After the Win (DoD based Everway-on-forum rpg signup surround!)

Since Descent into the Dungeon died ( ) , we clearly need a new RPG. I run Everway at home cause it's quick and easy. I'd be totally down to run a game here on the boards, too, if y'all are intrigued.

I was thinking a post-victory (after Dredmor's defeat) game.


Anyone interested?

 

I'm definitely interested, but I've never heard of Everway. I'm willing to give it a try.

 

Well, it depends on how often one has to be there to play it.
But if being there "3 times a day" (before work, after work, and before going to sleep) is enough, then I'd be glad for a chance to play.

I never played Everway before, but I'm crazy enough to learn how to.

 

I will troll around a bit and observe before I commit to something like this, but I am intrigued.

 

I'd say once a day if Descent Into the Dungeon was any indication. I don't want to commit everyone to a huge time-sink.

 

Then you can count me in.

Do you want us to declare what "classes" (or "character archetypes", I haven't had time to get through Everway's book as of yet since it's monday and I preferred getting some sleep before work [because it's monday]) we want our characters to have here, or is it something for later?

 

I'd be interested in joining provided I can find some information on Everway that won't cost me too much. Cash is everstreched around here. Although I am wondering how many player characters you were planning on having? I've found I don't enjoy large games (6+ players) as much as smaller ones.

Also, a few other questions I'm curious about:

Will everyone be human, or are we abandoning that limitation of classic DoD?

As a follow-up to the above, can I play a Diggle?

I know you've said Everway is fairly freeform. Do you want us to keep skills similar to DoD skill trees/archetypes? Are Expansino/Mod Skills allowed?

Does everyone have to have enormous eyebrows, or can we have some other physical quirk, like a Pinochio nose?

If I play a crafter, will supplies be rationed, forcing me to count every ingot, or will we just assume that you can restock your supplies up to a certain limit "between scenes"?

Are all adventurers assumed to have killed the "same" Dredmor, and thus know eachother before hand, or have we all killed "different" Dredmors, and been doing other things ever since?

Will this take place inside the dungeon or outside?

Slapstick or realistic? I.E., could I beat my head against the wall for comic effect without fracturing anything, or is dropping an Anvil of Krong on a party member something to be avoided?

The above questions are more to help me get an idea of what kind of game you're looking to run, not because I want things a particular way. I'm pretty easygoing about that kind of tihng, I just want to know what our GMs stance will be. I've found it an important thing to work out ahead of time...

 

In any case, Lorrelian should be a Pinochio-Eyebrowed Diggle with the ability to magically drop Anvils of Krong on fellow party members.

I am still somewhat puzzled how this will work. Will this be an Everway game with a DoD theme or a DoD game with an Everway theme? What rules are actually required? I am content to sit back and watch to see if I can figure it out and join in later if possible. (These questions likely sound similar to Lorrelian's questions above.)

 

How does one have Pinochio eyebrows? I assume that's what you meant, since all diggles have a Pinochio nose already. I'd be willing to do all the rest, although as GM Essence might find Krong Magic a little too zany.

But think of the Maslechian potential...

 

That is exactly what I meant. Not the most clever pun but meh...

It all really depends on what them and rules we have to adhere to. If using relatively soft and flexible rules trying to merge DoD and Everway then we could have loads of fun. I tend to think that good roleplaying should *NEVER* be taken seriously. Jokes should be easy enough to determine and actual intentions should be clearly spelled out so there is not a page full of posts discussing what was meant to be done by the PCs.

If I may be so bold as to suggest it, I would use the following syntax to indicate intentions.

*My PC* I try to pray to Krong to drop another Anvil on the pesty lich while my friends take their turn.
*Comments* I hope this works, but if not I guess I wasted the turn. Oh well.

As you can see this makes it painfully obvious exactly what actions I intend, and that I am prepared to use my turn if required to do this. You could probably safely presume a paragraph without the *My PC* tag at the start is nothing more than commentary and discussion.

 

OK, here goes:

Basic storyline:
All of you just killed Dredmor. After the victory scene, however, each of you were sucked into a vortex created by the lich's demise. You all learn as you travel through Mists that the various Dredmors were nothing but a test set up across several thousand dimensions to find Real Men (and Women and/or Asexual Beings etc.) capable doing Great Things. As one of those People, you have been pulled through Time and Space and the Aether and possibly some Phlogiston into the lair of the Three Headed Dragon, Danickdave.

Danickdave needs Real Men to do Great Things on a Level they are Only Barely Capable of Imagining. like Save Worlds and Shit.


Rules:

Character Creation:

Everway is a point-based classless system. All characters have five stats that scale from 1 to 10. Human average for all stats is 3 and/or 0 (see below), and their average total stats is 12. Our Heros start with 24 points, making them Very Powerful.

The Stats:
Earth: Earth represents the character's ability to withstand stuff. Everything from getting cut by a sword to getting emotionally manipulated by an abusive spouse. Earth is passive and (mostly) physical.

