Dark Souls as a ttRPG

>inb4 kys, some other bs
no, it's time Veeky Forums did something other than cyoa and circlejerk in the modern mtg thread. We all know that Dark Souls is worthy of a ttRPG: I suggest maintaining the grimdark setting while developing a fairly realistic combat system.

So the ideas I have for a not!Souls rpg:
1) 2 D10 system where success on any test is on an 11+. Additional degrees of success are on 12-20. Instead of degrees of success providing more of something, tests require a specific degree of success to succeed.
2) Attributes do not “level-up”, instead the characteristics change at the GM’s discretion through context (e.g. spending time in jail would prompt the GM to lower attributes, whereas a character training would prompt the GM to increase the character’s strength). Attributes assist a character in succeeding at a test, providing a -x requirement on a test where x is their relevant attribute bonus (attribute/10, rounded down to the nearest integer)
3) Combat is more realistic than in most other RPG’s. Combat actions are specific and are often aimed. Pain is a factor in combat, which is increased for each wound taken and removes dice from a combatants dice pool. This includes both melee and projectile-based fighting.
4) Magic based on slots equal to Intelligence (or other attribute bonus), with varying casting times and focus required.
5) Characters may have an amount of traits depending on the background of the character. These traits may have a positive or negative effect (or both) regarding success on a test.
6) Functioning somewhat similarly to the fate points system, in that a character has a finite resource that replenishes at the beginning of a game session, each character is allowed to not!hollow 3+(willpower bonus) times each game session before being fully not!hollowed.

Some ideas are based off of the Blade of the Iron Throne RPG, and another user suggested something from Ragnarok: Fate of the Norns which I will look into.
make Veeky Forums /getsshitdone/ again

I've always thought of RuneQuest to be a good basis for a Dark Souls RPG with some tweaking but you'd have to figure out how to speed up combat to make it now slow as god damn dirt, unless you don't mind your sessions taking a big longer.

GURPS has a Pyramid issue built around this kind of game in mind (repeated deaths as a mechanic, stuff on souls, etc.) and a setting similar in theme and tone to accompany it, somewhat explicitly inspired by dark souls/demon souls I believe. Obviously the "realistic" GURPS combat goes fairly hand in hand with it.

I can't for the life of me remember which issue it is though, any GURPSfags reading this please provide a reference because I, the dummy, cannot. (Could be helpful even if you don't want to use GURPS)

What campaigns could you run in a DS RPG besides "go immolate yourself", though?

I think RPG's that take too long for things to get rolled or done are a bit too slow. They should be able to be played with drinks and pizza. That said, Dark Souls is fairly gritty and would be played more seriously than your average ttRPG.
I think an issue is wanting to be as close to Dark Souls as possible, without trying to evolve it by any amount. Instead, a campaign could focus on the PC's striving towards their goal in order to keep hope alive. The difficulty is evolving the concept further, while not straying too far into just being a gritty RPG.

bump

The article is "Havens and Hells," and it's from issue #3/89 Alternate Dungeons II.

The short version is that the two forces -- Civilization and Chaos -- are trying to wipe each other out, but the universe is stuck in a stalemate. Humans, the race of Civilization, must venture forth from the cosmically-protected havens into the wilds of Hell for resources. Hell isn't another dimension, and it isn't fire and brimstone (unless you're in a volcanic area); it's the world outside of the havens, similar to standard fantasy lands but 100 times more ominous, sinister, and lethal. Humans that die in Hell "respawn" at the nearest haven with no gear and 10% of their point total missing. Monsters of Chaos don't really die either; they either get better, come back undead, are reborn anew, etc., and Hell is strengthened the more times a human is killed in their area.

By default, point totals have nothing to do with souls, but it's very easy to refluff that, with lost points meaning losing a fragment of your soul and the character points you gain at the end of the session being soulstuff you've absorbed from the monsters of Hell. However, there's also the "Dungeon Fantasy Video Gaming" article from Pyramid #3/72. In it is a small section meant to simulate monster drops a'la Legend of Zelda -- restoring health or fatigue and even occasionally providing a boost in power -- but can easily be refuluffed as picking up monster souls. Hell, the section is even called "Eating Souls for Fun and Profit."

IMO, it's closer to Demon's Souls than Dark Souls, with the power of an area being equivalent to DeS's White/Black Tendency. The big thing, though, is that GMs are more free to swing for the fences, as a TPK is an inconvenience, not the end of an adventure. If you're using GURPS, I recommend using The Last Gasp to simulate the Souls series' stamina mechanic and just because it's great for gritty/lethal games in general.

