/twewy/- The World Ends With You TTRPG

Each time the puck is passed between two players, regardless of whether or not it was passed successfully (i.e. with the bonus), the synchronisation between those two players increases which charges their respective Fusion attack. More powerful Fusion attacks (gated by the total Trust; first tier Fusion might require 5 total Trust, second tier 10 total Trust, and third tier 15 total Trust) require a longer charge time and cost more AP. Once the gauge is full, both players have to agree when to activate it (must be done as an action), which immediately decreases both of their APs and the synchro gauge and unleashes a powerful dual-attack.

Since we were talking about using foodstuffs as temporary stat boosts, we can use stickers as temporary boosts for skills and other effects such as sync and puck passing. Perhaps you can only buy stickers for other people, and cannot use stickers on yourself (or the ones you use on yourself are less effective).

After each successful day in the Game, and after particularly fraught scenes per the GM's discretion, a player can choose to roll their Trust in the other person. If they roll OVER their Trust, they can increase their trust in the person by one. This makes it more difficult to gain levels of Trust if you already have a high level of Trust. If a player has reason to suspect or distrust another character, they can decrease their Trust by 1 per day, unless the other player openly betrays them, in which the player can set their Trust of the other character to 0 at the end of the day. All changes in Trust only apply at the end of the day moving on to the next day.

(Cont.)

Players can also tell another player about their entry fee to immediately increase Trust by [some amount that we need to balance], but in return damage against them is doubled, unless that player's Trust is decreased to 0 in which case damage resets. i.e. Player A tells Player B that their entry fee was so-and-so. Now Player B can do double damage against Player A on top of any Trust bonuses, unless Player A's Trust in Player B hits 0.

I'm not married to any of these ideas, just throwing them out there. Feel free to pick and choose things or rip 'n' tear and tell me I'm off my rocker.

We can start with the basic skills. Beyond Speak, Fight, and Protect, we might want some sort of physical stat or two for things such as breaking down doors, leaping over obstacles, sneaking around, or what have you. We could either split that up into a few different stats or simply use the four subsets to split that up. For mental skills, we might want to have something of an awareness or perception skill, some sort of knowledge skill for things like fashion and technology, some sort of "creative arts" skill for things like writing/cooking/sewing, and perhaps some kind of skill of mental resolve. Movement might be a good idea given time limits and all of that. Speaking of which, we should probably hash out some sort of time mechanic. I like the idea of having it be grounded mechanically with the ability for the GM to handwave or flub if necessary built in.

We could also include FATE-like Aspects that are unique to eah character to allow for things like a fine knowledge of fashion or the ability to drive a car. Essentially this would be a limited number of custom skills that add dice to an existing roll if the aspect is appropriate.

Knowledge type skills are easy. Method and "drawback" included
Know: Rhythm- Consider the most obvious details, and "brute force" the answer. Can waste large amounts of time to get suboptimal answers.
Know: Flow- Quickly build off what you know. Flawed premises often lead to mental dead ends, and distraction is a valid concern.
Know:insight- Consider everything you can think of to come to your conclusion.
Incorrect assumptions and evidence tend to lead to extremely wrong conclusions
Know:Bravery- go with your gut feeling and assume the first thing you deduced as true. Tends to end either fantastic or badly based on accuracy.
>FATE-like Aspects
Paranoia has custom skills that work like that. Speed-shopping could be an actual skill in this scenario, and if I remember correctly they are added on-the-spot. I don't actually know FATE, is that kind of how they work?

Hm, could you describe the way that Paranoia does it? What do you mean that they're added on the spot?

In FATE, you can select a certain number of Aspects at the beginning that you can then apply to get bonuses on relevant rolls. For example, Shiki might have an aspect of "Aspiring Fashionista" which would give her a bonus on anything to do with fashion. Ideally, Aspects in FATE have both positive and negative qualities so that the player can invoke them to get bonuses and the GM can invoke them to make things more difficult for the player. Someone might create the Aspect "Tech Nerd" that grants them bonuses when it comes to technology or computers, but that detracts from their ability to perform in social situations. With regards to "Aspiring Fashionista", Shiki might find it difficult to do things that go against trends or might have to roll a resolve check to wear something ugly even if it has better stats.

Also, mechanically, how would those Knowledge skills differ?

Fate's is better for our purposes, I would think. I'll avoid the spiel. Long story short: retroactively get extremely narrow skills(examples modified from paranoia: Eat bag of potato chips in 4 secends, get vending machine to stop making that funny noise, suck up to Pieface)
As for mechanical knowledge differences... I thought I knew what I was talking about until I tried thinking harder. I got nothing.

It might work if instead of a knowledge skill we made it more of a general mental skill, so that one might be more "Logic thinking" while another one might be "reading the mood" (as in social intelligence, somewhat like 'Read Person' from other systems), and another might be a perception-esque skill or general science knowledge. I'm not sure how those would map to RFIB but we can figure it out.

We could use aspects to cover specific areas of knowledge such as being able to drive a car or knowing a great deal about how to make clothing.

Any opinions on the trust mechanics I described?

