The UHRPG is in the works. Ideas anyone?

[Allan_ecker]

I'm beginning work on the Umlaut House RPG. So far, I've come up with the following core:

Combat will be numerically simple but try to at least keep the blow-by-blow coolness intact, probably by relying on the Unicorn System (see unicornjelly.com for details).

Alignment is a considerably more complex thing in the UHRPG than in other RPGs. A character has three scores, Love of Self, Love of Others, and Strength of Personal Code which dictate his or her general attitude and emotional state in a way which does not imply "good" or "evil". (Rick, for example, switched from evil to good with only a modification to his Love of Self score.) These scores are measured from zero to six like the Kinsey scale, with three being neutral. For example, a character with a Love of Others of zero is a homicidal maniac and a character with a Love of Others of six is practially incapable of thinking of himself because of how much he direly cares for everyone else.

Bonuses and penalties will exist for both high and low love and code strength scores. It will be possible for the game or the character to make alterations to these scores, but only slowly with few exceptions. (The Ego Crash modifier, for example, drops your Love of Others score by one to three points, but requires that you begin with a score of higher than three. This modifier is responsible for Rick's "turning over a new leaf".)

Classes will be heavily dependant on alignment, and having a good match between class choice and alignment will be as important as, say, having a high wisdom score for a wizard in D&D. (There will be stats a la D&D in addition to the alignment stats, but I haven't got that far yet.)

All characters must be human, but characters need not be humanoid. (Remember, Rick is essentially arachnid without his full-body prosthesis.)

Dimensional travel will be relatively common, but still not "ordinary".

Any further sugguestions?

Oh, and just some examples:

Volair:
Love of Others - 5: Viciously Extraverted
Love of Self - 2: Somewhat negative self image
Strength of Code - 2: Nutty

Saundra:
Love of Others - 3: Introverted
Love of Self - 4: Positive self image
Strength of Code - 4: Rule Abiding

Jake:
Love of Others - 4: Extraverted
Love of Self - 3: Minimal Self-Consciousness (After +1 from True Love)
Strength of Code - 3: Normal

Rick:
Love of Others - 4: Extraverted
Love of Self - 2: Somewhat negative self image (After +1 from True Love)
Strength of Code - 2: Nutty

(The True Love modifier lasts the duration of the relationship, so no real danger of Rick becoming depressed too soon. Notice, however, that before he met Jake, Rick was pretty unhappy with himself.)

[Andrick]

Not to be critical or anything but exactly what would the premise of this RPG be? I mean, Umlaut House is all about relationships and pushing the boundaries of the taboos of others. I don't see how that correlates to a RPG. I can see where Supermegatopia can be a RPG; what with its spandex suits, snappy banter, ridiculous villians and gratuitous cheesecake it is prime material for such. I just don't see where UH would cross that barrier unless it were to go the way of Volair's spycraft, with a few sig characters from the strip. Since Volair's secret agent life is completely out of comic it would be a tenuous relation to the strip.

So... can you elaborate on a general plot?

[Allan_ecker]

Good point, Andrick.

Volair's Superspy Adventures are out of the comic FOR THE TIME BEING. The mythos of Umlaut House is supposed to be, whenever possible, a juxtuposition of stereotypical adventure elements AGAINST complex interpersonal relationships. The storyline we're just seeing the beginning of, is a typical Comic Adventure storyline, but set against the background of all this interpersonal nuttiness.

So that's what the UHRPG is. It's an RPG where you play a part in various sci-fi-ish adventures, but often get blindsided by interpersonal issues. The purpose of the numerical alignments is to provide some handle by which this can be regulated. I don't know how likely I am to succeed, but if I do, the UHRPG will be a game where you dodge a giant blade-shooting mechazoid, backflip over a dumpster, then run smack into your ex and spend a few rounds having an exceedingly awkward conversation about how busy you are these days.

See, the trick is to provide a numerical framework that encourages the kinds of off-the-wall juxtupositions that make Umlaut House fun. I'm hoping that by providing potential penalties and bonuses, the character who runs smack into his ex will find it strategically viable to just stand there being awkward rather than ignore the encounter.

Now that the premise is a little clarified, ideas for bunuses and stuff?

[Andrick]

Ah. ... Sounds like something right up the alley for one of my friends. He may actually know of a game engine which does this (he is rather heavy into new RPGs with a heavy bent towards narrativism). I'll go pick his brain and see what gems I can come back with.

[Alfador]

A "special encounter" with one's True Love (ranging from good clean snuggling, to full-on yiffing, or even just a simple hug) would definitely give bonuses to later tests. But wouldn't it also lower concentration, because all the character can think about is...the encounter?

[Allan_ecker]

If your Love of Self score goes above four you start incurring penalties anyway... But not everyone is likely to have the love of self score go up that high; Rick is only at Self Love of two even with the True Love bonus. And of course the True Love bonus is really a penalty if your Love of Self score started at higher than four...

Interesting...

Special Encounters should have an additional Concentration penalty of some kind. It's like when Robin Hood lets the stew boil over in Disney's animated version...

Except that would mean...

[Andrick]

Oh, we are [/i]not going into the 'Merry Men' thing again, are we?

[Allan_ecker]

*refrains from drawing Robin/John slash*

(With great effort)

[Alfador]

Like the scene in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" (the Mel Brooks version!) when Robin Hood explains "Halt! You've entered the territory of Robin Hood and his Merry Men." And Rabbi Tuckman blatantly misinterprets.

?(forgot to put a question mark in at the end, but now it won't make sense. Curse my insidious good taste in grammar! Curse it!)

[Andrick]

My friend got to me, to whit:
Hello Andrick,

I think the game you're thinking of is The Riddle of Steel. The Riddle of Steel has a very 'crunchy' combat system (ala Runequest or Rolemaster) combined with a Spiritual Attribute system to help keep things focused on the emotional drives of the character.