Difference between "Havens and Hells" and the Souls series is that in the Souls series existence sortof is Hell. PC's have to keep trudging forward to keep themselves from hollowing. An example of someone who has failed is the Crestfallen Warrior, as he sits there and never moves.
But thinking of killing mobs and currenct brought up by the second paragraph, how would a Souls system handle currency? Would it be separate or just be souls? It could be fluffed that merchants stay still to exchange wares for a bit of sanity (souls) so that the PC's get to keep moving forward.
Last paragraph reminds me of a question someone asked about how the lack of death leads to death being meaningless. The answer I thought of was that time moves on forward, and means that characters can fail in their goal (e.g. BBEG fucks everything up, and characters hollow b/c they failed)

Good Job user, we at the /fvgt/ wish you the best of luck.

Though I still say making a hack of the Blade of the Iron Throne RPG is probably the best place to start.

I've actually worked on a bloodsouls splice up that is suppose to be a middle ground between the two while it explores it's on setting. Me and my friend worked on it for the equivelent to half a week. We did an "alpha test" and the combat was a too slow. We did change that and adjusted it appropriately but the changes didn't save so we got annoyed and threw it in the shed. I still have the mess of notes before the alpha testing if anyone is curious.

Yeah, they're very different in tone, but a GM can rip ideas form H&H if they want to run games inspired by DS rather than literally DS: The TTRPG. I agree with in that a direct translation of DS to the tabletop would leave the players with little in the way of goals, and I feel that gathering what havens need is a good way to counter that; the havens are idyllic farming hamlets, but they have no sources of wood, leather, stone, ore, etc., and tasking the PCs with obtaining those things is a passable motivation. FromSoftware knows how to write lore and backstory, but what kept me playing their games was the sheer mechanical fun, and that doesn't translate 1:1 for rolling dice, so you need something more in my opinion.

One quick fix for the tone is changing the Civilization/Chaos balance; if Chaos is winning and havens are dying out, the "bastions" of Civilization are going to be a lot less like the Shire and a lot more like the Nexus or Firelink Shrine. It still lacks the existential dread aspect, but hey it's something. The point-debt accrued by dying too often can also lead to Hollowing in the form of added disadvantages (Chronic Depression, Bad Temper/Berserk, Obsession, etc.), so there's that too.

I'm pretty sure I'm off-topic/rambling at this point, so I just hope that you guys have fun and this project takes off in whatever direction y'all feel is best.

Is what I'm doing, sortof. I'm taking a bunch of ideas from it, and I'm reading into some other RPG's that anons have pointed to.
I like this 'bastion' idea. So lets say fluffwise villages/towns/areas have enough going on that they can sustain their souls, and thus remain uncorrupted or something like that. As forces of good or evil achieve their goals, these areas will either expand or contract respectively. Though of course it'll be a bit greyer than good and evil.
But not everything can be found in those small towns, and thus characters must venture out in search of material.

Another inconsistency I'm having is the idea of permanent injury and resurrecting/reviving. Before hollowing, a character can die x amount of times. But say a character died sometime after having their arm cut off. Does this character resurrect in the state they were in when they died with all temporary injuries removed? But a friend then pointed out that what if that wound was fatal, as in their head was cut off or they were chopped in half. Can't have them resurrect in two or more parts. This means that dismemberment for the PC's couldn't really occur which I feel adds to realism (but I suppose it could be cut for functional reasons).
Genuinely looking for an answer to the previous point, if anhone can think of sumthing.

GURPS is perfect for simulating the games actually. Now before you call me a memer, hear me out.

Combat isn't just abstract, nor does it involve sitting there and hitting things. When some guy swipes at you, you have to choose to block, parry, or hop out of the way of the blow, not unlike what you have to do in the game. At the same time you will have to be managing fatigue for more mundane actions, and for things like casting spells, just like it is in the game. If you do get hit, then you aren't really going to walk out of it fine. Much like having low poise in the game, if some guy smacks you you can be stunned or put into shock. And due to the high lethality of the system, you can get fucked up if you aren't careful.

The actual fighting bit on your side isn't too different either. You can wield weapons both ways, and you can choose what kind of swipe you want if the default choice doesn't appeal to you. GURPS does have targeted attacks, but soulswise those won't really matter for anything but some weakpoints on bosses and getting by defenses. The 1 second turns chop it up so it is closer to the action oriented nature of the Souls series, and fatigue points are a real resource just like fatigue in the games.

Overall I think that using GURPS is just a better choice than using let's say the D&D 5E Dark Souls bestiary or something like Shadow of the Demon Lord.

