| Archive for fireflycrews.myfreeforum.org |
| Nate_Watson |
Downtime system: taken from Rule7For those of you who don't read http://www.rule7.co.uk/ regularly, Keeper has just posted the bones of the Serenity-LRP downtime system there.http://forums.rule7.co.uk/Topic5478-47-1.aspx And may I be the first to say 'Shiny!" |
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| admin |
Copied the Rule7 post into the announcement section here.
link - here |
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| Jeff Milhaven |
Obvious questions, part one 
How much is a character's personal cost (assuming no starvation, and no luxuries)? If we eat luxuries for Build, for eg, does that temporary bonus spill over into the next event? Options for time are : 4 jobs, 1 month training 3 jobs, 3 months training 1 job, 4 months training Correct? If I teach someone, does that cost me training time? Can I teach multiple people at once ("today, class, we'll be learning the basics of atmospheric re-entry")? Does teaching zero-point skills take zero time? Is there a cap on the number of downtimes I can 'Luxury+personal training' for permanant background increases? If a high-risk job goes pear-shaped, can characters die? What happens if (due to pear-shaped jobs) we don't have enough cash to eat/pay rent on the ship/pay for fuel? Ok, that's the obvious ones for now... |
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| Nate_Watson |
Think Jeff's covered most of my basic questions - I'll add one in though as an expansion of his.
Is there a human maximum to backgrounds (ie 3 or 4)? |
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| Jeff Milhaven |
Well since with merit and origin you can have Body 4, I doubt any maximum will be as low as 3
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| Nate_Watson |
True enough, but whatever the maximum is, I'd hope that the Merit allows you +1 over that 
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| Shikoba |
I find I am worrying about Serenity slding into a stats based fest role play game, where the focus is on the aquisition of numbers, and loosing all of it's wonderful interactive qualities as a result. | ||||||||||||||||
| Nate_Watson |
I'm not sure what you mean by 'fest' here - to my mind, fests are a much larger scale than Serenity is likely to reach for a while. There's two things going on here - downtime and experience - which is it that you're worrying about? (Both?) One of the things which heartened me when the first discussions of Serenity appeared on Pagga was that one of the organisers said 'downtime supports uptime' - it's not an aim in itself. And I think from what we've seen here, that's true. Essentially, the downtime system is "tell us three things you want your crew to do, with an idea of how much risk you're willing to take, and we'll give you an outcome that has some rewards (ie cash) and some plot". I don't see that as the aquisition of numbers, and certainly not in a way that would interfere with the next game. Experience is a slightly different matter - it's a brave game that decides that characters don't change their skills, because we're so used to it from both tabletop and pretty much all other LRPs, so I can quite see that the organisers decided they wanted / needed a character progression scheme. I'm a little worried that it's too fast, especially as it appears that there's no cost for teaching others, but that doesn't mean that it will become the focus of the game. |
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| Keeper |
We'll publish that with the rest of the Downtime costs.
It does indeed.
Yep
Not at present.
We'll say no on those for now, but I think a bit of clarification is in order for the teaching mechanic.
No cap, per se. There's no major advantage to gaining stats above 4, and the only worry is if a player maxes out all 3 backgrounds. At present, we're judging it on a case by case basis, and trusting players not to do anything silly.
No, we will never kill a character in downtime. A character may be reduced to -4, and may start the next event with less than full Body, but no character should be killed outside of up-time.
You become plot's bitch. The consequences will be entirely IC, so expect loan sharks, repo men, and other unpleasant characters to turn up in uptime. There's always someone willing to loan you a few credits, at considerable price. For the time being, I'm only going to respond to Heather's post by saying that we're not going to let that happen. Serenity is about roleplaying, and the system is merely there to facilitate that. I do appreciate, however, that how that's going to happen isn't immediately apparent, especially given the open-ended nature of the downtime system as presented (note that the one apsect of downtime that we're still working on is balance, so we may yet increase the cost or decrease the speed of skill progression to prevent it becoming the focus of the game). I am therefore typing up a more thorough explanation of where Jon and I are intending to take Serenity in future events, but at this moment I've only just returned from Stargate, and am not as eloquent as I'd really like. Expect a lengthy and in-depth response in the immediate future, however. Andrew |
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| Jeff Milhaven |
I can see one; Body 5 and Critical Wound levels.
I like the cut of your jib.
