Orchestra- Cyberpunk Action

[kylesgames]

I will make a grayscale print version when all is said and done. I may have to spend a fair while on it, but I will.

Rough version 2 is done: Strokes have been removed and stuff has been made more dark. I added a circuitry look, and changed font (I want something that looks familiar yet still technical, though this may ultimately be scrapped).



Oh yeah, also, this is pretty easy to swap the colors on (relative to others), and it's "usable" in this state, should you change the text. Tell me what you think about the gradient outlines on text.

EDIT: Since I've posted this, I've changed the CATEGORY background lightness (made it lighter), made the ATTRIBUTE backgrounds go the same way, though with slightly less difference, as well as changing the lines between categories/attributes/skills match the decorative bit in the upper right. I also changed everything to a new font, which I like more. Also, I adjusted the outlines a mite to make them work better with the new font.

EDIT 2: Made decorative things and connecting lines gold. Made the lines uniform width (much, much, much thinner).

[SheikhJahbooty]

Why is this called Orchestra?

[kylesgames]

[SheikhJahbooty]

Just me, I expected more orchestration.

First, the setting seems super cool. If this is the cybered up version of Yojimbo/Fistfull of Dollars/Last Man Standing, or if it is Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven + Battle Angel Alita, then you have discovered a new vein of pure awesome to mine, good work.

Next, I will also add my vote to drop scene mentions, unless you plan to give them some mechanical significance, for example if most scenes are resolved with one roll, only switching to more rolls if the players request tighter focus, something like how it's done in (although that might be a joke name for the mechanics behind The Shadow of Yesterday). Or another example might be if PCs only lose stamina at the end of a scene based on what they did, then you might encourage a set of escalation, like mellow might limit your tactics or bonuses, but stressed would cost more stamina, but once you bump up to stressed it opens up more tactics and bonuses as options.

Next, You don't really need a shorthand for what type of challenge something is, like (red/agility/close combat) because close combat is always an agility skill and agility is always a red attribute. I like keeping them in character creation, but in adventures and rules texts, you can just say close combat. That's fine. In fact I didn't notice it ever being used in the PDF, just here on this thread.

But about the Orchestration.

RPGs are like a band or an orchestra. We've all heard that analogy. It's fine.

The setting orchestrates disparate influences, so maybe that's a cool justification. Kind of like Samurai Champloo. Champloo is a Okinawan mixed stir fry, so Samurai Champloo is a mixed up anachronistic samurai cartoon.

But considering that you have a skill called Confidence Arts in your game, I actually expected that the party would be able to purchase special moves that they could only do if they worked together, like flanking and crossfire moves, special cons that you need 2 or more people to run, good cop / bad cop interrogation techniques, running a patch to get an off site hacker into a computer, huge bonuses to tailing someone if you get the shadow as a group move, etc. stuff like that. I expected that orchestrating badassery would be built into the game rules.

This is just me.

You could ignore it. You could find it awesome and add stuff like this. You could think it's a cool idea but you want something more freeform, maybe snowballing assistance bonuses, so if one person helps another, the second person could snowball the bonus, adding to it for a third person, or he could cash in the snowball, getting all bonuses currently in it. Also, maybe rules like this are there and I just missed it. Or maybe you intended it and it wasn't explicit in the game yet.

I don't know. Just my thoughts.

[kylesgames]

[BubbaBrown]

Might want to brighten stuff up by 50%. You may be fine with the reds and greens, but blue near black is hard to see overall. Blue is the hardest color for humans and scanners to see, and one of the hardest colors for both monitors and printers to render. So, you might want to stay in the brighter ranges when it comes to blue.

Had to get close to the monitor to clearly see the dark text and black lines. And my main monitor is color-calibrated with a wide color gamut. Might want to check your brightness on your development machine.

[kylesgames]

[kylesgames]

[Onix]

Now this is cool stuff. I wonder if you could give the GM guidelines on how the players can make their own. Players will always come up with something crazy that you just didn't think of. So play test these out and get your players to make up their own. Let them go nuts with it and then ratchet it down later but tell them that's what you're going to do.

[kylesgames]

I don't actually have access to playtesters right now, unless I wanna run a scenario with me, myself, and I, because I just moved into a dorm and have no vehicle.

Normally I'd try to test at the local game shop.