Two problems to overcome when making a Souls-like tabletop:

>keeping combat fast without sacrificing depth
>not deviating from the basic world structure

You'd be surprised how much of a problem the second one ends up being. Partly because no one can ever seem to agree on the fine details (ex. vaatividya is actually a really, really bad source for souls lore, and was debunked by the game's own expansions on multiple occasions), and partly because half the time the game simply doesn't go into enough detail, so when you do make up something that seems on-theme and crunchy enough to work with, it ends up conflicting with something else you added in another area. Souls lore somehow manages the illusion of perfect consistency without going into detail, but the details are where tabletops thrive. It literally cannot function as anything other than a source of inspiration, and everyone's Dark Souls ttRPG will be different from everyone else's, sometimes extremely so.

The first is a problem for more than just the obvious reasons, because people often underestimate how complex the combat is. It isn't fighting-game tier, but it uses many of the same elements and you can often do any one of no less than twelve different actions at any time, each with their own advantages and disadvantages depending on how your opponent may respond and whether or not they were doing what you thought they were doing. It isn't just action and reaction or hit and block, there's a fair amount of prediction, spacing, and opportunism involved.

The thing is, Souls the video game can get away with that level of complexity because the software automates all of it under the hood. Done by hand, we're talking about hours of work for a single combat encounter. Veeky Forums Souls is either fast, or accurate. Not both.

I swear we have a 'how do soulsbourne' thread at least twice a day goddamn

I'm with this user. Blade has fast gritty combat that is still flavorful, and feels right for Souls. Sorcery system could use some modifying for Dark Souls Gameplay, but it would probably consist of being able to add extra dice to your pool for attacks while making some kind of arcane check.

Personally I'd just like to see how someone would take the mechanics presented already and translate them into tabletop. Personally I'd like to see someone write up the covenants as deities and such, or take the spells and convert them to dnd. Everything else one system or another has tried to do. Shadow's of the Demon Lord actually does the weapon and armor mechanics exactly like dark souls does. I just want to see someone do the same with the spells and such

Maybe a system where you put down a card facedown, then simultaneously reveal.
For example, you're defending, so you place parry, they place a close attack, so you get a big bonus to defense and a counter hit.
You're attacking, you back off and poke, they press forward so your attack gets a bonus
Something like that, obviously haven't put heaps of thought into it yet.

I have not seen one in at least a year
how should magic be done? I feel like splitting it into pyromancy/hex/sorcery/miracle is a bit much. I also feel that while people shat on Dark Souls for having stamina shared with magic as well as other combat, I feel that casting magic should take from the same pool of dice as for others (read: stamina)

>I have not seen one in at least a year
there have been several, we don't have them twice a day, but people like me keep them bumped just in case something interesting pops up

I've seen this mentioned before, and it doesn't work so well because it completely leaves out the element of reaction the game loves to use and abuse you with. There's prediction involved, sure, but even parrying isn't a guessing game unless your connection speed is suborbital.

Technically speaking, the series only has three spell disciplines: sorcery, miracles, and pyromancy, and pyromancy itself is an offshoot of an offshoot of sorcery. Hexes, in practice, are only ever cast as either sorceries or miracles using the same tools, just scaling with two stats instead of one. The series didn't start using stamina for magic until Dark Souls 2, mainly because in Dark Souls 1 you could cast 32 spells in a row without pause for the minimal investment of 16 in a single stat. The stamina cost was added to re-fix what removing the mana bar from Demon's Souls broke. Dark Souls 3, however, re-re-broke it by bringing back the mana bar but keeping the stamina costs, which just makes things extra fucky.

Another idea I have for combat is the idea of who's on the offensive, somewhat derived from the idea of a limelight from BotIT.
Say someone attacks first during their turn, the opponent then reacts as they do. Normally afterwards the next PC would get their turn, but instead if the defendant manages to react in a way that puts them on the offensive then they get to do take their turn next. As such the order of who goes in combat changes, although initially it would be by initiative and by surprise factor.

I actually didn't even know that DS1 didn't use Stamina because I never play casters b/c they're kinda shitty

BoIT is straight up dice pools, with blood loss, damage, fatigue, etc, all contributing to how effective you are in combat. Magic might increase dice pools at the cost of increased fatigue.

Pyromancers were never shitty and were actually quite good. It's the sorcerers that give everyone else a bad rap.

Sorry, I wouldn't know. I know lots about Souls, but not enough about tabletop to even know what BoIT is an acronym of.

Blade of the Iron Throne, as above.

Dark Souls will never transition to tabletop. It worked in it's home medium for a reason.

Dark Souls managed to be an incredibly challenging game that was dependent on PLAYER SKILL throughout the entire game. Patience, Perception, Timing, Learning, these are the most important parts about Dark Souls combat, and none of them transition to tabletop.

Further discussion: What stats would a Souls ttRPG use? Not sure whether they should be the generic ones or something Souls-themed. The name would also imply different things.

