Re: Chargen: Great part of the game, or Greatest part of the game?

[Bees]

What you were posting there was what U had in mind as species, not families.

From wikipedea:

Looking at jack jumper ants
"Family: Formicidae
Subfamily: Myrmeciinae
Genus: Myrmecia
Species: M. pilosula"

Formicaidae is all ants. That's the family/order.
M. pilosula is the type of ant.

Flies is an order - we might want species here
Scorpionflies is also an order, because they're not actually *true* flies. However a more out there order might not need species sub-templates right away.

Fleas is an order, we might want some species here,
Snow fleas area a species of springtail, not an order at all. Acocrding to wikipedia the order would be springtail and snow fleas would be the species.

However one might not need to take a species sub-template, and just play a vanilla "Bee", not a honeybee or a bumblebee, etc?

I was using snow fleas as in the family Boreidae, which are also called snow fleas (in addition to the species of springtail. Two species sharing a common name is well, common. ) I should've clarified, my apologies.

Ants are a mess I would much rather not bother with. I'll try to elaborate with say, flies.

True flies, Diptera, would be the order. Within this, families would be moth flies, hoverflies, bot flies, horse flies, houseflies (not the species Musca domestica, family Muscidae), craneflies, gall midges, two seperate fruit fly families (Tephritidae and Drosophilidae) etc.

Once you've chosen a family, you can create a character, which would truly represent the species level. For example, from family Scarabaeidae within beetles, you may want to make a gigantic-horn filled monstrosity representing rhinoceros beetles (say, the European rhinoceros beetle), or a typical burrowing scarab with drab color, or something yet weirder like Martineziana dutertrei or Euparia castanea that live in ant nests and eat ant larvae and dead ants (possibly by taking sneaking pheromones. ) Or within Family Apidae, whether you're a honeybee, live in a small group of others (all capable of reproduction) like some carpenter bees or alltogether solitary would depend on how many ranks on Eusociality you take.

A glaring problem with that I can see is that if your character essentially becomes a species, which makes building different individuals (or castes in eusocial insects) rather difficult.

[Bogleech]

I'd still like to see the source materials describe species and families scientifically, but similar enough species could just be lumped under their common names. Players could just be assumed to find their exact species if they want to reproduce during the game (I'm not going to judge). For all intents and purposes your character only needs to be defined as "mosquito" or "blister beetle." Anything more specific is more like dressing, really. If different species in one class happen to have radically different abilities in the real world, we could treat them as distinct types.

Fleas are actually now considered highly deviant scorpionflies, and termites are now considered cockroaches (not *close* to cockroaches, but full-blown cockroaches), so going by scientific classification might be arbitrary to gameplay. The insects themselves probably don't care or even know exactly how they're all related except on the outside.

[BrokenMuse]

Super-detailed accuracy is cool and all, but when you guys start throwing around "Euparia" and "Myrmecia" and whatnot, it makes things sound intimidating.

[Bees]

Speaking of Siphonaptera, would they be seperate from scorpion flies, and termites seperate from cockroaches? I don't know if we'd end up allowing for crazy winged hopping mantis-legged scorpion-tailed monstrosities or roaches that spit glue and build gigantic nests.

[Edit:] That works well and saves a lot of hassle of releasing a million errata every year as taxonomists try to sort things out.

[Bogleech]

Yeah, that's just what I'm saying; for the purposes of gameplay, we should probably organize species in a more "layman" way. The insects would almost surely think of termites and roaches as entirely different groups, especially if our own scientists did as recently as the 90's.

Players should only be able to gain hybrid abilities from VERY similar species. A stag beetle could gain additional horns or something, but not borrow a bombardier beetle's chemical weapon. It would be too confusing and a little too imbalanced (think how many skills are exhibited by all the world's beetles compared to all the world's butterflies)

[Naryzhud]

Yeah i'm on the side of having them split up sensibly, not necessarily scientifically correctly. Also i think perhaps a limit of one or two species you can get extra traits from might be a good idea so that we don't get these game breaking monstrosities. So essentially yeah termites and cockroaches should be separate orders.

[Naryzhud]

Ok, going on the let's get shit done thread, i've had a look through this and several other related threads and come up with some character creation bullshit.  Tried to keep it as simple as possible with as many options as we need so let me know what you think.

So without further ado i give you How to create an Arthropocalypse Character in 4 Easy Steps!


