Xathan's Brain

Xeviat · November 27, 2011, 08:21:43 PM

Xathan, the main thing I like about 4E is something you like as well, in a round about fashion. CR in 3E was a nightmare. 4E monster design is stupidly simple, and it is similar enough to things like M&M (another OGL product) that a monster table could be put into OGL and be just fine. I also dislike fractional save progressions (1/2 vs. 2/3 creates an imbalance that grows larger at high levels). Those are the two things I hate the most about 3E (also the fact that someone who hasn't pumped wisdom or spot/listen cannot hope to notice the skulking assassin at level 15).

I agree with the bulk of your posts, so I still feel more than willing to work with you on X20, especially since we're both X's.

Xeviat · November 27, 2011, 08:22:40 PM

WoD and many other systems avoid negative numbers. 0 is inept, 1 is barely skilled, 2 is average. It's a baseline I could get behind.

O Senhor Leetz · November 30, 2011, 12:34:19 PM

Quote from: Xeviat
WoD and many other systems avoid negative numbers. 0 is inept, 1 is barely skilled, 2 is average. It's a baseline I could get behind.

Less math is always something I can get behind.

Xathan · December 01, 2011, 01:23:10 PM

Urg, sorry for the delay in replying here.

Crow: I see your point - so far, I've been pretty lucky in my grows when it comes to "stat clowning" - the only time I've seen or heard of it was in that game where everyone was playing someone with a negative, but it does seem to be problematic enough to consider. My replies below will show a bit more of how I'm thinking about stats (the 0 base), and letting the negative aspects - absentminded professor, socially inept thug - be handled by, well, aspects. Best of both worlds - doesn't create stat clowns as easily and you get to pick you desired competence level based on how you word the aspect.

Sparkle: When has having too much ever stopped me? :P Seriously, though, I wouldn't do both at once, just one sooner and one later - and likely the Asura version first, depending on how inspiration strikes.

As for the dice, that was something I hadn't considered, especially about the bell curve and how it relates to regular d20's harshness. While the solutions you mentioned are workable, there's two problems for me: 1) I'd like to keep the system as a d20 backbone with FATE sprinkles, not the other way around and 2) I'm not a huge fan of non-existant dice, even if (like the d3) they're very easy to simulate using dice that actually exist. :P

That being said, since you're better at this probability stuff, do you think a simple change from d20 to 2d10 would prove effective enough in adding a curve to reduce the harsh outliers but still allowing the same range of outcomes as a d20? Or would the curve not be steep enough to have a significant influence?

Xeviat: Glad we agree on that point - all three of them, actually, since not only do you need to pump spot and listen (2 different skills to be aware someone's sneaking up on you), but for many classes they're cross class (urgh, something else I'm going to get rid of) and I agree with you on fractional saves - and I blame them, in part, for the imbalance and "tiers" we saw in 3.5 and OGL d20 in general. (I'm of the opinion that a fast, agile person should be able to better evade a fireball than a guy wearing a full suit of plate, but evasion and similar class features and feats do a better job of simulating that than fractional saves - and if a significant bonus is needed, a flat increase once or twice would be more balanced and predictable than a fractional one)

both you and sparkle pointed out that negative stats, when it comes to flavor, are just a matter of definition - -2, -10, 0, +2, +10, it doesn't matter - any of those could be terrible if defined as such. It's not about changing the numbers so much as it is about changing the perception of the numbers, and to counteract the annoying associate's in philosophy sound of that, boingy boingy whoopsy stabby.

That being said, going with a 0 is bad rather than average in a d20 base would immediately do a great deal to influence how players used to d20 view that 0, and would feel less harsh than a -4.

@Leetz: Yes. Less math is always good - don't want to accidentally create a system you need a minor in statistical analysis to play.

