Hey Veeky Forums! I am the creator of a tabletop game called Nyra. I made this thread to talk about the game and to let people know about its existence as I plan to create a Kickstarter soon. The game’s core rule structure is thoroughly developed and has been beta tested for years. The world is the result of 17 years of creative development. It has been a side project of mine for a very long time and it is finally within striking distance of being finished. I’d like to hear your questions and criticisms and if I’m lucky, get some help from you when you know the right way to proceed.
Nyra is a dark fantasy tabletop game based around a d10 instead of a d20 and has skill-based progression instead of level-based progression. Nyra is a dark and unforgiving world, much closer to Lovecraft than Tolkien. Although the fantasy aspect plays a significant role in the lore, the dominant struggle for characters in this world is survival. This is not only set out in how the lore is written, but also by way of how the rule system has been structured. When your character dies in Nyra, they die for good. Although there are mages, they do not have resurrection spells. And to make this even more pressing, the damage done from weapons, when compared to the health of player characters, is purposely brutal (read: realistic). Some of you have probably heard of and experienced the “nomadic murder hobo” archetype that so often plays out in tabletop games. In Nyra, that character dies very quickly. Roleplaying is enforced by way of players being forced to put themselves in the shoes of their characters and make wise decisions concerning their own well-being or risk having a dead character.
This thread will be a kind of story-time thread where I try to flesh out the overarching components of the mythos, while also answering any questions you might have. I am hosting the entire guide on Google drive right now and I will produce public links to answer your questions as best as I can.
As a proponent of old-school roleplaying and a fan of Lovecraft, I feel you've got a good thing going and would like to encourage you to keep it up, for Veeky Forums as a whole can be far from encouraging.
You may wish to let /osrg/ know, for they have others like me there:
Zachary Hill
>roleplaying not rollplaying >realistic combat >no levels superior >OC donut steel
Is..is this bait? I legitimately cannot tell any more.
Cameron Smith
In Nyra, I long ago made an effort not to integrate the classical Tolkien species into the world. Instead I sought to create new species with their own unique cultures and biologies. The only species that should be familiar to you are Humans and the Highlanders.
The Humans are exactly what we would expect of them. They are Machiavellian, imperialistic, and have maintained their power through a mixture of adaptability and brutal military conquest. The humans have maintained control of one of the largest continents in Nyra. However, their king, King Doran, is too psychotic to even be acceptable to the largely impoverished people of this nation. The kingdom overseen by Doran is shaky, held together by fear and tyranny. There is a sense that it cannot last and that a violent revolution is brewing.
Meanwhile across the ocean are the Ethakkra. The Ethakkra are satyr-like people, with their top halves covered in fur and the heads of anthropomorphic goats (pictured: left). They are the second most powerful species on the planet, vying for their control through economic control. They are focused upon deception to achieve their means. In their society, to deceive someone else is considered good and the person who has been deceived is considered stupid or naive. Despite this, they are very ordered, because what is held sacrosanct, is that those who have gained power deserve to have it. Only if one thinks they can take that power, do they ever disrespect their superiors.
Andrew Diaz
So, I can just write any shitty uninspired "old school" turd and get kikestarter bux?
Since I refuse to be wagie, I am bit short on dosh, how much dolaridos can I expect outa kikestarted RPG per hour of work?
Christopher Sanders
If you have to ask, assume it's not.
It's a thread about something actually creative, instead of some endless general or complaining about the board itself. As far as I'm concerned, bait or not, it's all good.
Luke Hernandez
The humans have descended, like the Highlanders and the Famulus, from a race called the Ponderan.
The Ponderan are a species of highly intelligent, magically attuned academics, currently cloistered away at the southern tip of the Human continent. The Ponderan have created an almost completely automated society, using mineral concentrations of magic to power their machines. Long ago they bred a species called the Famulus to be their workhorses, by selectively breeding those who were less intelligent and more physical muscular.
This gambit paid off for thousands of years, until the Famulus began to organize in secret. In what is now called The Massacre, the Famulus killed a great number of the Ponderan leadership in their sleep and pushed them from the continent. The Famulus now stay on the island of Onus, in the ruins of a once great technological empire, raiding and pillaging the coastlines of cities across the planet. They are massive, brutal, and have very low intelligence on average.
