Hewn and Some Numbers

 First of all a picture, because the kids like pictures. He is Hewn, carved from the Living Rock at the Base of the World. He's a sentient elemental inhabited by a little kid who has four elemental spirits he can embody. It's a whole mood.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about numbers. I put together a table that lays out all of the various values in the game: the attribute ratings (with modifiers), what the comparable Challenge Rating would be for a check at that level; what weight that equates to; speed and distance per action; and heat at that rating as an example of what intensities might look like.

The only problem/concern is how speed scales in terms of distance per action. The problem is that as characters get more powerful, they get more actions each round; so, a level 4 speedster with hyperspeed and PWR 20 (+5) is getting 9 actions each round. If he uses one of his actions to run, then this aligns well to traveling at 600 mph (moves 1 mile with each action). However, since he can theoretically use all 9 actions to run, he can actually run 5400 mph if he's using every action every round to run... so I've got to find some way to scale the action distances wayyyy back. I cannot assume that every character is going to take hyperspeed, but I have to account for it somehow. I think if we slow the progression of distance per action (maybe just go with a default of 100' per rating after 13) this would allow for an incremental bump, and allow you to really move, but also would keep things reasonable. This also accounts for the fact that you would be in combat most of the time, so you are doing more than just straight out running (or flying). You are dodging attacks, communicating with allies, and doing other combaty stuff that is not just straight up sprinting. 

Super Chart of Awesomeness

Rating (mod)	CR	Weight	Speed	Distance  per action	Heat
2 (-1)	12	30 lbs.	Immobile	1’	50 F
3 (-1)	13	50 lbs.	>1 mph	5’	55 F
4 (-1)	14	70 lbs.	1 mph	10’	60 F
5 (--)	15	100 lbs.	2 mph	20’	65 F
6 (--)	16	150 lbs.	3 mph	30’	Standard room (70 F)
7 (--)	17	200 lbs.	4 mph	40’	80 F
8 (+1)	18	300 lbs.	6 mph	60’	90 F
9 (+1)	19	500 lbs.	9 mph	90’	100 F
10 (+1)	20	700 lbs.	12 mph	120’	Highest Temp on Earth (120 F)
11 (+2)	21	1,000 lbs.	20 mph	200’	140 F
12 (+2)	22	1,500 lbs.	30 mph	300’	160 F
13 (+2)	23	1 ton	40 mph	400’	180 F
14 (+3)	24	3 tons	60 mph	600’	Boiling Point of Water (200 F)
15 (+3)	25	5 tons	90 mph	900’	300 F
16 (+3)	26	7 tons	120 mph	1,200’	400 F
17 (+4)	27	10 tons	200 mph	2,000’	500 F
18 (+4)	28	15 tons	300 mph	3,000’	Inside an oven (600 F)
19 (+4)	29	20 tons	400 mph	4,000’	900 F
20 (+5)	30	30 tons	600 mph	1 mile	1200 F
21 (+5)	31	50 tons	900 mph	1.5 miles	1500 F
22 (+5)	32	70 tons	1,200 mph	2 miles	Lava (2000 F)
23 (+6)	33	100 tons	2,000 mph	3 miles	4000 F
24 (+6)	34	150 tons	3,000 mph	5 miles	6000 F
25 (+6)	35	200 tons	4,000 mph	7 miles	8000 F
26 (+7)	36	300 tons	6,000 mph	10 miles	10,000 F (surface of the sun)

Editing Amok

Editing continues at a decent clip. Here's today's update...

1. I am cleaning up the trait (i.e. power) descriptions quite a bit. I am cutting maybe 25% of the language and tightening up concepts considerably. I'm simplifying operations and streamlining the numbers across the game. There is a LOT more cleaning up than I expected to be doing. I keep asking myself where the extra number crunching delivers any extra bang - do you really need to add two or three modifiers when you could just add one, and simplify that one to a cleaner number? That's where Feats came from and that's where several of the changes I'm toying with are going. Cleaner and simpler all around.

2. I think I want to go with 100 traits (powers) for the core rules. Instead of several rolls (by type, then by individual trait) I can have all 100 on a single percentile roll. It is forcing me to combine some powers (what is the real difference between charm, mind control, and hypnotism - can't these all be three flavors of the same power? I think so...) The basic rules for mind control work one way, but you can take limitations (hypnotism plants subtle suggestions; charm allows the target to maintain self control but to favor you). I like this. It's simpler and cleaner, but doesn't take away anything. Another example is plant animation; it's basically just summoning huge plants. Combine the powers and allow you to 'summon' pretty much anything that fits your character's theme.

