Spiral of Conflict (tentative name)

[Ratman]

Spiral of Conflict is a project which aims to finally make a tabletop RPG system out of Nasuverse. As it seems to stand right now, it will use The Riddle of Steel ruleset as a base. It's intended to be playable to at least some degree by the end of summer, so I'd better make a thread now.
Current creative team is pretty much me and Katsura, but we are definitely accepting more people. Will make an IRC channel as well, once it's necessary.

What is The Riddle of Steel?
It's a medieval and low fantasy simulationalist RPG. What FATAL desperately wishes it was while it wanks in the corner with its miniature manhood. The wiki can be helpful in learning the system, but as with everything, you learn the most by practice and observation.

It may seem like a surprising choice, but I've decided to use it for several reasons I deem good: First, because it focuses on gritty and realistic medieval combat, abundant in Nasu's work, which is rather entirely lethal to normal humans without plot armor. It also has a very unique system of magic that will be needed for working out magecraft. Finally, it has a great system for handling aforementioned plot armor, that is deeply tied to a character's value system and personal inclinations. I'd like the character's Origin to heavily feature in gameplay, and RoS is the closest to that, from what I've seen.

Things to be done:

Spoiler:

1)Streamlining the Special Atributes and Drama into Origin, and Origin Points.

2) Adding a lot of custom Gifts and Flaws. Possibly changing the rules on them, they will feature more heavily, could have even some kind of a tree(since you can have an open circuit, and THEN you can have a magus training, and only THEN can you really a Crest, every step being very beneficial to even people without magus background, but only crest having magi being able to cast proper spells worth a damn). Should be split into Gaian, Alayan, and Moon ones, with not every character having access to each. The basic idea is that Alaya gives access to everything based off Circuits in-universe, Gaia gives the possibility to gain superhumans physical stats more easily at the cost of hurting mental stats and making Alaya harder to access, and Moon makes it flat out easier to increase all stats, at an obvious specific cost.

3) Getting the game into a modern setting. Change skills into their modern variants and add the specific nasuverse skills. Add present day firearms. Add enchanted equipment. Possibly make schools of fighting in nasuverse a thing, knights just use traditional polearms and psychics train martial arts, but a School for Executors or a bare-handed one for mixed bloods would make everything a lot easier.

4) Work out magecraft properly.

5) Make up new material to add to canon as examples for GMs to use, while making sure it isn't against canon. Mark added material in the rulebook so people can avoid it. Will need a lot of outside help.

6) Balance it all out. Will need as much outside help as possible.

[SeiKeo]

Uhhhh realistic medieval combat for a low fantasy setting....?

[Ratman]

Not even necessarily fantasy at all. It's a system made so that you do not simply swing the sword, but when you do, you have a very good idea of just what you are doing. A fight is supposed to be a culmination of a story segment if anything, if you do random encounters between towns here, you are just being a dick to your players because they would likely die meaninglessly.

Now think, how often within a route or his story does a Type-Moon protag really fight? How often does he win the fight?

It's also admittedly a deeply flawed system, but the combat being lethal is not the reason, really.

[SeiKeo]

No, I mean I have no idea why you're using such a system when the least Superhuman/natural major TM work has magic ghost arms and surviving a ten-story fall with barely a scratch.

Your point is taken that TM works are often not actually very action-heavy. However, the systems that are the most complex and need to do the most lifting are the combat systems. It's easier to hack together out of combat mechanics and keep combat than to keep the out of combat numbers and then try to brew the entire combat system on your own. Doing the latter is a pain in the butt.

[Arch-Magos Winter]

Use GURPS.

Problem fucking solved.

[Strife ❤️]

Make a totally custom system based entirely on the provided stats Nasu gives.

[Ratman]

No, I mean I have no idea why you're using such a system when the least Superhuman/natural major TM work has magic ghost arms and surviving a ten-story fall with barely a scratch.

Your point is taken that TM works are often not actually very action-heavy. However, the systems that are the most complex and need to do the most lifting are the combat systems. It's easier to hack together out of combat mechanics and keep combat than to keep the out of combat numbers and then try to brew the entire combat system on your own. Doing the latter is a pain in the butt.

I've gone through a bunch of systems, and yeah, a lot of them need just a few adjustments compared to this. But not a single one quite fit for everything, M&M for example was the closest, but it's imposible to remove the broken from it, apparently. People will try to take something that makes no sense as a part of their character, and any homebrew that replicates an universe really requires everyone to cooperate on creating a right experience, fully aware of the lore. At that point you might as well freeform, because you are clearly in a magical christmas roleplaying group of enthusists. You can do that on BL, but not anywhere else.
But this one is fun and close in nature to the work. When I think of what nasuverse feels like, this thing comes to mind from distant past. I admit I have little experience with it, but the two sessions of it I've played are the closest to Nasuverse I remember. Sort of trying to recreate that, I guess.

That said, we've considered changing the whole thing to the point of calling it a new thing, especially if the huge Reflex and resulting dice pool of a vampire does as funny things to the combat as I feel it will.
Things that speak for this are the lack of "look into the DH core book to see what this is" that's incredibly annoying in Adeptus Evangelion(especially since it's like a single line in the book, and the reference is there to make it obvious that they aren't stealing or anything), and also the fact that the RoS core rulebook is somewhat poorly put together, and the game works best when explained by the table. Hell, even the character creation on the wiki shows how simple creating a character is, while in the book it looks realy damn hard.