Possibly instead of Know, we go with something like Think.
Think: Rhythm - Rhythm confronts things directly and looks at what's there. This is somewhat like a Notice skill, allowing you to take in your surroundings as they are if you have a few moments to process.
Think: Flow - Flow here is all about alternate paths and ideas. Think: Flow can help you to spot red herrings and misdirections that might seem too good to be true, or let you figure out an alternate way around a situation like a smashed bridge through a different solution. When things to awry another path can present itself. ALTERNATIVELY...something else that makes more sense 'cause this is the one I'm really unsure of.
Think: Insight - Read the mood of people around you. Gain Insight into their motivations and emotions. Similar to 'Read Person' in other systems, combined with an understanding of body language. You might even be able to predict their strikes in battle, or know what someone needs to hear, or when someone is lying. ALTERNATIVELY This is akin to "logic" and is used to help figure out puzzles and the like, but I'm worried about interfering with the players (not the in-game Players, the IRL people) figuring out the puzzles themselves.
Think: Bravery - In a pinch, someone brave might look around and figure out a reckless but potentially This is somewhat like Notice, but it applies less to details and more to immediate circumstances. Cornered by a gang member? You might notice the streetlamp overhead is about to fall on both of you. ALTERNATIVELY, Think: Bravery might be about Resolve and steeling oneself to the challenge, essentially given oneself the confidence one needs to do something, like an internal pep-talk. This could be used to defy one of your aspects, or even to fight against someone who had betrayed you. I like the second one better by the way.

With the current "Fight" skill, for example, how would those really differ?

The trust mechanics that you're dropping seem pretty solid so far. I like them, especially the options to decrease trust which allows for some dynamic relationships between players.

And the Think system you're proposing here is nice, sort of like a boost when the players can't figure out the answer or can't quite make a more straightforward roll.
And I don't think that Think:Flow is that bad of a concept, the way you're describing it sounds like the GM would give the player multiple methods to attack a problem, but not the exact stats they'd need to successfully use that method.

What I'm getting from these skills is that they're more of a roleplaying mechanic rather than a battle mechanic. Which means that it's up to the GM to come up with which skill would result in a better outcome.
For example, if a player needs to get some information out of a mousy/shy character, and they decide that they'd have a better chance of rolling a success by using Talk:Bravery they could. Even if they succeed, the GM could say that the character now has lower trust in the player now because they scared them with their enthusiasm.

We should really explain that it's up to the GM to add consequences to the player's actions depending on which stat they end up using, that way you can't try to swiss army your way through a game with only one stat.

I think you're going a bit too abstract here. The ideas are good but my thought is that players will be uncertain as the value of these Skills, and GMs will have a hard time building challenges around them. What I'd suggest is more concrete, with some wiggle room.

Think: You draw from the well of knowledge you've pooled from your life experiences. This skill includes both your approach to problem solving and the things you've learned through your mindset.
>Think: Rhythm- You're streetwise, knowing the facts about life on the rougher side of the tracks.
>Think: Flow- You know about how people act and move and what motivates them.
>Think: Insight- Your ceaselessly curious mind has accumulated a wealth of facts and figures.
>Think: Bravery- You know yourself. You can call upon this knowledge to steel your resolve in the face of threats that challenge your notion of what's real.

I want Trust to be able to fluctuate but only over time, and I chose the delayed changes in Trust so that players don't try to shimmy their way out of the mechanical consequences immediately.

The Think system is meant to cover what would be mental skills in other systems -- awareness, alternate paths, resolve, and the like. The purpose is to get players to consider all stats equally or to realise that they need other players, rather than being able to "swiss army" the game with one stat as you said. That is exactly why I wanted to delineate the circumstances under which each stat would be used. I'm not too much of a fan of minmaxing because it tends to narrow the viable builds in a system.

I agree entirely about the GM's consequences, and I also think that a less-than-optimal skill would have a much higher difficulty in terms of required successes. Trust is important to NPCs as well, since players have more influence over NPCs who have greater trust in the players. That includes shopkeeps and the like. Ideally we will create a system in which all stats and skills are used with somewhat equivalent frequency -- I know that in certain other homebrews such as Adeptus Evangelion, a handful of skills come up much more often while many others are entirely useless outside of roleplay flavour. Obviously no system is perfect and it will depend on the game, but I would like to avoid it if possible.

We should call the GM something entertaining, like the Conductor or Producer, in the actual rulebook.

REMINDER TO VOTE. THIS IS THE FINAL POLL UNLESS WE GET A TIE.
strawpoll.me/10500715
strawpoll.me/10500643

That also makes sense and works well for me. I suppose I was looking towards some kind of notice/perception skill around there somewhere. Also, welcome back.

If no one has any real dissents with the Trust system, I'll copy it over to the document, and from there we can always alter everything as needed. Again, I'm not married to any of these concepts, just trying to hash out things we haven't covered.

We should also start to stat psychs so that we understand what happens with the action economy. Ideally, we want pins of relative tier of usefulness to have the same "impact" in the same AP. We could also consider status effects.

Rather than pins just becoming better, however, I would really like for them to become more diverse, such as through suicide tactics (i.e. LASS and BOY), status effects, or some such.

Won't be able to post much for the rest of the night though, but I'm definitely going to draft up Perception skills tomorrow.

No worries, I'll do my best to keep the thread alive. I might start writing up an explanation of the Reaper game and various examples of tasks.

if we hit a slow spot, we could always try making some pins or threads or something
even if they aren't included in the book, at least it's better than bumps

We should probably figure out how much damage we want to be doing, and whether damage should be static for each pin or require a damage roll. I'm inclined to static damage for easier balancing and to cut down the number of rolls.

I'll definitely have that on my radar for tomorrow.

Part of the beauty of the TBZ system is how easily it translates into damage. Examples could include a Psych dealing damage equal to # of Successes +X, or X damage per Success. That way you never need to make a separate damage roll, which always slows down combat, especially if players are making multiple attack actions in their turn.

