Table Top RPG's?

[mtn_otter]

That makes sense now.  Of course, if if the worlds collided, the great flood logically could not have happened, so the RP now has a distinct time line from any other canonical source...  Why can I think of that, but not realize the time lines split?

[tacopill]

Well, who said things won't go back to normal when the game is done.

Although, distinct timelines does make more sense.

And to answer your other question.... yes.

(beat)

you probably just have a different mentality, so you see different connections between things.

[Tucayo]

Don't worry, guys, you do not need staff aproval to start an RPG  Good luck with it, BTW

[pokenutter]

Thanks!

[tacopill]

Thank you guys!

Now, on to the work.

1) We still need a name.
2) please review the rules i proposed 11 posts ago. I will quote them here for you conventince:

Here is what i propose:
1) Only characters who are from the Mario Universe or Zelda Universe, or are OC's from there can be here.
2) PC's must be distinct from existing (or formally existing) characters, and must be distinct from all other characters in the Nintendo Multiverse. This includes:
* no Pokemon Trainers, unless the character can train monsters/creatures from the respective universes as specified in #1
* no characters from star fox, earthbound/mother, etc. Deliberate knock offs will have their character killed as soon as someone notices and gives a warning and a chance to add said distinction, but has not complied in 1 week.
3) A later post always overrides an earlier one, unless otherwise specified by the three of us.
4) If a player can't continue for a period of time, it is asked that the player writes one more notice, where the character asks to leave temporarily. The reason should fit well with the character.
5) if the player needs to leave permanent, they should inform the GM as to this and allow the GM to adapt the story, if needed, to the change.
6) Private messages concerning the game, backroom conferencing and other similar actions are discouraged, and if they cause a decrease in quality of the game, all participates maybe asked to leave this game.
7) The exception to #6 is any player-GM talks, that neither person wants public AND is necessary for the game to continue. These include: finding items, information, etc. that not everyone in the party should know at the current moment.
Each player is responsible for there own inventory after their initial setup. They are responsible for ensuring no fluctuation in quantity of the items happens, without an in-game reason (like, "i found 30 arrows *holds up arrows*").
9) Each player should not randomly generate a key item. If they have an idea for one, please inform the GM first through and if approved, he/she will add it to the story.
10) All rules questions clarifications should go in the "rules" thread. All out-of-game introductions should go in the "sign up" thread. All in-game information, except anything included in the signup/introduction post, should go in the "play" thread.

So, what do you think?

3) Some time during the week or next weekend, i am going to pm pokenutter with my idea for the main goal of the story. I have a major presentation to give on Thursday, and homework due on Friday, so i make no guarantees about it. If i do find a break between the weekend and now to type it up, i will send it to him/you.
4) not to sound egocentric or power hungry, but what positions/titles do we need establish for this?
5)  how far back should we acknowledge edits? i mean, we can discourage a person from editing 10, 20 or 30 posts backwards, effectively changing events that happen; but is there anything we can do about it, should they do it anyway?
6)  speaking of which, how far back should we expect the user to read? it would be kind of harsh for us to expect them to remember something that happened 25 posts ago, especially if the player is just joining us.
7) Also, will this be free form, or stats-based?

[pokenutter]

1) I can't think of a name.  I have this kind of trouble all the time.  Does anybody have any ideas?
2) They sound good.
3) I'll keep an eye out.
4) Well, we need game masters and players.  Participants should not be bound to these roles, and should be allowed to switch as often as they want, just not in the middle of a session.
5) Their last post seems like the most reasonable edit fix.
6) People could form guilds, and we could have separate threads for each guild.
7) Stat-based is easier to play, but requires more setup time, and may limit players.  However, it seems to me to be the best way to play.

Now, I have a few questions.

1.  Do we want to limit the races that players have at their disposal?  Would creatures such as Octoroks be playable?
2.  What about alignment?  Will players have the option to play an evil character?
3.  Are we using the d20 system, a percentile battling system, GURPS, or something of your own design?
4.  Will major events in one story affect every player?  How do we get the word out if a major event occurs?
5.  Concerning items; inventory and weapons are a must, but how do we work in legendary items, such as the Master Sword?  How do we prevent godmoding through items?  How will Mushrooms work (health restorative, like in Mario & Luigi, or as a stat booster, or a size increase item?)  Which items from each game series will appear?  How will they work together without being redundant? 
6.  How about XP?  Will characters gain levels?  How will stat upgrades be utilized?  Will a character gain stats every level?  Will stats be the traditional STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA formula?
7.  Maybe we could stockpile this information in a new thread, like a player's handbook.