I used the occasional pyromancy, but never felt they were worth the casting time.
But back to constructive discussion, were ties made between pyromancy and the theme of flame in Souls? I'm thinking of how magic could be tied fluff-wise to something in the not!Souls setting.
I feel like fatigue and pain is too much. Fatigue is also kind of represented by a stamina system. I, personally, would make magic share the same dice pool with no additional dice granted. This would force them to have the same dynamic of how meleemen have to decide to sacrifice offensive actions for defensive actions and vice versa.
This would however require careful balancing in terms of dice cost for actions, as not doing so would mean spellswords would not be viable.
Those could be in a ttRPG, but in a different way.
Perception is always required in ttRPG's, making astute observation to where armour is missing or broken, as well as for traps.
Patience was always a bit shit imo for Souls, and Bloodborne and DS3 went ahead and made it more proactive. See BotIT for how combat works and is fast with many options.
Timing is impossible to do in a sequential game, so I'll give you that point.
Learning is in any game worth a damn, and is not unique to vidya. This would be included as attack patterns of enemies as well as in what works and doesn't.
And again this isn't about only copypasting DS into ttRPG but also about how to further evolve it.

It's not complex though, the resolution is pretty straight forward and isn't any slower than most games. It is just that it gives you tactical choices, so the only thing that will really slow you down potentially will be decision making.

>were ties made between pyromancy and the theme of flame in Souls?
Yes. In Dark Souls 3, we have this line spoken by Corynx:

>Heed my words, Unkindled One. Fear the fire. The home of pyromancy, Izalith, was scorched by the very fire it created. Undoubtedly, it was a flame of chaos, tangled by a witch's hand. But who's to say that this Bonfire's flame is any different?

While pyromancy was born from the Flame of Chaos, this line suggests that the Chaos Flame and the First Flame aren't really all that different. And, considering that a pyromancy flame is capable of casting multiple different kinds of fire spell anywhere from chaos flame to lightless abyssal flames and even the new profaned flame, pyromancy itself probably isn't tied to chaos either.

The series mentions multiple time that chaos demons may be a twisted form of life that was never meant to be, but they're still life and not all that far removed from other kinds of life. The flame of chaos itself is dead by the time the third game rolls around, and its role in the story is replaced by the profaned flame, an undying fire of abyssal origin.

While respawning indefinitely in the video game is no problem, because the worlld is entirely dependant on the player, I feel it would cause lots of issues in a ttrpg, because NPCs (both hostile and friendly) would either also be able to respawn, or you would need some explanation why only the players can respawn.

>tfw only computer can't run DS3. Will have to wait until summer until I'll have my pc finished.
So I'm thinking of the setting of this RPG. Would it be Souls or blatantly not!Souls. I prefer the latter because it means that evolution can be done, but it also means that this wouldn't really be a direct Souls RPG.
I ask because of how certain things would be fluffed (settlements, how magic works, currency)
Part of the issues I explained with only a certain amount of hollowing allowed per session until a character fully hollows, as well as the issue of agency being explained by the BBEG getting on with whatever it is they want done causing the PC's to hollow (maybe) due to their failure and loss of hope.

If you're going strictly by the lore, no undead can respawn indefinitely. The player character just happened to get up that one last time they needed to make it.

Undead become progressively more hollow as they die, and eventually reach a point where they simply stop getting back up. The series doesn't clarify this, but there are enough true corpses lying around and the bonfires are specifically said to burn on the bones of undead as fuel. Ergo, undead must be able to fully die somehow, but the exact limit isn't given.

Seeing as the player character needs humanity to reverse hollowing, and this full death state would have to be something after hollow, it's probably fair to use humanity as a respawn counter. The resource could be as rare as the GM wanted the game to be grim. The character's mind is effectively lost at full hollow, anyways.

I'd imagine not!Souls would probably be easier to pull off, since you wouldn't have to spend literal years digging through all the lore to please the autistic neckbeards who do. I wouldn't really be able to contribute if you go that route, but that's not exactly a loss.

Well I thank you for your input, but I do believe you can be of more help.
I feel like crunch needs to be written at some point, so might as well start with the obvious points and parts that clearly label this as not!Souls:
Firstly, do you think characters should each be allowed a set amount of deaths before hollowing completely, or should there be a value that replenishes each game session? The value would be some set amount + willpower bonus

In-game, undead can gather more humanity and are not necessarily limited to what they start with. Humanity is often found in corpses, within creatures that feed on corpses (often rats or dogs), or taken directly from a slain human. There's also a technique called the Art of Lifedrain, which allows a character to steal the humanity directly out of a living person, though this is taught only by a character who's basically half the reason why everything bad happens in the backstory and should probably be limited only to evil characters. Given to a player character, it'd be a whole lot of incentive to go full murderhobo.