The Highlanders are the result of the interbreeding of Famulus and Ponderan. Their children were large and muscular, but had much of the intelligence and patience of the Ponderan. The Highlanders have a very tribal, but war-like culture. They are split into three large tribal alliances called G’ok, Braggos, and Peridar. These three nations fight centuries old wars to decide who will maintain dominance.
Jack Lee
But you'll also need to put all that money on that old-school game of yours. It's a bad plan.
Grayson Cooper
The Sarkin are a race of under-dwelling bat-like humanoids. The Sarkin are horrifying to behold for most of the other races of Nyra, making them widely hated. Nonetheless, the Sarkin have an extremely harmonious and functional society. They stay away from the other races of the planet and instead focus upon technological development and communal improvement. They have created a massive under-ground cave complex which goes from one end of the human continent to the other. They have developed black-powder and steam technology, although the rest of the world is largely ignorant of how these work and they do not allow others inside of their communities for fear that the chaos of the world above will disrupt their achievements.
The Kaze are tall, slender, bird-like humanoids, living upon an island called Kaem. These Kaze worship knowledge, discipline, and patient consideration. They travel widely, but prefer not to involve themselves in the concerns of other beings. In Kaze society, those who know the most, are most highly revered and hold the highest places of authority. Although not averse to war, when they are seen off of their island, they are widely used as record-keepers, diplomats, and scouts of various sorts. Even though others are wary of them, they are widely respected, perhaps from fear that they know what could hamstring the empires of their opponents with the intel they have gathered over time.
Alexander Green
Lastly are the Utwesh, a race that are similar in appearance to that of the Ethakkra. They are close evolutionary ancestors of them. Long ago, when the Ethakkra and Utwesh had only diverged from their common ancestor very recently, the Utwesh were beginning their worship of nature and life, while the Ethakkra were beginning their worship of social cohesion and commerce. The Ethakkra and Utwesh lived amongst each other, even though their cultures progressed in ideological opposition to each other. Over time, the Ethakkran control of society became supreme and oppressive and the Utwesh became the underclass. This exaggerated the primalism and life worship among the Utwesh, a trend that the god of chaos, THE, took notice of. His subtle influence into their behaviors would form a new religion of chaos worship predicated upon these tenets of individual determination and primitivist reverence for the state of nature. In response, the Ethakkra became highly influenced by the god of order, One. The result of this opposition would form a violent civil war lasting for almost a century. The Utwesh now live upon the southern half of Faydorn while the Ethakkra live on the northern half. Because of the events in the Utweshi-Ethakkran Civil War, many Utweshi formed ancient underground cave communities as well, meaning that the Utwesh are currently an under and over dwelling society.
So that’s the tedious task of explaining each of the species.
Next I'll talk about how magic works in the world of Nyra. There are six elements of magic in the world of Nyra.
Chaos-Plasma-Gas-Liquid-Solid-Order
Jace Carter
One will notice that the phases of matter are close to those of the traditional elements. Plasma is like fire. Gas is like wind. Liquid is like water. Solid is like earth. However, within these paradigms is MUCH more room for spell creation and expansion of concept. Gas users do not just control the wind; they can also create nerve gas in the room, or suck gas out of your lungs. A liquid user controls lava as much as they control water. Nonetheless, these elements will feel familiar to what has been seen in other magic paradigms.
What is most important to know is that Chaos and Order do not represent good and evil. In fact, in many occasions Order is the proponent of things we would consider evil. A tyrannous king who enslaves his people may be orderly. A revolution that enshrines human rights may be chaotic. Order mages have anti-magic because they see it as the creation of disorder in the universe. Chaos embraces magic, embraces disorder, embraces consciousness and free determination. These two ideologies fight the most bitter of all ideological battles.
In the world of Nyra, the gods fight for control of an infinite number of universes, each with different constituents of each element. A universe made of all water? The god of liquid gets that universe without contest. A universe where it is half liquid nitrogen and half gas? The gods of liquid and gas will wage a war for that realm. But a realm which contains all of the elements and in which all of the elements come to bear to create something unique? That is Nyra. That is the battleground in which the story of this world takes place. And these gods care nothing for the lives of humans. They want control of Nyra.
Austin Watson
>god of Chaos, THE >god of order One Do I get any points for guessing that they are probably aspects of the same god or something to that effect?
Brayden Harris
No offence on the fluff OP, but give me those juicy rules or is this a roll 1d10+mod for everyone type affair?
Jaxon Jackson
*Every type of action*
Benjamin Ortiz
>Bat People Yeah, okay. I am on board now. Is this compatible with other OSR games a la FLAILSNAIL?
