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Created Wednesday 09 August 2023

Attack of the Really Big Space Monster: The Game

[And yes, whatever the title actually is, it must be that corny.]

I'm thinking of making this not into a book. (No, I mean not only knowing it'll never amount to anything, but also orienting this towards a final product isn't a book.)
A role playing game.

With Chaoism-like skills and combat mortaility. (You can get killed in any fight there. There's always a chance. Which is why Stormbringer worked so well there.)

But with not only scenarios but scenes.

Yeah, one of those over-produced dungeon packs that came out when AD&D really had jumped teh shark. Drzid Duardin or some shit. Those overcompensating scenario packs.
That were still better than the giant campaign. Just a meat grinder. Where the only strategy needed was to leave the dungeon for a bit. Gygax's invention: Enemy fodder that doesn't spread the alarm of your arrival.

That being the key to combat here. Positioning. Because detection is hard, but weapons now so lethal that you only ever have three HP ("wounded," "severly wounded," and "somehow crippled"). Even in relatively close combat (e.g., urban warfare), it's still always about detection.

Like Fei's Great Lunge exemplifies with needing to think and move fast and think as far ahead of ambient information as you can. Know where to aim. And stretches this vast and with melee reflexes this fast, key to combat here is being in the right place at the right time. If you hit, you may well win. If you also aren't hit, you may also not loose.

So combat mechanics is a small game of positioning. In a role playing game, a game of chess with turn timers determined by the situation in the game (maybe having iniative means your turn 1 is X longer).

I'm obviuosly both far from saying exactly what that'd look like and no where hearer to where it would ever matter, but a board game of sorts, with peices that do indeed represent players on the field (so, yeah, I guess this is also one of those miniature-base games I never really got into either), and so you determine a bit which characters die (well, "enter into combat" which is something like a modifiable D10 against 3 HP)

The idea is this: It's not that you have 3 HP per unit (or whatever, maybe Haggs have, like thousands of regenerable HP---a challenge to degrade over not a battel scenario, but a campaign; so, yeah Hagg battles must be played as campagins. Their creation, estblishment, and dominance all take at least one battle scenario each, and can share HP across battle scenarios. Haggs and Blinker Blaster Bases both are fought over campaigns; maybe different-sized campaigns (but that, sure, still need to have a common pattern they can be laid against: You can play over-lapping campaigns: If there is a Human player and a Blattid-Buzzkills Band player, they can play those campaigns on the same turns as the other player.
- And yeah, I think here the Humans have a bit of an advantage. Haggs only take 3 scenarios to build while the BBBs take 4. The Humans can thus complete a Hagg---reach system dominance---sooner. The BBBs aren't completely at a disadvantage, though: Just like with NP in tactical battles, the player can slide HPs around, not only between turns in a tactical battle, but across campaign scenerios. They can load dice so high, you can't loose.
  - But, of course, there are diminishing returns: Jumps in the costs of moving HP. (Or not, maybe that just makes it more complicated than better. Yeah, scrathc, that, free transfer of, sure, opportunity credits. Yeah, OPs.) So you can OP a situation. Have one piece on an otherwise dominated board---like one side having lost all pieces but the king and the other side none---and OP his HP (sorry, but that worked out well) so high, on every turn, you somehow miss capturing the king.
    - But, to play the full game, you also have to "momentario" those attacks. Role play out how the heck the king did that. But where more and more unrealisitc things must be accepted given the number of OPs in use (max OPs is 9; this is all d10; this is astronomy; the system is numnbered in degrees magnitude.).

Degrees magnitude

It's a D10 system. Representing log₁₀. The difference in a score in the game---between a 3 and a 4, say---is meant to represent one order of magnitude. Something changing enough in quality that is changes in quantity. "Wounded" versus "severly wounded." But it also represents a D10 role. So, for what it's worth, it's a log universe decided by "decile" probability. The game mechanics are geared to there being a few really improbable events happening. But for there then to be scenarios were nothing usual happens; you each loose X HP (X bveing whatever would have been the numbers of peices eacxh side would have, no other mods. So, if at that location you had 3 pieces, they each have 3 HP. No other HPs or OPsa could be added to or moved from that scenario.

