Another Celebrity Gamer: Kagami Yoshimizu

Something completely random: I’ve become a huge fan of Lucky Star, so along with the now 5 manga volumes I picked up the “Lucky Star Public Guide Book,” a guide to the manga (and other associated stuff) for hardcore fans in a manga format, similar to Love Hina 0. In the back there’s an interview with him. It turns out that he got into TRPGs in middle school (when he was enjoying the Lodoss novels and accidentally bought a replay), and started playing them more seriously in high school. All this got mentioned in the interview because when it came time to put together a 4-koma manga he was having a hard time coming up with characters, so he opened up his RPG scrapbook and pulled out some of his characters. It doesn’t mention what TRPGs in particular they came from, though it shows very tight pictures of the character sketches from the character sheets and three of the four have a box for “運命” (unmei/fate) underneath. The interview doesn’t really get into much detail about his TRPG habits, and whether he still plays or has since given it up a la Stephen Colbert. Still, especially in light of the fact that his manga is one of the key inspirations for a game I’m working on, I found it interesting.

Thrash 2.0: Home Stretch (of Lap 1)

The other day I realized something about Thrash. Something about the game inspires people to form strong and at times divided opinions on things. Maybe it’s got the cumulative opinionation (I think I just invented a word) of both RPGs and video games. I really do genuinely appreciate getting feedback on my games–Filip in particular has been tremendously helpful of late–but thinking back to all the discussions on the Thrash mailing list I can’t help but think that as fun as all of that was, at times there were problems with the signal to noise ratio there. I’d say “I’m thinking of switching from 1d10 to 2d6″ and a big argument would follow. Certainly, trying to get the community to collectively figure out where to take the game was an abject failure. I really wonder how the FFRPG guys did it.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything like that. If the above has slowed me down any, the majority of the 5-year delay still falls squarely at my own feet. When doing creative stuff, I have to take my own twisted personality into account, and remember that a lot of the time I work best in isolation.

So, right now I think I need to just hunker down and finish up the rest of the current draft. Barring any sudden amazing blasts of inspiration, I pretty much just need to finish filling out the less interesting bits of what I’ve already got laid out. The base character creation rules are done, maneuvers are pretty much complete (I’ll be needing people to look to see if any need to be added), the combat rules are complete, the Destiny rules need the wording cleaned up at most, etc. The weapon rules are still a little sketchy, and there’s a decent amount left to write in the GM section (though that’s mostly fluff and advice). From there I’ll have my local friends look at it (especially fighting game fanatic Suichiro), and then put a version up on the web for all to see.

Thrash 2.0: Destiny

I get happier with Thrash 2.0 the more I work on it. Things are just generally fitting together really well. The new maneuver design system seems to work just fine so far, and I’ve got the Special Maneuvers all taken care of (though there wound up being more Support Maneuvers than Specials, and only about 6 Supers, though most of them are meta-things used to make supers based on your special moves). Although I mentioned this before (a while back), the new AP system has allowed me to finally get combos and counters figured out in a way that looks fairly solid, for which I’m immensely glad.

I also keep coming up with rules options — three pages so far — that I’m sticking into the playtest version for people to look at and mess with to their heart’s content. I wound up creating a “power level” rule similar to Mutants & Masterminds, to set and gradually raise caps for various character traits.

The major thing I’m still working on figuring out is the details of the game’s more narrative-oriented aspects. I’ve added “Destiny points” to the game, which do double duty as XP and meta-game Drama Point type stuff. My inspiration for this melding of two elements is Truth & Justice. The game starts out with just adding clever rules for superpowers to the PDQ system, but its implementation of Hero Points goes a long way towards adding some of the feel of superhero comic storylines to the game. The question is, what do I need to do to give more of a fighting game/fighting manga feel?

Fighter Nature is sort of like T&J’s “Motivations” in that it’s going to describe the fighter’s reasons for fighting and affect the flow of Destiny points. I’m still working out what I want to do with Story Hooks though. These can be things like having a murdered family member to avenge (Chun Li), being famous enough to attract challengers (Ryu), or having been created by a secret organization as a fighter (Cammy). Stuff like that. I’m thinking of taking a cue from The Mountain Witch and giving the player the power to introduce things related to the Story Hook into the game (albeit with a Destiny point cost, and a potential for a Destiny point reward).

Some of the other uses for Destiny I’m thinking about include:

• Second Wind (get some Health back)
• Digging Deep (get a bonus on a roll)
• Duel (force someone to have an uninterrupted one-on-one fight
• Epiphany (suddenly figure out a new move pertinent to the situation at hand)
• Fury/Quiet (reach a new plateau of rage or meditative calm to be more effective for one scene)

Thrash: Not Dead, I Guess

After it coming up in an e-mail conversation, and being mentioned in this RPG.net thread alongside Final Stand, I think I got sufficiently embarrassed over the fact that I’ve been failing to work on Thrash 2.0 for 5 years that I got inspired, and came up with some new ideas for how to handle and fix some of the things that have been bothering me. I’m still keeping the majority of the stuff from my last big push to work on it (last year), but changing some fairly major things too.

The main thing is that I’ve come to dislike systems with lots of fiddly points to spend. Now, I admire what’s been accomplished with stuff like Hero system and Mekton Z Plus, but I just have a very low tolerance for dealing with that kind of stuff personally. The earlier draft had characters spending pools of points on Attributes, Techniques, and Everything Else. I’ve decided to nix that last category (for which PCs originally would spend a big wad of Character Points) in favor of something less granular. Characters get a set number of selections for Maneuvers and Supers (by default, 3 and 1 of each to start with), and a set number (10) of “Support Traits,” which are a catch-all for Edges, Skills, Maneuver Upgrades, Support Maneuvers (which are where you get your movement and defensive maneuvers mostly), and Story Hooks.

I’m still working out the details of Story Hooks, but I want them to be something like TSOY Keys and the whatever-they-were-calleds in Weapons of the Gods. Basically the player has an opportunity to “buy in” to storylines ahead of time, and get extra XP for it. I’m also thinking of brining back that “Fighter Nature” idea I had a while back, which is basically where you pick an archetype that represents your character’s basic motivation for being a martial artist and going out to enter tournaments and whatnot. I was originally going for more of a purely “gamey” design, but I think I want to also include at least some stuff that points the characters towards getting into fighting game/fighting manga style storylines.

I also got sick of dealing with so many fiddly bits for maneuver design, and decided to come up with the simplest system possible. So, although the game still has Action Points and whatnot, its maneuver design rules are more akin to BESM Weapon Attacks. You take a base maneuver, and add Enhancements and Drawbacks, up to a certain limit, to get what you want.

So, at this point the final version of Thrash 2.0 is looking like a crazy mashup of The Shadow of Yesterday, Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, and Cinematic Unisystem.