3. This is the big one - I did this with Army Ants, and I almost did it with Tales of the Splintered Realm; you get a number of actions per round equal to your level. This is shark jumping territory, I know. But, the source material supports it. Batman doesn't leap and then wait for Riddler to act. He leaps, kicks Riddler, fires a grapple gun, and zips away. That's solid. Hulk grabs Loki, smacks him on the ground four times, and drops him. The cooler a hero is, the more stuff he or she gets to do on his or her time to shine. This is mitigated by a few things: A) the game only goes to level 6; B) most characters will end up being level 3 or 4 I would think. Level 5 is very high level, and 6 is the most powerful characters in the world.

Hyperspeed ends up being CRAZY fast then. Let's take Quicksilver. He's level 3 (so 3 actions) and has hyperspeed with PWR 18 (+4). This gives him 7 actions each round. DAAANG. But (and this is a big but), he is not really dealing that much damage. Yeah, he can run up, punch a dude five times, and run away... but each punch is only doing like 1d4+2 damage or so... I mean, yeah he might hit five times, but he's still only dealing 15 damage. The other thing is that this really aligns with the source material; when Spiderman was fighting the bank robbers in Homecoming, he's attacking three or four times before one of them gets to go. Then they each take an action, then he goes four or five more times. Realistically, you don't stand around while your foe makes a whole bunch of attacks; dramatically, this happens ALL. THE. TIME. Since the game is emulating the source material and not the real world, this is logical.

Looking forward to play testing some of this. Oh, and here's a sketch because pages with images tend to get more interactions. Just sayin'.

Compressing the Scale

Changing the modifiers for attributes has the ripple effect of compressing numbers all across the system. The modifiers for attributes are the default way to scale traits; your PWR modifier is the effective rating of your various talents linked to Power. If you had PWR 15 (+4), your default rating for many powers was 4. If this is linked to your hyperspeed, this means you can run 100 miles per hour; you are a lower-tier speedster. It's a respectable, albeit not particularly impressive, run speed. 

However, compressing the attribute scale means that the 15 rating is now a +3 modifier, pushing your run speed (if I was to use the same scaling) to 50 miles per hour. The old scale capped out at a +10 modifier, giving you a run speed about 10x the speed of sound; now, using the same scaling, you'd cap out just short of the speed of sound.

Two things are going to happen in the newer game; the scale is going to take slightly bigger chunks at each level, but the top end is going to cap out slightly lower. I am going with the Incredibles as the vibe for the game, but also as setting the power levels; Mr. Incredible is probably the strongest superhero in the world, but he's not Superman level strength. In FASERIP terms, he's probably Amazing (about the level of She Hulk) and maybe up near the Thing (Monstrous). He's not Unearthly - the is where our Hulk parallel would go. Since FASERIP and the Handbook of the Marvel Universe hard wired my thinking around these things, I put 100 tons as about the limit of what a superhero should be able to lift; this is far short of Superman (or even raging Hulk), but that sort of unbelievable cosmic power is not around in the world of the Incredibles. Doc Stalwart and Mr. Incredible would draw in an arm wrestling match, and Doc is my peak exemplar of superhuman strength; so I want my scale to top out near 100 tons. Sentinels came close to that, pushing one or two steps beyond. I can compress the climb, keep enough granularity for my purposes, and still check all my boxes. Here's a compressed scale for travel speeds and distances. This implies that a character with no superhuman speed (0) can travel up to 30' with an action (10' with a minor action), and up to 100' with an action and a successful Feat. A speedster character with respectable PWR (let's say 18, a +4 modifier) can travel 3000' in a single action (and 1.5 miles with an action and successful Feat). That's pretty dang quick.

One more thing: Going with the Incredibles, Dash is able to run as fast as those saucer glider things that I'd estimate are whizzing around at maybe 300 mph; but he might be making a whole bunch of successful Feats (he keeps pushing his powers). It is possible that his PWR is in the neighborhood of 14-16 (+3), and is making Feats to keep pace with those gliders. This all feels right for me.

Rating	Movement	Distance
-1	1 mph	10’
0	3 mph	30’
1	10 mph	100’
2	30 mph	300’
3	100 mph	1,000’
4	300 mph	3,000’
5	900 mph	1.5 miles
6	3,000 mph	5 miles
7	10,000 mph	15 miles

Fresh Eyes - Range

I'm doing a broad strokes skim through of the rules right now, looking at it with fresh eyes. This is very helpful. I'm asking about some of the foundational things - it's not that I'm looking for things to change, but I'm asking if things are in there that don't need to be. Basically, what is there because it's necessary or adds appreciably to gameplay, and what's there because I have some sort of default assumption it has to be? It's a relic of 40 years of familiarity with this system? (Yeah. It's 40 years. I started with the 1981 edition of B/X, so you do the math...)