Nyra works from a traditional style of tabletop game where you have a character sheet with skills and equipment to support different archetypes. However, your progression is through gaining and distributing skill points.Your skills reach a cap at 10 (with some specific exceptions) and when you roll a d10 you are seeing if you can roll UNDER or on your skill. This is one of the most significant ways that Nyra's test system is different from other popular tabletop games.
If a test is more difficult, the GM can dictate that you must roll under half your skill or that there is a decrement to your skill of some kind in doing the task. If you roll under or on that threshold, you succeed at the skill.
The main method of character progression in Nyra is from gaining skill points from critical successes (1) and critical failures (10). You do a simple calculation, then store those skill points in a bank which you can spend out of combat to increase one of your skills. This was out attempt to emulate how people learn in real life; from miserably failing at doing something or gloriously succeeding at it.
The GM will also often give out some skill points if the player have succeeded at some great task or achieved something they were set out to do. But in combat situations, the character progression that takes place is usually from the skill points from critical successes and failures.
Christopher Young
Get this solicitation off Veeky Forums you shekel swindling fuck. I don't care about your kickstarter project or any of the buzzwords you're using to try and get me to waste my money on. When this system has a fucking rulebook, post the pdf here and then maybe someone will care.
Until then get a real fucking job like the rest of us, and stop talking to yourself about unfleshed setting shit. It's embarrassing.
Parker Williams
A lot of anti-semites on Veeky Forums huh?
Dominic Wright
Veeky Forums in general. You might have luck somewhere else
Dominic Jenkins
Utwesh = tree hugging cousins of the goat-jew Ethakkra race.
Justin Nguyen
Each class gets a different character sheet. This is an example of the Hunter class. One will notice that there are skills in bold and skills that are not. Skills that are bolded are easier to skill-up using skill points (meaning their cost is less).
Everyone has access to the majority of the skills in the game, with some exceptions. However, the favored skills system makes it so that classes excel at the things they are supposed to be good at. Classes are further individuated by giving them very powerful feats at character creation that other classes can never buy with skill points. You can see the Hunter feats are already listed in the feats section here.
Caleb Bailey
I ignore their posts. I'm here for the people that want to engage fruitfully. There are already a few in the thread and I appreciate it.
Adam Collins
This sounds cool as fuck, OP. Got any teasers about how combat or progression works?
Ryder Adams
None of this seems terribly unique. >Probably more rpgs have skill-based progression than class-based >Gaining skill ranks through use is something done by several well known systems None of it's badly designed I'm just not seeing a reason to invest time and money when I already have games which do the same things
Daniel Reed
As for progression, the beginning of that is here: Focusing now on combat;
When combat is initiated, characters with the highest Sequence go first. If two characters have the same Sequence, the one with higher Agility goes first. If all those are the same, they flip a coin or decide among themselves. One can buy more Sequence with skill points. Almost everything about a character can be purchased with skill points, they are the currency of character progression.
Damage in Nyra is location based and when your character is created, you calculate the damage for your Head, Chest, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Leg, and Right Leg. They also each have different damage thresholds. You can see these on the character sheet here: If a character wants to aim a strike at a body part, that roll is a HALF skill. This discourages players from getting characters and aiming for head every time. What we found though, was that players decided to always just wild strike at full skill efficiency to land the strike. To get around this, we introduced what are called Weapon Proficiency.
A Weapon Proficiency allows you to exceed the 10 cap on your weapon skill, BUT only for a weapon you have chosen to specialize in. This means that you can essentially get your weapon skill to 20, so you can make aimed strikes to the head at full skill efficiency. This is only very, very advanced characters that will have this much weapon skill.
Henry Flores
Look OP, this is all fine and nice, but it's still advertising, specially since you talked about the kickstarter, please read global rule 1
Lucas Ross
Heck I'm Jewish and make a lot of Jew jokes here when I can.
Welcome to that part of the internet where nothing is taken too seriously. Offended ? maybe you should try a different site.
Despite what I wrote for comedic value here I am slightly interested in this even though it kind of reminds me right now of a less gory version of Lamentation of the Flame Princess.
Justin Mitchell
Meant rule 11
Jaxson Nelson
I am not linking to a Kickstarter because I am not advertising. No Kickstarter has been made. I'm discussing this project so people know it even exists and gauging interest.