The basic idea, I think, from Riddle of Steel is this.

1) You assign certain Spiritual Attributes and they're things like: Passion: Love my wife 3 or Faith: Believe in Crom 1, something along those lines.

2) Whenever you do something that relates to your Spiritual Attribute you gain a number of bonus dice equal to the attribute. Thus, from the above example, if I was fighting a guy who was holding my wife captive I would gain 3 bonus dice on every action in the fight.

3) Whenever you develop or enhance a Spiritual Attribute through role playing the GM (I think) awards you an additional die for addressing the issue in your Spiritual Atribute. Thus if I defeat the guy above, run to my wife and reaffirm my love for her the GM may increase my Passion: Loves His Wife score from 3 to 4.

4) Spiritual Attributes cap out at 5. However, they are the ONLY way to statistically improve your character. Thus I may choose to move 2 of those Spiritual Attribute dice to my Swordsmanship skill. My Swordsmanship skill goes up by 2 and my Passion: Loves his wife goes back down to 3.

5) The net effect is to create a feedback loop. Players like to see their characters improve. The only way to improve is to create an emotionally driven character. The more you address those emotions the more effective you are in play.

I have not actually READ The Riddle of Steel. All of this I have gathered from discussion over on The Forge and so there may be some inacuracies in my understanding of the system.

In addition I highly recommed pointing your friend to The Forge (http://www.indie-rpgs.com) as this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff they're good at providing feedback on.

Hope this was useful.

Dishrag"

Useful to you, a?

[Allan_ecker]

Thanks deeply! That is VERY instructive.

I've improved my understanding of the UHRPG a little, so I'll provide what details I've come up with.

1: Like the RPG you're describing, points are awarded by the GM for role-playing in an emotional situation. All interactions with sentient beings provide the possibility for bonuses or penalties to be earned.

2: These bonuses and penalties are based on FACTUAL OCCURENCES. There's no penalty, for example, if the conversation is awkward. However, a slap in the face will earn you a temporary -1 to Love of Self, probably some other things, too. The GM will have a list of things that can happen, an what the consequences are, but will be concerned (if he's doing his job, anyway) with making the interraction realistic more than dealing out penalties and bonuses.

3: There will still be skills and classes. Attributes that determine success in an adventure will be the Alignment attributes, the Power attributes, and the skill points.

4: Skill points are acquired when levels are raised and when characters are generated. Skill points may be traded for higher values of Power scores and vice versa. Points may also be traded for movement of the Alignment attributes into the Dysfunctional ranges, from 0 to 1 and from 5 to 6. (Volair, at Love of Others 5, earns 5 skill points for being Mildly Dysfunctional in one area.)

5: While there are no penalties between 2 and 4 on the Alignment scores, many classes (which provide bonus skill points in specific areas) require values either above or below 3. (Joining the Mad Scientist class actually requires that your character be in the dysfunctional range for at least one score, whether it be the high or the low end.)

This is all very interesting, but it'll be a while yet before I'm ready to play-test.

Thanks for the website, Andrick!

[RandomScribe]

Ooh, this sounds cool! Are you still working on it, by any chance? Since it seems so storytelling-based, we might be able to get a game going here in the forum... ^^

--RS

[Allan_ecker]

Haven't worked on it in ages, but some progress was made during my last session of work. I created the concept of "learn by doing" skills; rather than have ranks in a score which stay there perpetually no matter how rarely you use them, you -potentially- earn points every time you use a skill, and you lose points for not using that skill over time. As in real life, every attempt gives the opportunity to learn; players roll to see if they earn a new skill point if the difficulty of the action is close to their roll (even if they fail).

The skills were divided into skills associated with Mind, Body, and Soul. (A system which became a "parent" to the UHRPG was called the MBS or Mind, Body and Soul RPG.)

Mind Skills:

Deduce, Use spell, Build spell, Create spell, learn, perceive, speak, teach and outwit

(For science fiction worlds, replace "spell" with "technology". For mixed worlds, make Use Spell and use Technology separate skills.)

Body Skills:

Lift, Throw, Aim, Run, Jump, Unarmed Combat, Armed Combat, Sneak, and Overpower

Soul Skills:

Lie, Cheat, Steal, Jest, Charm, Seduce, Convince, Persevere, and Keep Cool

I may go over the MBS system and put it on the web somewhere at some point for play testing.

[RandomScribe]

Oooh... I love the idea of building skills by using them... not enough RPG systems do that. Still, I'd be careful about taking away points in skills you rarely use--nobody ever likes their character getting worse at anything. If you do implement that, just be sure that skill loss is a much slower process than gaining the skills, or at least ensure that the characters get an opportunity to use all of their skills at some point... alternatively, you could have skill points that only ever go up, but impose a penalty on skills a character hasn't used in a while. And you have to use the skill a few times to completely eliminate the penalty (It's a lot easier to learn to do something the second time around, even years later. It's like riding a bike! ^^ ). Or something.

My only other suggestion is that you allow non-integral values for the "alignment" stats. There wouldn't necessarily have to be any difference in modifiers or title between, say, a score of 4.3 and 4.4, but it would allow the system to be a little more precise (if getting slapped gives you -1 to Love of Self for a while, then it would make sense for a mere insult to have a slightly smaller effect).

--RandomScribe, who is a game designer at heart ^^

[Allan_ecker]

*very* good point. Probably change that to a temp modifier rather than permanent decrease. I didn't get to mention it earlier, but having alignment scores in the pathological ranges (zero or one, five or six) can actually be a benefit, as some classes will require them.

(A mad scientist must be "into the red" by at least three points; some classes require even more drastic measures.)