Fire: Fire represents the character's ability to impinge his will upon the world in a physical fashion. Running, jumping, diggling, killing, and sharing your passion with others. Fire is active and (mostly) physical.

Air: Air represents the character's ability to impinge his will upon the world in a mental fashion. Understanding complex tools, talking people into things, using ranged weapons, and comprehending foreign languages. Air is active and (mostly) mental.

Water: Water represents the character's ability to perceive the world around them. Intuition, Spot/Search/Listen, feeling spirits, swimming, detecting magic, and sensing danger. Water is passive and (mostly) mental.

Each of these stats is measured geometrically such that if you have 1 point more in a stat, you're twice as good as you were if you didn't. Thus, a 4 fire/3 earth warrior is evenly matched with two 3 fire/3 earth warriors (provided skills don't interfere, see below.)

Elemental stats can't start below 2 or above 7. Each stat also comes with a Speciality -- one activity that the player is considered to be one point better at than others -- and a Weakness: one thing that they're one point worse at. For example, a mage's Fire speciality might be Sprinting, and his Fire weakness might be Melee Combat.


Skills: Skills (also called Powers or Magic) are what separate Heroes from normal people. Skills are free-form abilities that can be as unlimited or as strictly defined as you and the DM are comfortable with. Each Skill can be worth a number of points between 0 and 6. A 0-point skill is something that only barely affects the game except in a cosmetic, awesomeness sense. The more dramatically a skill affects the course of the game, the more points it's worth, on this vague scale:

Major -- Skills can be once major, twice major, or thrice major. The more major a skill is, the stronger it's impact on the game. A non-major skill would be "I can ooze fire from my hands." A once-major skill would be Fire Darts. Twice major: Obvious Fireball. Thrice major: I can conjure a flame that will melt stone and metal as well as annihilate life-based anythings.

Versatile -- Skills can be once versatile or twice versatile. The more versatile a skill is, the more different goals it can accomplish. A non-versatile skill: Obvious Fireball. A once-versatile skill would be Flame Sculpting (directing fire to go precisely where you want it to go, including telling it to not burn something.) A twice-versatile skill would be Elemental Sculpting (the same thing but with any raw elemental material.)

Frequent -- Skills are either frequent or not. Non-frequent skills have some form of significant limiting factor to their use. It can be "cooldown: 32", or it can be "only works under a full moon", or it can be "only works on people who have just injured me".

A power that is thrice-major, twice-versatile, and frequent would be worth 6 points (and be very powerful). This would be the equivalent of "Psionics" -- a single skill that encompasses offensive, defensive, and utility abilities that are essentially all cheap enough to be spammable and includes some very game-changing effects (like Unconditional Love). Equipment (of which there is techincally none in the game) should be represented by powers.

Each player starts with a single 0-point power, and must spend build points for any other Skills he has.


Deciding How Events Proceed: Rather than dice, Everway uses a Fortune Deck. Whenever a player determines what his action will be, three forces come together to determine the result: Drama, Karma, and Fortune. Drama is the DM's fiat, it says "if something is better for the storyline and everyone's entertainment, it should happen". It's balanced by Karma -- which says "people with better numbers should win the contest" -- and the Fortune deck, which has a whole bunch of elements in it that are there to mess with Drama and Karma and keep things unpredictable.

I'll keep my Fortune Deck on my desk and announce which card I've flipped for each event. The Fortune Deck gets reshuffled every scene to keep things from getting too predictable for all you card counters out there.



Cosmology:
Danickdave's lair is a hubworld, a place with doors to thousands of other dimensions. Each of these dimensions ranges in size from Seattleish to Australia-ish, and each of them has some sort of fundamental problem that needs solving. You can expect to spend some days in each world solving it's problem, then heading back to the Lair for your New Mission.

Non-humans are allowed, but characters should at least be humanoid.

Diggles are cool.

Skills can be freeform, but I encourage you to stick with DoD themeology.

No specific traits are required, but at least one caricature-able trait per character is encouraged.

Crafting is probably out, seeing as equipment is kind of hand-waved in Everway. If you want a Power that says "I can (re)build stuff and make it cooler", that's totally kosher, but unless someone spends build points on "I have uber equips", it's going to primarily be environmental and/or for NPCS. On the same note, if you want to play an archer/ninja/whatever, you're basically assumed to have the ammo you need to do your thing.

Slapstick. There will be the occasional gritty moment, but think of this as a DoD-based anime turned RPG.



Any other questions?

 

Awesome! Count me in if you are willing to basically hand-hold a newblet that really does not know Everway.

If you are cool with that and this, could you just pick something for me? It can be an example or something to balance the party. Your call. I could even be the joke character that everyone wonders about. "How did *That* guy kill the lich? Did he accidentally trip over his own feet and land on the lich? How is he even alive?"

This could be useful if everyone chooses roles that are too much of one or a few things and someone needs to fill a particular role. I can role play just about anything. Just tell me what would be best or I will probably be a Chaotic-Neutral and make dumb jokes all the way through.