Going by the description on the Dark Hand item in Dark Souls 1, it's possible that living humans can have variable amounts of humanity before they die:

>The Darkwraiths, incited by Kaathe, use the power of the dark soul to absorb humanity, an art shared by this weapon, which also acts as a special shield. The ancients, particularly, could sap the humanity of even a replete saint in the blink of an eye.

I'd imagine a character with a lot of humanity in life would still have most of it as an undead, which could give grounds for a stat-based amount. Although, if you want to stick as close to the original mechanics as possible, humanity would probably work as something you find while playing the game and use as a revival item, maybe even as an occasional trade good. Having it refresh itself periodically would almost go against the story, where you're basically in a world that is slowly and unrelentingly wearing you down but interspersed with a few bright spots and moments of triumph.

You be able to do this easy if you established a boardgame style to it. make cards of weapons with each card stating how much fatigue it causes when you use it both one handed and 2 handed and strong and light attacks. Also state how much damage it does based off the maneuver chosen when attacking. You will also need the weight of it stated, keep the numbers round so it's easy to tally up to reduce brain strain on long games. Don't forget special weapon, crafted or not that have special powers and what rules are affected, such as a Drake Blade that always does a specific damage ignoring any Strength bonuses, but a strong attack can release extra damage at the cost of extra fatique.
Armor is another story of cards, weight, how much damage it absorbs and how much repair is needed based off the attacks used on it. As well and any special abilities you would get wearing it, if any.
Follow suit with items like rings and whatnot.

Make a character progression, when you level up you increase one of your stats, which causes a few elements to boost up. You'd start out pretty weak, attacking with a couple light moves or one strong one would drain your fatigue, so boost your stamina stat. Give out some gems or tokens to use as your characters fatigue counters, rolling or a light attack for example would cost a token to perform, rolling in light armor or a strong attack costs two tokens, movement (if you use miniatures as a visual aid) could cost 3 1inch squares per token spent. This way your tactics open up the better your stats get, so someone in light armor with say, 6 fatigue tokens, could avoid an attack by rolling away 3 squares (2t), move up (1t) and attack with a strong attack (2t) and a weak attack (1t) on their turn, but that would leave them completely unable to do anything until some or all of their fatigue tokens restore. If you have left over fatigue, or gain lost fatigue during your opponets actions, you could spend it to attempt to block or roll away.

Once you work out the fairly simple mechanics of the game, work on your story plot off as much of the game world you can find off the wiki

Alright, so I like the idea of not!Humanity being required to reverse the process for ttRPG pruposes, as it could create conflict within a group.
So crunch-wise each character is allowed x+willpower bonus deaths.
I like this idea, but maybe more as a way of helping players. I might develop the boardgame idea but this will probably be distributed digitally when it's finished, meaning that a boardgame-y aspect wouldn't work terribly well.

Dont forget the most important part of dark souls, if your character dies you die

Conflict within a group isn't a subject that ever comes up in the series, and it sounds interesting. Would give it a unique spin separate from the source material if handled right.

What else is there?

As an example, FT = fatigue tokens

Battle Axe Wgt:5 REQ:STR=13 (+2FT when using understrength) Group Type B
Light Attack - Damage
2-hand 1FT - 1d10+1d6 + STR Mod + Magic Mod
1-hand 1FT - 1d10 + STR Mod + Magic Mod
Strong Attack - Damage
2-hand 1FT - 2d12 + STR Mod + Magic Mod
1-hand 1FT - 1d12 + STR Mod + Magic Mod
Light attack can be used to side swipe multiple close combatants adjacent to player.
Stong attack is overhanded chop which could be interrupted by an opponet that is NOT stunned.
Backstep Chop: Use to avoid an attack, Cost:2FT
Jumping Chop: Use to close ground and attack in one move. Cost: 2FT

Don't forget you can create a base set of manuevers that can be used, Like Kick 1FT, Run 1FT/3squares, Guard 1FTvsLight/2FTvsStrong

Maybe even set up weapon groups for simplicity, so all weapons of Group Type A can perform the same moves sets. Also, Group A require a players Strength be X to use effectively.

I dunno, its a lot of work but the basic mechanics once out of the way you can focus on the world and plot. Its the mechanics that will make or break the game though, too tedious is bad. But you always want to dangle the carrot of Plot balanced with the reward of better gear to keep the player interested.

Conflict does somewhat conflict with the Souls series as it is a singleplayer game to some extent. However, other players either help you to (fluffwise I suppose?) to remain sane, or fight you for personal gain but corrupt themselves. I'll have a think about this and how this could be included in a ttRPG.

Well I asked about the stats/attributes such as Vitality, Strength, Dexterity and so on and what they should be called. Different names have different connotations though. It also means that if miracles/sorceries are seperate then Faith and Int are required, so having too much complexity means even more complexity gets added.
I feel like there shouldn't be too many (BotIT does it quite well with 6, although the names it gives are a bit shit).