I like Successes + X better than times since times means a slight difference in stats can translate to a huge lead

That's fair. I'm inclined to keep the numbers small for easy addition and the like, so ideally we'd see damage in the single numbers for me. Of course if others have a different preference...

Anyway I'll start to move the Trust mechanics over to the doc, as well as the idea of Aspects if everyone is all right with it.

So a Bravery-based character is your stereotypical shonen protagonist, Flow is the character with the silver tongue, Insight is the brains and Rhythm is the thug, correct?

looks like it
the question is, how would you choose to blend them together into one character?

Insight+Flow is Joshua
Rhythm+Bravery is Beat
Bravery+Insight is Neku

Arguably, at the start of the game, Neku had more Rhythm than Bravery. I'd also list him as a combination of the two instead of Insight, even if he does show moments of intelligence.

Another day Neku is full Bravery though.

True, Neku changed his build as the game went on. But by the end of Week 1 even, he'd started to change to Bravery+Insight instead of Rhythm+Bravery. After all, he never once questioned Shiki being his entry fee week 2.

So he started out with more points in Rhythm, then took mostly advancements in Insight.

I'm not sure what Shiki would be. Flow + Bravery, maybe?

I'd argue that even before the end of week 1, he had grown to be more Brave.

Depending on how the numbers play out, are stats going to be given approximately once every 2-3 days? 1/day is a bit too much, and the progression feels about right if you're playing for a longer time (say a reaper's game goes over a month).

It'll probably be up to the GM. If the intent is to play just a single week like the typical Reaper's Game goes, then 1/day would be too little. If it's longer, then the advancements should likewise take longer. I imagine that there will be guidelines on what an endgame character should look like, and then the GM can spread out the stat boosts as long as he plans the campaign to go.

Actually, the system could benefit from something similar to Advancements from Magical Burst. An Advancement might be a stat increase, a skill increase, a new ability, what have you.

Wow, these polls are really tied. How are we going to decide?

Depending on how powerful you want your characters at the end of the week, sure. I'd still argue that skill increases and stat increases should be separate. Stats are arguably stronger, as they effect a larger amount of things. However, skills could probably be given 1 per day if your stats are 1 per 2-3 days. If you want quick progression, 1 stat and 2 skills per day feels about right.

Then I guess we discuss what we like about our preferred choices over the other, trying to bring the other side around.

For example, with passing the puck, I believe combopass is better because it's more true to the game. I'm not a fan of initiativepass because of this, but also I feel that initiative should be based on either Flow or a separate stat, say how much AP you have at the end of the round or something. AP could be a different stat as well, which can be leveled up to gain more as you get stronger.

So yeah, initiativepassing doesn't feel right.

Alternatively, we could playtest these things and decide that way.

To me, Initiativepass is better because it actually does reflect the game better. Against highest-level threats, your attention naturally shifts between who has the puck, either to pass it quickly if you're doing a Heaven's strategy, or against Taboo Noise, you're doing it to maximize damage with who has the puck.

The trouble with combo pass is that the tabletop game won't play exactly as the game. For example, in the game, you can continue to attempt to pass the puck until you combo or the puck fails. In the combo pass system, you would have to wait an entire round for a chance to pass the puck again, whereas in the game you typically focused on the person with the puck until they passed it (which, I believe, is how most people played it). Combo passing also puts light puck emphasis on psych rather than inter-player trust or synchro or whatever. That said, it'd be pretty easy to implement the light puck combo passing system as separate from some sort of once-per-turn synchro charging for successful trust rolls, so that both playstyles are rewarded. I'm just worried it would get complicated rather quickly.

Combo pass does feel more true to the game, so I'd like to figure out a way for it to work.

Perhaps, players still popcorn, but the person who holds the puck automatically goes first at the end of a given round, to give the players more opportunities to pass it?

What if we combined combopass and initiativepass into one? You still popcorn the puck around, but instead of deciding the bonus based on a trust roll, the bonus is based on a combo. If you fail to perform a combo, the bonus is lost, and the puck is passed with +0 AP. If you successfully perform a combo, then the puck is passed with whatever bonus AP +1.

I mean, in the game, if you didn't combo quickly enough you lose the puck and have to start over.

Ah, I get that. I always played with the AI and only focused on the bottom screen.

However, if you have combopass, you can pass it on your turn, so either the next player has it or whoever you think can keep the combo going better can get it. It would still be able to be passed to the next person in the initiative, but you can also choose to have it go to someone else.

The idea behind it is that, while it can still be passed through the initiative, if someone is planning to do something that won't continue the combo, they can say "skip me, I'm doing this thing" like stealing a pin back from a bird or something.

Also, with combopass, you have the ability to use the light puck speed thread ability, going from 1 person/round to passing at the end of their turn on the round.

I'd think Bravery to be more along the line of moving forward with purpose, with others getting out of his way.
Try it next time you're in a crowd. Fix your gaze on the point you're going and move with purpose and usually you can get through with very little resistance.

You mean sort of like how people assume you're supposed to be there as long as you act like it?

This seems like a good idea to encourage the gameplay style from the game, but at the same time it feels like things might get kind of repetitive if everyone's just trying to combo

This is kind of a thing with all rpg combat to some extent though. The way rpgs provide mixups to 'repeat what we do every time' is to give enemies interesting powers, immunities, or abilities, to change the environment to be different or challenging, to add vulnerabilities of a different sort (protect X, do X before Y happens).

