"Pay attention to what you're doing, Jazzman" edition.
What is the World Ends With You? It's a strikingly original Square Enix action RPG from 2008 for the Nintendo DS about trust, collective consciousness, desperation, imagination and fabulous outfits. Characters are swept into the Underground, a parallel dimension linked to major urban centers, where they run through a 7-day gauntlet of tasks and trials by higher-plane beings called Reapers. Band together and win the Reapers' Game and you have a shot at returning to the Real World. Fail, and you face erasure.
>What is this? This is a Veeky Forums Homebrew RPG based on the above game. It's designed to be fast, simple and exciting, and it adapts virtually all of the mechanics from the source game to a form optimized for a tabletop experience. Most importantly, we've striven to preserve its core themes of cooperation, psychic powers and elaborate fashions.
>What system are you using? We've adapted the core resolution mechanic from another Tabletop game Tenra Bansho Zero into our system. Roll a pool of dice based on your Stats, and count each die that's under your Skill or Psych as a success. It's fast, easy and dynamic. Characters only have four Stats based on your strength of will and mental condition, and only 9 Skills; mixing and matching Stats with Skills creates unique actions, such as rolling Protect:Rhythm to block a punch or Protect:Flow to dodge out of the way.
To flesh out your character, you come-up with free-form Tags like "The Gambler"or "Street Smarts" which describe unique elements of your character's personality and background which fills in the gaps in your Skills. Altogether, character creation takes all of five minutes.
Combat is fast and emphasizes cooperation. Players fight as a team, sharing their a common pool of HP and passing buffs to one another so that a different Player gets to the the superstar of each Round. Range is abstract, numbers are small and the action is lightning quick.
We're slowly moving everything over into a PDF which I would link if I had a copy.
>What's on the agenda? Well, we're fairly certain on how we want skills to work now, so all we have left to work on before we have basics down is threads. After that, we hope to playtest with this baseline stuff. If it's all good, we then need to make more pins, noise and threads to fill out the shops with.
We were also thinking of scrapping Trust because we have little-no reason for it remaining, so character sheets may need to be remade without it.
Also also, we were planning on the UG having more things happening in it than just the Reapers and Players pissing about. We've yet to implement that though.
Nicholas Robinson
bump
Robert Reyes
Good morning thread, and welcome to a new week!
Today I'm going to revise the rules for the Endure Skill and then add a little addendum to the end of the Skills chapter which will give guidelines about the significance of Stats and Skills are to roleplaying your Player. That will complete the Skills system. So glad that's finally been done.
Here are priorities for this week:
>1. Completing the Reaper Sports. Here's the document for those: >drive.google.com/open?id=1JJQRubikTOJDyYnsQFCHmb_I9xMz-c-8HOazu8DIdiI We're over 50% done with this list, which is the first step. Once the list is populated we're going to need to do write-ups for each game, probably a paragraph apiece, to serve as guidelines for GMs running the games for the Players.
This is going to be a major project and we are going to need help to not have it take forever. Which brings me to the second need:
>2. More Devs Right now I'm doing most of the writing and Jazzman, flavoranon, Noise Rapport and other random anons have been pitching in with suggestions and feedback but we can use some additional help at actually creating content. So anyone who wants to add something is free to. Personally I'm especially interested in adding some flavor text to serve as page breaks between each chapter to serve as in-universe introductions to those chapters. It would help break up the flow of raw crunch that we've got going so far.
Asher Hernandez
Question. What is Pre-mortem Analysis? Is it the new name for Murder Mystery, and are we adding Murder Mystery somewhere? Perhaps in Thought or Perception.
Julian Adams
Premortem Analysis was something that Archivist came up with where you have to go out and find some piece of information about someone in the RG. It's similar to Reaper Review in that respect but it's more about stalking than research.
We can add Murder Mystery under Endurance as you suggested.
Carson Bennett
Aah, I see.
I might start plugging in a few of these tomorrow, after I sleep. There's a few I don't fully understand just from the name alone, but the rest I'll have a go at.
Night all.
Camden Peterson
From the previous thread: >Quick thought: to differentiate between normal psychs and intrinsic psychs, what do we think about calling them "refined psychs"?
>What's the problem with differentiating them by calling them Intrinsic Psychs? It's purely a matter of symmetry and clarity. It's useful to be able to speak of both Psychs and Intrinsic Psychs as "Psychs" because fundamentally they're used the same way even if they have different rules. In which case it would cause confusion because it's not clear as to which one is being referred to at a given time.
Gabriel Richardson
pre-lunch Bump. I'll have the finalized Skill section done up when I get back.
Kevin Edwards
Revised guidebook attached. I redid the Endure skills and I added some final notes about how Skills affect a Player's personality and behavior.
