passion, say), you get to define the focus on them yourself. For instance, you might have Drive: Avenge your father's death. Every substantial act towards this would benefit from your Spiritual Attribute in Drive (adding extra dice to rolls related to it), earn you extra points to spend on stats, skills and proficiencies, and contribute to the Spiritual Attribute itself.
- Apparently, in practise, Spiritual Attributes help focus PC characterisation by providing a tangible, consistent reward for focusing on that PC's goals and moral compass.
As INUH would know, most people put F in race -- regular human. That leaves A-E for all the other good stuff. So any non-magical character is probably going to have better stats, skills, proficiencies and/or class than a magical one.
Yes.
^^ It's about compromise. As a magical
girlcharacter, you're going to suffer in some respect, be that economically, with character flaws, stats, ect. For instance, if you want to be a mage that's also got good attributes and is pretty fighty, then your A, B and C slots will be taken up by that kind of thing, leaving only D, E and F for stuff like Social Class, Skills and Flaws.