Finally, you can allow changeups of powers and abilities. Taking inspiration from Neku more than the others, you could allow a buildup of a range of a lot of very specific powers, but only allow a very limited number into combat. Before each combat, a quick choice of which you're using? Link number allowed into combat to one of the core stats?

I'm not being super helpful here since I havent read the whole system, and probably won't until it's more finished, but I like the idea behind this.

sry to elaborate on this point- it's ok to simplify the core mechanics of combat, even to the point where the 'default most efficient behaviour' might be quite similar fight-to-fight. The key is to build enough mechanics into the enemies and environment to make it more interesting.

Taking a simpler system as an example, FATE combat boils down, at it's most efficient, to all your players taking it in turn to set up advantages ('i trip him over', 'i blind him' etc), and then having one person hit the enemy really damn hard. This doesn't happen super often, since most of the time the situation is too complex to allow perfect comboing.

Does the Combopass also use a Trust roll to successfully pass the puck? Because that's what I think I'm having trouble with. I like the puck being passed by Trust, but if it also requires a complete Combo then you run into the problem of having two vectors for failure, which makes the game more random and take longer. You can successfully pull off your Combo but fail your Trust roll and end up back to square one. Pure Trustpass seems smoother and more sensible to me.

How set are we on the 10-sector battlefield idea?

Because I had some shower thoughts about it this morning and I think we can do better. My concern with it is that it's going to slow down combat, which should be fast and relatively free-wheeling, just like the action in the game. Moreover it's going to compel the use of a battlemap to keep track of where everything is, which I'm not sure is the best idea and it makes playing over the web harder.

Here's what I thought of instead:

The Noise Battlefield is has five Zones: North, South, East, West and Center, so if you wanted a battlemap you could make one real easily by drawing a circle with a smaller circle in the center, and evenly dividing the remaining space.

It costs 1 AP to move between adjacent zones, so moving N-E costs 1 AP, as does moving from the Center to any of the outer zones. Moving N-S or E-W always means crossing the Center, unless you have a Teleport Psych, so it costs 2 AP.

Here's how this affects attack range:
>Range 0: You can target Noise in the same zone as you
>Range 1: You can target Noise in an adjacent zone
>Range Any: You can target Noise in any zone
>Range All: You can target all the Noise on the battlefield

No, the idea is that you pass the puck to someone you can trust, or to someone who needs it the most. Passing the puck isn't based on trust in the DS game, it just goes from one person to another as a damage multiplier for the puck holder's attacks.

In our game, once you use the puck, you pass it to the next person who needs it. If you don't trust them to keep the puck moving, you give it to someone else. No trust roll needed.

Okay that makes sense. So the two competing ideas are whether the puck is passed by completing combos or by making a trust roll at the end of each Round.

I'm still on the side of Trust rolls, for a couple reasons. First it gives players more incentive to build their trust, and I think it's a more thematically appropriate interpretation of the rule. In the source game, you always only had one partner to pass the puck to (except in the final boss fight), and the entire section of the game was about you building trust with them. I think that's best mirrored in our project by the Trustpass.

Secondly, it means that characters don't have to be combo focused. It should be possible for a character to focus on heavy single attacks over chaining smaller attacks together. Then again we still don't really know how combos are even going to work as of yet...

What's Anguis's range?

Any, and it would have an effect that if you fire it across multiple Zones it hits stuff along the way. So if you fire S-N it will hit Noise in the S,C and N Zones.

Lightning Bolt and Entanglement would probably have similar effects.

I figured maybe something like a 3x7 grid, which allows a teleport psyche room to maneuver and somewhat matches the size of the DS screen, and is also small enough to make movement a viable strategy for players if they don't have a teleport.

Combos would act similarly to they do in the game. Landing one big hit with a 1 use/round pin (massive hit, for example) will pass the puck immediately, but only the final hit of a 3 use/round pin (shockwave) would pass the puck.

And the trustpass makes less sense, to me, as it wasn't the combat that built trust. It was being literally and metaphorically bound to one another for a week and being forced to rely on one another to overcome obstacles. The puck only exists to power up your finisher and damage the taboo noise.

"Together, we are but twigs, but together we form the mighty faggot!" - the smart kid from the Simpsons

Seems like an important quote for this thread.

Fair enough, though it does sort of double-penalize a Player for failing to execute his combo by not only causing him to do less damage but also denying the puck.

On the other hand, that does create the need for the Hold That Puck Thread ability. If you have a Thread with H.T.P. you can keep it for an extra turn or two before it flickers out, giving you more time to fulfill a combo. So yeah I think that could definitely work.

Here's another Skill write-up, this one for Sense:

Sense: You can get a feel for the world around you-- the people that inhabit it and the forces that propel it.
>Sense: Rhythm- Detect sources of aggression and unseen dangers lurking about
>Sense: Flow- Feel out lies and when others are trying to manipulate you
>Sense: Insight- Notice subtle or hidden things and what troubles people
>Sense: Bravery- Sense causes of fear and motivation in others

Sense: Rhythm is your typical "roll to detect ambush" type thing, as well as your ability to read killing intent in others, which is actually a mechanic from TBZ.

Sense: Insight can be used as a general spot check as well as to pick-up on specific things that are bothering people.

I'm also redoing the Think skill because I didn't quite like how it read for Flow. Looking for a good solution...

Remember, only the final hit actually needs to connect. You can declare that the other attacks miss, you only need one to hit.

It actually goes the other way. If you need 3 successes to hit the target, but only get 2, it's a miss. If you have 2 successes and 3 failures for a flurry, you can declare the final hit and another as successes, but not the others.