Bentley Ramirez
>Nyra works from a traditional style of tabletop game where you have a character sheet with skills and equipment to support different archetypes. However, your progression is through gaining and distributing skill points.Your skills reach a cap at 10 (with some specific exceptions) and when you roll a d10 you are seeing if you can roll UNDER or on your skill. This is one of the most significant ways that Nyra's test system is different from other popular tabletop games. So... BRP/Runequest with less granularity?
Jack Lewis
I had never heard of Runequest before this, but now that I've looked, yes. Most certainly. We decided against percentile dice because we felt that skilling up, calculating cost, and doing constant mental math about how far under you are the roll, was tedious with a base-100 system. This is one of the motivating factors for choosing a d10. It makes for smooth mental math and still contains enough granularity for characters to feel gratified with progression.
Blake Walker
I'm inclined to let this go on a spirit of the law basis.
We don't want advertising because we don't want forums to devolve into spaces for firms to get free attention and shill their products. This would degrade the quality rapidly, especially as firms are incentivized to capitalize on attention before people move elsewhere.
But here, we are provided with content that has value to the forum. Certainly, OP may at some point kickstart this & it will retroactively become a form of advertising due to the awareness raised now. However, for the time being OP is gauging interest while we are provided OC to mull over and think about critically.
So far it seems a little uninspired, but I'm compelled enough to stay in the thread, and appreciate that someone is trying to make something new.
Cameron Rivera
>I had never heard of Runequest before this That's just depressing.
Christian Morales
>
Further, the system of getting skill points on critical success and critical failure is something that is tenable on a d10, because approximately 20% of all rolls will give you skill points. But on a d100, 2% of all rolls would give you skill points. That would mean that a more complicated rule would have to be instituted to do something that is very simple and straightforward currently in the rule system.
Jeremiah Parker
Forgot to attach the Ethakkra image above.
Jumping back to the lore side of things. As mentioned, we envision survival being a significant component of this world. In part to distinguish the universe of Nyra from our own, and in part to add more complex survival mechanics to the game, there will be more to keep track of for one's livelihood than just food, water, and rest.
Namely: Soul. In the world of Nyra, survival is an emotional thing. The sorts of daily life items that keep us happy -companionship, meaning, purpose- are vital to the very ability to continue living in Nyra. Having these elements provides beings with what we call Soul, which will be tracked like hunger and thirst.
Rather than those sorts of things though, Soul will not be sated with consumable items, but instead will need to be addressed through player actions. Things like helping the needy, pursuing one's goals, and having sex will be actions needed to be taken by PCs to stay alive.
Wyatt Watson
2 questions: - Will different components of Soul be tracked separately? e.g. companionship needs, meaning needs? Or will any action that helps those sorts of things improve Soul? - How do you prevent sex from becoming a magical realm creepfest?
Anthony Watson
>Further, the system of getting skill points on critical success and critical failure is something that is tenable on a d10, because approximately 20% of all rolls will give you skill points. Actually that seems like an extremely high rate of gaining skill points especially given the lack of granularity, and I'm not at all sure it would be tenable even for a relatively short campaign let alone a long one.
>But on a d100, 2% of all rolls would give you skill points. "You gain a skill point on a roll of 1-5 or 96-00" is not really all that much more complicated.
Nathaniel Russell
This shit sounds like misery porn combined with tedious bookkeeping and tons of OC DONUT STEEL for pretentious fucktwats who think they're "so mature" and "patrician".
It's the same as every other motherfucker inspired by muh game of thrones or muh dragon age or some other "dark fantasy" bull, and the system is simultaneously innovation for the sake of innovation but also a poorer version of other systems.
I wish there was a sort of reverse Kickstarter where you could defund something.
Wyatt Cooper
One of the most compelling parts of Nyra for the players in Nyra has been the mixture of perma-death along with the brutality of weapon damage in the game. For example, a short sword:
The P,C,S,B listed here are different kinds of swings that can be done. They are Piercing, Chopping, Slashing, and Bludgeoning. One will notice that this short sword is good at Piercing and Slashing. It has a Delay of 3. In Nyra, you have as many actions as you have Delay available to carry them out. Your Delay is equal to your Agility. So if I had 6 Agility, I could swing the above weapon twice, but if I had 9 Agility, I could swing it three times. The modifier points to which primary statistic will be used to determine flat damage added on top of this swing. This creates a system in which melee characters try to min-max which weapons will be best for their combination of Agility and which of their primary statistics is highest. Different armors are better and worse at defending the different categories of damage as well, making the inter-relation of best weapon gratifying to work out and it gives room for even highly advanced characters to min-max their damage more.
