Oh boy, it’s that time! To groove to weird music, and muse out a game design idea. Had a fun brainwave of “shadowrun, but you play a fixer coordinating a dossier of runners, matching the archetypes for teams with a wild mix of weird classes” And hey, that’d be a fun thing to use my Penumbra setting on, so how might this play out?
Yup, Mewgenics got me toxoplasmosis, so now the brainworms demand I ramble about a roguelight tabletop tactics game of high tech fantasy heists gone wrong, Cohen Brothers movie style.
So you start off with creating a fixer profile, and then generating oh, a dozen shadowrunners randomly [[maybe 2 per archetype]] and they have various rivalries/affiliations/synergies to mind.
You pick 5 shadowrunners, er, I mean, Adventurers, yes. (this could vary, but fixed numbers are more likely, mewgenic/darkest dungeon style)
So what classes are your adventurers?
I kind of like by stat, and probably play a bit more loose fun with the rules, it’s a vague mashup of D&D and Shadowrun mostly aiming for rule of cool and cute monsters gunning eachother down.
Thinking a magical and tech option for each stat, so 12 vague archetypes.
Str is your soldier, sammy, weird melee freak, or stuff like monks, physical adepts and chi channelers. Lots of “Go hit for obscene damage, throw cars, make big leap attacks.”
Dex gets to be the ninjas, rogues, thieves and other silliness. Dancer and maybe even bard, very evasion tank goofiness. The usual cheese >.> <.< It’s all about what class would ‘abuse’ dexterity stat for it’s effects.
Con is your tanks. Big beefy guardians, paladins, and other defensive class vibes. Barbarians too, sometimes channeler types could be cool. The ‘unleashes inner demon’ is a cool magical idea.
Charisma is your fucking spoony bards, warlocks, and hipster sorcerers. The cool kid’s club. Non magical is the face, probably lots of charm, distract, confuse mesmer bullshit. I could see drone riggers being here, command presence over drones/summoner types too.
Intelligence gets you the hacker, artificer half of the tech side. Fecking nerds. Blue mage type wizards go here probably.
Willpower is the surprise, it’s not wisdom class. This one’s probably the more “hmm” for class, though I could see rigger actually, mechsuit even? Heck yeah =D And divine caster, nature/healer nerds, but maybe some cool surprise domains like trickster.
So what’s a class got.
Uh, probably all six major stats. These form your main dice pool, cause I want this to be a tabletop game too. =D something a bit beer and pretzelly, but hopefully enough random tables to make you laugh at some crazy power combos. Stat spreads will be a big thing, as probably races play a fair amount into a lot of them. EG, Moles are Tough, Strong, but not as dextrous. Adventurers naturally roll into highest stat class? (eg, you’ll find tough and strong class moles, magical and non, but no thief/rogue/dancer moles typically. Having some variation in dice polls +-1 seems like a good way to mix things up. Some of this may be “how to balance Astral Ogre (10’ hippos with bulletproof hide and an instinctive knowledge on firearm engineering and all the science needed to get to make firearms) vs Gnome (uh, small, low light vision, talk with burrowing mammals?)” =D
One is there being a big and small passive pool, and if there’s not a racial passive (eg, being a THICCC Booty hippo monster that can deadlift semis) then a class can get a big passive that does big changes. This leads to some races being kind of specialists. Giff are always gonna be action hero assholes, getting lots of little moves and pushes and shrugging off blows as a tank should.
Then I’m thinking your main choices.
Primary attack
Your main attack. Probably a gun. Sometimes a cantrip. You can always use this, or it has a lot of ammo (6+)
Secondary power: something you can do, sometimes an attack, sometimes a passive or otherwise differing mechanical thing. (minor illusion, vicious mockery, guidance, hack, command, etc)
Limited power: Your cool thing, but it’s 1/battle. Go FULL AUTO! Firebal! Transform into a dragon. Barbarian RAGE! It’s your main gimmick, sometimes needs a charge or some other requirement.