And then theres, crafting weapon mods with crystal, lightning, holy ect ect This is where your roleplaying comes in though, make the players gain the trust of the blacksmiths maybe even doing deeds for them (besides the Embers) before they will craft them the cool shit

Everyone has a weird boner for fatigue tokens lately. Did a popular new game use them? I can see the point of it, like making heavy attacks cost more than light attacks or etc., but looking at it this way these fatigue tokens act more like attack speed than like stamina. Stamina in the game was less a way of saying how many of a certain attack you could do in a period of time (factoring for regen speed, everyone recovered the same amount over time) and more a way of forcing you to stop attacking every now and then so you still had enough left over to protect yourself. Unless there's something major I'm missing here?

Souls is better described as a game that seamlessly combines single player and multiplayer. So long as you're online there's no distinction between the two, and even when offline the game attempts to simulate online play with NPCs and messages placed by the developer. Fluffwise, cooperation helps undead maintain their humanity. Gameplay-wise, this is represented by rewarding the players with humanity for a successful co-op. Invasions are done with the goal of killing human players for quick and easy humanity both in story and gameplay, or worse still using lifedrain on them for upwards of ten humanity at once. It's referred to as a sin in the game and puts you on the gods' hit list, but the fluff makes a funny side comment about invaders possibly being more human than anyone else. Technically speaking, they do tend to have the most humanity.

Humanity itself is a special type of soul that all humans have. It's revealed to be the Dark Soul, and is the human soul.

There is some overlap between the different magic schools. For instance, most of pyromancy is a recreation of long-forgotten fire sorceries that simply use a new medium, and the flavor behind dark magic suggests common rules behind sorcery and miracles. It'll take me a bit to go into the details, so hang on.

Continuing,

Basically, sorcery in Souls involves channeling souls and forming them into spells. Most sorcery doesn't specify what type of soul is being used (probably just the unspecified ones you find everywhere), but dark magic (hexes) in particular use human souls, or humanity. Spells cast with humanity often have certain traits, such as a tendency to pursue their target, and according to the flavor seek to gain a will of their own. Since sorcery is soul-based, the existence of light sorceries suggests that there may be light-related souls, and the existence of fire sorceries suggests much the same for fire.

Miracles aren't explained quite as well, but they're cast by reciting a tale to somehow achieve its effects. However, much like sorceries there are dark versions of miracles, cast by reciting tales of humanity instead of tales of the gods.

Normally, this would suggest that the casting methods are too different to combine into one, except there are spell tools that do exactly that and can cast from two or more different categories (sorc/pyro/mir). On top of that, there are some spell tools that scale with the wrong stat, such as a sorcery tool scaling with faith instead of intelligence.

Speaking in purely mechanical terms, though, the only practical, visible difference between different spell schools is what tool they're using. You could, if you wanted to, base all spellcasting off a single stat and just have spells that require specific tools to use, perhaps with some kind of investment system that encourages specialization in one or the other, such as a bonus based on how many of one spell type the character knows.

In Dark Souls 2, it could be difficult to distinguish a hexer from any other type of caster until they actually started using spells, and in Dark Souls 3 a hexer-style character can fully bridge the gap between all different spell schools and cast from each with virtually no loss for their increased versatility. Bloodborne did away with the difference entirely and just had a single Arcane stat that was used to determine non-physical damage and your effectiveness with magical items (used as spells). Demon's Souls, the first Souls game, actually did it first and best by having a special spell tool that could cast all spells in the game, which scaled with both Intelligence and Faith combined and effectively treated them as a single combined stat.

So, yes, if you wanted to make not!Souls there's plenty of framework for a spell system that uses a single stat but still has different schools of magic. Or even just one school of magic.

I don't know about this fatigue thing you talk of, but stamina already manages how much a player can act in a turn so there's no real need for it.
By the way, what would you suggest for writing this up fluffwise and crunchwise. Write crunch then fluff up or write the fluff and figure out the crunch, or write a piece of crunch and fluff it up.
I also feel that some kind of worldbuilding should be started as I need more than my own mind to make it similar to Souls while still being not!Souls and therefore capable of evolving and escaping copyright infringment.

I think it's best to have larger categories of weapons, heavy swords, blunt weapons, small knives which each have a specific moveset (like in dark souls) that allow the character to make certain attacks that have different outcomes or effects.

I feel like it would be best to keep it to one stat, as the numbers get tricky with 2 stats. If either of you can think of a way to have 4 different schools of magic under one roof I'm all ears. What

A bit of fluff idea:
Towns and settlements are built around the not!bonfires, as naturally they would want to be protected and it's pretty good to have a replenishing/vitalizing source right near the people.

