Monday, June 10, 2013

[Magi]Roll/Keep III: Roll/Keep With a Vengeance


 Nemesis, winged tilter of scales and lives,
Immortal Resenter! I sing Thy song,
Almighty Payback on proud-spread wings,
Lieutenant of fairness, Requiter of wrongs.
Despise the lordly with all Thine art
And lay them low in the Nether-dark.
~Hymn to Nemesis, Mesomedes

As I played with this idea of a roll keep system using Fate Core I came to the realization that this would work for my Magi game. I still have a lot of things to work out, but I would like to share what I have com up with so far.

In this game you have two types of skills, dice rolled skills and dice kept skills. Dice rolled skills would equate to attribute in other games, and I may end up calling them that here. I would prefer not to. These are the skills that let you know how many fudge dice you are rolling this turn. There are three of them: Entropy, Stasis, and Creation. When you are in a situation you need to decide how you wish to approach the task at hand. You would choose one of those three things to do so.

Dice kept skills are the skills that let you know how many Fudge Dice you can keep from a given roll. Normally these are what would be called skills, and I may end up calling them that. These skills are seven in total and are: Elan Vital(life), Matter, Forces, Spirit, Affinity(connection), Psyche(mind), and Tempus(time).

When you are doing a normal action where the outcome is both important and in question, you roll a number of dice equal to the Dice Rolled Skill you used, and keep a number of dice equal to the Dice Kept Skill you used. You then add it all up and compare that to a target number or your opponents roll. This is the minimum required success for a non-magical action.

Magical actions will require you to keep a minus dice for every extra level of effect you wish to have. the bigger the magical effect, the more minuses you need to keep in order to power the effect. you can also seek to gain extra effect by taking more minuses than you need to overcharge the roll.

You can manipulate the rolls in a number of ways. Before the dice are rolled you can spend a fate point to set a single die to the side. This is not rolled and is not added to the resulting dice total, but is counted towards the end effect as if it were an effect die. You can also spend a fate point before or after the roll to add a die to the roll, or to keep an extra die(provided you have more dice to keep).

Stunts allow you to alter the rolls in very specific circumstances. Basically they represent specified magic spells or techniques that you have practiced enough to be fantastic at. There are two kinds of stunts. The first kind give you a +2 bonus to a roll when using a specific type of magic. It works alot like how stunts work in FAE. The second type is a lot bigger and as such it counts as two stunts when you take it. It allows you to use Minuses and Blanks for effect dice when you are rolling, but only when using your magic in a very specific way.

The final thing I have for Magi this time is a change in the name. Magi was always a working title, and I have finally come up with one I like a better. I am now christening this project Hubris. I feel that covers the game pretty well, as well as demonstrating my mindset when I set out to do this project. So, let me know what you think of my ideas here. I have not tested them fully yet. I am curious as to your thoughts on the matter.
If you wish to see the previous thoughts I had on Magi here is a list, in order:
The Pitch, where I had a couple of cool ideas
Step One, I start defining the core of the game
Step Two, I try and get the basics of the setting and almost get it
Step Three, Magic, Nodes, and a few more influences
Step Four, First thoughts on character creation
Step Five, More on Nodes and the setting
Step Six, Stress
Step Seven, Character Creation examples
Step Eight, The Nature of Magic
Step Nine, Skill descriptions
Step Ten, Nodes and Supernodes
Step Eleven, First thoughts on Fast vs Slow magic
Step Twelve, Where I say what I am removing after I had tested the game a bit

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