Endless Pen&Paper Game {WIP}

FullMetalRiku

Fanatic in Disguise

26 700g2g pts

10 years ago

Oct 21, 2014, 2:33:31 PM

Hello, sorry for the disappearance. Between college and some other issues in my life I haven't had much opportunity to work on this project. Now that I have returned I can start working on this a little more, however we still need more people who are willing to help bring life to this project. I have already listed my skype and steam so go right ahead and add me if you wish to help work with me on this project. I have also had the chance to play Dungeon of the Endless, which has given me some other interesting ideas. Such as the Broken Lord characters getting more stats per kill (Based on Tulak), and possible concepts of Virtual Endless (Haunts) having a possession ability (based on Mizi)

Pifilix157

Glassteel Drakken

Pifilix157

Glassteel Drakken

7 800g2g pts

7 years ago

Feb 22, 2018, 7:41:59 PM

Sorry if i am late to the topic, but i would really love to see the Endless Legend pnp bloom, but i am not much into pnp, not even tried to do such. I would really like to try it out.

Well, on the topic of talents and skills, why not make it able to just get basic "level ups" in char, and then giving them out on a talent and skill tree ? Even when starting out, like you play as a broken lord "tank", and you pump the starting level points into a "speech" talent part of the "talent" tree. This tree would be like the skill tree in endless legend, but only specializes in talents and lesser skills, like: The acrobatics tree, which specializes in movement and reflexes
Knowledge tree, which mainly specializes in speech and intelectual talents
Craftmanship tree, hich is self explanatory.

sorry for my bad english, i am foreign.

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

9 years ago

Jul 18, 2015, 11:00:06 AM

I can barely believe how long it's been since I last posted here. Real life just kept on eating all my time.

In any case, I did start to write a rules draft, but quickly abandoned it again, because I felt the rules were getting to complicated for the depth they offered.

I have also been thinking a lot about our disagreement on the dice to use, given that in the end our aims where similar: Making the task resolution simple but rewarding for the player. I may have tried doing so by using a roll that allows for extreme results to keep the roll exciting, yet easy to modify, while you were trying to do so by rewarding players who have invested in a skill, but in the end, it's all about fun when rolling the dice. (Of course, these are just my best guesses. I'd love to hear your design goals, so I can consider them.)

In my absence from the forum, I have been briefly introduced to the "Narrative Dice System" by FFG, which uses dice pool mechanics for task resolution, with one pool governing the actual success and failure and another governing beneficial and detrimental side effects.

I'm not terribly fond of dice pool mechanics, but seeing that system gave me the idea of for a compromise between our two ideals.

Rather than adding a fixed bonus to a single roll, I thought about instead having higher skill levels roll more dice in a sum roll. That way each skill point offers not only a boost to the raw potential of the roll, but also makes the skill more reliable by reducing the probability of the extreme results.

However, that approach makes finding the appropriate threshold very difficult, and I believe multiple thresholds for varying degrees of success might be the most reasonable way to handle this system. For example, a very easy task could have a threshold of 3 or more for basic success, and 5 or more for a critical success, and the difficulty rating multiplies this number, for examples an average task is 3 times as difficult, giving 9 as a threshold of success and 15 as a threshold of critical success.

Unfortunately, this makes critical success less likely than with the untrained roll, so it may be a better idea to make the critical threshold additive, e.g. Base difficulty is 3 or higher, and one plus the difficulty rating is added for the critical threshold, against giving 5 on the easy task, but 13 for the average task. But thats an issue to be worked out once we get back to work on actual rules.

In either case, positive and negative circumstances could add a boon or bane roll that

For the uncreative, this could simply translate into a bonus or penalty to the base roll, changing the chances of success and failure. For the more narratively inclined, it can help determine the results of an action, beneficial and detrimental side effects alike. If necessary, it could even by tied into triggering special effects. I'm not yet sure if the system would total bonuses (two advantages and one disadvantage mean rolling one boon die) or the results (you roll both boon and the bane dice, than add the boons and subtract the bane).

Regarding your suggestion of skills versus talents:

I had already been thinking of a similar system, but I had not considered splitting the XP gain in two categories. It adds only a negligible amount of complexity and bookkeeping, but it could be a wonderful solution to the problem of keeping the player from amassing too many talents without making them as prohibitively expensive as often seen in other free advancement systems.

On a related note, I have also been wondering how to handle attributes/ability scores. Do we want to take so much inspiration from EL that we eliminate them and subsume them into broader stats (Attack, Defense, Interaction), or should we keep them. And if we keep them, how do they interact with skills and talents?

Alien@System

Oddity

Good puns aren't told, they're perpetrated.

Alien@System

Oddity

10 years ago

Apr 5, 2015, 9:01:43 AM

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
A valid example. Of course, in the second case people are paying for certainty more than they are thinking about a lower chance, but since we may run into certain rolls in this system it is still an important point to consider. However, the word "pay" and further down "invest" are key here: Diminishing returns can be achieved through the character advancement rules as much (or more) as they can through the resolution mechanics.