Accidentally posted before I finished writing, continuing from the last full sentence:

What I thought of was that each spell would be labelled Sorcery/Miracle/Hex/pyromancy and then the amount of spells of one school equipped give some kind of bonus.
NPC's would take note of what kind of magic the PC's use, perhaps asking them to heal someone (Miracle) or being irritable / calling the guards (Hex)

Told that before, will tell it again.
To make fight not random you should divide every turn into segments.
For example PC is in a fight with a mad dog. They both have similar stamina, so they use the same amount of dice(let's say three). But the dog is more agile(15) than PC(who is 10). They both throw dice. Dog gets 15 13 12. So he passed all tests, and can use those three dices in a turn(3 successes), while PC rolled 15 10 9, so he passed two of them and gets to use those two dices(2 successes)
You already eastimated who gets initative in a fight, because dog is more successful(you can do normal initative roll tho).
So dog can do three actions(of course actions cost different amount of successes) and PC can either defend or do something else.
How to "win" initative? You have to have more successes than your oponent. For example mad dog now has 1 miseryable success and has initative. And PC has three of them.
Dog attack, PC defends, PC has successes so he seizes the initative and still has one success to attack
The base of it, expand it as you like

Well, the developers at From Software claim to start crunch first, designing the type of gameplay experience they want their players to have, then story second to tie all the elements together. However, as not!Souls, you already have the gameplay experience in mind, and many of the elements can be lifted directly or loosely modeled after the mother series, it'd probably be better off starting with story first. Also, considering that video games can afford to give up story for gameplay's sake whereas a tabletop thrives on worldbuilding so the GMs and players have more to work with, you're gonna want a solid story in place before you get too far with it.

Bloodborne, the sister game to Dark Souls, could be called a minimalist version of Souls infused with amphetamines and acid. It uses only six stats for everything, and only had a single stat for all aspects of spellcasting. Vitality for hp, Endurance for stamina, Strength for large weapons, Skill for finesse weapons and critical hit damage, Bloodtinge for gun damage (lore reasons, bullets fused with PC's blood), Arcane for magic damage and proficiency with magic items (the spellcasting). Magic effects and items cost bullets, for lore reasons.

Four different schools of magic under one roof? Outside the idea I had here >You could, if you wanted to, base all spellcasting off a single stat and just have spells that require specific tools to use, perhaps with some kind of investment system that encourages specialization in one or the other, such as a bonus based on how many of one spell type the character knows.

and which this great mind also had I can't think of anything else, really. Aside from directly lifting Bloodborne's system of just using magic items for spells and having them themed for one organization or another, or tying spell access to organizations, like several years of education in the local wizard school, being clergy in a religion, or apprenticeship to a heretic.

>vaati is bad source of the lore
yeah, but it's easier to sit through his videos than watch entire PlagueOfGripes let's play video, even tho PoG is more often right(and explained dragon asses)

Thinking further, you might be able to base spell access on covenants, with the magic stat being what allows you to channel the power of whatever being you formed the covenant with. Ex., in Dark Souls, Seath the Scaleless codified sorcery and founded the school for teaching it. In not!Souls, learning sorcery could be like forming a covenant with whatever isn't Seath who designed magic from the ground up, whereas practicing miracles is about worshiping a god and channeling its power directly.

PlagueOfGripes is only a little better, in that he acknowledges his explanations are only fanon and points out when he does this. Dragon asses were given the official name "Bounding Demons of Izalith", and story-wise have nothing to do with dragons. The fact that they were originally designed as the ass-end of a dragon for a fight that was eventually cut due to time constraints and recycled as an enemy in a desperate attempt to give content to an incomplete area doesn't have any impact on the story. Has an impact on the quality of the game, for sure, but not on the story.

I guess there aren't really any good lore sources that are also easy to watch. Come to think of it, there aren't any really good lore sources period, since everyone tries to speculate at least a little bit and draw connections between things that may not necessarily be connected.

But it's not like weird lore interpretations would have a negative effect on a game that isn't trying to perfectly imitate Dark Souls lore. If anything, looking at a bunch of different angles might even work out better. I just wouldn't stick with one only, especially not Vaati since he tends to get especially weird more often than most.

I'm thinking that the way skill would be in a ttRPG is by what actions the player decides to take, rather than reflexes (which is crucial to Souls but impossible on ttRPG).
Sure a pattern would fall into place, but so does it in Souls as eventually you git gud enough to know what to do when facing a new opponent. This means a player is rewarded for using blunt weapons on armor and sharp against non armor
I want to consensually snuggle the top cat !
that's actually quite a simple solution. I like. That made me think of some kind of 'sin' counter similar to that in Salt and Sanctuary where switching faction counted as a negative, and in not!Souls it would give some kind of -1 per sin on check to succeed.