Range is one of those things. At first, it seems to make sense - the range of Hawkeye's arrows is going to be shorter than the range of Iron Man's repulsor blasts... right? I mean, it doesn't 'feel' like it in the movies; we never have dramatic moments where Hawkeye cannot target something but Iron Man can - where Thor can hit it with his hammer but Cap cannot throw his shield. I mean, it's not a dramatic thing - it's just not a super-heroic problem.

If we are concerned with the effective difference between assault rifles and sniper rifles, then things like range become important distinctions. But for supers? Meh. I mean, we could easily have a few different range categories; people are on one, tactical weapons are on another. Yes, your laser-guided missile is going to have more range than Cyclops' eye blasts; but his eye blasts and Magneto's magnetism are fundamentally the same in terms of range. We can go with a standard range, but then add limitations or enhancements to shift range in certain circumstances. For example, we could go with: 

1. Short is up to 50' (no modifier)
2. Medium is 51 to 250' (-2)
3. Long is 251' to 1,000' (-4)

Part of the fun of fantasy games and spells in general is the tactics of how certain spells work; you have to be so close to the enemy, and the fireball has such-and-such area of effect, and how do we measure this to keep from frying the party too... but supers gaming has a different vibe. It's much broader strokes. I don't see the benefit of worrying over the individual range of every power. It's one less thing to track, one less thing to log, one less thing to add as a layer to every power; it's either range or it's not. 

Then you could add limitations and boons; a ranged power that only works at short range, or that takes no range penalties at longer ranges. 

The other thing is always, for me, is this something I cared about when I was twelve? That's my default assumption. I cared a LOT about whether Thor or Wonder Man could bench press more (like, cared about this wayy too much) but I never thought about how far Spiderman could shoot his webs, and whether this was farther than Human Torch could fire a bolt of flame. It was always 'hit a guy over there' and that was good enough for me. I want granularity (or the feel of granularity) in many places; the difference between your armor skin and my armor skin matters; who can fire their bolt of lightning farther is just not on the list.

Supers Design Thinking

I keep tinkering and jumping from idea to idea. I work on something for a bit, then feel meh, then move on. This week, it's back to supers! Don't know what if anything will come of this, but I thought I would share my thinking. That's kind of the point of my blog after all :)

A few months ago, I decided not to work on a revision of Sentinels, because basically it would be mostly cosmetic - a tweak here and a modification there. However, in the last week or so, I've thought about some foundational things that would change the basic game engine in some not insignificant ways. Here are the first thoughts:

1. The basic modifiers would borrow from Tales of the Splintered Realm. This scales back the numbers a little bit, and gives a little more wiggle to each of the rating categories. Now, 'monstrous' would be a score of 20-22, a +5 modifier (the old FASERIP 75 which is my go to for when I'm thinking about superhuman bricks - the Thing and Colossus both ended up at Monstrous, so it's my default thinking for PC bricks). It's a tweak, but it has a ripple effect across the whole game.

2. The basics of the setting would shift. This is the big one in my mind. I would basically turn the clock back twenty years - instead of being a fallen age after the death of the major heroes, this would be the silver age, when peeps are at their peak. While I liked writing the game after the fall, I liked setting my own writing and characters earlier, during the silver age. This would set the game during the Stalwart Age (and that might be the title, or subtitle - maybe Sentinels of Echo City: The Stalwart Age, or just "The Stalwart Age". Not sure yet). The vibe is Incredibles, but almost the first ten minutes of the first movie - it is the height of the heroic age. This solves a big problem I've had - the 'big stories' are already told (from my point of view), and the player characters are now taking the place of the fallen heroes. I liked that from a RPG world design view, but not so much from my own perspective. I kept wanting to create locations that were destroyed or overgrown or lost. Backing the game up twenty years allows me to share these things at their height, but also hardwire the conflict that leads to their eventual fall into future releases. Basically, I had been creating the game post Thanos snap - now I can go back to the first Avengers movie timeline wise and build from there. This would be a hard reset on the game world and characters - I would not be beholden to any continuity I had established in the previous game editions, and would basically be new 52-ing the whole thing (although hopefully better than that).

3. XP progression bothers me. At the VERY least, I want to build in story events for when you level up. The GM has to come up with a story-based event that you have to finish before you can get the new upgrades for your next level. I almost want to merge character progression/XP with the resolve mechanics; you use character points to level up and to do special things. It would then be closer to Karma in FASERIP - you use these points to perform stunts, but sacrifice long-term growth for short-term awesomeness. I like the idea that you have limited resources and you are always being careful in spending your resources. It also makes character growth slower, which feels more superhero esque. It also means that when you do that amazing stunt, you are actually paying for it in some way. That also feels more heroic. This means that the system can also borrow from Karma in having more character-based 'good guy doing good stuff in good ways' rewards. It also makes death unlikely; you can always spend some hero points to keep from dying, but you are never going to get any better if you are always treading water to just stay alive.