Payment does not only mean XP costs, the on-the-fly bonuses awarded during the game fall in the same category. They have to invest time, and role playing to set up a situation in which the GM grants them those bonuses. There, the GM can't provide the diminishing returns, because granting different circumstance modifiers to different people, in the same situation, would reek of favoritism. The diminishing returns have to be inherent in the die roll.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
And if I recall correctly, DSA does have diminishing returns on the experience points invested into skills, but that apparently did not stop the min-maxer. Granted, he sounds like the most tenacious kind of min-maxer, veering into munchkin territory.

Actually, she was one of our least combat focused characters. She sunk all her points invested in combat into the bow skill, however, and due to the way DSA gives attack modifiers for ranged weapons, the rest of us, who either tried to level multiple weapon skills, or were mainly melee, had considerably lower attack values, even with more points invested into combat.

The GM should have countered that by bringing her into situations where the bow skill was useless, but we were too good to really get suckered into those.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
However, introducing the city governing aspect is an intriguing notion.

The problem with city government is that it can make the rest of game-play unrealistic. Why would a Baron of the Broken Lords, a Vaulter Clan Leader, and a Roving Clan Caravan Owner hike together through a swamp, instead of sitting comfortably at home, rule the city, and leave the swamp-trekking to the minions?

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I can't stand those games that boast having several hundred unit types, when in reality they turn out to be minor shifts in stats and most units of a supertype (e.g. Heavy Infantry, Archer, etc.) can be used in exactly the same way without any adjustments to strategy.

Agreed, somewhat. As I said, you need as much complexity as is appropriate for the theme. I never understood why DSA needed to separate Beer Brewing and Cider Distillation (which are both again not the same as neither Alchemy nor Cooking) , when there weren't even any rules for alcohol.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Now that would be great if we could pull it off, but right now I can't think of anything that wouldn't just tack a simple empire management game onto the RPG.

Well, in an RPG, Food and Science would, based on this system, compete about the XP slot. Calling it Science would be better, if only because calling something that you're not eating "Food" is weird.

But yeah, I don't think we can really use it. It only works in DotE because you have that spaceship, where that Industry and Science can apply to.

Edit:

I had some ideas over the course of the day, which are a bit more specific than general discussions about dice systems:

Given the split of XP in two resources in DotE, one could do the same in the RPG. The first is called XP (since calling it Food would be weird), and can be spent on a common list of skills, with rising costs the higher the skill already is. That list includes weapon skills, non-combat skills and can later be expanded to include spells (for the corresponding classes). This describes how experienced the hero is in mundane things, and how well they have trained.

The other system is Science, which works via Talent tree. A point of Science is awarded by the GM for reaching major milestones in a campaign (with a recommendation of a point given every N XP), and can be spent to unlock talents from the tree. Every talent only costs 1 point, but you have to have the prerequisite talents first before you can unlock higher ones. This represents a hero's understanding of Dust, and with more familiarity, they are able to unlock more of its functions.

The Talent Tree has four parts: One common part, which has Talents affecting the non-combat skills, and is the same for every one. One class part, which depends in the Class the Hero has chosen, one race part, which comes from their race, and one specialization, which is determined based on both class and race.

In the Class Tree, there are for example Weapon Aptitude Skills, which make it easier to use a certain Weapon Type, and basic combat moves with those weapons. The Race Tree can include both new combat talents, as well as non-combat talents. For example, for Roving Clans, there could be a skill that makes it easier for them to gather Dust, while for Ardent Mages, their starting Talent in the tree would be the Ardent Fire.

The Specialization, as the way it is determined suggests, includes skills that make each class unique compared to others. Most notably, it includes Spells for Support classes, and most likely combat maneuvers for other classes. Spells are, once unlocked via Talent tree, leveled using XP.

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

10 years ago

Apr 4, 2015, 6:56:38 PM

Alien@System wrote:
I'd disagree with you on that, because the way humans perceive bonuses to probability differently. Those 5% point bonus are feeling very differently when you have a 50% chance, or a 90% one. In one case, the change in probability is negligible, while in the other, it halves your chance of failure.

I agree that this perception of probabilities may be a problem (even though there would have been more relevant parts of my post to quote for reference, since the different perception does not refute the ease of calculation). However, I would like to point out that the same problem is true for 3d6 as well.

Looking at the average and edge case, we get the following: Moving from a threshold of 10 to one of 9, we get a 10% failure reduction on the D20 and a 25% reduction on the 3d6. Considering the edge cases, we cut chance of failure in half if moving from 20 to 19 on the D20, and we cut it to a fourth when moving from an 18 to hit to a 17 on 3d6.