Make a totally custom system based entirely on the provided stats Nasu gives.

The nature of this thread compels me to reply seriously, so instead of "u having a giggle der m8 etc." I'll just state that they are nonsencial and vague beyond salvaging, so that it's off the table.
But if we diverge far enough, we can assign letters to ranks in stuff, if you absolutely need to have that tabletop vidya feel.

Use GURPS.

Problem fucking solved.

Never actually seen that one done, it sounds kinda like eating bread instead of cake, but do go ahead and explain your case further.

[Arch-Magos Winter]

GURPS has so much freaking going for it splats wise and in its corebooks that you SHOULD be able to homebrew about anything from it.

[SeiKeo]

GURPS is like an overgrown Swiss Army Knife that's a foot thick.

- - - Updated - - -

Coincidentally, the various GURPS supplements are probably far more than a foot thick.

[Ratman]

The U stands for Universal, so that's the point, yeah.

[Five_X]

GURPS is like an overgrown Swiss Army Knife that's a foot thick.

- - - Updated - - -

Coincidentally, the various GURPS supplements are probably far more than a foot thick.

Stops a bullet, motherfucker.

[Arch-Magos Winter]

You could use all the GURPS books to effectively armor a truck against small arms fire, and perhaps even LAAW's.

[Kat]

I'm not yet acquainted with Riddle of Steel, but I have kind of legitimate excuse. Once I switch soon to my laptop, which is under repair, I'll look through it properly, so thus far I have restricted myself to "fluff" discussions on what we could add.

Recently, I discussed that we could add ESP powers like Azaka's as one of alternatives to magecraft as they don't need functioning Magic Circuits to work.

[I3uster]

So many people tried this shit. It only works in freeform was the conclusion of pretty much all of these things.

[Kat]

That doesn't mean we cannot attempt it.

[Ratman]

I'm not yet acquainted with Riddle of Steel, but I have kind of legitimate excuse. Once I switch soon to my laptop, which is under repair, I'll look through it properly, so thus far I have restricted myself to "fluff" discussions on what we could add.

Recently, I discussed that we could add ESP powers like Azaka's as one of alternatives to magecraft as they don't need functioning Magic Circuits to work.

That's the thing, I'd like to eventually add everything. The ten-store fall is already doable in RoS with a good acrobatics check, depending on how you roll on damage allocation you can have a lot of scratches or break your neck. (Ghost touch should also definitely be an added psychic ability)

Psychic power is pretty much natural magecraft inside your body that you don't need an open circuit for. It's definitely a natural gift, so duh, that's why I want to do most of special snowflake stuff through gifts. Alaya should have "Locked Circuit" and "No Circuit" as a minor and major flaw, the latter forbidding you to take psychic ability as well. But otherwise, lots of magi have it in addition to their own. Hell, Touko can actually craft Mystic Eyes.

[Kat]

It is possible, but not confirmed that other Mystic Eyes' than Fujino's are a type of psychic ability. The others are known to be a mutation of one's Magic Circuits located in the eye.

Only Mystic Eyes of Binding, Charm and Whisper can be produced artificially, so I guess these would be cheaper to select at character creation, and could be bought for experience points later on.

[Ratman]

Well, you normally build a character via point buy out of Building Points, which really will serve as experience, I guess. Average character in RoS is built from 70 BP.
So you can spend 40-50 on stats so that he isn't a cripple, and get a buffer to substract from if you need the few points. Then you get to spend on skills, 5BP for three at pro level, let's say you take six skills. Then comes the Proficiency, and duh, it's expensive as hell, you probably can't afford it. So you make space with flaws and making your character a social retard(since mental skills are surprisingly important in combat as well). Normally, you shouldn't be ble to take Gifts unless you make space with flaws or make your character incompetent in battle or grossly unbalanced.

The idea I am going off is that magi shouldn't use Proficiency except for dumping a bunch of points in basic martial arts and possibly KNIIIFE FIIIGHT, so they should have plenty of room to buy shenanigans.

It will also be important to balance the psychic ability against becoming able to hit harder, to make sure not everyone runs around with glowing eyes because come on that's dumb. Definitely going to count mystic eyes as psychic ability to lift the headache, even the vamp ones.

[Kat]

By social retard, you mean such flaws as Shirou's "Girls cannot fight!" or Tohno's "Bedroom jackass"?

I think that Mystic Eyes of Death Perception are out of question.

[Ratman]

Actually not necessarily. Shiki is edgier than the edgiest hedgehog in the edgy hedgehog store just because he can actually hit the lines by virtue of Nanaya training. He's probably got Major Accurate, and clearly went for max Reflex and rank 12 proficiency, giving him the ability to Masterstrike using his resulting combat pool out the ass. MEoDP mainly give him the ability to ignore toughness(even in items) at a random location, which is already pretty damned deadly, but still useless unless he builds his entire character around being able to hit just the spot he needs. You can do that with an experienced character (100 BP) but have fun being a cripple.

By social retard I mean having social and mental aptitude(in Shiki's case maybe health and toughness) at 2 or so, rather than 4-6, each saving him a few of those precious points to buy a gimmick with. A 10 in any one of the ten atributtes costs 20 BP and Reflex is made of Agility and Wit(Shiki, so witty), so to get 10 Reflex, you need a 10 in both. In exchange you pretty much always go first in a clash, which Shiki needs because if he gets hit, he dies.
You could probably give Shirou Sexist as a minor flaw for laughs, and Shiki is obviously sickly too" so that's some more points.