In General:
I'm currently putting development on my more involved projects - Terra Macabre, TM FATE, and X20 - on hiatus until december 15th, after I'm done with exams. However, I'm not willing to spend the entire time in a creative slump, so during that I'm going to (besides responding to comments on the above 3, since that doesn't take as much thought as developing brand new things) work on some of the other, less involved things here - including laying groundwork for Xeno Fantaseum, which I hope to be able to do soon.

sparkletwist · December 01, 2011, 03:17:22 PM

Quote from: Xathan Of Many WorldsI'm not a huge fan of non-existant dice, even if (like the d3) they're very easy to simulate using dice that actually exist. :P

They do exist. There are some weird triangular dice made that are actual d3's, but, you can also get 6-sided dice that are just labeled 1-3 twice, essentially quite like a Fudge die.
(As an aside, I will take this moment to lament the decline of the twenty-sided d10)

Quote from: Xathan Of Many WorldsThat being said, since you're better at this probability stuff, do you think a simple change from d20 to 2d10 would prove effective enough in adding a curve to reduce the harsh outliers but still allowing the same range of outcomes as a d20? Or would the curve not be steep enough to have a significant influence?

The curve is a straight triangular shape, instead of a bell curve. If you want probabilities clustered in the middle but with more variance than a true bell curve, that is actually just what you want. When rolling 2d10, you have a 1% chance of rolling a 2, and a 1% chance of rolling a 20. This is down from the flat 5% chance you have on a d20. You have a 10% chance of rolling an 11, which is double that of the chances on a d20. The probabilities progress smoothly from there; i.e., a 1% chance of a 2, 2% chance of a 3, 3% chance of a 4, and so on, all the way up to a 10% chance of an 11, and then a 9% chance of a 12 and so on back down.

So this may suit your purposes quite well. :)

Superfluous Crow · December 02, 2011, 01:11:35 PM

The roll I wanted to implement for my own system was going to be 1d6-1d6, which lands in the -5 to +5 range. This corresponds nicely to skills in the 0 to 10 range, since a guy with 10-5 and a guy with 0+5 will tie (although this roll is quite unlikely with a probability of 0.077%), and it also doesn't require fancy dice.

Xathan · December 08, 2011, 02:52:42 AM

@Sparkletwist: Wait...20 sided d10? But what...that is...brain.

QuoteThe curve is a straight triangular shape, instead of a bell curve. If you want probabilities clustered in the middle but with more variance than a true bell curve, that is actually just what you want. When rolling 2d10, you have a 1% chance of rolling a 2, and a 1% chance of rolling a 20. This is down from the flat 5% chance you have on a d20. You have a 10% chance of rolling an 11, which is double that of the chances on a d20. The probabilities progress smoothly from there; i.e., a 1% chance of a 2, 2% chance of a 3, 3% chance of a 4, and so on, all the way up to a 10% chance of an 11, and then a 9% chance of a 12 and so on back down.

So this may suit your purposes quite well.

That's perfect, actually - makes odds easy to estimate but makes the dice a bit more predictable. Will have to make criticals more AWESOME since they're much more rare now, but I'm okay with that since fumbles are equally rare now.

QuoteThe roll I wanted to implement for my own system was going to be 1d6-1d6, which lands in the -5 to +5 range. This corresponds nicely to skills in the 0 to 10 range, since a guy with 10-5 and a guy with 0+5 will tie (although this roll is quite unlikely with a probability of 0.077%), and it also doesn't require fancy dice.

That's actually a pretty good way to handle it - unfortunately, I want the max roll to be a 20 (since I'm calling it X20 after all. :P) and I can't think of a good combination that will get me a range of -20 to +20 (Though that would be awesome if I could figure it out.)

And now for something completely different:

Xeno Fantaseum Brainstorming[note]It's worth mentioning that this is all highly preliminary and written in sand - I'm dumping every idea I have and going to sift through them.[/note]

Design Goals:
-Provide a unique spin on existing fantasy tropes and concepts without twisting it into the realm of unrecognizable
-Create a setting that feels and looks fantastic (in the original sense) without going into the area of creepy.
-Maintain a feel of the alien but avoid the previously mentioned creepy - no "boogerville" setting this time.
-Make magic matter and have a realistic impact on the world without making swords/armor/castles obsolete.
-Biology matters. It can be weird, it can create cool creatures, but I'm going to actually consider evolution in some form...or create my own rules for it.