Of course, I'd be tightening up and cleaning up language throughout, and the whole thing would be formatted like Tales, in maybe a 64 page book with staples that can lay open on the table. After the ease of working with that book, I don't think I'm going back to the 6x9 book format. I think the setting would be presented similar to Tales of the Splintered Realm as well - the whole world in a handful of pages with broad strokes, so I could justify a city book later on. This would be a core rulebook with a foundation for a setting, but it would be intentionally incomplete so that there's a lot of room for later expansion.

That's the other issue - I want a format that will lend itself nicely to supplements. I'd like to create a format that I can release a regular game expansion/update/adventure to keep the game alive. I am good at releasing quality games to a modicum of fanfare; I am terrible at following through and continuing to support games in the long term. It would be great to get better at the latter.

Seymour Pages 1-2

 I put together the first two pages. Here you go...

Seymour and Sadness

First of all, no apologies necessary if you don't keep up with my blog. I post like once a month, so I kind of bring it on myself. I am not going to say I have writer's block or a lack of ideas or any of those sorts of things - I have a lack of passion for a project. I will work on something for a bit, tinker and noodle and sketch, rough out a few pages of ideas in a Google Doc, and then run out of enthusiasm. I haven't found anything that grabs me. So I post nothing, because there's no significant progress to report on.

And to be honest, I have fiercely avoided autobiography on this blog for a long time. I wanted my creative self to be presented in a certain way, and for the rest of me to remain tucked beneath the ocean all nice and cold and icebergy. But maybe that is the thing that is actually putting a limit on my potential. I don't know.

I thought maybe I'd work through it with you.

I was talking with another member of my department this week (at the school where we have both been teaching high school English for 20 years), and we were talking about creativity and enthusiasm and where art comes from. I quoted something I had heard attributed to Lorne Michaels - comedy cannot come from anger. I have been sort of simmering in anger for some time now over a few issues in my professional life. I'll just summarize it this way - I have been on 35 interviews for school leadership positions, and I have 20 years' experience and a doctorate (along with two master's degrees), pristine qualifications, and sterling recommendations. I should have landed the first position I applied for. I almost never make it past the first interview.

But I also have a hole in my head from brain cancer. And it scares people. Not give them nightmares scares them, but it makes them... uneasy. They try not to look at it. They politely avert their gaze. And then they send me an aloof letter saying they are 'going in another direction' or 'found someone better suited to the position'. 

Sorry, but no. Those are all code for 'someone who doesn't have a hole in their head'. My friends have all argued that it cannot be that. Maybe I just said a wrong word in my interview. Maybe I should be more professional. Okay, maybe less professional. Okay, maybe talk less about myself. Okay, maybe talk more about myself. Okay, maybe name drop. Okay, maybe don't name drop. 

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Maybe don't have a hole in my head.

And I have anger. I see less capable people beat me out. Over, and over, and over again. I know that I'm not the first person to face this (I assume that this has been the story of pretty much everyone who is not a white male in the history of the Western world) - but it's frustrating nonetheless.

And the worst part is that it has made me assume I cannot make creative stuff well. I have too much anger and frustration right now to make art. I need to wait until I'm in a happy place, where I have peace in my soul and a song in my heart.

And then I started the Little Prince (also on the recommendation of the same colleague). I'm doing the airplane in the air approach and reading it for the first time with my honors classes - I'm not reading ahead, so I genuinely am not sure what's going to happen, and I'm sharing in the class discussion as we try to build meaning in the text together. It's fun and challenging to have no secret insight that the students don't have. Teachers always stack the deck in their favor. I generally know the answer to the question before I ask it. Not this time.

The text is innocent and angry and sad and scared.  I don't think it's going to end well. I like stories that don't end well. I like stories with messy endings. The Lord of the Rings - there's peace, but there's a huge cost, too. You have to earn your peace.

And I read a smidge about the author. He was a combat pilot. He died in combat. His marriage was a mess. This was not a happy guy writing art from a position of rainbows and unicorns. He was frustrated and scared and trying to work through it.

The last time I was this unsure of myself in general was when I created Seymour. I was in high school, and had no idea who I was or what I wanted to become. And he kind of helped me. He got me through some stuff. 

I doodled him today. I think he might be offering to help me again. I might take him up on it.