But specifically, the damage listed there for Piercing is 3d6. That may not seem like much, until you realize the damage calculation for a Human head is: Head - CON for slight. CON * 2 for serious. Add 1 for critical.
So if they had 6 Constitution, they would have 13 health on their head. The median roll for a 3d6 weapon if the person had 5 STR would be around 8 or 9. That means, ON AVERAGE two hits from a short sword to the head would kill average health human characters.
This makes players cling to their characters. They don't mindlessly charge into battle. Instead, they avoid battle unless it is necessary. When they are in a situation they are not sure they'll win, they actually become invested.
Lucas Morris
Hahaha, funny. But no, the survival aspect in Nyra comes from the fact that the wildlife around the world are horrifically dangerous and the systems of control for society are unforgiving and careless.
This is the actual Ethakkra art I forgot to include.
The skill point gains are not excessive and costs have been calibrated such that the curve of gains is normalized.
And no, 1-5, 91-100, not that much more complicated. But all of the associated calculations would be much more complicated than a d10. It is not that either is really difficult. It is that smaller numbers make for easier numbers to crunch mentally.
Daniel Cox
Soul is one stat tracked by itself. Any of those actions would improve it. Magical realms are a function of player maturity, Nyra doesn't do anything to push that sort of gameplay.
Skill costs would be high enough that skill gain is not too fast. Playtesting will get us to optimal levels there.
Evan Phillips
>One of the most compelling parts of Nyra for the players in Nyra has been the mixture of perma-death along with the brutality of weapon damage in the game. So... the same as pretty much every fantasy game that isn't D&D or clone?
Asher Kelly
>make wise decisions >based around a d10 I think you'll have to pick one. Especially if "wise decisions" means "using only the skills I have developed", which assumes a Candy Land universe rather than a Lovecraftian one.
>that character dies very quickly. What happens when a character dies? If the player can just whip up another one and reinsert, then you didn't solve the problem. If he can't, cheating will ensue.
Everybody here keeps trying to reinvent CHAINMAIL, why?
William Kelly
I'm not that bad at drawing am I?
Can we please not make this one of those threads where you can't figure out who OP is. I sincerely want to get this out to the broader Veeky Forums community.
Soul is a core mechanic for the game that makes it unique, adding replayability and promoting interesting dynamics among the players.
While I have nothing against them, the RPG world has enough "horrifically dangerous worlds" for that ground to not need to be retrodden.
Colton Rogers
>Everybody here keeps trying to reinvent CHAINMAIL, why? The spirit of fantasy heartbreaker still lingers
Christopher Ortiz
So far I have had you guys compare my game to about a dozen other games. Which actually means that it is not exactly any of those.
Also, is trying to derail the thread. Any mention of "Soul" or these lists of bodily needs to sustain characters is an easy indicator of who the fake person in the thread is. Nyra has been calibrated with a desire to create efficient and easily calculable rule systems.
Here is more original art to demonstrate I am the real OP. You can see from the style it is the same artist.
Aaron Johnson
If a character dies, their character sheet is taken away and their equipment is left to the group. We always had a ritual of burning character sheets when characters died.
Of course they can make a new character and the GM will do so at their leisure. A person losing their character isn't banished from the gaming group for dying once, but they have to go through the process of making a new character. Personally I would never let the player create the same exact character again as GM.
Tyler Hernandez
Interesting worldbuilding. Sorry to say, but the rules aren't that unique. I know these are the four words that nobody wants to hear, but >Yeah, it looks alright.
Easton Wilson
>Claims to be OP >Attaches drawing that looks nothing like any of the other drawings in the thread
Why can't Veeky Forums just this once be like it used to be and be open to new works.
Here is a piece of original Ethakkra art with my current pencil to demonstrate that I am the real OP. You can also reverse image search the picture above to see that he got it from google.
Logan Wilson
Whoever the fuck real OP is, can you give us more lore?
So far it just seems like a generic fantasy re-skin.
Christian Sanders
doesn't that weapon system heavily favour high agility characters though, not only is being able to attack multiple times generally better than doing more damage on less swings, but on a weapon where damage is modified by agility even that ceases to be an issue.
Thomas Powell
To ensure maximum faithfulness to real life, of course, the players roll for bodily attributes as well.