I enjoy playing with the numbers right up until I can get into kit, don't worry hon, it'll go away. If we can break it in downtime and let the refs know, it means we won't get any actual munchkins. |
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| Shikoba |
Yay! That is all I need to know. There has been all to much of a tendancy for new games to follow the examples of the larger events such as Maelstrom and they nearly always loose their role playing to the number crunching. I loved Serenity far to much to see that happen. |
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| Keeper |
If Serenity ever descends to "I'll trade you 3 Rocking Chairs for 2 Mud", you are officially allowed to shoot me. Andrew |
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| Shikoba |
[quote="Keeper"]
I'll get a gong or something, and start clanging it should it ever look that way. |
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| Keeper |
Besides which, 3 Rocking Chairs are barely worth 1 Mud.
Andrew |
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| Javier |
ahhh but are they Rocking chairs with the "safety design" added or not
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| Gonner Hendershot |
This may sound like a silly question, but are all crews going to be held to the two week deadline as from the Monday just gone, or will the deadline start at some other point? | ||||||||||||||||
| Nate_Watson |
That's for a slightly different thing - that's an 'open downtime' that's outside of the general rules.
Though I'd agree that time is ticking on that .... |
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| Gonner Hendershot |
Ah, I see. | ||||||||||||||||
| Sol |
Is it possible to get new background merits, such as cortexer empathy, after character creation (say by spending the entire downtime learning it). I didn't realise how much fun it was going to be RPing hacking computers and I would like to make it a speciality of my character, It isn't really a big issue since teaming up with others to solve probolems has been a big part of the fun so far. | ||||||||||||||||
| Jon |
Theoretically, downtime would have to reflect a siginificant focus on the use of cortexer and its related whatever the word is. | ||||||||||||||||
| Gonner Hendershot |
Idiom? | ||||||||||||||||
| Keeper |
No need to get offensive...
Andrew |
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| Gonner Hendershot |
Andrew, how can you say that. | ||||||||||||||||
| Jon |
Cos' he's a total idiom. | ||||||||||||||||
| Gonner Hendershot |
Nah, he's more of a metaphor. | ||||||||||||||||
| Keeper |
Yeah, well you love the cake. | ||||||||||||||||
| Gonner Hendershot |
Mmmm, metaphorical cake. | ||||||||||||||||
| Jon |
That pretty much sums up his cake alright. | ||||||||||||||||
| pizza |
Wish it summed up mine, I just eat too much of the real thing.
Solerno |
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| Keeper |
That comment shall haunt me for the rest of my days... Meanwhile, back on tanget- A metaphor for something HUGE! |
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| Jon |
Wow...I've never heard someone admit to liking the cake before.
To be honest I'm to tired and that one is actually almost good. |
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| pizza |
I'm sorry, were you talking about a particular cake? I was being rather more general. Clearly, I missed the joke. Probably best shut up before I become one myself. Solerno |
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| Keeper |
Mr Solerno, we would like to apologise for any confusion that may be caused by we strange Norwich folk and our light-hearted (if utterly senseless) banter.
Oh, and welcome to the boards. Andrew |
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| pizza |
Clearly, this is a side of Norwich I didn't see while living there. Still, I'm going back on Saturday, maybe I'll encounter this 'cake' - metaphorical, virtual or actual - then.
Solerno |
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| Jon |
Laughter, uncontrollable, sides, aching... | ||||||||||||||||
| Gonner Hendershot |
Jon appears to have contracted Kirk syndrome, which would also explain the hair. | ||||||||||||||||
| Jon |
The line has been officially crossed. Your character dies. |
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| Gonner Hendershot |
Indeed.
Anyway, returning to the topic of this thread, it was mentioned that you could partially learn some high cost skills & get some benefit from them, i.e. partially learn a 4 point skill like Assault weapons, so how would this work in practice? Also, is there going to be a cumulative cost for skills that can be bought up multiple time like Tough or Mechanic? |
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| Jon |
Good point, Tough is going to be limited to equal to your build when I get the revised rules out, cumulative costs are a cunning plan and will be looked into.
Semi-learnt mechanic will provide you with a single card, semi-learnt assault weapons is still being discussed. Semi-guild members gain fringe guild benefits. |
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| Gonner Hendershot |
So by the same token partially learning Pilot or Medicine would allow you to perform some of, but not all of, the functions of the full skill. | ||||||||||||||||
| Keeper |
The semi-learnt skills will not always have a fixed benefit - we'll decide what you get on a case by case basis, if only for variety's sake. But in simplest terms, you do get a subset of the full benefits of the full skill.
Andrew |
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| Gonner Hendershot |
Sounds fair enough to me. | ||||||||||||||||
| Chaplain |
I've tried to send in my downtimes three times now, and each time it's bounced back.
Can someone give me an email address to send it to that actually works? |
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