[Edofenrir]

Ok, I'm going to remark a few things, I assume...

Don't worry about a name until the project reaches its final phase. It doesn't need one before that, and thinking about and not be able to decide for a name can paralyze a whole project, let me tell you.

Treat legendary items like the Master Sword like official characters. That means: Don't give them to players. If you do, only give them out temporarily during a very large and important quest. Be sure to take them away from them after the quest is finished. And last but not least: Keep track of the items you gave out. You won't want to have two players with Master Swords running around.

When you combine different franchises, it will be inevitable to have redundant items. A Mario character healing himself with a red potion feels weird, just like a Pokémon using a 1-Up Mushroom. That is something you will have to deal with I guess.

And another thing: You might want to think about races in general. More specifically, about the ratio. I was once in a Zelda RPG, and the experience I made there: About half of your players will choose a Sheikah, because Sheikah are the hyrulean equivalent of the ninjas, and everyone loves ninjas. The problem is: The Sheikah are a nearly extinct race. So if you have five Sheikah players for every Goron in the game.... the atmosphere will suffer.

Yeah, that's what I can think of at the moment. Maybe I will make a few more remarks later.

[pokenutter]

Alright, thanks!

[tacopill]

Focusing on the Game System & Stats for a moment, i think we should model based on known stats, but also diverge towards our own on certain points:

* They can level up when they complete a quest, in which the GM says. XP is a litle much for both sides to keep track of.
* When they level up, stats are reconfigured based on the following (a simplified version of the Pokemon system):
** base stats - based off of a race template
** individual stats - to distinguish one member of a Race from another.
** effort stats - GM rewards for good RPing.
* Stats are broken up into two categories: battle and non-battle.
** Keep the battle stats simple, as it could get really complicated trying to generate battles on the internet, especially if we involve dice.
** Meanwhile, the non-battle stats can be expanded as we need them.

Thinking about it for a minute, we could use some of the idea a few of my friends made for a game project we did a while back. Please tell me what you think: Stats


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The items i think we are going to put race restrictions on their use, depending on the nature of the item. Such as:

* 1-UP Mushroom can only by used by a Mushroom Kingdom Dweller, while Fairies can only be used by Zelda-Universe Dweller.
* Super Mushroom can be used by all characters, as the item does no more than grow the character to 20 Feet.
* Our original items can be used/gained by all characters, such as Crests.

For more on this, please check out my Mutilverse Crossover Rule
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I will hold of on a name until later on, as suggested.
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As for alignment, guilds, etc. I am going to leave that up to the player. If they wish to start a guild-related thread, so long as it doesn't conflict with the main story thread, i think it will be fine. If it does, the main story thread takes precedence, as it effects everyone. Guild leaders would be responsible for following the main story, and incorporating major events into it.

if we do in fact implement guilds, we should recommend them put limits on how much of each Fighter Class is in their guild.
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One more thing!

If a player is going to play a "non-intelligent" race such as Octoroks, then they should give a reason for it being so... unless, like you said, we go Paper Mario here pretty much any species can have "friendly" and/or "intelligent" members.
.....
Actually, i like that idea. It would help keep the game's race ratios more manageable and encourage diversity. However, we should discourage racism, as funny as it may seem at the time.....

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Remember, nothing i said above is binding. i want your opinions on them before we move forward. And my links are all to wiki's. So if you have an idea of how to improve them, join up and add it.

[pokenutter]

Stats and levels look good.  The items section I think could have a slight change where non-proficient races gain the benefits of items, except cut in half.  So, if a zora dwindles down to five hit points an the team only has mushrooms in their inventory, the zora's chances aren't as bleak.  The races section would work, but a lot of Zelda enemies really aren't a good idea for races; these should be identified before play begins. 

I remembered 2 other questions;
What are we doing about currency?  Do they use rupees or coins, or is there an exchange rate?  In Draco's intro, I put up both values out of laziness.
What about classes?  Which ones should we use?

[tacopill]

i figured we might allow the users to pick from this list, or generate their own from throwing together combination of Range-Based, Move-Based and Stat-Based, so long as they fully explain the class and we approve of it.