I think it may be impossible to avoid this problem in a simple "single die roll" system, as they always have a highest and lowest possible roll.

Alien@System wrote:
An even more extreme example I once read in a book: Imagine there is a skin cream that you want to buy, where 4 out of 10000 people have adverse effects. There is a similar product, bit with a better ingredient, which only shows adverse effects for 1 out of 10000. However, it costs twice as much. Would you be willing to buy the better product?

Some time later, both creams have improved. The one where only 1 in 10000 has adverse effects is now the cheaper one, and there is one, again twice as expensive, which has no adverse effects at all.

Studies have shown that people are more willing to pay for the more expensive product in the second case, despite the actual reduction in probability being smaller (1 out of 10000 compared to 3 out of 10000). An RPG should take this subjective quality of probability into account. If a player has to pay for his hit chance to be improved from 50% to 55% the same as the min-maxer pays to get it from 95% to 100%, the first player will feel cheated.

A good dice system has no cut-off point, were you can be sure to succeed, but a long, slowly converging tail, where you need to invest a lot more points to go from "very likely" to "certain" that you did to go from "half-half" to "very likely".

A valid example. Of course, in the second case people are paying for certainty more than they are thinking about a lower chance, but since we may run into certain rolls in this system it is still an important point to consider. However, the word "pay" and further down "invest" are key here: Diminishing returns can be achieved through the character advancement rules as much (or more) as they can through the resolution mechanics.

Alien@System wrote:
If I might quote from personal experience, in my DSA group we had an archer who in the end had an attack value of 26, I believe. That meant the GM had to throw several penalties at her to give her even a chance to fail. The same penalties, applied to an archer with an attack value of 16, would be crippling, and called unfair.

That is a rather nasty example indeed. However, bonuses that large and diverging so much could break any dice system.It certainly wouldn't work with basic D20 rules, and a 3d6 does not work well with those bonuses either. It's unlikely that any single die system does not fall apart when bonuses become larger than the spread of possible die roll results. However, even dice pool systems could break under that strain.

And if I recall correctly, DSA does have diminishing returns on the experience points invested into skills, but that apparently did not stop the min-maxer. Granted, he sounds like the most tenacious kind of min-maxer, veering into munchkin territory.

Alien@System wrote:
You can of course never foretell what the group will make out of your game, the amount of detail you put into certain aspects of the universe should be proportional to how relevant you think those aspects would be to the "intended" play style. If you expect your heroes to spend time crafting their own equipment, including possibly adventures specifically for getting ingredients, then you should invest an appropriate amount of pages and rules to that aspect of the game, instead of just writing "And the Crafting skill covers how good a hero is a making equipment". Or, to take a slightly more relevant example, Statecraft. EL heroes can be both warriors and governors. Depending on what you want the game to be, that leader aspect could either be expanded to half the rulebook, or just shortened to a single skill.

That should always be seen in comparison to the complexity of the combat system. Endless Legend has, uh, 12 different weapons, I believe. If you have 12 weapon skills, that means something you consider as important as combat shouldn't be covered with only 1 or 2 skills.

Not that I'd go for having 12 weapon skills. I'd maybe go with 5 (One-Handed Melee, Two-Handed Melee, Ranged Physical, Ranged Magical, Shield)

You're right that the theme of the game should be taken into account. I had imagined it being focused on exploration, since that beautiful artwork of the anomalies and the artistic direction of the cities and gear were what really drew me into Endless Legend. However, introducing the city governing aspect is an intriguing notion.

And I wouldn't go for more than 5 or 6 weapon skills, either, though I can never make up my mind whether the"One-handed melee, Two-handed Melee" or the "Axe, Sword, Hammer, Spear" distinction are better.

I wouldn't introduce too many governing and non-combat base skills (that is, skills not part of a class or faction tree), either. I'm almost always in favor of few substantial choices over many similar options. I can't stand those games that boast having several hundred unit types, when in reality they turn out to be minor shifts in stats and most units of a supertype (e.g. Heavy Infantry, Archer, etc.) can be used in exactly the same way without any adjustments to strategy.

Alien@System wrote:
I'd like to somehow work in Amplitude's signature FIDS system somehow, maybe oriented on how Dungeons of the Endless does it. Which I haven't played, so you would need to tell me how it actually works in detail.

Now that would be great if we could pull it off, but right now I can't think of anything that wouldn't just tack a simple empire management game onto the RPG. For better brainstorming, let me list the uses of the different FIDS in DotE:

Food: Leveling up heroes
Food: Healing heroes during a combat wave
Industry: Constructing turrets and other structures
Science: Unlocking new turrets and structures
Science: Resetting the cooldown timer of active abilities
Dust: Powering rooms through the crystal (does not consume dust)
All:Currency with some merchants

Alien@System

Oddity

Good puns aren't told, they're perpetrated.