The purpose of this is to ensure that players don't keep making supermodel characters that have no reason to be that way, and to maintain realism.
Furthermore, in the world of Nyra you must tend to your needs, both bodily and spiritual, which also includes relieving yourself, be it of waste or sexually. Going away from the group to get privacy on the open road or in a dungeon makes for an easy ambush.
Joseph Nelson
>So far I have had you guys compare my game to about a dozen other games. Which actually means that it is not exactly any of those. except most of the games being compared to do most of the things your system does, so the combination also isn't espeically unique
Zachary Allen
it might be worse, as OP clearly hasn't been outside of his basement for 17 years.
Kayden Jones
This is the fake poster again, suggesting that Soul and other nonsense survival mechanics exist.
You will not need to have sex to survive, just like in the real world. And don't worry, pooping will not be a significant component of gameplay.
Bentley Hernandez
>I made this thread to talk about the game and to let people know about its existence >I plan to create a Kickstarter soon >the result of 17 years >dark fantasy >...instead of... >dark and unforgiving world, much closer to Lovecraft than >purposely brutal (read: realistic) Yikes.
Daniel Garcia
I'm pretty sure Runequest was more popular 17 years ago than it is today.
Matthew Cooper
Have you seen anybody playing Runequest nowadays?
Asher Ramirez
This is the fake poster again, pretending that he can just make any sort of character and decide that they not be obese, or able to take an Ethakkra's fist up their rear without complication.
It is not brutal enough to simply not include such things as these, that are important in real-life, nor is it realistic enough.
Shoo, fake poster, and take your immature power fantasy with you.
David Diaz
Sure, let's talk a bit about "Magism" and the costs for using magic in Nyra. In Nyra, mages are almost universally feared and despised. Mages, especially in Human, Ethakkra, and Highlander societies are hunted like witches and murdered. Babies or children who show any sort of inclination toward some sort of magic usage are killed. This means that most mages never come out to society. Mages cannot control whether they have an attunement to their element. Their "Eye of Arkhan," a biological component of their brains is attuned with that element at birth. Different societies accept different mages preferentially. Most societies accept Orderists.
However, as this mage continues to become more powerful there is a price. Using magic creates a buildup of solidified mineral magic in the body. This mineral is highly toxic to living things and this leads to slow emaciation and, once the mage has become incredibly powerful, usually complete enfeeblement. By this time they usually have the ability to work around it; but the path to power for mages is one that they take at the toll of their physical health.
There is no doubt that if you want a highly proficient combat character, you should power your AGI. Low AGI combat characters can also be effective however, because two-handed weapons are highly effective. Nonetheless, you can buy primary statistics with skill points and it is highly encouraged that you get your AGI up with similar priority as your CON. As for the modifiers, they shouldn't be exaggerated in importance, they are a way to eek out a bit more damage. Compare the above weapon with a two-handed sword:
This weapon obviously hits much, much harder. But it is mostly an ideal weapon if you have 5 AGI. Once you have 6 AGI, your median damage will usually be higher with a 3 Delay weapon once again.
Jonathan Reed
What about Bose Einstein Condensate?
Parker Gonzalez
Someone's actually posting some creative original content for once in so long and you're being a colossal faggot. This is why we can't have nice things.
Caleb Garcia
words of advise: do not antagonise user or you will get trolled to oblivion and ultimately banned.
beyond that, this doens't bring anything special gameplay wise (which is no surprise, there isn't much room for innovation in RP tabletops)
Don't expect to gain money from this at all. Like I said above, you won't innovate in tabletops, economical sucess is dictated by popularity of the setting and franchise.
But ff you like your setting, go at it. As long as the people playing have fun it will be good. Just get people to play it
Liam Jenkins
So to summarize the different classes in Nyra, they are: Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Mage, Brawler, and Savant. Their unique feats are the following.
Warrior Life of Warfare: +1 to sequence at character creation, not to exceed the maximum. Combat Reflexes: -1 difficulty on combat rolls.
Rogue Surestrike: If enemy is unaware of attack in close range, Rogue does not fail on his roll, but must still roll for his critical attempt and location. (Required Small Blades: 5) City Foot: Able to hide in plain sight; but only have this ability while in the city. (Required Stealth: 5)
Hunter Sureshot: If enemy is unaware of attack in long range, character does not fail on his roll, but must still roll for critical attempt and location. (Required Archery: 5) Nature's Step: Able to hide in plain sight; but only have this ability while in nature. (Required Stealth: 5)
Mage Arkhan's Gift: +1 to MAG without accruing any penalties at character creation. Magic: Magic is available to character at creation. After choosing an element, they will have access to a library of spells with differing intensities.
