Badass Kung Fu Demigods design journal pt 4

So, these rules are a little bit slapped together compared to the previous, still extremely slapped-together, rules. Unlike the previous ideas this really has no equivalent from previous versions of the game and involves a bit more brutalization of sacred cows. 

In previous drafts one element I've consciously avoided has been any kind of meta-currency: no fate points or bennies or hero points or what-have-you. BAKFDG started off as kind of a substitute for Exalted, one of my favorite games in concept (if not execution) and before I made it I looked at a lot of Exalted substitutes made by others. One that always rubbed me the wrong way was FATE, because I felt the central conceit of Fate points clashed with the high-powered setting of Exalted. I felt like it was important that the Exalted not make use of out-of-game metacurrency because it undermined their status as supreme, monolithic badasses. One of the Chosen does not win a fight because they're a main character and a main character always wins a fight..they win a fight because they're a quasi-divine warrior who can punch through castles. 

While I haven't changed my mind, I have come up with a mechanical concept that I quite like and straddles a satisfying middle-ground between "self-reliant ubermensch" and "cast adrift on the seas of narrative". For now I'm referring to this as the Spotlight system. 

Each character has a Spotlight which can be expended in a variety of ways: 

• Make a Boosted roll related to one of your Defining Traits. 
• Get Back Up: recover from being KO'd (probably still injured?). Can only do it once per scene.
• Make a narrative declaration about the scene. These are normally relatively minor, but can be significant if it relates to one of your Defining Traits. 
• Fill up a Tension Bar. 
• Trigger a combo (I'll get to this later, assuming I don't decide that combos are ridiculously overpowered). 

Everyone gets a single Spotlight at once and they're "refreshed" once everyone has used their Spotlight. I might introduce a mechanic to restore your Spotlight in exceptional situations, but I like the elegance of just refreshing as soon as everyone has had a chance to use it. This does carry over from session to session, so it will kind of rely on folks not hoarding...but that's also kind of a table problem. Rules can't fix bad players or bad GMs. 

I do feel like I'm missing a use for spotlight I thought of at some point and neglected to write down, so expect the possibility of this list expanding a bit.

Badass Kung Fu Demigods design journal, pt 3

Fun fact, a few days ago I noticed a persistent scotoma floating around the center of my vision. So, hopefully I'm not going blind...but if I am I better hurry up and get this stuff written out while I still can (I've got an eye exam in a few days, hopefully it won't be something to worry about). 

But back on topic, when I was talking about the Core Traits (which I'm pretty sure are going to be reduced to Might, Style, Reflex and Mettle, or some synonyms thereof). [[EDIT: I've settled on Heat (strength), Impulse (speed), Style (skill) and Guts (willpower)]]. I mentioned that I wasn't going to completely get rid of player-defined abilities and that's where Defining Traits come in.

Your Core Traits are the things that are universal, making Defining Traits the personal, customized elements of your character (before getting into crazier stuff like Powers). A Defining Trait is kind of a combination of the previous draft's Backgrounds and Knacks all in one. They're usually meant to be big, broad concepts that cover a lot of ground. Some examples of Defining Traits: 

• Giant Robot Disguised As A Teenager
• Machine Shaman And Techromancer
• Renegade Alchemist
• King Of The Moon 

By themselves Defining Traits have two very simple functions. First they define your character in a way that establishes permissions (I'll try and come up with a pithier term) allowing a character who is Megacorp Neo-Count to flaunt their wealth, get invitations to social gatherings and have a closetful of gilded codpieces or a character with a Infernal Motorcycle flying on wheels of fire or calling their bike with a whistle. 

The second is when one of your Defining Trait is relevant to a roll you're making you get a 1-die bonus to the roll. This isn't cumulative with multiple Defining Traits (so don't worry about stacking all your Traits into combat or anything). So the Neo-Count gets the bonus if he's driving his custom supercharged sportscar or bribing someone with a large stack of cash or intimidating someone with his family's reputation. 

This doesn't sound like much, but the main benefits will be related to a brand new mechanic I'm calling the Spotlight mechanic. While Spotlights have other uses (which I'm still tinkering with) one of the primary uses will be to allow you to expend your Spotlight in order to make a Boosted roll related to one of your Defining Traits. 

Although I haven't settled on a final decision I'm thinking characters will probably have two or three Defining Traits, enough to cover most any normal starting concept.

Badass Kung Fu Demigods Design Journal pt 2

So, here we get to the bit of inspiration that ended up sparking the series of ideas leading to this re-write. It's a pretty small change overall, but it opened up a fair number of new doors so I'm quite pleased with it. I hope it doesn't turn out to be secretly broken as hell, because I'd hate to have to ditch it. 

The change has to do with how traits are rolled. Like the previous drafts the Traits are rated by a die-type which ranges from d4 to d12. The latest version involved rolling two dice by default and taking the highest result. The change was pretty minor, instead of keeping just the highest, both dice are added together. 

So, understandably this might just seem like just throwing around bigger numbers, but it does give me an important additional lever. One of the frustrations of the previous drafts was the inability to fiddle around with the mechanics of the system too much when it comes to powers and abilities. It's one of the downfalls of a rules-light system, and finding a satisfying middle ground was tough. 

