Background Mechanic Suggestion

Hey Everyone, your friendly Lungfish here.

I saw some suggestions to stat up characters using Mutants and Masterminds and having some experiance with supers rpg (greetings from /tg/) I thought I would offer an alternative.

4 colour system.

Pros:

Simple to use and inherantly randomized
Not worrying about PL's to play at
unified resolution that translates well to web forums (the skills and powers are measured percentage, which allows quick and easy comparison , diceless resolution or roll off's or whatever the players want)
Free

Cons:

We'll have to trust you not to lie about your rolls (same as with powers now)
Actual system resolution is more then a little clunky (there's colours of success and tables to roll against and stuff, but much much less then M&M )
Silver Age Affection (it doesn't see the problem of plasticman vs superman, character creation is essentially random)
incomplete (its just kinda sitting out there a tollkit right now)

But here is (remember the scales for most things are 1-100 with 1 being stiltman and 100 being superman , 50 is where powers begin to become "big league supers"




"Lungfish looked down at his costume. It was ridiculous really, baggy and vaguely aquatic bodysuit tucked into rubber boots. Yellow Kitchen Cleaner gloves hid the boxing wraps he had on under them. On his head something like a cloth Chinese dragon-head sat. Its long whiskers kept getting in his face. At least its not a cape , Mark Holmes thought. He had read that comic, capes were totally a bad idea. Lungfish closed his eyes, looking deep inside himself for that special place he didn't really have and he'd didn't know where to find. Mark Holmes was just a fish scientist. He didn't know how he got these damn powers or why he kept having visions of lungfish in his dreams."

Melee 30
Coordination 30
Brawn 20
Fortitude 30
Intellect 30
Awareness 50
Willpower 30

Damage/Hp 110 - a little tough
Fortune 110 - a little lucky
Lifestyle 30 - Independently Wealthy, family has some money. Not bruce wayne money but enough to pay for fish science school and give me a stipend.
Repute 9 - Not very favorably viewed upon

Skills (2)
Ichthyology
Beurocracy

Powers ( I still used the randomizer linked from 4chan for the power, but I apportioned out the powers a little better)

Telekinesis - Lungs - 40
Healing - Lungs - 40
Adaptation - Lungs - 30
Super Sense - Lungs - 20

The forum based systems I've used were a bit simpler and designed to be freeform, but to give the players an idea of the characters' strength and weaknesses.

It would be something like:

You have 100 points to spend on the following:

Strength
Speed
Intelligence
Fortitude
Energy
Dexterity

And then you'd push the points in to match your character's strengths and weaknesses. Like Beta Boy for instance would be:

Strength: 12
Speed: 12
Intelligence: 40
Fortitude: 12
Energy: 12
Dexterity: 12




It's not intrusive, it's meant to work with your character design and give you and others a more concrete understanding of your characters abilities.

You know Beta Boy won't beat you in a race, or in an arm wrestling contest, but you know if he starts putting his mind to his work, you're going to have yourself a threat.

You can ever go far enough as to have the GMs assign difficulty classes to certain tasks, like say climbing a wall. It could require 15 strength. It would encourage Beta Boy to find a different solution to climbing that wall using the talents he has. Time to invent a grappling hook!

Basically, to appease /tg/ while not chasing everyone else off, go with a DnD 4e level of structure.

^
Damn that's a good system.

Mr. Nerve:

Strength - 15
Speed - 15
Intelligence - 25
Fortitude - 20
Energy - 15
Dexterity - 20

That numerical system is totally arbitrary and pointless until you assign benchmarks that parallel real world physics or other characters. Does 100 Strength make a character all powerful or only as strong as the Hulk (inb4 >implying the Hulk isn't all powerful)? Does a character with 16 fortitude consistently get his ass whooped in a fist fight by a character with 17 strength or 17 energy? Is 40 intelligence genius level?

so yeah, I'm skeptical

It's mostly designed to establish character strengths and weaknesses.

You know 5 is smaller than 6, but not by much, in a real world situation there is room for deviation (hence the d20s rolled before applying static modifiers.)

You also know there is a larger difference between 5 and 50, one that is usually not covered by meager deviations, meanings it is highly likely that the end value of 50 is going to overcome the end value of the action associated with the 5. It's not supposed to be super concrete, just relative.

It could even be changed to percentages, as in 15% of a character's maximum potential is dedicated to intelligence, etc. That's mostly designed to result in characters that are more or less equal.

And like I said, if you want to relate these to the real world, you give the real world values tho relate to this. Such as it might take 30 strength to lift 2 tons or something like that. Or Steven Hawking is 85% intelligence.

When the forum was made we discussed using some kind of system, but most people were against it.
I'm actually for using some system, but you're better off putting up a poll so you can see what the interest is; otherwise you're just wasting time on something that will never get used.

You'd also need experience levels for this sort of stuff or else your character would be either
a. stuck with the same stats forever
b. having to decrease one or more stats to raise the others, which doesn't make sense

You'd need to design a well defined way to earn points.

Spook wrote:

When the forum was made we discussed using some kind of system, but most people were against it.
I'm actually for using some system, but you're better off putting up a poll so you can see what the interest is; otherwise you're just wasting time on something that will never get used.

I figured it's better to have a full system thought out before proposing it.

Synapse wrote:

Levels and stuff.

Yeah, that is an issue but it's solvable (We aren't the first ones to ever contemplate this after all.)

The question is what do you want out of the system.

The rest of the work is left up to the nerds that have spent all of their time on this.

I want something that
a. makes sense (since you can't use 100 points to build a Gravity Lad or Leukocyte and then build a Zealot, O-Girl or Signal from the same 100 points since that is illogical)
b. incorporates character growth
c. is not too much work
d. probably other things

I know its kinda hard for other people to measure up to Gravity Lad, but we can try.

I would suggest giving additional points based on race and or power (typical /tg/ stuff.)
Like any power that includes super strength adds to the characters strength, being some kind of robot increases fortitude but might reduce agility.

As for leveling, those systems can be as simple as post count, or even up to a per event basis, or as complex as a per action basis, something like the Marvel system where you get experience for certain actions.




There's like a million systems. There's definitely something to fit your needs.

I could get behind a post count system since it's less work for me but I imagine it might not accurately reflect character strengths since some posts have nothing to do with the character a person is using. (e.g. Sigil)