Inspirations:
-Skyrim. Just...Skyrim. I probably would have been able to hold off working on a fantasy setting for quite some time if it wasn't for skyrim, and it's a great example for the "spin but still recognizable" Goal.
-Judeo-Christian and Celtic mythology, with a bit of pre-Islamic arabic and Egyptian mythology thrown in. Some of my favorite mythologies, and ones I see as rather under-used (Not that they aren't - I've seen Cad Gaelor and Olam, after all) and I'd like to apply my own unique spins here.
-Pretty much every CBG setting I've read and commented on to some degree or another.
-My old settings. Inspiration isn't really the right word here - but I'm cannibalizing all of them that didn't get the axe already for TM and I haven't used yet. :P

Geography:
-Here's where I'm really trying to go to the degree of "Fantastic without creepy"
-However, I'm torn between three "constructs" for the world. Thoughts?
A) The world is a series of "islands" (ranging in size from new Zealand to Antarctica) connected by a series of land bridges that can get as thin as 1 km and a wide as Florida and Italy. This entire web floats but still forms a sphere that the sun orb around, and at the core is a massive, semi-luminescent crystal that makes the nights never get darker than twilight on Earth. The advantages of this are that it looks completely awesome in my head and opens some really interesting possibilities, but with the downside of it does limit the landmass available to a particular cultures, in terms of nomadic bands and sprawling empires. Also, underground areas become much more limited in depth.
B) The world has a similar island-web structure but is instead a dyson web, facing inwards. The advantage is that I can do much, much larger landmasses and still retain the look of option A, but the downsides are I have to come up with some way to do day/night cycles and not go crazy and weird, and it becomes an absolutely enormous area to deal with.
C) The world is a stable sphere like we all recognize, but branching off of the world are "Earth Trees", large petrified remains of enormous prehistoric flora that have "trunks" a mile or two wide, go around 50-200 stories into the air, and have fused, bowl-like branches large enough accommodate towns and cities. Creates a very interesting take on the floating islands (and can easily make these trees larger to accommodate entire nations on their branches) and has the advantage of allowing for cool adventure sites while not removing any of the classic adventure sites and being more familiar to those of us native to Earth, with the downside of I'm having trouble picturing them and if I can't I'll never be able write a believable setting with them.

Superfluous Crow · December 08, 2011, 04:28:37 AM

So you can imagine the crazy landwebs but not the petrified space elevator trees? ^^
I think I'm the complete opposite. I get the general idea of the landweb, but then there is suddenly a giant crystal in the middle, which creates twilight, which means that in between these landbridges you don't find water just empty space, right?I can sort of imagine it seen from outer space, but living on it??
It's kinda cool but also somewhat over-the-top crazy, so it will take some balancing and hard work to keep the suspension of disbelief firmly in place.

The trees I can get behind. Most fantasy players can accept floating islands and these trees are, as you note, basically floating islands with trunks. Imagining it from space is not entirely simple, but think of how it would look standing on the ground: you, a tiny living being, standing in the shadow cast by one of these gargantuan entities. They are like insane sphere mountains. And the ground environment might be very different, with some areas lying in perpetual shade. Do the sphere-things have a local gravity? I could imagine both local (entire civilizations seen living and working from the ground of the mother-planet) and non-local (spherical seas gushing off the equator of tree-spheres in thunderous waterfalls).

In relation to the earth-webs, you might take an ounce of inspiration from the classic D&D plane Pandemonium, which was one of the few places I enjoyed the idea of. Basically a plane of howling winds, eroded tunnels, and non-specific gravity that always pointed towards the nearest surface. Imagine doing your earth-web in three dimensions, making it this eroded lattice of caves, pools, chasms and murderholes.