You see, by keeping two dice I open up a new door: increasing or decreasing the number of dice "kept" on a roll. So an extremely advantageous roll is referred to as Boosted allowing you to roll and keep three dice, while an extremely disadvantageous roll is referred to as Busted and you only get to roll a single dice. To keep things from getting crazy both effects are non-cumulative, your roll can only be Boosted/Busted once and if it is both Boosted and Busted the effects cancel out and you roll normally.

The previous bonus dice rule remains, adding extra dice but still keeping the original number. So a Boosted roll with three bonus dice means you roll six dice and keep three. negative dice are removed...they were never a significant element to be honest and the more dramatic effect of a Busted roll is more useful. 

By simply having both the Boost/Bust mechanic and regular bonus die I can now work with a much larger variety of effects. For instance, it becomes a great way to represent the difference between Power Levels...a character with a higher Power Level gets their roll Boosted when acting against someone with a lower Power Level. Busted rolls are a good way to represent a crippling-type Power and Boosting rolls is a good way to represent an exceptional bonus (like a holy-themed power Boosting your rolls against creatures of evil). 

This also provides a good way to represent the power of a Champion-class NPC, giving them an extra die, independent of the Boost/Bust system. So a normal roll is 3 dice, a Boosted roll is 4 and a Busted roll is still 2. That alone should make a champion encounter powerful enough to easily challenge an entire team of PCs. 

Badass Kung-Fu Demigods Design Journal: Is This Even My Final Form?!

Sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is put it down for a bit and step away, because you'll often find that in a month or two you'll be in the shower and a little idea comes and knocks on the back of your brain to introduce itself, often completely transforming things in the process. This isn't the first time this has happened in BAKFDG and I had one of those weird moments of out-of-the-blue inspiration which sets off a chain of dominoes in your design. 

So, with that in mind I'm using this to put down a few of the new ideas and try and get them to gel a bit before I write up an actual new draft. 

Core Traits 

So, one of the biggest problems I've run into with BAKFDG is trying to make player characters feel distinct from one another. What is truly the difference between a huge burly ham-hock of a brawler and an elegant cyborg duelist with a laser sword? 

In the previous draft my attempt to resolve this was with Fighting Forms, giving a mechanical distinction between fighting with brute strength and fighting with speed or skill. While I was fairly satisfied with the rock-paper-scissor system of advantages over different forms, I wasn't particularly thrilled about the other half of the equation (basically giving each Form a bonus Strike when you score two Strikes on a roll). None of them were great, and it always felt like Might would naturally be more desirable overall (bonus damage being significantly more advantageous in most situations). So I've been wracking my brain on how to emphasize these distinctions and was stalled out for a long time. 

Getting here involved brutalizing a sacred cow a bit...not quite slaughtering it but definitely giving it a proper maiming. What I'm talking about is the original PDQ-style player-defined Traits, which were already being de-emphasized. At the start of the project Traits were entirely player-defined and there was no real mechanical distinction between different Traits beyond their inherent scope. Eventually I realized the need for more of a mechanical skeleton and divided Traits into general backgrounds and the more defined Fighting Styles. But although they operate within separate realms both still were fairly loose and open. 

Which brings us to a new concept: Core Traits. Unlike my previous drafts, Core Traits are more like traditional RPG stats and are each assigned a die-type from d4 to d12. Each character has five Core Traits: 

Speed (alternate names: Wind, Flash): Just as it sounds, covers speed, dexterity, agility and fastiness. 

Might (alternate name: Mountain, Brute): Also self-explanatory. Being strong and durable. 

Skill (alternate names: Ocean, Style): This one's a little more complex, basically anything that requires skill or training or patience. picking a lock or a pocket would fall into this category, along with things like hacking a computer. 

Power: (alternate names: Flame, Spark): The ability to project your force of personality, energy or mystical power. This is the trait used for things like throwing energy blasts or giving a rousing speech. 

Will: (alternate names: Steel, Mettle): Indomitable spirit and never-give-upedness. 

Basically, all actions fall under one of these five traits. If something doesn't fall under the scope of a Core Trait then it's probably not worth rolling (or handled with a special rule that'll come up later). These aren't the only types of Traits, they're combined with Defining Traits which are player-defined abilities that'll be expanded on soon. 

One notably important element is that each of the five Core Traits is equally useful for combat. You can fight with your Might, your Speed or your Will or whatever. Some Powers might force or limit Trait choices (a psychic battlefield forces you to use Power or Will for instance) but largely each is equally applicable in combat. 

The Rock-Paper-Scissors element will be kept as well. Speed has a bonus against Skill, skill has a bonus against Might, Might has a bonus against Power and Power has a bonus against Speed. Will is an all-rounder and is neither strong nor weak against any other Trait.

Concerns:

Biggest one is that the five-Trait array feels just a tad forced. I'm considering dropping Power which is currently the odd one out in a few ways (mainly in that it kind of assumes everyone has the ability to shoot energy beams and whatnot...not a bad assumption for a game like BAKFDG but not every version fits). Either way I want to keep the Will stat as a all-rounder type, so that'll just collapse the first three into a 3-way RPS set-up. 

This is a good example of why you want to avoid getting too attached to a theme. When I was originally setting this up I went with an elemental theme: Wind, Rock, Flame, Ocean and Steel. But this means I was forced to try and make some of these concepts fit thematically in a way that wasn't too natural.Now that I type things out with a more generic name-set instead of the forced elemental theme I feel a lot more confident in changing to a 4-stat array.