Multi-hit attacks are weak individually, but pass the puck better.

Good morning thread!

I like this better than the 10-sector battlefield. My only concern is that this might make Teleport pysch less useful, as crossing the entire battlefield is only 2 AP. If the Teleport psych is 0 AP and simply uses up one of your pin slots, then I suppose it would be worth it. Otherwise it'd only have limited uses.

I'm in agreement that it gives players more incentive to build their trust. That said, perhaps we ought to have two different potential playstyles reflected. For example, we could have the puck passed by combos independent from turn order, so that (as has been stated elsewhere), a player could theoretically get excluded from the light puck entirely during a match. That means less overall group trust since you don't HAVE to trust anyone, but also encourages more dynamics.

We could retain the importance of trust rolls, however, if we use them to power fusion attacks instead. In other words, a group that isn't focused on combos would instead focus on trust to quickly unleash fusion after fusion, and both are valid playstyles.

My largest concern is that this would complicate remembering who has the puck. It's not that big of a deal -- in real life, you could simply have a physical object that is passed around. But while playing online it might be more bothersome, especially as you also have to keep track of whose turn is next. Putting light puck passing and turn order together simplifies the process, but it's not necessarily the best solution.

The Sense system is nice, though I'm concerned that Sense: Flow and Think: Flow might be similar. I would potentially try to split Sense: Insight and Sense: Bravery a bit more unless you can give me some examples (regarding people) where one or another might be useful but not the other.

That sounds like it would be easily abused. To counteract that you'd have to roll the hits in order, so that you can't pass the puck just on one success. Remember, we want puck passing to be more prominent later in the game rather than earlier, since it's a powerful tool.

Think:Flow would put you in the other person's shoes. It would help you get a better grasp on the situation based on how things have happened.

Like say, for example, if you receive a message saying "get to the other side of Shibuya" but the other days have been really hard (comparatively) then you would use this skill to think there might be an ambush coming up soon.

>My only concern is that this might make Teleport pysch less useful, as crossing the entire battlefield is only 2 AP. If the Teleport psych is 0 AP and simply uses up one of your pin slots, then I suppose it would be worth it.
One way that Teleport can be useful though is for it to also be an effective Defensive Pin as well, as in you can roll Teleport:Flow to evade an attack with greater effect than you could normally with Protect:Flow. That's how I see it at least.

Plus there's always the factor of it being really cool to be able to teleport around an arena, even if it isn't strictly useful. Truth be told I rarely ever used Teleport when I was playing.

remember that we were going to have a puck that was going to function as an initiative, so the last person in a 4 person party would have +4 AP by the end of the first round anyway.

That and I feel that trust is a terrible stat to have. Before I get booed out of here, I want to explain why I think that.

The Trust stat, afaik, is only used in combat and kept secret from the players. The DM then has the players at their mercy as to whether the puck is passed or not, and can quite easily screw over players with it.

In addition to that, Trust has no purpose other than that. It's a dead stat. Why invest precious character generation points if it's a hidden stat that does nothing?

Also, to address the concern of the puck multiplier being super high really fast, just add a pass- based multiplier. When it gets passed x times, where x is the size of the party or whatever, it goes up a step. Puck passing abilities on threads could then be adding more points for that each time it's passed.

It would depend on the amount of AP a character has. I've seen the number 6 thrown around a lot in this or the last thread, so going from 6 to 4 is really significant. If we're going from 10 to 8, it's still big, but not as much.

So basically, more AP means probably larger field.

For the record I feel that Trust shouldn't be kept secret from the players. After-all your Sync rating was quite clear in the source game. And in a game that's ABOUT trust to a large extent Players should be fully aware of their ability to Trust others.

The only way sync was gained was by eating food. Also, sync dropped as you fought. Also, it had nothing to do with the light puck, only combos for the ultimate skill.

Right, but it's impractical/impossible to covert all of the source game mechanics 1:1 into tabletop mechanics. Instead the goal of this conversion, as is the objective anytime a work is translated from one medium to another, is to preserve the spirit and feel of the work, not each specific detail.

In the source game, Sync was built by eating food because it was a way to reward you for grinding cash and taking your time instead of rushing through the game by making you more powerful. Your ability to interact with your partner was necessarily limited by programming restraints.

In tabletop format, those limits are almost exactly reversed. Grinding in tabletop is rarely much fun because a combat that takes 30 seconds on the DS might take 5-10 minutes on the table if you have a relatively quick and breezy system. There's also no good way of handling constantly changing numbers like that without slowing everything down to a crawl and requiring each Player do a lot of bookkeeping.

On the other hand, you're much more able to interact with characters in meaningful ways and find creative solutions around problems instead of working out the one correct, pre-programmed answer.

>Grinding in tabletop is rarely much fun because a combat that takes 30 seconds on the DS might take 5-10 minutes on the table if you have a relatively quick and breezy system. There's also no good way of handling constantly changing numbers like that without slowing everything down to a crawl and requiring each Player do a lot of bookkeeping.

Exactly, so why cover another stat which is almost entirely useless with one exception and require yet another roll before the turn ends every turn? Wouldn't it be easier to just say "Okay, that attack hit so the puck gets passed" than to force that? Not to mention, each trust stat would be different between each character, meaning you'd need to keep an easily modified number for each team member which you then need to ask them for their number and then make another roll after the turn based on that?

I mean, it'd be easier to have trust be something that is RP only, or have your players cooperate to get a better score or result.

Remember K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. If it doesn't feel necessary, or feels like a bulky addition that can be streamlined, keep it simple.

