[Ar-list] Re: Ar-list digest, Vol 1 #5 - 4 msgs

[Carter Butts]

Ira wrote:


> 
> the RG will come last and we haven't even got all the characters created 
> yet--though we had two really cool mediated character creation sessions.
> 
> broadly what it'll be is a mystery/suspense oriented game involving the 
> supernatural in a modern setting.  so far, we have one character who's a 
> strong psychokinetic, one who's a vampire, and another one (not yet 
> really worked on yet) who will probably be a mage.
> 
> I'm waiting to see what the characters are like before really working 
> too hard on the game world, though I have some general ideas.  for one 
> thing, it'll be very low-magic (as part of the reason why science hasn't 
> discovered it yet and started in on magichnology) which will mean that 
> those relying on magic will have sharp limits.  however, their magical 
> powers will be very broad in the first place to compensate for this.  
> also, only certain people will be able to channel magical energy in the 
> first place.
> 
> the psychokinetic character has a cult-group as an enemy, which should 
> be interesting since they have magical power backed up by some sort of 
> supernatural creature.
> 
> the basic format is that each character was normal at one time and then 
> had some kind of encounter with the supernatural...


Sounds like fun; I'll be interested in seeing what your group comes up with!

> that'd be cool to take a look at.  getting the right mentality for AR is 
> still a little difficult for me sometimes, and those would probably help.


See my previous message on this....

> I'd love to help with the LaTeX conversion of all that; indeed, I'd like 
> to be writing my stuff in LaTeX or Tex.  however, my TeX is poor and 
> LaTeX nonexistent.  maybe in a while I can get into it again and make 
> some progress.  I'd love to support anything working with TeX.


Actually, the conversion per se is not so hard; getting the result to 
look more like an RPG book and less like an academic text may take some 
doing.  :-)  Still, we shall see....

> unless I'm wrong (which is easily possible), it should just be a matter 
> of making the roll and working back to what the per minute bonus must 
> be...  that is to say:
> 1. roll d100    (eg. 42)
> 2. add 1 to find the rolling target (eg. 43%)
> 3. apply the inverse DRF to the result of #2 (eg. -7)
> 4. find the rating of the attribute being tested, apply all modifiers 
> EXCEPT the time bonus (eg. -20)
> 5. the result of #4 plus the time bonus should equal #3, so we subtract 
> #4 from #3. (eg. 13 minutes)
> 
> does that look right to everyone?  the only numbers I made up for that 
> are the result of the die roll and the rating being tested, which is how 
> it should be.
> 


As I mentioned, I like this approach; it's not canonical, but seems to 
make a certain amount of sense...the result can be interpreted as the 
minimum time which would have to have elapsed for your roll to be a 
success.  Initially, I thought it might be a bit cumbersome, but in 
retrospect I am not sure this is so; I'd be interested in hearing about 
how this "plays" in actual use.

-Carter