All I need is an ending image to fill the empty space in in the second collumn. Any suggestions?
Jaxon Gomez
bump
Mason Hill
Another bump
Evan Cooper
More games:
>1-4: Critical Mass Your goal is to somehow orchestrate events so that a certain number of RG people gather in one spot by a given time.
>4-4: Labyrinth The layout of the UG has shifted such that pre-existing paths no longer function. The Players must reach a certain destination within this maze of twisted streets.
>7-4: Art Battle The Players must compete against a Reaper or group of Reapers to score points for their artistic endeavors. Extra points are awarded for riskier acts.
>9-5: Fear Itself The Players must accomplish a task while being plagued by their greatest fears.
Daniel Hill
Bump
Luis Wright
Game suggestion
>5-4: Trap Set It's a trap disguised as another task! Roll again to make another task, and lay a trap somewhere during the day. Then spring it when they get close!
Nathan Butler
Sounds good! What kind of traps would you imagine?
Zachary Miller
Mostly just hard encounters, but also things like spike ball traps or boulder traps to make life harder by either blocking off the way they have to go or something. Not something immediately lethal, but something to make life harder while they try to do the other task.
How's that sound?
Aaron Thompson
Sounds great. I love the idea of taking an existing task and ratcheting up the danger like that.
Daniel Price
babump
Benjamin Sullivan
and another
Jacob Nelson
Morning bump
Ethan Ross
Based on this, here's another idea, an actual Game of Chance:
>0-2: Minefield The UG is littered with traps that will go off at random. Unlike Trap Set, where the GM decides ahead of time what the trap is and where it is, in Minefield it's random each time the Players enter a new area whether there is a trap and what it is.
Jaxon Scott
Decided to start doing some full write-ups on Reaper Sports. Since Movement is the easiest I began there. I think this format should suit us well.
If anyone wants to pitch in just post a paragraph-sized write-up in the thread and I'll add it to the doc.
Asher Perry
bump
Benjamin Rogers
Another bump.
Real low on steam today unfortunately. Working out the Skill systems took a lot out of me.
Eli Bailey
bump
Jaxon Gomez
The only downside I can see with Minefield is that players really don't like instant random damage.
Well, that and what is damage going to do outside of combat? A set amount of damage for the next few fights? Enemies are attracted to you for the duration? (New suggestion Lure, if we don't already have it) Damage for the day that slowly regenerates?
Levi Harris
bump
Colton Sanchez
Outside of combat, the main hazard of damage is that it can incapacitate a character and make it harder for the party to deal with challenges and combat. Which is where Endure comes in.
But you're right about Players not wanting to be screwed over by random traps. Quite perceptive.
Angel Martinez
In fact, players don't like winning or losing based on chance at all. We should probably not have a games of chance section at all. Perhaps it should just be modifiers for other challenges, such as -1AP for that day (lethargy) or group health reduced by 2 per player (glass bones) or other things like that. You could have good things thrown in too, like having skill rolls have an additional dice (skill monkey) or something.
Kevin Ross
bump
Alexander Hall
bump
Jaxon Cooper
Fair enough. I didn't suppose that games of chance would be truly random, just that they'd be more unpredictable. I put that there because Beat actually references Russian Roulette as a Reaper Sport, and I was trying to populate the list at the time.
I can definitely see your suggestion working. So we've got:
>0-1: Lethargy (-1 AP) >0-2: Glass Bones (-2 Group HP per Player) >0-3: Stripped (Your Pin deck shrinks by 1) >0-4: Skill Monkey (+1d for Skill Rolls) >0-5: High Protein (+2 Group HP per Player)
Need one more still.
Anthony Perry
>0-6: Rest Day (Enemies with -10 dB appear)
Enemies are just objectively easier on that day. Weaker ones show up and Bosses are just plain worse that day.
Alternatively, "Out of the Frying Pan" which is the opposite.
Blake Lewis
Bump
Looks good to me. I'll write those up this afternoon which will seal off that part of the Sports.
Jayden Long
Bump
Nathan Powell
Got a big fat project dropped on my lap today, so I may not be able to touch the Reaper Sports today like I wanted to.
David Scott
bump
Carter Rivera
Should food have a Tough to Chew/Swallow/Stomach quality that makes it so you can't digest more than X Bytes at once? Because I feel like some foods can get maybe too good.
Gabriel Scott
wow, you guys are scrapping trust entirely?
Noah Smith
Hi, I stopped by in the first thread but I haven't really been keeping up so I apologize if any of this is redundant.