Alien@System

Oddity

10 years ago

Apr 3, 2015, 11:13:38 AM

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

This predictability can be a very desirable trait, but I shy away from using 3d6 for a different reason connected to the spread of results: difficulty of adjustments.

[...] Just adding or subtracting 5 percentage points per point of bonus makes on the fly adjustments remarkably easy.

I'd disagree with you on that, because the way humans perceive bonuses to probability differently. Those 5% point bonus are feeling very differently when you have a 50% chance, or a 90% one. In one case, the change in probability is negligible, while in the other, it halves your chance of failure.

An even more extreme example I once read in a book: Imagine there is a skin cream that you want to buy, where 4 out of 10000 people have adverse effects. There is a similar product, bit with a better ingredient, which only shows adverse effects for 1 out of 10000. However, it costs twice as much. Would you be willing to buy the better product?

Some time later, both creams have improved. The one where only 1 in 10000 has adverse effects is now the cheaper one, and there is one, again twice as expensive, which has no adverse effects at all.

Studies have shown that people are more willing to pay for the more expensive product in the second case, despite the actual reduction in probability being smaller (1 out of 10000 compared to 3 out of 10000). An RPG should take this subjective quality of probability into account. If a player has to pay for his hit chance to be improved from 50% to 55% the same as the min-maxer pays to get it from 95% to 100%, the first player will feel cheated.

A good dice system has no cut-off point, were you can be sure to succeed, but a long, slowly converging tail, where you need to invest a lot more points to go from "very likely" to "certain" that you did to go from "half-half" to "very likely".

If I might quote from personal experience, in my DSA group we had an archer who in the end had an attack value of 26, I believe. That meant the GM had to throw several penalties at her to give her even a chance to fail. The same penalties, applied to an archer with an attack value of 16, would be crippling, and called unfair.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I never understood the attitude that having a greater variety of non-combat skills is the sign of a system more focused on roleplaying. I have seen plenty of DSA groups very intent on playing hack-n-slash style, even back in 3rd edition with that terrible "weapon comparison chart." On the other hand, my current Pathfinder group has seen combat only twice, one a brief barroom brawl and the other a misunderstanding that cleared up after a single shot.

You can of course never foretell what the group will make out of your game, the amount of detail you put into certain aspects of the universe should be proportional to how relevant you think those aspects would be to the "intended" play style. If you expect your heroes to spend time crafting their own equipment, including possibly adventures specifically for getting ingredients, then you should invest an appropriate amount of pages and rules to that aspect of the game, instead of just writing "And the Crafting skill covers how good a hero is a making equipment". Or, to take a slightly more relevant example, Statecraft. EL heroes can be both warriors and governors. Depending on what you want the game to be, that leader aspect could either be expanded to half the rulebook, or just shortened to a single skill.

That should always be seen in comparison to the complexity of the combat system. Endless Legend has, uh, 12 different weapons, I believe. If you have 12 weapon skills, that means something you consider as important as combat shouldn't be covered with only 1 or 2 skills.

Not that I'd go for having 12 weapon skills. I'd maybe go with 5 (One-Handed Melee, Two-Handed Melee, Ranged Physical, Ranged Magical, Shield)

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I think we could even go so far as to say that dust is also the measure of experience, though we'd need to be careful about that double use.

I'd like to somehow work in Amplitude's signature FIDS system somehow, maybe oriented on how Dungeons of the Endless does it. Which I haven't played, so you would need to tell me how it actually works in detail.

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

10 years ago

Apr 3, 2015, 10:20:49 AM

Alien@System wrote:
While solving it with a single roll sounds good, I'd very much prefer if it wasn't a 1d20. Really, anything but a 1d20. Having a Point Of Being Sure To Hit just encourages min-maxers. If you use more dice (like, for example, 3d6, which have nearly the same range as 1d20), you get a much smoother probability curve.

I'm not entirely opposed to using 3d6, but I would prefer the d20. I always feel like using a d20 has become very unpopular because of some of the experiments with the D20 System.

However, having "a point of being sure to hit" does not depend only on the die used, but rather on how that die interacts with thresholds and skill levels. Using the rather carelessly picked numbers from my previous example,I could construct a few extreme cases:

If maximum skill level is 10, the maximum bonus against a completely untrained character would be 10, so you would indeed be guaranteed a proper hit, with a 65% chance of critical.

If maximum skill level is 6, we get 20% glancing blows, 40% chance of a normal hit, 40% chance of a critical hit. Keep in mind that this would be a master facing against somebody without training.

But if maximum skill level is three, we get just barely no chance of missing, 40% to glance, 40% for a normal hit, and 20% for a critical hit.

Furthermore, I used miss/glance/hit/crit to match EL, but it could just as easily be critical miss/miss/hit/critical hit, which makes the above chances feel very different. In an asymmetric system we could also shift all thresholds upward so that glances happen on 8-10, hits on 11-18, and crits only on 19 or more.

