GeekEclectic
09-22-2011, 11:44 PM
Time: Tuesday evenings beginning at 9pm EST. I'm hoping to have each session last approximately 4 hours.
LFP: I'm hoping to have 4 regular players. That will make the character generation process pretty interesting and give us a lot of material to work with in game that I can be reasonably sure you guys will actually be invested in.
System: Cortex Plus, specifically the version found in the Smallville RPG. I will not be using the Smallville setting, but the system is brilliant for games with a lot of drama and actually encourages players to engage in interpersonal conflicts(without fear of death or many other nasty things that make it a bad idea to engage in such in most games).
Setting: You are students at a private school who are some of the elites who engage in the school-sanctioned duels at the school's underground arena. Your position affords you certain privileges, as does winning duels. Losing also has its costs, and nobody really knows the reason the duels are held in the first place, or even when they were first instated. Not even the oldest faculty members seem to have any idea. They simply occur, and are treated as a normal part of student life. The duelists range from the extremely honorable to those who would do almost anything to gain an advantage(no matter how unfair) in the arena. What kind of duelist will you be? And what, if anything, will you discover in the process? Note: a number of specifics of the setting are determined in character generation(see below).
First Session Weirdness: The first session in a game that uses this system is actually group character creation. You create your characters together, and part of the process actually has the players creating many of the NPCs and locations that will feature heavily in the game. If this process goes quickly, I may try to run a short session with any remaining time in order to get everyone accustomed to how the rules work in play.
Second Session and Onwards: Once character creation is complete, the game progresses much like most other RPGs. Instead of doing random things, though, you are encouraged to think about what your character wants to accomplish, why they want to accomplish it, and who they're doing it for(or maybe who they're doing it to). Why you're doing something and who you're doing it for(or to) are often more important than your skills and other resources in determining success, though you can call on other resources to increase your chances of success.
Conflicts and Fights: Combat is handled like any conflict. The way conflicts work in Cortex Plus is that you roll all the applicable dice and add the highest two together to get your final number(spending a type of currency called plot points can allow you to add a third, fourth, etc. die to the total). Then your opponent does the same, trying to get a higher total. This goes back and forth until one of two things happens. First, instead of rolling one person can just "give in," which means they give the opponent what they want. Second, one person can fail to roll higher than their opponent, in which case they take a type of damage called "stress." The type of stress(angry, injured, etc.) taken depends on the type of conflict, but it's important to know that stress cannot kill or cripple a character. Your character can only die or otherwise be permanently disabled if you "give in" on a conflict when that's what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Otherwise, it cannot happen. You can only take stress, and stress eventually heals.
Hopefully, that gives you a basic idea of how the system works, and whether or not the setting would be intersting to you.
LFP: I'm hoping to have 4 regular players. That will make the character generation process pretty interesting and give us a lot of material to work with in game that I can be reasonably sure you guys will actually be invested in.
System: Cortex Plus, specifically the version found in the Smallville RPG. I will not be using the Smallville setting, but the system is brilliant for games with a lot of drama and actually encourages players to engage in interpersonal conflicts(without fear of death or many other nasty things that make it a bad idea to engage in such in most games).
Setting: You are students at a private school who are some of the elites who engage in the school-sanctioned duels at the school's underground arena. Your position affords you certain privileges, as does winning duels. Losing also has its costs, and nobody really knows the reason the duels are held in the first place, or even when they were first instated. Not even the oldest faculty members seem to have any idea. They simply occur, and are treated as a normal part of student life. The duelists range from the extremely honorable to those who would do almost anything to gain an advantage(no matter how unfair) in the arena. What kind of duelist will you be? And what, if anything, will you discover in the process? Note: a number of specifics of the setting are determined in character generation(see below).
First Session Weirdness: The first session in a game that uses this system is actually group character creation. You create your characters together, and part of the process actually has the players creating many of the NPCs and locations that will feature heavily in the game. If this process goes quickly, I may try to run a short session with any remaining time in order to get everyone accustomed to how the rules work in play.
Second Session and Onwards: Once character creation is complete, the game progresses much like most other RPGs. Instead of doing random things, though, you are encouraged to think about what your character wants to accomplish, why they want to accomplish it, and who they're doing it for(or maybe who they're doing it to). Why you're doing something and who you're doing it for(or to) are often more important than your skills and other resources in determining success, though you can call on other resources to increase your chances of success.
Conflicts and Fights: Combat is handled like any conflict. The way conflicts work in Cortex Plus is that you roll all the applicable dice and add the highest two together to get your final number(spending a type of currency called plot points can allow you to add a third, fourth, etc. die to the total). Then your opponent does the same, trying to get a higher total. This goes back and forth until one of two things happens. First, instead of rolling one person can just "give in," which means they give the opponent what they want. Second, one person can fail to roll higher than their opponent, in which case they take a type of damage called "stress." The type of stress(angry, injured, etc.) taken depends on the type of conflict, but it's important to know that stress cannot kill or cripple a character. Your character can only die or otherwise be permanently disabled if you "give in" on a conflict when that's what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Otherwise, it cannot happen. You can only take stress, and stress eventually heals.
Hopefully, that gives you a basic idea of how the system works, and whether or not the setting would be intersting to you.