Battle Play

Yeah, this is the part that'll probably never be made. Not by me, and that narrows it down quick. But still a miniature-based board game.
When you play "nornal" roleplay---interact with other players & NPCs, do things in the world, even campaign---you just RP as usual. But any time there is a battle, you've got to stop any other play and lay out the battle. Battles are serious. Maybe it's VP not HP, but in many cases of battles it's this unit and its lives. You've got to set those pieces up ("position" them in some way) and play the game out, or tell some computer to fight it for you and tell you who won and with what cost. (And, yes, presuming players include Deciders, the AI the player uses to calculate that battle is the one you're Second-Avatar to. Most do about the same, but some---like H0---do a heck of a lot better.

(But, yeah, the makers of the game---I mean the actual board-game I for one won't ever make---ought to have the actual game playable through differents Ais. All Human players get an Ai, but you've got to somehow be a "spwcial player" to have more than a 9° Ai---an Ai that has a 10% chance of moving 1 OP. That's the Ai that is available to any Human anywhere (well, within any Human-occupied space. Any other space, there is either at least a 8° Avatar spent for and sent, or there is no Ai in play for Humans.

Oh! That was it. Phew. Moments that must happen. In the design of any campaign (i.e., a "campagin" is in part defined by having these things) must be X number of scenarios / scripts, scenes, that must happen.

Yeah, some of those are those telling stories I'll never write.

But part of those are also things like, "at some point, a car crash must kill an unexpected character" (and the GM, of course, decides if that moments was good enough or not. In which case that player can, sure, try again, but it's got to now be an order of magnitude better for him to still have a shot.
Storied Moments. Sure, some I may eventually actually do. Things like, "The Common Populous rise up in a reallly cheesy and Hollywood-ended / Peotic Justic way to succeed in a way that more helkps than hurts them," Kitune's Moment that Must Happen. Even a 9° Kitty has to have some moment end up like that; and that can matter well- and cleverly-played.

Moments that Must Happen don't have to be used in combat, but since the winner and looser of a campaign---a loss that comes with the loss of 1 Strategic Point (the winner wins not loosing any of hos precious SPs)---is determined in OP scores, you want to use maybe make sure something happens when you need it to happen.

Anyway, battles are decided by the "board game provisionally now just bad Go" are decided by points. The most points the winner.

A side's base points---ones they can't have taken away---are their HP. A side has 3 HP for each character, when a given character's HPs have been lost to capture on the board, that character is dead in the story.
A side also gets a certain number of OP points to play with as well. (Ideally, each OP is indeed a wirtten moment in the story, which is why I'll never write this into a real book) These can be used (and lost to catpure (but not otherwise gained by the other side)) in a given scenario. How many that are available is decided before the scenarios is played out.
The winner of a round is determine by the side that captured more of the other side's stones, but didn't loose the match; winning an actual game of Go trumps loosing more stones.

So, the HP you loose in a round doesn't get you closer to loosing the sceanrio; you can expend those character points all you want to save your OPs. But once a character looses the 3 HP, they are out of the story (including being unable to "be characters in" any subsequent moments, scenarios, etc. There are no ghosts here. But, then you kill off your caste. And you caste includes characters with Moments that Must Happen. They don't happen, you loose all of the OPs in the Moment (which is usually 1, yeah, but sometimes more) plus one. This is deducted from their final campaign score.

O.K., that's enough. More than enough. Let's try this out.

The OP of an Ai

Death comes to where we were, not where we are. Buzkills have Blinkerblasters; Blattids have (in addition to Buzzkills) information penetration. Humans have Ais. They find new ways. Some of which are quite good. THey can generate oportunities. These sometimes come with weird effects, though; teh OPs are given a weird flavor. When tehy are expended, they trigger that effect. These side effects are sometomes glorious, but more often mild bad.
This might already be too granular, but the role of an Ai in a scenario's OP is based on a probability. Well, a reduction of probablity: The level of the highest Avatar that appears anywhere in that sceenario is used to modify the OP of that whole scenario. If there are 20 OP for a given scenario, they are usually divided evenly between players

(any equalities are rounded, so net less 1 OP to one player)

but Ais can move OPs from one side to the other.