Dark Souls 1 had a mechanic like that, where covenant-bound spells had their power based on covenant rank, leaving the covenant dropped your rank, and the game implied abandoning a covenant without doing it the proper way would get you targeted by Gwyndolin's secret police but they said that about a lot of things.

perhaps members of a covenant would hunt the PC down for their betrayal? I suppose it would be interesting to see how that NPC goes about it. Maybe they were well aquainted and he feels sorry, or maybe the NPC is devout as shit and just goes apeshit.

That would more or less be the Darkmoon covenant in a nutshell. Do something somebody called a sin, and Velka writes your name in a book while Gwyndolin sends his covenant members off to kill the sin out of you. Velka and Gwyndolin are both divine beings, Velka doesn't have her own covenant but she records sin, charges ridiculous prices to remove sin, and allows people to leave covenants without it counting as sin. Gwyndolin is the third and last child of Gwyn, who's basically a combination of Zeus and Odin. All gods are physical and exist in the normal world, by the way, and can be killed but do not age. Not that there are many things able to kill a god in a fair fight.

I'm gonna fluff for the not!Souls setting and summarize what is decided on the crunch so far.
I've been on this thread for more than 12 hours now so I'll remake this thread later.
Thanks for all your input ! Very much appreciated.
If you want to give more input while the thread is kill then add me on steam: Existential Ego Death or halubi

A deckbuilding RPG.

Hear me out. Dice are slow and resolve poorly for Dark Souls. What you want is a game built on rapid back-and-forth action. To accomplish that, you need a fast resolution.

So you have players build decks out of a set of cards. They get so many Attack 1s, Attack 2s, Attack 3s, et cetera. If they want to spice their deck up with Pyromancy or magic they splice those in. Stats basically determine how many of what card you can put in, rather than damage or endurance. So Strength determines Attack Cards, Dexterity determines Dodge Cards, Stamina determines Shield Cards, so on and so forth.

So a round of play goes like this:

Both the GM and the player play their cards face-down for the turn. The player turns their cards up first.

"I'm gonna go all in and play an Attack 3, Attack 3, and Attack 3."
"Alright. Pinwheel has a Dodge 3 to nullify one of your Attack 3s, but his other two cards are spell cards. You're taking a shitload of damage."


You could have traits for monsters that do things like allow you to force players to play with their hands revealed so the monsters can see their options, or things like that.

Damage from attacks or spells is based on your weapon. An Attack 1 would do 1x the damage, an attack 2 would do 2x, and an Attack 3 would do 3x. So if you had a +5 Greatsword it'd do, let's say, 10 (5 base, +5), and on an Attack 3 it'd do 30.

Spell Cards might have other effects or internal damage, and nullifying them is probably harder than mitigating them with a Shield Card or something.

you know, PoG explaining dragon asses was a joke pretty much, if you watched it

>cat
>wanting to snuggle with Him Who Is Not To Be Named, The Unspeakable One, The Token Trap From Haiyoure! Nyaruko-san

Now here is an interesting possibility.

There seems to be a correspondence between the original Lord Souls and the sorts of magic we see practiced.

Hexes and 'Dark Sorceries' reflect the Dark Soul. That's pretty blatant.

Likewise, a solid case can be made for Pryomancies reflecting the Witch's soul. She was, after all, the mother of Pyromancy.

Miracles seem a bit weirder in terms of how you cast them, but they are explicitly tales of the gods. But remember who the gods are in this context: Gwyn and his family. Those possessing the Lord Soul of Gwyn and its power since he partitioned it out to people. So while the method of doing so is unique, this is still a reflection of a Lord Soul, and there are even Light Sorceries like what Oolacile had, so that shows that it may be possible to draw on this power in other ways, they just don't anymore.

This seems to leave generic sorceries up in the air without a patron. But there is still one Lord Soul left, isn't there?

We know necromancy is a form of magic, and risen skeletons have little white lights in their eye holes. What if generic sorceries are drawing on the power of Nito's soul? Its not like anyone would really know, Nito never does anything.
It also makes a twisted sort of sense that Seathe's magic (where we get all of the crystal sorceries) would be in the same vein as Nito's power. If you wanted to find immortality, wouldn't you try to tame the power of the First of the Dead?

It's very subtle in DaS1 and only makes sense in hindsight (Nito's cloak looks like humanity, skeletons are undead, so on), but in DaS2 Nito's power is closely related to the dark. The player doesn't cast any spells relating to Nito outside the Gravelord Dance miracles, though, so it's hard to go into detail.

Which reminds me: three games later and we still don't know any more about Nito than his first appearance. Nothing more annoying in the lore than this.

Bump.

>>not wanting to snuggle with an eldritch qt3.14