1)Roll abilities

Roll 4d10 9 times and discard the two lowest.  Assign them as you want to
the various stats.

Alternate Method: Points buy system

All stats start at 20 maximum of 40 before stat modifiers
Players have 40 points to spend on upping their stats. (Yes it's more powerful
on average, but it's an either or at DM's discretion.)

2)Pick order, apply template
3)Pick species, apply secondary template

Templates looking like:

Order Name

Size
List of Standard Traits and Abilities say 2 or 3
List of Stat modifiers
List of Stat restrictions

List of Species to choose from.

Species Name

List of Stat modifiers and restrictions
Any applicable Standard Traits
List of Traits and Abilities to pick from.  Pick four of either, or at double cost
pick ONE from another species of the same order and two from your own.
List of Restricted Species within order?

4)Pick name and go kick some ass.

Do i really need to explain this part?


Let me know what you think.

[Grawflemaul]

8 stats does seem like a bit much. It's almost into FATAL territory.

I'd rather like to cut them down, but I can't really see which ones could be removed.

[Naryzhud]

As you say, there aren't really any there that are superfluous, and besides, I don't think it'll be hard to keep track of 8 stats, it really isn't that many.

[Quest Lord]

Ignoring certain parts (like snow fleas being unable to survive in hotter regions), should this be divided further into Species, or is family level sufficient?

I think family level is sufficient for most things. We might split it further for ones that show more differences at the species and sub-species level. Whether that should be through an optional third level of templates or via having different templates for different species/subspecies at the same level as order is another question.

However, what you've done there looks great

@Naryzhud
Sounds great to me. I'll leave it up to see if anyone can comment on it for a little, and if there's no criticisms I'll add it to the "done" thread.

[ChickenSpider]

Here's a thought: There could be a built in system for easily creating subspecies within a family. Or, down the road, we could have a book concentrated on introducing these subraces into the game.

[Naryzhud]

@chickenspider that's kind of what i was going for with the species thing, you can create vastly divergent stuff, but it'll cost you more points... or did you mean something else?


@Quest Lord thanks dude

[ChickenSpider]

I beileve we think alike. I had'nt seen your post on this. My apologies for the redundant comment.

[Naryzhud]

No worries Chickenspider, just keep those ideas coming!

[Quest Lord]

@Quest Lord thanks dude

No problemo. Any other comments on Naryzhud's stuff?

[Sasha]

Talk about slow replies...
I think I'd still like to see how well it works in playtesting - eight stats is more than some other systems I've played with - but it's not too much, compared with things like White Wolf (which tend to run at least nine base stats). Count this as support, at least until we see how it works on the tabletop.

[Naryzhud]

Also, while we're discussing size in combat it might be worth taking time to work out how do we set the size for PC's? Are we treating it like any other stat? That could result in some very oddly sized creatures is all.

Perhaps having it set at a certain level per species and only roll 1d10 to add to it?

[Quest Lord]

Also, while we're discussing size in combat it might be worth taking time to work out how do we set the size for PC's? Are we treating it like any other stat? That could result in some very oddly sized creatures is all.

Perhaps having it set at a certain level per species and only roll 1d10 to add to it?

I think most stats will be capped by species/sub-species, etc. So a beetle will only be able to get it's FLEX up to a certain level, and a grub won't bee able to get heaps of carapace, etc.

Talk about slow replies...
I think I'd still like to see how well it works in playtesting - eight stats is more than some other systems I've played with - but it's not too much, compared with things like White Wolf (which tend to run at least nine base stats). Count this as support, at least until we see how it works on the tabletop.

Like everything else, iterative design is the key. Make it, test it, fix it, test it, fix it, test it. . .

[Naryzhud]

Speaking of testing, let's stat up a few more species and we can start...

[Naryzhud]

So how we gonna handle health then? HP? Or shall we do some sort of injury system?

For HP, (vit mod)size dice seems a sensible place to start.

Injury systems can be pretty cool though, perhaps comparing damage to a vitality roll and have the difference make an injury more or less dangerous.

I'll think more on this but let me know what you guys think.

[Quest Lord]

For HP, (vit mod)size dice seems a sensible place to start.

Makes sense. I figure this should do until we get a minimum alpha together. Injuries sound cool, but not sure they really fit with the bugs thing - I figure pulling off legs etc. is something certain bugs do on purpose because that's how they roll more than stray damage from fights.

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