As for currency, i think an exchange rate would work well, so long as the ratio is easy to do math with.

your suggested 10,000 coins for 3,000 rupees boils down to 10/3 or 3.3333....coins per rupee, which could make accounting and inventorying bad (um, do you have 1/3 of a coin? i'm a little short). 

ooooo! i found this, which may help, but may not: http://grifkuba.org/main/wiki/index.php?title=Smash_Bros_PBPRPG_%28Project_Details%29.

And before anyone says anything, i am not recommending we do a smash bros forum RPG.... yet. Let's Stick with the Mush-rule one for now.

[Edofenrir]

One more thing!

If a player is going to play a "non-intelligent" race such as Octoroks, then they should give a reason for it being so... unless, like you said, we go Paper Mario here pretty much any species can have "friendly" and/or "intelligent" members.
.....

Please do not exclude the Paper Mario series just like that. It is a legit part of the Super Mario franchise and successfully extends the information about how the residents of the Mushroom world live. That means not every Goomba or Koopa out there is evil by default and automatically after the good guys. They have to make a life as well somewhere, and the fact that there are some aggressive kinds of them exist doesn't mean they're all like this.
Also, given the story-based setting of a Table Top RPG, the Mario RPGs (Paper Mario series and Mario&Luigi series) should actually be your main reference, since you're looking to create a functional world, not a platformer with a rudimentary plot.

The Mario platformers are fun agmes and entertaining in their own way, but when you search for story and background, look at the RPGs.

[tacopill]

My apologies, my intent was not to over-simplify, or exclude members of the series.

[Edofenrir]

My apologies, my intent was not to over-simplify, or exclude members of the series.

Sorry if that sounded harsh.
It's you guys' RPG after all, so you can do with it what you want. I'm just trying to give some advice since I'm a huge RPG freak myself.

[tacopill]

not a problem. I have problems in basically every form of communication there is, so i can easily cause problems with others. I have been improving over the years, but that doesn't stop me from slipping up every now and again.


And being a big RPG fan, do you have any advise for us? and do you like what we have so far?

[Edofenrir]

I think what you got so far is alright. I'm trying to drop in some hints and suggestions along the way when I can think of something.

I think stats were mentioned earlier, so here's something about stats: Whenever I think of RPGs and stats, I largely orientate myself on the Pokémon system, which is a fine system. I usually imagine seven base stats, namely:

Stamina (Hit Points; determines how much damage a character can take before fainting)
Mana Resources (Magic Points; how many spells a magician can cast without getting exhausted)
Strength (Attack Power; determines how much damage a chara deals with a physical attack)
Skill (Defense Points; the higher this value, the more physical damage will be absorbed)
Will Power (Magic Attack; determines the damage-output of a spellcaster's magic)
Focus (Magic Defense; the higher this value, the less damage someone receives from a magical attack)
Agility (Speed Points; determines in which order charas use their attacks)

These are the standard battle stats included in many RPGs. The names are optional and can be swapped if they sound stupid. Some system include something like Accuracy (chance to hit) and Evasion (chance to dodge), so that can be included as well if necessary (I usually skip that and just assume a general hit chane of.... say... 75-90%. Sometimes I attribute the hit chance directly to a skill, so a certain skill might have a hit chance of 70%, regardless of who uses it).

These are only battle stats of course. There might also be "field" stats which determine other things. There isn't really a limit to the number of those stats I guess.


Well, RPGs are sorta my métier I think, so I could talk for hours about thousands of different things, since the world of stats and game mechanics really fascinate me. I don't want to impose my will on you guys, though, so it would probably be best if you just ask me something when you think you need a second opinion. 

[tacopill]

Alright, sorry i've been away from this for so long. Busy with things, wrapping up my last semester of college, helping lylat wiki get off the ground, and it's possible i maybe do something entrepreneurial  by the end of the year. So, i apologize for being away for so long.

Anyway. Here's my proposed stats for this game:
In our battle system, there are several stats, or numeric values representing attributes such as physical strength and mental capacity.