Simply put, we'll need a basic idea of the numbers involved to judge rolls, or have a desired result in mind to adjust the numbers accordingly.

All that said, 3d6 has one advantage over 1d20: A much lower deviation. Rolling 10 or 11 on 1d20 has 10% probability, on 3d6 it has 25%. If we expand the "average" range to 8-13, we get 30% on 1d20 but about 68% on 3d6. Rolling a 17 or 18 on 3d6 has a probability of a little under 2%, while on 1d20 we have 5% chance to roll a 20.

Thus, using 3d6 makes the individual roll far more reliable if your chances are already good (75% if you need a 9 or more on the dice, 90% for a 7 or more, as opposed to 60% and 70% on a d20), but makes "lucky breaks" far less likely (only about 26% for a roll of 13 or more.)

This predictability can be a very desirable trait, but I shy away from using 3d6 for a different reason connected to the spread of results: difficulty of adjustments.

Using a single die, I can be certain that increasing a bonus by 1 always improves the success chance by the same number of percentage points. On 1d6 a +1 bonus gives you about +16 percentage points to your chances, on 1d10 you get 10 percentage points, etc.

Using 3d6, the impact of the bonus depends on the roll required before applying it. If you needed an 11 before, the +1 bonus gives you a nice 12.5 percent point boost (thought that actually only makes you hit 1.25 times as often as before), whereas getting a +1 bonus when you need an 18 give you "only" a 1.5 percent point boost. Technically you hit four times as often, but hitting 1 out of 100 attacks or 4 out of 100 will feel bad to the player in any case.

I just prefer giving GMs the ability to quickly and with little effort judge the impact of a bonus. Just adding or subtracting 5 percentage points per point of bonus makes on the fly adjustments remarkably easy.

Admittedly, I am not thrilled by how wide the results can swing and how unreliable an individual roll can be, but I feel that in this case, such results fit with the mysterious and unpredictable nature of dust.

(For those confused by my use of percent and percentage points, consider this xkcd comic.

Alien@System wrote:
I'm in favor of the damage not being fixed. It keeps things more interesting if you can't be quite sure how much damage you do. In the spirit of EL, however, I'd keep the ratio random damage to fixed damage small. As for the rest, the more rolls the players do, the better. Makes them feel prouder for rolling high.

Of course, your mention of defense rolls poses an obvious question, namely, whether the combat system should be symmetrical, or asymmetrical. A symmetric combat system is easier to keep track of, but can be annoying for the players, and difficult to balance. The asymmetric system would give the players a greater sense of awesomeness, since they would, by the very rules of the game, be stronger than generic mobs.

I would prefer an asymmetrical system, as I consider the PCs to be people touched by dust, so they should indeed be stronger than generic mobs. You are right about some uncertainty about damage adding to the fun of the game, though. It'll be thought to find the sweet spot between excitement of random rolls and the static damage 'in the spirit of EL'.

Alien@System wrote:
That depends on what kind of game it will be in the end. A Dungeon Crawl, like the original DnD? A game focused on social aspects more than combat, like DSA? Or maybe even a game about empire management as much as adventuring, like Midgard? This will determine in how much detail you'll need which skill.

I never understood the attitude that having a greater variety of non-combat skills is the sign of a system more focused on roleplaying. I have seen plenty of DSA groups very intent on playing hack-n-slash style, even back in 3rd edition with that terrible "weapon comparison chart." On the other hand, my current Pathfinder group has seen combat only twice, one a brief barroom brawl and the other a misunderstanding that cleared up after a single shot.

A decent group of players can draw a lot even out of a single unified diplomacy score, using it to judge whether or not the character would be capable of pulling the same fast-talking the player did or not. On the other hand, a group inclined for combat might just have one player heavily investing in non-combat skills and resolve all peaceful encounters with a couple of die rolls.

So my vote is still on having a small number of frequently useful skills, rather than a great number of highly specialized skills. A greater number of options does not necessarily increase depth of choice, but it certainly increases complexity, and can often be a mere illusion of choice.

Alien@System wrote:
I'd agree with the suggestion people made above, that given the nature of EL, having Dust be both your currency and your mana pool would be the most natural choice. There should, however, be some abilities one can use for free, to ensure that broke people still feel like they can do something besides hitting people with their sword.

The "broke people" are just who I thought of when suggesting a slow, natural recharge. A single point after every encounter, for example, while somebody else might go into an encounter with 6 points to spend after a recent windfall. I think we could even go so far as to say that dust is also the measure of experience, though we'd need to be careful about that double use.

Alien@System

Oddity

Good puns aren't told, they're perpetrated.