That being said, I'm personally pretty conservative with how my world looks. Creating a coherent and believable world is challenging enough without twisting the world out of shape and I'd hate to alienate my readers/players before they even get to the setting proper. Now, this is my inner pessimist speaking, so don't take it too much to heart. :p

Kalontas · December 08, 2011, 06:16:23 AM

I think they Dyson web might require more work than an amateur world-builder would be willing to put into - maybe if Wizards or Paizo or someone paid you, but not only would it require seriously thinking of repercussions of a such unusual world shape, its size might just overwhelm anyone who has any commitments other than just its construction. A bit too alien, if you ask me.

SabrWolf · December 08, 2011, 02:07:36 PM

I'm with S. Crow on this one. I think the idea of having giant trees that serve as giant cities or even kingdoms is really cool and, IMHO, a bit more "Fantastic" in the traditional sensibility. Don't get me wrong, the Earth web would be hugely fantastic in a classical definition, but the giant trees sound more traditionally fantastic. Antiquated and almost Tolkien-esque actually.

I'd go for that one if it was me working on this setting with the guidelines you've laid out for yourself.

Xathan · December 09, 2011, 12:51:52 AM

Quote from: Superfluous Crow
So you can imagine the crazy landwebs but not the petrified space elevator trees? ^^
I think I'm the complete opposite. I get the general idea of the landweb, but then there is suddenly a giant crystal in the middle, which creates twilight, which means that in between these landbridges you don't find water just empty space, right?I can sort of imagine it seen from outer space, but living on it?? It's kinda cool but also somewhat over-the-top crazy, so it will take some balancing and hard work to keep the suspension of disbelief firmly in place.

My brain is wired weird, so yup! Crazy landbridge crystal thing is easier than giant trees for me...>.> However, when you put it like that...I can see your point very well.

QuoteThe trees I can get behind. Most fantasy players can accept floating islands and these trees are, as you note, basically floating islands with trunks. Imagining it from space is not entirely simple, but think of how it would look standing on the ground: you, a tiny living being, standing in the shadow cast by one of these gargantuan entities. They are like insane sphere mountains. And the ground environment might be very different, with some areas lying in perpetual shade. Do the sphere-things have a local gravity? I could imagine both local (entire civilizations seen living and working from the ground of the mother-planet) and non-local (spherical seas gushing off the equator of tree-spheres in thunderous waterfalls).

....Sold. That mental image is awesome. I hadn't even considered local gravity for the trees, and now I find the idea insanely tempting - I just need to see if I can work with that without breaking my own suspension of disbelief. If not, then I'll keep the gravity what I had planned, where the branches are more like bowls instead of spheres and the civilizations exist within them.

QuoteIn relation to the earth-webs, you might take an ounce of inspiration from the classic D&D plane Pandemonium, which was one of the few places I enjoyed the idea of. Basically a plane of howling winds, eroded tunnels, and non-specific gravity that always pointed towards the nearest surface. Imagine doing your earth-web in three dimensions, making it this eroded lattice of caves, pools, chasms and murderholes.

Pandemonium was my favorite DnD plane too, and I've long considered a setting built in it. Now what you have me pondering is doing the trees on the surface and Pandemonium Web on the inside...in fact, that might be incredible.

QuoteThat being said, I'm personally pretty conservative with how my world looks. Creating a coherent and believable world is challenging enough without twisting the world out of shape and I'd hate to alienate my readers/players before they even get to the setting proper. Now, this is my inner pessimist speaking, so don't take it too much to heart. :p

I'll admit that's something I'm worried about. There's a chance I might ditch the weird geography altogether...but I love weird geography so much. In theory. In practice, however, you're right - it's so much harder to write, play, and believe in a world where geography and physics are told to go sit in the corner.

Quote from: KalontasI think they Dyson web might require more work than an amateur world-builder would be willing to put into - maybe if Wizards or Paizo or someone paid you, but not only would it require seriously thinking of repercussions of a such unusual world shape, its size might just overwhelm anyone who has any commitments other than just its construction. A bit too alien, if you ask me.

Yeah, it's probably too big for a one person job.

Quote from: SabrWolfI'm with S. Crow on this one. I think the idea of having giant trees that serve as giant cities or even kingdoms is really cool and, IMHO, a bit more "Fantastic" in the traditional sensibility. Don't get me wrong, the Earth web would be hugely fantastic in a classical definition, but the giant trees sound more traditionally fantastic. Antiquated and almost Tolkien-esque actually.