General Stats - determined by playing and/or dm bonuses.
Power Level (PL) increases with each won battle and increases the other points with its increase. (0)
Evolution Points (EP) determines whether or not the character can become a more advanced character or not. (0)


Battle stats - determined by Race
Life Points (L.P.) determine how long the character can stand the battle before being called out. (2)
Attack Points (At.) determine how long until your move energy runs out. Each attack you make (regardless of its type) drains from this, and when you reach 0, all you can do is defend. (5)
Evade Points (Eva) determines how many blows actually hit you. (3)
Intelligence Points (In.) determine whether or not the character can learn a new attack. (4)

Computation stats - also Determined by race
When a battle goes on, there are 3 factors that determine how you do:
Strength Points (SP) determines how much damage the character is capable of dealing. (6)
Endure Points (En.) determine how much damage an attack causes to your character. (1)
Sage Points (SaP) represent your mastery over magic, and when combined with Strength Points, represents how much magical damage you can deal. When combined with Endure Points, how much magic you can take. (0)


Non-Battle stats - Determined by other things.
Happiness - kind of obvious (7)
Food Points - starts off at 100 ( 8 )

• Things that change it: candy - subtract; vegetables - add; etc.
• Things that depend on it: depends on character, (possibilities include are some may heal buy itself, others use moves that depend on this)

Wisdom - How much world knowledge does the person have? (9)
Charasmia - how easily can they persuade others? (10)
Badass - How well do you override the laws of physics, reason-ability and logic? Can you perform feats that summon-some-awe? (11)

Now, each stat is followed by a number at the end of it's description.  If the number is a 0, it can only raised when the character levels up,  and only at a specific rate based on the character's race, personality  or other factors determined at creation. The numbers 1-6, in addition to raising when the character's P.L. go up, can get a boost to the rate that it would go up with certain items called crests. These stats can also be changed with specific type of training. Each number can be used as an easy reference to that specific stat, which will be helpful in describing crests and training. Numbers 7 on up are changed by other things.

One thing to notice, there will be specific items that can only be used based on a character's stats (again, the first 6 numbered above) or something the character has achieved or experienced. These items are pretty much like cards, and when activated, can transform a character into one of 18 forms. Each form can enable them to do something amazing that is somewhat based on the stat's it requires. In addition, being in the form will open new doors, allow the character to use new moves, and other things. And for sake of a better name, Each form is called a "card form" when the transformation is active.

Crests and Cards are hidden throughout out the world, and only one of each are said to exist (and, in reality, do exist). In total, There are 10 crests and 18 cards to be found.

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Stat Calculations
When a character levels up, each stat goes up by a specific amount. Depending on the stat, this can be based off of race, or personality, etc. But, for specific stats, this amount can be increased when a character has a specific crest in their possession. For every level up from that point on, the character will go up by both amounts.

For example, INT has two related crests: Intelligence and Ingenuity. Mario starts off at POW 1 with 1 INT.  When he/she levels up, he will gain 1 INT plus 1 for each INT-crest the player has earned or has a party member that has it. So, lets say the player gained the Ingenuity crest at level 10, and teamed up with a Intelligence crest at level 20. To find out the INT at a specific level, you would need to do the following:

• for POW 1-10, just add 1 INT for each level, maxing out at 10.
• for POW 11-20, just add 2 INT for each level, starting at 10 and maxing out at 30.
• for POW 20 and upward, just add 3 INT for each level, starting at 30.

Now, in addition, there are more ways to customize your character.
# if you were a High Thinker Form at time of winning a battle, and did so for 50 battles not necessarily in a row), you get more INT added directly on.   
# Going through specific training will also give a boost to your INT (or what ever stat the training is for) quickly, but it will come at a cost.
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Now, to help distinguish between Fighter Class and Card Form (as i can see them getting mixed up), He's a quick recap:

• Fighter Class - specializes in 2 of the 6 malleable stats, in addition too specializing in a specific range of fighting (short-, mid- or long-range) and  specializing in certain group of moves (Weapons, Magic, Healer, Equipment Repairer).
• Card Form - requires specific requirements to be fulfilled (which can be stats based) before using the card to transform into the requested form.

I am going to expand on Fighter Classes later on, meanwhile the crests and cards will be hidden throughout the world for the players to find.
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So, what do you think?

[pokenutter]

When do we start?

[tacopill]

Considering this week is very unpredictable, and that we still need a little time to prepare (including, but not limited to, all the posts i said I'd make)   i am putting our tentative start date at Midnight UTC on May 22nd. If it doesn't look like we have everything finished by then, i will push it back a little.

We have to be careful on not pushing it back too far. I leave for summer work training on June 4th, and i am not sure how much internet will be available.

Edit: Also, i think it might be a good idea to have a related wiki (after all, what does the W in NIWA mean ), but which do you think would be better:

1) Use a wiki i already have set up, but would have non-game related information as well as game-related information
2) Set up a new wiki all-together?

[pokenutter]

We could set up a new wiki.  It seems to be the best choice.