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.