Brawler Pugilism: Has access to new unarmed skills. Focused Strikes: Double STR modifier on all unarmed strikes.
Savant Contact: The character has a unique skill called Contact (listed under Charisma), which encompasses all of the Savant's contacts, deals, and knowledge. He may roll against contact to do anything that is conceivable within what this encompasses. Contact is rolled as any other skill, however Fame is a flat bonus to every roll on Contact, even able to exceed statistic cap. Language of Diplomacy: All diplomats get common +10 because common is the language of diplomacy. Natural Learner: Savant is the only class that can take a skill from 0 to 1 without being instructed. Followers: The Savant can have a number of followers equal to CHA divided by 2. He controls these followers like they are his own characters.
Daniel Roberts
Take Brawler, for example, and you can see how the different character sheets are needed. Even though just the simple feats listed may not seem to differentiate them much. The difference between favored skills and non-favored, as well as the presence in some characters of class-unique skills, creates drastically different playstyles.
The Brawler has 8 extra skills unavailable to other classes. The Brawler can fit the role of being your main tank, but he will do so by controlling the battlefield, not necessarily outright murdering it. The Brawler enters battle, sweeps one opponent, disarms the other, does a free aimstrike to the one on the ground (aimed strikes are normal skill check to floored opponents). He is a control-tank.
Savant does not even enter battle. He commands his side characters to enter battle. Savant is our attempt to create a CHA class that is not boring. The mixture of having companions, while also having the skill Contact (which is broken but no one has really explored its loopholes) makes Savant fun to play, even though the actual character is frail and unable to enter combat. If he dies, your group loses control of his companions.
BUT I'm sorry guys. I gotta go meet my girlfriend at a lecture from one of her favorite authors. I'll return later and see what has transpired here.
Brandon Gomez
And I'm back. Sorry to see that there weren't any further posters in the interrim.
I appreciate your honesty. To be sure, the world of tabletop gaming is diverse enough today that there will inevitably be overlap with existing systems. I believe the full set of mechanics that will be in Nyra synergize in such a fashion that the game stands on its own quite well.
Moreover, I think that the universe is compelling... I'll continue from As noted, usage of magic comes at the cost of mineral buildup in one's body. This enfeebles in a variety of ways, but in its most common simply ossifies the body. This ossification makes for some interesting groups of mages, each of whom deal with it in different ways.
As I called out, many mages are able to achieve a level of power by the time they are entirely enfeebled by their magic usage that they can overcome it through spells. Many intern themselves in golems and other magical constructs, or even possess corpses with their spirits, taking on the identity of one whom they have killed. Others simply cast charms on their own body to overcome the damage that magic usage has wrought.
Many die along the path of magic due to mineral build up, but some realize somewhere along the way that they will not grow sufficiently powerful to overcome the Faustian bargain in time. These people may instead focus their efforts on developing the mineral buildup in such a fashion that it can be useful. Some spend hours in meditation giving themselves stone-like skin, others empower their arms to become great melee warriors, others still enhance their sexual features. PCs who pursue this route can represent these decisions in attribute gains. Stoneskin mages might gain +1 CON, those who provide themselves mineral-embued arms +1 STR, those who enhance their aesthetic features, secondary sex characteristics, or genitalia +1 CHA.
Samuel Sullivan
You lost me at magic stone dicks OP.
This system is a little all over the place. Even ignoring the OP mixup before, your lore seems confused & your game mechanics quite... mediocre.
And then you throw the magical realm "a-and people who decide they don't want to become mages can grow giant cocks" in there.
If all of this was a bait thread for a magic cock joke... I just don't know what to believe any more
Jace Mitchell
I'm at the lecture right now. Although this specific post isn't too far off, it's not the me. Here's more concept art, appropriately something I sketched for the critical failure section. I won't be back for several hours so don't trust this guy unless he gives you material from the actual game when he posts. I will make no further posts without original artwork.
Julian Lewis
I can't tell anymore if there are actually multiple posters or if OP is just schizophrenic.
Inclined to think the latter, if only for fun's sake
Jonathan Gonzalez
Still reading through the thread, but thank you for pitching your game/kickstarter honestly instead of trying to plant "viral content".