Role D10
If there is an Ai whose degree is less than the die role, then let that Ai player arrange themselves up to 10 - Ai° OP not only across moments in the scenario, but also across players in the scenario.

So, yeah, essentially a player with an Ai roles a die against there Ai for more points for their side:

Example: Min has a 2° Ai in this scenario. There's a Decider in play, whose comes with their assigned 2°. She roles a 3, which is higher than her Ai°, so her side gets 8 OP and the other side(s) has 8 fewer OP. If there is one other side, they loose 8; two other sides, they each loose 4. Three other sides, they each get 2 (always round inequality one point down).
If Min had roled a 1 or a 2, though, she would not have been able to move any OPs. So, yeah, I guess I should have said it was essentially a skill shot.

OPs gained/moved by Ais often come with a weird flavor. Thinking maybe something like:

Roll	Effect
1	When this OP is used, the next D10 turns are turned into OPs for those players. All moves during those converted points are fee: They cost no points. The OPs created this way are flavored XXXX
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9	No effect
0	No effect

The Grey Wolf's is "There must be an exceptionally-well choreographed stoner scene that beats me writing this with Min to my left, sitting in my partial darknes, getting now that I'm stoned, and reading through her citizenship materials. No time during this scene can Min be hurt."

The Angel's Hostage's is "There must be a moment when 'everyone is so happy, but me.' When Min looses out somehow. But as adorable and innoucuous way you can. And the better you can make for the argument, the less damage you hvae to do to Min."

And to continue that special role, really, any damage done to Min in a scenario is also deducted from the other teams after the final score tallying (so, yeah, I just invented "score tallying" and broke it at the same time---the final score tally being that time when the scenario is ended and you at each side's final OP score, to see who won the points for that scenario).
Anyway, any player whose characters were in a battle in which Min is damaged must subtract 1 from their total OP that scenario. As always, both sides loose in a tie.

Just Go with It

No, you know what the stand-in is until anyone else cares to do better (and please do if you can!)?
Go. A game of Go where each stone is a character in the scenario. (Any character that influences as scenario must be included. And each of those assigned to a given stone. You not only play stones, but stones that are captured by your opponent die in the story somehow in that scenario. Role play that out.
And you only have as many stones as HP plus OP. ~~(So, maybe a different-sized board.)~~ No, normal-sized board, but any game where there just aren't enough stones on the baord to declare a winner are declared a "plot-specific draw" (no events other than those already spent on a scenario can be affected by what happened during that scenario), outside, of course, of any characters lost through placement on the board.

(Put in a super-secret plance no one will find, like right here, to scribble: "You know, Samuels never said whetheror not you have to follw a certain order to the characters that are assigned stones in the game." "Yes," I thnk (meaning me), "I never do say, do I? The implication was that that's one of the basic things a group of people must decide when sitting down to play this game: Do we let players choose the order of their characters on the board? When and how? Randomly from a bag? At the beginning as they line up their stones in their row? As they play them, deciding who is the stone now being played? At the end, when they about to collect their stones off the board? You decide!" Ha! Ha!)

But it does not have to be Go. Really, maybe even a simple card game would be better. Magic-away or whatever. As king as some chits in play can be "captured," anything is fine by me. As long as there are no ads, and it's fun to play repeatedly, or do well enough maybe hitting auto-complete.

And these games can be furhter changed/constained by scenario rules. For example, that no battle can last longer than 3 rounds. I.e., when tow sides clas but back down.
But the point is also not to have every sceario a slog-fest. Most scenarios have no HP in play. (In fact, each scenario has a HP range

World's End: Maybe a Coin Isn't Always a Coin

Maybe it's a D10. 1 — 5 the Humans win, 6 — 10 the Blattids win. This roll is modified. Let's figure out how (eventually)!