Alien@System

Oddity

10 years ago

Apr 2, 2015, 7:26:24 AM

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Inspired by EL's current combat system, tasks are resolved by rolling 1d20 + Character Skill - Foe Skill, with the modified result determining miss, glancing blow, hit, or critical hit (e.g. 1/4/11/18 as thresholds). This has the avantage of naturally shifting likelihood of critical success/failure as skills change while staying simple to calculate, resolve, and predict.

While solving it with a single roll sounds good, I'd very much prefer if it wasn't a 1d20. Really, anything but a 1d20. Having a Point Of Being Sure To Hit just encourages min-maxers. If you use more dice (like, for example, 3d6, which have nearly the same range as 1d20), you get a much smoother probability curve.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Weapon skills would modify how often weapon special abilities trigger or how powerful they are. The same may be true for tools used for non-combat tasks.
Combat damage might be fixed rather than rolled, to speed up resolution. This is up for debate.
To increase players' sense of agency, and because the player characters have been touched by dust, combat might involve defense rolls by players instead of attack rolls by the game master

I'm in favor of the damage not being fixed. It keeps things more interesting if you can't be quite sure how much damage you do. In the spirit of EL, however, I'd keep the ratio random damage to fixed damage small. As for the rest, the more rolls the players do, the better. Makes them feel prouder for rolling high.

Of course, your mention of defense rolls poses an obvious question, namely, whether the combat system should be symmetrical, or asymmetrical. A symmetric combat system is easier to keep track of, but can be annoying for the players, and difficult to balance. The asymmetric system would give the players a greater sense of awesomeness, since they would, by the very rules of the game, be stronger than generic mobs.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Non-combat skills should be kept fairly broad and widely applicable to keep them relevant, e.g. Perception instead of Spot, Listen, and Search. We don't want players to think "This skill is far too specific. I'll never need it."

That depends on what kind of game it will be in the end. A Dungeon Crawl, like the original DnD? A game focused on social aspects more than combat, like DSA? Or maybe even a game about empire management as much as adventuring, like Midgard? This will determine in how much detail you'll need which skill.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

All characters have a Dust pool that they can spend to use abilities, which refreshes slowly over time or through potions or even as minor reward. Ardent Mages, of course, have additional uses for the Dust Pool

I'd agree with the suggestion people made above, that given the nature of EL, having Dust be both your currency and your mana pool would be the most natural choice. There should, however, be some abilities one can use for free, to ensure that broke people still feel like they can do something besides hitting people with their sword.

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Shifter

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

10 years ago

Apr 1, 2015, 9:06:43 PM

Well, I certainly wouldn't say the project is dead, but it's certainly comatose. Unfortunately, shortly after my last post, work returned to eating up most of my time and what little I had left I was too spent to seriously work on this.

I have, however, had a fwe ideas, and with any luck I might get to properly write them down over the easter holidays. Here are some key notes:

character advancement relies on classes, skill trees, and skillpoints gained per level
skill trees are determined by faction and class, in addition to a generic skill tree, similar to Endless Legend
advanced or faction specific classes might be available
Inspired by EL's current combat system, tasks are resolved by rolling 1d20 + Character Skill - Foe Skill, with the modified result determining miss, glancing blow, hit, or critical hit (e.g. 1/4/11/18 as thresholds). This has the avantage of naturally shifting likelihood of critical success/failure as skills change while staying simple to calculate, resolve, and predict.
Weapon skills would modify how often weapon special abilities trigger or how powerful they are. The same may be true for tools used for non-combat tasks.
Combat damage might be fixed rather than rolled, to speed up resolution. This is up for debate.
To increase players' sense of agency, and because the player characters have been touched by dust, combat might involve defense rolls by players instead of attack rolls by the game master
Non-combat skills should be kept fairly broad and widely applicable to keep them relevant, e.g. Perception instead of Spot, Listen, and Search. We don't want players to think "This skill is far too specific. I'll never need it."
All characters have a Dust pool that they can spend to use abilities, which refreshes slowly over time or through potions or even as minor reward. Ardent Mages, of course, have additional uses for the Dust Pool

Alien@System

Oddity

Good puns aren't told, they're perpetrated.

Alien@System

Oddity

10 years ago

Mar 5, 2015, 5:07:48 PM

If this is still active, I would cooperate on game design. I've played PnP RPGs, mostly in the The Dark Eye (or DSA for short) system, and I've spent a lot of time trying to find good dice systems, up to writing programs to plot out probability curves.

As for the specifics of the system, while I am more in favour of class-free systems (as you have in DSA), where every hero could possibly be anything, but given the large race differences of EL, that might not be viable here. I also prefer having an unstratified progression, which means no explicit character levels, but instead the ability to spend your XP on skill improvement as you see fit.

As for contact data, excuse me for not feeling comfortable to write them in a public thread. Write me a PM if you want them.

MonsieurDupuis

Fomorian

MonsieurDupuis

Fomorian

28 100g2g pts

10 years ago

Feb 23, 2015, 7:51:40 PM

Hey all. I've been working on an Endless Legend TTRPG on and off for a while now, and was going to post what I had when I found this thread.