Jonathan Edwards
>they have to go through the process of making a new character Making a new character is half the fun of the game, so you're rewarding people for fucking up. Yet you want the game to be taken seriously. You need to rethink this.
Here's an OC drawing of an Ethrakka dagger to keep you sated while I'm at this lecture.
One of the concerns that my friends have thrown at me is LFQW. The sheer brutality of the system & extreme prejudice against mages in most civilized places helps to avoid this, but so does magical weapons (drawing to the left is from that section). Warriors and other fighter classes are able to enchant their weapons by means of blood magic that normal mages cannot access due to the mineral build up in their bodies.
Tyler James
This is the fake poster again. Pic related is actual Ethrakka weapon.
LFQW isn't an issue due to the nature of the magic system, as well as the D10 mechanics. Fake poster was correct however, that the prejudice against mages is something which will be experienced by mage PCs in a very real way.
Christopher Sanders
>Everybody here keeps trying to reinvent CHAINMAIL, why? "hey guys, I've made a brand new game! It uses" >hit points >wargame simulator dice >upgrades through encounter experience "but get this- not only is it lolrandom through the dice, but also through the random shitball people you wind up playing with! and to make sure they're really shitty, we make the game not go anywhere! it's totally open-ended! can i have some munny nao?"
but user my game doesn't use dice it uses cards so i'm better, right? >/facepalm
Eli Diaz
Players may also gain access to ancient Ponderan technology. This photo is concept art for a Ponderan pleasure craft. This magitech would be used by that species to bring sex slaves to Nyra's nearest moon.
PCs will be unlikely to actually get one of these devices working, particularly given the tehnological regression that has occurred since the fall of Ponderan society. However, components of these devices may taken by players and (mis)used for their own purposes.
Aiden Walker
I'm having a little trouble getting a handle on your mechanics, but nothing jumps out at me as startlingly original.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But if the mechanics don't open up new play experiences, and they're not comfy and familiar, then why should I play this instead of using your material to tack some homebrew onto Lamentations of the Flame Princess (or Savage Worlds, or 5e, or...)?
It seems like what you're pitching is a D&D homebrew setting with different mechanics.
Your art is amateurish pencil sketches that evokes generic medieval fantasy.
Here's two things to ponder on--
REIGN is a modestly successful fantasy RPG with novel mechanics that offers new play experiences (mechanics that revolve around running organizations, religions, kingdoms, etc instead of the individual stats of Beef McStrongbad). The setting is tryhard shit that I happily ignore because the One Roll Engine has some interesting design possibilities.
Veins of the Earth is a setting supplement that is virtually without mechanics (or at least without player facing mechanics). It's broadly connected to the OSR, but you could run it on almost any system about individual adventurers, in any time period. You could run Veins of the Earth with a squad of Navy SEALS or a cabal of medieval wizards, and the sheer awesomeness of the setting would show through.
Connor Wilson
This so much. OP needs to read.
The topic has been talked about to death, but seriously, why must every RPG just be another DnD clone.
Worldbuilding and game system design of this sort need to be seen as separate functions altogether. If your world is super unique and brings non-standard RPG gaming to the table, then perhaps the two should be done simultaneously.
But here we see a potentially interesting world that could be easily slapped onto an existing, proven system. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Veeky Forums gods let folks like this learn thats its okay to just be a world builder.
Samuel Robinson
bump
Lincoln Davis
Is that a VTNL thread in disguise?
Blake Butler
Well I'm finally back from going to the lecture, getting dinner etc...
These posts were me These posts were all fake Some of those were especially bad considering they even forgot they were supposed to change their username back and forth before posing as someone else (like lolol) . Nonetheless, the thread is clearly too mangled to salvage.
It's funny, the game has been compared to so many other tabletop games in this thread, it's almost a compliment. Hilariously, everyone missed the mark on the system it is most like and that is Dark Conspiracy. A cyber-punk/old-gods mythos tabletop RPG from decades ago. Nyra was long, long ago, the house rules of a DC campaign adapted to tell my fantasy setting. As the world developed, the rules developed alongside it until it became what it is today.
I did this several years ago when the game was LESS developed and Veeky Forums actually had a lot of useful things to say. Things have really gone downhill around here. Oh well. Thanks to all the people that offered constructive criticism and encouragement. Here's one last sketch. See ya!
Adam Allen
are you hiring out for art assets? looks like you could use some help.