I definitely see where you're coming from, and I agree that the onus is on the developers to prove that a certain mechanic needs to be in a game.

I will say though that there are plenty of games where your relationship with other characters and NPCs is codified as is the plan here, and it works out great. I've no doubt that it can be done so here too.

I do have one comment on what's written about on the top of Trust in the Google Doc:

>he higher your Trust in someone, the more effective their skills are against you -- this means both beneficial skills and harmful skills. Additionally, your ability to damage them decreases. If you are in a situation where you trust deeply in the other person but they do not trust you at all, they can easily betray you and hurt you much more easily than some random scrub.

I feel like this isn't something that's going to matter in most games. Most Players at a table are going into the game with the express understanding that they're there to cooperate towards a certain goal. There's rarely any incentive to not cooperate with other players unless the game also has a competitive aspect, which is against the stated theme of the Reapers' Game. Conceptually it's aces, but in practice I'd predict that base case scenario it's largely ignored and worst case scenario it's a source of frustration for players.

Just for the heck of it I started uploading Threads from GameFAQS into the Thread Count. Like the Psych entries it's pretty bare bones until we have the combat mechanics more solidly built, but it's a start.

Someone with more knowledge of the design behind each Brand can do write-ups for the overall ideas and themes behind each.

Here's a random thing I was thinking about, before I head out for a big:

For Pins, our suggested way of Players handling them in their inventory could be for Pin info to be written on small slips of paper like cards, probably such that we can print 6 Pins on a normal 8.5x11 sheet.

It would have an open space where you can doodle or print the Pin's design, and the following lines:

>Name and Brand
>Psych
>Level and XP (if we want to track Pin XP like that)
>Damage and Range
>Effects
>Uses/Boot/Reboot

when a Pin's uses are exhausted, the Player turns the slip over, and on the back he's written its Boot/Reboot Time so he knows when it's ready again.

I thought that would be a more interesting way of handling Pins than just writing them on your character sheet, especially if we expect Players to have a rotating deck of Pins.

That's a great idea, and I'm not going into too much detail because bed and work and stuff, but perhaps making them printable sheets or if it's going to be printed, making a couple pages of cut-outs that you can fill in yourself.

Or you could have a deck of cards with the pins on them, 4 of each pin or something and blanks for personal pins.

That's definitely the idea.

Also regarding Pins:

Every Pin has a rating called its Magnitude. Magnitude, or Mag, is used to compare the relative combat power of Pins. Pins that do more damage, have more uses, greater range, less boot times and more special effects have a higher Mag rating.

Every Psych would have at least one Mag-0 Pin, which is the base-power version of that Psych. Every additional Pin using that same Psych is Mag-1 or higher. Two pins with the same Mag should be roughly equal in combat ability.

For example, consider a simple Shockwave Pin, like the one that Neku gets at the start of the game. It's a Mag-0 Shockwave Pin that has 6 uses and does 1 damage for each Success it rolls.

Now consider two Mag-1 Shockwave pins. Let's called them Jeet Kun and Wing Chun. Jeet Kun deals 1 damage for each Success +3, but has 1 less use, while Wing Chun deals the same damage as the Mag-0 Shockwave but has 8 uses instead of 6.

It may also be that very powerful Psychs like Nexus Ray and Black Hole have higher base Mag, so you'd never have a Mag-0 Black Hole because it starts at like Mag-5.

We can then link the price and rarity of a Pin to its Mag. We can also create a system for randomly rolling Pins at a certain Mag.

Does that make sense?

After reading your thoughts I agree that Trust shouldn't be the way that the light puck is passed and the combo system works absolutely fine to me. As for why Trust should remain as a stat:

1. The Trust stat is separate from the base four stats and thus you wouldn't waste character points on it.
2. Trusting someone more means that their skills are more effective against you. This includes things like Protect. For example, say that your character is depressed or afraid, and another player tries to cheer them up with Speak: Bravery. That cheering up will be much more effective because of the Trust.
3. I don't expect for player betrayal to be common, but I wanted to include it, because the original game also dealt with the concept of betrayal. We want to incentivise players into building their Trust with one another (which also incentivising RPing, essentially) but provide a potential risk inherent to that. The theme of TWEWY from what I understand is "trusting people means that they can hurt you, but overall the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and you should trust people".
4. I was also going to gate Fusion by the total Trust that two people had in one another, since that fits the idea of Fusion. I agree that Trust, especially as a hidden stat, shouldn't be rolled in combat, but instead act as its 'own thing'.

As others have pointed out, player relationship stats have been used successfully in other systems. For a minor example, Magical Burst has relationship ranks from 1-4 that are pretty important since a girl with a support network is less likely to succumb than an isolated girl. Bliss Stage's combat pretty much focuses on turning relationships into attacks.

Perhaps instead of rolling your Trust during combat, then, it's better to just have it be a slowly fluctuating stat that increases skill effectiveness. The purpose of it being hidden from other players is to mimic the fact that in real life you don't know for sure (Cont.)

Continued...

you don't know for sure what another person thinks of you. In other words, you, the IRL person, has to trust the other IRL person at the table. Because putting a higher Trust in someone inherently puts you at risk but can also provide many benefits, it means that the IRL players at the table have to trust one another just as the Players of the Reaper's Game.

That said, if you still don't like the idea of Trust as I've laid it out (assuming we remove it from combat, other than perhaps having something to do with Fusion), we can change it or remove it entirely.

This sounds neat. Once we balance the action economy we can figure out and balance how useful different effects are.