Has the effects of graffiti on the players been discussed, more specifically *plot spoiler*the positive vibes Hanekoma puts in CAT graffiti [/spoiler]. Maybe CAT artwork creates such positive vibes in RG people that they don't pull noise to them while near the artwork, creating areas with little to no noise where players are more safe. Maybe Taboo and CAT artwork creates areas where there is higher and lower respectively noise concentrations and a player minigame could be seeking out and clearing taboo graffiti and fighting off the noise around it. Reposted with fixed spoiler tag, realized after that the setting isn't nessisarily Shibuya so CAT art might not be present, so how about general postitive graffiti?
Camden Barnes
Not necessarily, we just currently don't have a good application for it. There are some ideas being kicked around but nothing really solid has been put forth.
Nolan Miller
We haven't done too much with food as of yet, but the idea is that with the exception of +HP food, you can only ever digest 1 Byte at a time. So you can't digest 4 Attack+1 Bytes to give yourself 4 extra attack dice in a single attack.
Lucas Hill
evening bump
Adam Howard
I feel like this is a 'depends on the setting' thing.
Like, maybe one campaign heavily features graffiti, where it will be extremely relevant. Maybe another campaign will feature an uprising of the lower tier reapers, where graffiti will be a device, but not a focus. In a 'normal' (very game-like) campaign, it might just be set dressing, or maybe a single sidequest to fix the materialization tag on a shop.
Gabriel Thompson
Is there a reason to make your Entry Fee not simply your lowest Rank tag?
Carter Johnson
And why even give players the option of making their Intrinsic Psych's Resonant stat not their highest stat?
Ian Wright
Nope, no reason, though there's actually a good reason for making it your highest tag: it's possible to eliminate Tags that no longer apply to you, but your Entry Fee can never be wiped out until you reclaim it.
Elijah Thompson
It's definitely a theme that should be highlighted, though as flavoranon posted , not necessarily mandated. So much of TWEWY is about exploring and expressing who you are as a person and expanding those borders that it would be wrong to ignore it altogether.
Camden Lopez
bump
Noah Phillips
How's everyone doing? I've been super busy this week between work and planning other game stuff so I haven't been able to do as much for this project as I'd have liked.
Liam Perez
page 10 bump
Ryder Murphy
Not sure what i can do to help (and no way to edit pdfs), so i've been lurking, mostly
Landon Miller
I had a bunch to do these past few days, so I wasn't on.
If you want a character to have a real drive to get back what they lost, or even trying to live their life as they used to but suffering because they are missing part of themselves, then you'd want the Fee to be the highest, or at least very high.
Keep in mind that the entry fee is what they value most being taken from them.
A player may set theirs to Insight, but might find Bravery more useful in the game, making them level up Bravery instead.
Alternatively, they may not use the intrinsic pin ever, meaning it's effectively useless later on.
Also, the reason you can choose is because each player may decide to use a different Stat as their main. And once the pin is made, that's it.
Kevin Moore
bump
Josiah Collins
bump
Asher Hernandez
If you're still around, here's what we need help with right now:
1. Writing up Reaper Sports as here: 2. Writing inter-chapter Fluff to break up the crunch a bit
Isaiah Reed
Bump for later this afternoon.
Ayden Bailey
One more quick bump to save the thread from Page 10.
Not sure what's going to happen this weekend. I won't be around much at all to post or contribute till next week.
Landon Lopez
bump
I'll try to keep the thread afloat.
John Young
3-2: King of the Hill
Goal: Defend a certain area from attackers for a certain amount of time.
Execution: The players must defend a specified area - whether they wake up already at it or must first travel to it within a certain time limit is up to the GM's discretion - from waves of aggressors, either totaling a set value of dB or for a certain amount of rounds.
Variants: King of the Hill can be made more interesting by inserting small tasks like Fetch in between waves of opponents. Alternatively, perhaps the Players need to generate the area themselves by providing a support Reaper with a specific Password.
7-2: Dress-Up
Goal: Interact with a specific Reaper while wearing a certain Brand.
Execution: One or more of the players must be exclusively wearing Threads from a specific Brand, whilst reporting in to a certain Reaper. They can acquire the necessary Threads by shopping, searching the UG, or anything else that seems appropriate. Dress-Up is a good way to introduce the concept of Threads, or re-emphasize it to Players who tend to ignore them.
Variants: Dress-Up can be the condition required to remove a wall on the way to another task, or could require specific combinations of different Brands of Threads(e.g. a Sheep Heavenly Hat, Lapin Angelique Top & Bottom, and a D+B Accessory).
Sebastian Ross
I like it
Mason Rivera
How would you handle a player forming a relationship with an npc?
Luke Stewart
As you would in any other game, I guess.
Leo Sanchez
bump
Jeremiah Cooper
Why did we choose to make it rolling below a number instead of above for skill checks?
