[NaGa DeMon] Forgotten Heroes

[wraith808]

I completed my NaGa DeMon project, Forgotten Heroes. It was actually the test bed for my system that I'm using for another project, and I'm pretty happy with it! I need to do some tweaking, but the rules played better than I expected, and my players seemed to enjoy it.

This implementation is a horror/suspense/investigation/thriller type of game, falling squarely into that area occupied by CoC, ToC, Esoterrorists, etc, where players seek out and eradicate the memory of ancient evils so that they can fade from existence. Once I do some editing (had a lot to do in a month, especially with a release at work imminent) I plan to conduct some more playtesting before releasing it and the underlying system. But I'm pretty stoked, and did want to announce it.

[koipond]

Awesome, give a link and I'll give it a review and stuff!

[Rob Lang]

Smashing, well done Wraith! I'm always thrilled to see people complete manic projects under pressure - gives me hope that I might do the same.

[wraith808]

Thanks for the kudos... it's pretty cool since I've never been able to come close to finishing a NaNoWriMo. (people that do are incredible!) Like I said, it needs some more editing and I need to incorporate the initial testing results... some of my dice mechanics need tweaking.

That said, I do have something to get some input on, as I think my prob and stat metrics might be a bit off on my dice mechanics.

The system is d6-based. I took a different tack than most games... your stat (1-6+) gives the dice that you roll and your skill (1-6+) gives a bonus rather than the other way around. I justify that as skill makes you more consistent, while your attributes are what differentiate two people of the same skill.

For your roll, you roll a number of d6 equal to your stat, and a number of d6 equal to GM assigned difficulty. You take the highest from each roll, and your final total is (highest positive die) + (skill) - (highest negative die) - (opposing skill if any). There are other modifiers, and other funky things you can do with dice, but that's the basics.

Without the bias of my results during play, anyone have any thoughts on that mechanic and the probability curve?

[Rob Lang]

[wraith808]

Unfortunately, I had to write the system from scratch; it was one of the requirements for the project that this was a test bed for. I couldn't convince them to use a system already in place, even though it would have saved me loads of time.

As far as the mechanic, I'd not seen it used before; it was an amalgam of a few different systems that I've played, as I didn't want to make things too far out, nor require too much special in the way of dice to make it more accessible. My average for stat is a 2, and scores above 4 are rare, so I'd wanted it to flatten out to a certain extent as you reached the limit, as stats do other things also, i.e. govern how much you can lift, how much damage you can take, etc. But it did seem to flatten out more than I intended, which is what I'm trying to tweak without changing back to a d10 base like I had thought to do originally.

But NaGa DeMon had the nice side effect of removing the analysis paralysis I have when faced with such decisions- having only a month to design and test the game made me realize I could tweak those things later.

But seeing you give voice to what I'd noticed makes me think that the d10 base is unavoidable for a mechanic like this.

[Rob Lang]

NaGaDeMon is good for the hot rush of creation. Now in the cold light of day you can adjust your decisions to create a better game overall. I can't speak for Nathan on this but I am sure that would be his intention. NaGaDeMon to get the idea out and then the following months to hone it.

[wraith808]

[Rob Lang]

Have you got a new system update?

[MrGreen]

The mechanic sounds like a blend of Cortex and Fate, interesting. I'm curious to see where you go with it.

As far as NaGa DeMon goes I've yet to take part, as I only just heard of it. But next year I hope to take a crack at it, provided the studio isn't in crunch-mode next November. I'd like to try to make something even more simple, in the vein of Lacuna Pt 1 and see how much I can do in a single month. It sounds like a great endeavor, best of luck Wraith!