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The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 7:15 pm
by kylesgames
So a lot of modern games have a sort of "oh crap" resource that allows characters to excel in emergencies by spending a point of something or other that gives instant power (e.g. a reroll, reversing the die result, avoiding damage, or so forth).

In PROJECT HAMMER (it actually has a sort of formal working title now, but I like all-caps), that's not a character-specific thing.

Characters have the ability to Strain their Gear. This includes their personal gear, stuff they've acquired in their travels, and so forth. Straining gear does three things:
• It lets you use it without any penalty from existing damage.
• It provides twice the normal bonus (e.g. double damage, twice as many possible attacks, double Action Roll bonus)
• It immediately damages the gear by one point.

Gear goes on a scale from 1-5 points. The first two points of damage have no mechanical effect. The third gives a -5 penalty to any test with the gear, and the fourth gives a -10 penalty (this is a relatively minor penalty, but means you still use low-tier gear). The fifth point of damage destroys all gear, unless it is personal gear, in which case it becomes inoperable. Characters can only carry five things of gear, so if you intend to get more you're going to be fine sacrificing old gear. In addition to being damaged via strain, critical failures also damage gear.

Gear maintenance is a tricky thing. Rather than rests, PROJECT HAMMER has downtime. Healing and such happens in real time whenever the characters get a breather, but downtime represents a solid block of resting time.

Short downtime grants two maintenance tests. This is an Intellect test, and benefits from skills and maintenance-specific gear (you can strain gear to undo the strain of other gear, which feels like an early 00's internet meme). A character who is resting to heal gets one maintenance test or no tests.

There are a couple issues I see with the Strain mechanic. The first is that gear's qualities are not typically impacted by Strain, which would be a downside, though qualities are designed to be mostly scalar with the gear's effect or provide a bonus that is valuable enough that it is generally applicable (like armor piercing, which typically is worth more than a corresponding batch of damage when the character would Strain). The second is that the system is added complication.

There are a few interesting things that come out as a result. Strain double's a weapon's rate of fire, allowing any ranged weapon to gain bonus hits during a skirmish (and, therefore, give a reason for a character with a weapon that'd normally be better for taking marksman actions to skirmish). Strain also serves as a tangible way for armor to degrade, as armor does not normally have any mechanism for doing so. Strain increases gear turnover, but also makes low-grade gear valuable, and makes finding gear for the non-personal slot more worthwhile.

Thoughts?

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 4:10 am
by Rob Lang
I like the idea very much. There is one thing that niggles:

If the gear is taken away from them, do they lose the ability for strain?

As a GM, I'm always taking away the player's gear. I think the mechanic is so neat that I would like them to always have it available! Is there a possibility to strain one's self?

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 11:03 am
by kylesgames

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:57 pm
by Onix

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 2:27 am
by Rob Lang

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 10:26 am
by kylesgames
Actually, I've waffled back to my original position (before I settled on the Strain mechanic), of giving people their own personal pool, but...

• Their personal pool is best used to feed Strain (which allows an item to be Strained without taking damage).
• When it isn't, it's used to provide a mediocre fall-back bonus...
• ... or power abilities like spellcasting that normally require specialized gear.
• It can go up or down without restriction during play at the GM's discretion.
• It resets when the characters get a significant chunk of downtime, to discourage hoarding.

It's also going to be a group mechanic, though individuals can have different ratings: a character with 1 Push has to use it first if they want to have it. A character with 3 can use it an extra time after the party's used their starting 2.

Here's the brief snippet that provides an overview of the resource:

PUSH

Push is a measure of team morale and characters’ vigor and force of will. Characters use Push to accomplish incredible feats, as seen in the [[PLACEHOLDER PUSH]] section.

• A character starts with 2 Push unless they have a flaw or trait that suggests otherwise.
• A character’s Push cannot go below 0.
• Push is gained during play for good roleplaying or when characters do awesome things. It resets to 2 at the end of every Long Downtime.
• When a character spends a point of Push, everyone else loses Push and the GM gains Push.
• Push is spent to provide a bonus to a roll or Strain gear without causing damage to the gear.

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:22 am
by madunkieg
Disposable Fashion! Disposable equipment! Disposable peopl...uh, no.

Yes, the idea that stuff runs out of power is really good for certain items (e.g. bullets in guns, fuel in cars), but there are some things that shouldn't get used up. Yes, fashion changes quickly, but it would take hundreds or even thousands of uses to be out of style. But style is a matter of perception, not the clothing itself, so it becomes difficult to model in a game.

I'm thinking of using a similar mechanic in Metropole Luxury Coffin (MLC) to push the idea of everything being temporary. But clothes in MLC are made out of flimsy paper, not cloth, so you have to buy new clothes every few days (quicker if you try to run or get into fights). Similar rules will govern almost all of the equipment.

The real problem is that people shouldn't run out of steam so fast. I've tried various systems that rely on people having a limited number of points, and found them to be universally unsatisfying ways to create stories. The typical story ramps up at the end with the big, bad boss, while the characters run out of juice and are unable to take on a kitten. So, use this system for equipment, but not people.

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:43 pm
by kylesgames
Mind you, PROJECT HAMMER doesn't beat people to bits left and right.

The estimated rate at which gear fully decays is ~20-40 uses, or 5 Strains. During any point at that timeline, a character can repair it to remove the damage. It's possible to get gear that lasts for 60-80 uses with the right build, though you're going for a "keep-my-stuff-maintained-as-long-as-possible" approach to do so.

The purpose of gear wearing out is simply to prevent two characters with similar roles from overshadowing each other and to make extreme specialists have a limit to their abilities without nerfing them (scary rifle breaks just as quick as an improvised weapon if you want to go for dramatic all-in fighting).

The idea is to give a boost mechanic that actually makes short-term loot useful; if I give a drunk an improvised bottle in D&D, he sucks with it. In PROJECT HAMMER, everything you get is useful, even if it's useful to the point of being sacrificed.

The setting also involves a lot of interplanetary travel, and I like the notion of characters temporarily acquiring gear but only being able to use it a while.

Re: The Clothes Make the Man

PostPosted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 6:33 am
by Onix