Are you sure humanoid is required? There should probably be a squid or tentacle monster or something equally stupid just for humor. And by humanoid I presume you mean they should have two arms, two legs, one head and all the other parts required to interact in a reasonably predictable way with normal stuff. A tentacle monster would not fit well in a suit of armor, and would not use a sword/bow/anything else really, so if that is your intent, then forget my tentacle monster idea.

Feel free to exclude me since I have not even downloaded the rule book you posted a link to. I see no reason to join the site to download a simple rule set I will probably understand only half of and when most of the rules will be a merger of DoD theme and the Everway method to an RPG. It does sound very interesting though.

 

EVERWAAAAAAAAAAAY

I will be in like flynn. I'll toss something together soon. Is there an online Everway sheet somewhere?

 

I'd like to play, but the freeform-ness of the skills is a little daunting. Essence, would you be willing to put together a character for me based on the general idea of what I'd like to play?

 

Tell you guys what -- I'm not going to just entirely make up a character for anyone, but I'll definitely do some hand-holding through the skills part. You guys tell me what your concept is, and what you think your rough elemental stats should be, and we'll figure out how to fill in the skills part together.

Here's what a rough Everway character sheet looks like. (I have no idea what happened to the Fire graphic/word, leave me alone.)

 

Crazy Tentacles

2 Earth
6 Fire
2 Air
2 Water

Six Skill Trice Major Fire of Perversion. Twice Versatile, Frequent. (Double edged to balance as you decide.) (12 points?)

This being was lost from it's native plane when the lich died. He is humanoid and male. He is constructed of extra-dimensional squid bolt byproducts. His intellect is questionable at best, and he smells pretty bad too. And he is very weak but pretty much everywhere all the time. Or at least parts of him are...

He enjoys sticking tentacles where they should not be and regenerates constantly since he is usually exposed to intense damage due to being everywhere in a radius around the humanoid body he possesses. He can be a hazard to his fellow lich slayers, but can be used as a living weapon against anything by throwing him against it and observing what horrors ensue.

(I have no idea how this should really work. I expect I have this all wrong, and if not, the idea is dumb anyway. But oh well. I will wait and see what others come up with and see if I can find a niche.)

 

Let's revise that a little. I like the idea.

2 Earth
6 Fire
2 Air
2 Water

Skills:
3: Instant Regeneration (2x Major, 1x Frequent) -- you cannot die to any wound except one that literally instantly kills you. You're still vulnerable to starvation, thirst, drowning, poison, and other forms of non-wound-related death.

4: Limited Omnipresence. (2x Major, 1x Frequent, 1x Versatile) -- you have a body, but it moves through space in strange ways, allowing you to see and interact with objects and people in an ever-shifting area that ranges from a dozen feet to about a mile depending on what the DM remembers and/or can cope with. Sometimes, you even see glimpses of strange alternate realities or possible futures, but these are often more annoying than helpful.

5: Fires of Perversion. (3x Major, 2x Versatile). You can summon forth a grotesque, otherworldly parody of fire that does not burn, but instead causes whatever it alights upon to perform the opposite of it's expected task. Use it on a castle wall, and it will promply fail at all of it's jobs -- protecting the castle, holding up the attached towers, and so forth. When used on a person, the person becomes a horrible caricature of their former selves. You cannot impede another mortal's free will (i.e. they will still do what they please), but they will do so in the most un-them-like manner possible. (i.e. hardcore warriors will try in vain to sneak up and cast spells on you from behind and homeless people will try to command the police to attack you as though they had actual political value.) This ability can only be used under two conditions: when you coalesce your entire body into one place (removing your Limited Omnipresence for a period of time determined by the DM), or on the turn immediately after a sentient mortal creature dies within your reach.


Does that sound like a character you could get behind?

 

I love it! That sounds like the perfect tool for utter chaos in all things!

All shall fear my inane powers of limited DM-approved-only world-wrecking!

*Edit* Since Limited OmniPresence is frequent, and so is Instant Regeneration, does that mean I could cover an area as a missile shield of sorts? Limited OP would certainly mean I could not intercept all missiles, but something large or slow would be hard to not be hit by.

Would Fires of Perversion be an active ability requiring concentration or more passive, like a natural ability? I wonder because with really low air and water stats I would not be too clever and Limited OmniPresence sounds a bit distracting already. I suggest someone take a frail and weak character and someone else a strong character capable of throwing me as needed. This way, the weak one could throw me if I accidentally pervert them.

 

Huzzah.

I want to play with a crafty rogue-ish character centred on throwing weaponry. Thus, "crafting" will be my hand-wave if anyone ever asks "why do you never run out of projectiles?".

Are you the kind of game master to kill off a PC normally, or are you the kind to go for "rendered incapacitated and at other PCs' mercy, unless it was caused by the player's stupidity"?
Also, can the effect of powers be scaled downwards? Like, if I got a power that is thrice major, could it be triggered with a less powerful effect?

You'll get my idea of the character when you answer the two above.