I'd go for that one if it was me working on this setting with the guidelines you've laid out for yourself.

Glad to hear we're all in agreement on that! :D Question: Crow floated the idea of no weird geography, and I'm pondering it. Thoughts?

[/quote]

SabrWolf · December 09, 2011, 03:33:11 PM

Quote from: Xathan DovahkiinQuestion: Crow floated the idea of no weird geography, and I'm pondering it. Thoughts?

I think your question needs a bit more clarification. In your initial Xeno Fantaseum Brainstorm you mentioned 3 options for geography. Web-world, dyson sphere world, and tree world. Since tree world seems to be the general consensus (so far), what was it that you wanted to discuss? (lol)

Xathan · January 09, 2012, 02:04:50 AM

First of all, on Xeno Fantaseum (a month later) I'm going with the tree world: more on that later.

However, what I wanted to talk about for a moment is why I build. It's something I've been giving some thought to, details I've been niggling at, but it boils down to two things:

I used to build just for fun.

Of late, I've been thinking about getting published way too much.

The latter has been killing me. I worry about OGC, I worry about copyright, I worry about a number of things that take the fun out of building. Then I take on too many projects (another problem entirely) and that leads to writer's block and eventually to me vanishing from the boards yet again.

As such, I've made a couple of decisions.

First of all, I'm cutting back my projects. Xeno Fantaseum and Terra Macabre are going to be my two settings, with a tertiary setting being a classic(ish) 3.5 dnd setting since my players want a game set in that and I'm nothing if not an obliging DM. Instead of making X-20 as a full brand new system, I'm going to do a rules system that is a way to incorporate Aspects, Consequences, and Maneuvers into d20 with a couple minor adjustments to bring it in line with Pathfinder and bring monster/encounter design in line with 4e - much smaller scale and much less work than what I had originally planned. Once that's hammered out, I'm going to do something I haven't done in ages: d20 class and race design (keeping in mind the modifications I've made). Why? Because in thinking about d20 again, I remembered something I had forgotten: I freaking love the d20 system, for all of its flaws. An added benefit to this is a new class/race/feat set/whatever is a fairly simple project, no where near as involved as a new setting or system - in fact, I think every project on the CBG I've actually finished has fallen into the above categories and really required minimal effort.

I'm also not going to worry about if a setting/ruleset/concept could get published. It's killing my creativity and, unlike when I first started worrying about that, I'm no longer interested in professional game design: the way my life is headed right now, I'm going towards a career I'm going to enjoy and am no longer worried about become a professional game designer. Anything I "publish" will likely be a PDF through Drive Through RPG that's free, and if I do that it's going to be way, way, way down the road. Until then, I'm taking back the mentality of "I do this for fun, not as a third job", which should increase my productivity dramatically.

In the coming weeks, expect to see the rough sketch for the simple version of what X20 is going to be (as well as d20/Pathfinder/X20 compatable classes, feats, etc), an update to Terra Macabre in terms of cultures and getting the setting to the point where it's playable and I'm happy with it, and laying the groundwork on XF. Thank you all for sticking with me on this, and I'm looking forward to designing and posting.

LD · January 16, 2012, 02:00:43 AM

Good idea to go ahead with doing it for free. If your career involves govt. work or many companies, then you won't be allowed to earn income from other jobs/sources (At least without approval... and with govt. work that may be unlikely).

Sadly, few things can be sold at a profitable margin to make setting up a company and dealing with taxes, etc. worth the trouble. And even those that are sold don't support people too well. Paizo's lucky... but TSR went into bankruptcy, and most 3PP barely make enough to pay 2 peoples' salaries. :o.

But all is not a loss. There is the chance that if you publish it for free now, kicking around ideas and it does get popular, then someone might actually pay you to develop something more involved. That chance is small, but it's like what happens with some E-book designers. You create a market and make a name for yourself, then you can sell yourself and your later, newer, better work at a higher rate!

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