It's d20 system based heavily around Pathfinder, D&D 5E and Star Wars Saga Edition RPG. It originally started off as an attempt to create a Pathfinder version of Endless Legend, but it exploded from there. I'll probably post what I've done in a google doc sometime in the near future, but Here's a rundown of the various ideas i've had in the process

Have Character backgrounds/Race be relevant. Endless Legend is practically defined by its asymmetric gameplay and any TTRPG should reflect that. What this should mean is that playing a Broken Lords Warrior should feel different from playing a Necrophage or Vaulter Warrior.
Five to Six classes. Tentative list of these include Frontliner (melee warrior), Blackguard (roguish type), Hunter (ranged survivalist), Adept (skill monkey), Thaumaturge (dust mage) - EDIT - Each class would have a specialization depending on the race chosen.
Each race has a certain affinity towards different roles/classes.
5E/SWSE style of skills, where each class gains a set number of skill points at the start of the game. Additional skill points are gained every 5th or so level. I'll go into further details in the eventual doc, but I've fond that this helps circumvent exponential growth.
Dust 'Magic' divided into three 'schools'; Evocation (Damage and Debuffing), Manipulation (Illusions and Battlefield Control Specialist), Bolstering (Buffing/Healing).
Similar to the game, Currency and Magic are linked. No limit on the number of spells cast except the cost of dust needed to do so. Cost lowers and power of spell increases with leveling
Weapons and armor gain bonuses depending on the material they are made out of.
Most of the In-game combat mechanics translate surprisingly well to tabletop.

Fore

Newcomer

Fore

Newcomer

300g2g pts

10 years ago

Feb 22, 2015, 12:47:43 AM

Hey there, big tabletop enthusiast and EL lover jumping in with the rest of you.

Skype/Steam : lordoftheforest

Definitely think we should try to hash out a dice system before touching on Dust mechanics and differences between races. I'm used to solving a dice conflict with a single roll, usually a pool of dice that you get from attributes and skills added together.

I'm also curious as to what sort of things are the players in this particular p&p going to be doing? What sort of playstyle should we encourage and how? Is this going to be a game with combat as a main focus (if so should it be intricate and complex or fast and quick)? What sort of elements from the game should we keep and what should we try to leave out?

Morhgoz

Newcomer

Morhgoz

Newcomer

20 800g2g pts

10 years ago

Feb 20, 2015, 7:20:52 AM

I might lend hand, as I design rpg, miniature and board games as hobby. Have only published on free miniature sports game this far. Depends mostly what kind rule settings you plan to use, mostly.

1.) I think we should go for a system based on a single die roll. It's easy to predict when changing modifiers on the fly, but it has a very high variance, making the roll itself less reliable than in a "sum of 2d6" or a dice pool system, which I believe fits the setting nicely, what with the unpredictability of tempering with dust and all that.

What dice this would use?

1b.) I'd love to somehow work out a way to have this system "explode" the way dice pool systems can, so that absurdly high results are possible in rare instance, flukes caused by dust exposure.

One way would be that characters have "Dust-pool" that gives them extra dices that are added to total. When you use dust from pool it's gone and you have to get more dust to replace it. Earthdawn has similar system.

2.) The number of relevant stats should ideally be low and streamlined. Perhaps not quite on the level of "attack-defense-damage," but certainly no more than maybe six to eight stats.

How about Body (strengt and toughness), Mental (intelligense and willpower), Face (charisma and attractiviness)and Speed (dexterity and movement) as main stats and secondary stats, like attack, defence, initiative hit points/wounds etc that are calculated from these?

3.) I've been wondering about initiative systems that model some of the effects of Endless Legend's combat mechanics, something that would let you formulate a plan, but it might go horribly wrong as the situation changes. Perhaps something similar to what the game "Inquisitor" by Games Workshop used, allowing you to plan a number of actions, but your initiative roll determines how many of them you actually manage to perform.

I like this. Say you plan to move, attack and use some special ability, but because initiative you couldn't do it all. Also some actions would be more complicated and are would need enough good initiative to success. Haven't read Inquisitor rules for long times, must read them when get back to me department.

4.) Rather than having a numeric value, skills could be rated in tiers like "untrained-novice-professional-expert-master-legend" providing various kinds of bonuses and penalties, e.g. re-rolls or automatic critical hits.

If dice wouldn't to big, like d20, skills could work as multiplier. Untrained x1, novice x2 etc.

5.) A level- and class-based system seems reasonable, and fits well with the examples of EL and ES. However, I think class should provide a skill/talent/whateverwecallit tree just as it does in EL, so should race, and perhaps there should be a common tree or a "specialization" tree. Alternately, class/race trees could only cover the first, say, 5 levels, and the next 10 are determined by a specialization you choose then. So for example, we could get Vaulter Soldier (Marine) or Vaulter Soldier (Dawnguard) just as likely as Vaulter Scientist (Engineer), or even Necrophage (Forager) Soldier as opposed to Necrophage (Drone) Soldier.