Question about Iniative:

How do we want to handle Player actions and Enemy actions? Do we want to have a massive initiative ladder? Or do we want a Player Round/Noise Round type situation?

I'm included to the separate Rounds idea because it allows the GM to control all the Noise basically at once, which will speed up combat. It also lets Players coordinate their actions better and it gives them the chance to switch their mindset over from "Time to Attack" to "Time to Defend".

Thoughts?

I'm in favour of the Player Round/Noise Round scenario. When should AP refresh, in that case?

AP refresh at the start of the player round would mean that players would not know how much AP to have "left over" for evades, counters, and so on. It would also mean that countering would have limited usage, as the noise go afterwards. Having AP refresh at the start of the Noise round means that during the Player round, players will know exactly how much AP they have, and will make counterattacking more strategic since it can occur first in a round.

I do worry, however, that having the Noise attack first first seem unfair to players, unless the Noise don't attack first round.

Well there are couple ways to do it.

>1. Carry-over
Any AP you don't use in the Player Round is carried over to the Noise Round, to be used for defensive actions. The main advantage is that it's simple and fast, but it might lead to slower, more conservative combat as skitish players avoid taking bold offensive actions to protect themselves. It makes sense that this could happen, but it's less interesting.

>2. Partial Refresh
You still reduced pool of AP in the Defensive round, maybe 3-4 instead of 6, that can be spent to avoid damage and do other non-offensive actions. We might also combine it with the previous option and say you can carry over some AP from the prior Player Round, so you can have up to 6 AP for Defense. I like this option for its balanced approach, but it may be more bookkeeping that some players would want.

>3. No AP
You don't have AP in the Noise Phase, but you don't need it. You merely react to whatever the Noise does. This is pretty simple and would probably be pretty fast to resolve, but it might lack strategic depth and player choice.

Of the 3 I'm partial to #2, though #3 is intriguing purely for how quickly it would resolve the Noise phase.

Partial refresh is fine, though I fear it does remove some player choice. I like the combination with 1 so that you CAN have 6 AP for Defense -- if, for whatever reason, you're just not being effective in a certain battle and so forth.

Presumably, Noise AP would refresh in the same way, so that they can also guard and so forth, though the average mook Noise probably wouldn't, either because they refresh less AP/round or because their attacks are costlier, etc.

Here's an idea for Noise population of the Battlefield:

Whether we go with my 5-zone proposal or the current 10-sector, the GM can roll a d10 to determine where each kind of Noise he's fielding starts out.

Also an idea for Noise population:

Each potential Noise battle has an Intensity rating between 1 and 10, which represents how dangerous it is. Intensity informs the GM of how many Noise and what kind of Noise he should be using.

So a couple Dixiefrogs would only be Intensity 1, while a pack of Garage Wolves would be Intensity 2. If you wanted an Intensity 3 battle you could fill the arena with 3 gangs of Dixiefrogs, or 1 gang of Dixiefrogs and a pack of Garage Wolves. The GM could then roll 1d10 for each enemy group to see where they spawn in the arena (or decide himself if he'd rather do it that way).

Most normal enemies don't spawn alone but in groups. You won't ever fight one Dixiefrog or 1 Garage Wolf. Dixiefrogs always spawn as gangs of 3 and Garage Wolves spawn as pairs. Each group counts as a single enemy for targetting and HP tracking. That creates the illusion of fighting a large group of enemies without actually needing to worry about having a dozen individual targets on the field at once.

Okay, so during the Noise Round players have 4 AP that they can use to move or commit defensive actions, and can carry over an additional 2 AP from the Player Round. These numbers can be fine tuned.

I actually don't think that Noise really need to have their own AP. I actually have an idea for Noise behavior that I mentioned in the last thread that I'll write-up which could be interesting.

That's far. Noise could have their own behaviour, and I like the idea of the Intensity coupled with grouping enemies together. I'm also in favour of your 5-zone system, and I'll update the doc accordingly once I have some free time.

That said, I think that players like it when the enemies are bound by the same rules that they are. I think that enemies such as Reapers, for example, should definitely have their own AP.

>Couture Matrix Question
Any suggestion for an Edgy Bag? I've got Rows 1-3, 5 and 7 done and Row 4 only needs that entry to be complete.

>That said, I think that players like it when the enemies are bound by the same rules that they are. I think that enemies such as Reapers, for example, should definitely have their own AP.
Agreed on Reapers; plus Reapers aren't Noise anyway, so they obviously work different.

>Noise Behavior
Here's my thought process.

Noise doesn't need its own AP, because they are far simpler than Players in their goals. Players have all sorts of things going through their heads-- Psychs, group HP, the Puck, not letting the rest of the group down. Moreover, each Player character is controlled by one real player, whereas all Noise are controlled by one person, the GM. So I'm in favor of simplifying them to make his job easier and to make combat smoother.

It's accurate to the source material to say that Noise really only have one drive: to hurt people. They're born from human unhappiness and they can't be reasoned with, only eliminated.

Every Noise has a set of coded behaviors that affect what they do in their Player Round and the Noise Round. At the start of combat, the GM either rolls to determine what that behavior is or chooses for himself.

Let's take a Garage Wolf for example. It probably has three behaviors, which map to a 1-10 chart:

>1-5: Ravage. The Garage Wolf attacks a Player in his Zone.
>6-7: Prowl. The Garage Wolf moves to an adjacent Zone with a player and attacks them.
>8-10: Shelter. The Garage Wolf takes a defensive posture in preparation for an attack.