Passives and traits. A lot of racial ones, oh boy! Mo’bolds can burrow 2 squares. Gorgon petrifying stare. Centaur trampling, satyr jumping. All the cool monster tricks go here.
Hmm, rolling around 6 dice for TN 5 isn’t too bad. Once question is, do we use SR stat mods, I actually had a funny idea of using the shadowrun 3 dice mechanics. Variable Target, starts on 4. For 7+ you reroll all 6s. Rules as written you added the next roll, so 7 always was just 6. I had it as a 1 failed, so the TN is more 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9… you could have it as “must beat the TN past 6. So TN is >=4 to 6, and then >7+ cool!
So the insane choice. Using the L, M, S, D, 10 squares, X overflow damage is in 1, 3, 6, and 10 box increments. Every two successes stages up an attack. And every two defense successes stage down.
Generally… core TN to hit = distance, cover, modifier bullshit (smoke fire, gremlins, hacked, smartgun, etc)
Attack power - armor = TN to save. So evens is 4. This does mean numbers have to be pretty small, or gonna be lots of 2s or 6+s. I think I used a slightly wider spread? I’ll hav to check my umbrafall notes =D but does mean usually attacks are 4+ more than the armor expected to defend against it. And usual ratings are like, 2/4/6/8 for weak, average, good, excellent? So attacks are like, 6, 8, 10, 12 power.
Using the opposing stat as armor is a good idea. Stats usually attack stats? (Str says, save vs strength or take buttloads of damage?) leads to some rock paper scissors of trying to match to their cleanest kill? Though various saves probably as well, toughness saves for just straight being shot, etc. I like how this can lead to some crazy BS. Especially if you get stat manip/attacking >:3
Damage code. Attacks can be rated as light, medium, serious, or deadly. This is how much the damage attack starts at. In reality you end up like “ok, I’m at Deadly+X And so you need X+2 saves to not die =D but at Serious a lot of units are ready to leave
There is some thought to a morale system too, with various ways to demoralize/disable without killing. It’s that kind of weird game =D
SR had it as “complex action, or 2 simple, and you could move depending on the action taken. I had a fun idea that was “two actions, or you could combine two of the same into a super action.
SO move, attack, or power, and you can mix up 2, or do a super move, attack, or power. Cool, this lets some moves get weird, like, I’m shit at simple, but haha, get wrecked full action.
Probably some things play with this more, giving bonus actions. Free actions was the SR term. Little hops, heal 1s, shield 1s, etc. “Cantrips” is the trope term.
There’d be some sort of simple defense pool. I do kind of want to figure out how to balance the combat pool idea. You have a pile of extra dice, and you can use them to protect against damage, or increase your attack. Mostly how to balance how many you get, probably part of class balancing.
Classes should be balanced enough there’s not a ‘oh god that class’ (too good or too weak) getting stuck with a moogle bard once ina while can be fun if they can pull off cool tricks.
In a way, almost like balancing fighting characters, at least at start. You should be able to occasionally land into the menagerie of gear, enchantments, cyberware, and vehicle mods and what have you occasionally just BUST OPEN a team. But heck yeah. Enjoy that moment you got the god run and break the game open.
We want to strip a shadowrun down to a super bare minimum. So probably things like “reach objective.” with chance to do some stealth/setups on opponents. Playing a touch puzzle game seems a fun vibe. defend, attack, Escort, breakthrough tend to be the kinda, big 4. Protect something, destroy something, get something from a to b, get yourself from a to b.
One funny idea was some extra objectives. Street Sammies can get bonus bounties for kills, or maybe a specific unit. Mages want to see some magical BS (or some encounters can be real hard countered with a magic, good ol elemental weakness), hackers need to hack something. Riggers wanna go someplace to get the sensor suite or can hack all the cameras and get you a full map.
A fun idea would be stealing Mewgenics wholesale. A skillcheck that influences the next encounter. So there’s random gangers as a hostile 3rd party, or there’s a ton of extra corporate NPCs making it more cluttered, or you get a bonus or penalty to the situation.
Of course, systems will start small. Very easily one to make a few example class characters, and then expand out as things get figured out.