I don't usually like level based systems, Earthdawn is exeption as it leveling system is so different from others, but I think this could work...

5b.) Non-combat skills should probably remain outside of the class-based system, so that any character can pick them up and provide some flexibility.

Yes they should.

If you willing to use different kind of systems, I know one system which could work easily to this project and it's designer, Ville Vuorela ( maker of Stalker RPG), has given open license to his older system rpg system, Praedor. It uses d6's. More difficult the task is, more dices you throw and target number is your skill level. Damage, in combat works so that weapons have fixed damage like 8 or 12 plus d6, but degree of success gives you extra dices. Normal succes d6, good success 2d6 and extraordinary 3d6. And these dice can explode and cause huge amount of damage in one hit. I can tell more of the system if you like. And to this project you probably would have to re-work initiative system...

Serenum

Newcomer

Serenum

Newcomer

100g2g pts

10 years ago

Jan 10, 2015, 11:04:04 AM

Hello, I've read about this project and I was instantly very interested in it.

I have 2 questions:

- Is this endorsed by the devs?

- Do you plan on making a pen & paper rpg or more like a faithful tabletop recreation of the game? It's not entirely clear reading your posts.

silentArtifact

Old Heretic

silentArtifact

Old Heretic

17 500g2g pts

10 years ago

Oct 29, 2014, 10:41:58 PM

I'm surprised that no one has posted this before, but there's already a game system that is more or less custom-built for this setting: Numenera! It's a earth-like setting, but with ancient technology that's confused for magic, ruins, politics, and so forth. I personally found the setting a bit too weird-science-fantasy for me, but I fully intend to run on Auriga when my players eventually feel like trying it out.

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

VIPThe-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

Shifter

10 years ago

Oct 29, 2014, 7:49:04 PM

I've been gone for quite a while for work-related reasons as well, but I've been thinking a lot about this, mainly about what traits I'd like the basic rules system to have and how to work them out. Here are some of my thoughts:

1.) I think we should go for a system based on a single die roll. It's easy to predict when changing modifiers on the fly, but it has a very high variance, making the roll itself less reliable than in a "sum of 2d6" or a dice pool system, which I believe fits the setting nicely, what with the unpredictability of tempering with dust and all that.

1b.) I'd love to somehow work out a way to have this system "explode" the way dice pool systems can, so that absurdly high results are possible in rare instance, flukes caused by dust exposure.

2.) The number of relevant stats should ideally be low and streamlined. Perhaps not quite on the level of "attack-defense-damage," but certainly no more than maybe six to eight stats.

3.) I've been wondering about initiative systems that model some of the effects of Endless Legend's combat mechanics, something that would let you formulate a plan, but it might go horribly wrong as the situation changes. Perhaps something similar to what the game "Inquisitor" by Games Workshop used, allowing you to plan a number of actions, but your initiative roll determines how many of them you actually manage to perform.

4.) Rather than having a numeric value, skills could be rated in tiers like "untrained-novice-professional-expert-master-legend" providing various kinds of bonuses and penalties, e.g. re-rolls or automatic critical hits.

5.) A level- and class-based system seems reasonable, and fits well with the examples of EL and ES. However, I think class should provide a skill/talent/whateverwecallit tree just as it does in EL, so should race, and perhaps there should be a common tree or a "specialization" tree. Alternately, class/race trees could only cover the first, say, 5 levels, and the next 10 are determined by a specialization you choose then. So for example, we could get Vaulter Soldier (Marine) or Vaulter Soldier (Dawnguard) just as likely as Vaulter Scientist (Engineer), or even Necrophage (Forager) Soldier as opposed to Necrophage (Drone) Soldier.

5b.) Non-combat skills should probably remain outside of the class-based system, so that any character can pick them up and provide some flexibility.

Hopefully, at some point before the end of the year I can cobble together a rought rules system so we can get to the fun part of actually designing abilities, races, classes, and creatures.

FullMetalRiku

Fanatic in Disguise

FullMetalRiku

Fanatic in Disguise

26 700g2g pts

11 years ago

Jul 5, 2014, 9:41:18 PM

Alright, so I got to thinking, so many games and movies with a really good storyline and actual functioning lore have some kind of Pen&Paper game built around them, even if they are fan-made. So I thought about Amplitude, and their greatest strength in game design, the lore and storyline of a game and how they present it to us. With that thought, I decided that Endless Legend deserved a Pen&Paper game to show just how good the lore is. The issue I am having, is that I am not the best at designing Pen&Paper games, so I am wondering if anyone would join me in making an Endless Pen&Paper game to help show our appreciation for the Devs.

TheMrHego

Old