Because Garage Wolves are highly aggressive Noise, their 1-7 behaviors are all attacks, which kick-in during the Noise Round. If the GM rolls those as their starting behavior, the Players basically have a free attack during the Player Round because the Grunge Wolves won't take defensive actions. (continued)

(continued)
We could also say that any Noise automatically spawn with their Defensive Behavior at the start of Combat.

Once the Noise Round starts, the GM determines the Garage Wolf's behavior either by rolling or picking. That says what it does during the round. Simple Noise like a Garage Wolf would only have a few behaviors-- either it attacks someone in its Zone, moves to an adjacent Zone and attacks, or it tries to protect itself. Ravage would naturally do more damage than Prowl, since Prowl also allows the Garage Wolf to move.

More complex Noise would have more complex behaviors, probably including more than one action during the Noise Round.

If a Noise uses a Defensive Action, it would probably only work once or twice (we'd determine that), so it's still possible for players to group up on guarding Noise to overwhelm it.

>Edgy Bag

Ripped Carryall.

Nice call. How about a Classy Hat? I already have Fedora and Pillbox under Retro Hat. Or I could switch them around if you have an idea for better Retro Hats.

That could work. I mean, that's essentially no different from having an AP system but only giving each Noise a few different options -- I didn't mean to give them an entire pin whatever system outside of the Reapers. For example, what if the GM rolls "Ravage" but there are no Players in the Zone, or if the closest player is two Zones away? Naturally, having simple roll tables like this sounds great for a GM to look at at a glance. I would supplement this with a very simplified version of the AP system.

As a basic example, a Garage Wolf movement is 1 AP, attack is 2 AP, and defend is 1 AP. Garage Wolves get 3 AP per round, total. A Garage Wolf can thus move a sector and attack, or attack and defend, or move two sectors and defend. The defend action would only be against a single attack, so that players can certainly group on it. Weak enemies have less AP; stronger enemies have more. A slow enemy might have movement - 2 AP. We could also then create a catalogue of abilities and so on so that GMs could create their own Noise.

Note that when I say Garage Wolf here, I mean the pack of them.

Dixiefrogs might only have 1 AP and can either move into an adjacent zone or leap into an adjacent zone to attack for 1 AP.

>That could work. I mean, that's essentially no different from having an AP system but only giving each Noise a few different options
Fair enough. I think this system makes it easier on the GM because he doesn't have to think "if I do X, do I still have enough AP left to do Y?" It's the same end effect but as someone who GMs games pretty frequently I know I'd appreciate having thing streamlined like this.

As for Ravage, we can write it as:

>1-5: Ravage. The Garage Wolf attacks a Player in his zone. If there are no Players the Zone then it Prowls instead.
>6-7: Prowl. The Garage Wolf moves to an adjacent Zone with a player and attacks them. If there are no players in adjacent Zones, then it Ravages instead. If it can do neither, it moves to an empty zone.

It's slightly more complex but I think that satisfies all possible outcomes.

Incidentally I won't be able to post much if at all this weekend, so if the thread gets Archived over the WE I'll start a new one Monday morning if there isn't one already.

Bowler Hat, Top Hat.

Bam, rows 1-7 done up. Thanks for the input.

As for retro bags, Satchels work.

Bomber Jackets work for Retro jackets.

Sports coat for Sporty Suit.

Added. Which means that the Couture Matrix is now filled out except for the Wild row, which is meant to be tacky, tasteless gimmick stuff like platform shoes or a giant cowboy hat.

Writing on mobile, forgive me for any typos.

Hm. I also GM frequently though admittedly I'm used to crunchier systems which may be why I keep proposing crunch despite TWEWY not benefitting from crunch. I can't say that I understand the difference between having complex behaviour rules versus having a very simple system -- surely a GM won't sit, paralysed, thinking about whether to use 3 AP to move and attack or whether to use them to guard. Frankly we could do both: yoke Noise to an action economy, then have a roll table of suggested behaviours. In your example, say the Garage Wolf has 2 AP and access to the actions Movement (1 AP), Light Attack (1 AP), Medium Attack (2 AP), and Guard (2 AP).

We then add a roll behaviour table.
1-5: Ravage - Perform a Medium Attack on a player in the same zone.
6-8: Prowl - Move to an adjacent zone an perform a Light Attack on a player in that zone. If no adjacents zones have players, move twice towards a zone with players.
9-10: Shelter - Guard against a single attack.

For Simple Noise the behaviour tables would be in line with possible actions, though more complex Noise would have access to more types of actions and therefore greater control. Even in the simple example above, a GM may choose to perform two Light Attacks instead of one Medium, if that suits his needs.

A modular framework like that would make it easier to build Noise down the line.

Right. Bell-Bottoms could work for the pants, Hawaiian shirt could work for the shirt, Poodle skirt for the skirt, Lab coat for the jacket, and a shopping bag for the bag?

Those aren't crazy enough. Bell-bottoms would fit in as either Casual or Sexy pants, Hawaiian is in there as "Aloha" for Breezy Shirts, Poodle Skirt I feel isn't particularly distinctive enough compared to what we have already; I'd probably say hoop skirt instead. Actually I'll add that right now.

I definitely see where you're coming from and the rules can certainly be written to accommodate both styles of GM. I was being a bit hyperbolic about GMs finding it stressing to deal with AP for lots of different monsters; surely they can handle it, but I'd personally enjoy it more if it were more automated.

The way you're putting it together is definitely a good way to do it, and how we should proceed. Nicely done.