Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony
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Looking for a Project Lead

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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:40 pm

Hey there. A few of you may have heard of a project we worked on about 4 months ago called BiTS. Standing for, "Break This System", BiTS was designed to throw out all our worries about balance between various builds and characters - just being as fun as possible to actually build in. The goal was to build a system where players would work together to overcome crazy challenges, which they could increase the difficulty on, rather than something used for a balanced roleplaying campaign.

We mocked up a tabletop version in about 2 weeks, using the core rules from PT/LL (with just a few new ones and tweaks explained in the book). We haven't had time to work on it since. However, looking back at how fun it was, we realized something. The people on these forums are incredible at coming up with abilities that look really cool and are lots of fun to play with. The only reason we can't include most of them is due to making sure they aren't broken with some other ability already in the system.

Well, for BiTS we want these absurd combos in the system. As long as it's not infinite damage or something similarly ludicrous, it doesn't matter how broken your build is - the challenge is to find ways to break things even harder with another build. As for the challenges, we'd like to see the community design their own challenges (like many have designed monster challenges) with various levels of difficulty and instructions on how many points things are worth. For example, perhaps the challenge has a dragon involved, and for every extra dragon you add to the fight - increase your final score by 50 points. The community could create the challenges and design all the point-rewards for those challenges independently. They don't need to be unified, as you'd be competing for the high score on each challenge individually.

In short, if you like building in this system but wish there were more fun combinations of abilities, a flaw system to exploit and so on... We need a project lead.

We don't have time to work on the project ourselves. Rather than let it go to waste, we'd like to entrust it to someone that..

1) Has a deep understanding of how to write powers in ways that won't confuse anyone.
2) Is good at polishing other peoples' ideas to make them cooler and easier to understand.
3) Has a decent understanding of how to balance abilities to a baseline (not worrying about combos).
4) Has a lot of experience building characters in Pony Tales or Living Legends.
5) Is passionate about game development and is willing to devote time to the project.
6) Would be happy to take direction when necessary from the system developers.


Responsibilities
The project lead would be in charge of which new powers, traits, flaws etc. are added into the BiTS system. He would also be in charge of transposing the current system to a skype version with no references to tabletop movement. The project lead would be in charge of editing existing powers for confusion and fixing/cutting those that turn out to be confusing or so powerful that they overshadow everything else by a ridiculously wide margin (which would kill the fun of the min/max arms race). The Project Lead would also need to work actively with interested community members to give feedback on ideas and include the community's contributions in expansions.


Conclusion
If you think you'd be great at this position and it sounds like a lot of fun, shoot me a PM. You can also post here with general thoughts and so on.

I just want to note that BiTS looks a lot like PT/LL but it has some key differences. For one thing, the races give combat-bonuses. For another, there are flaws. For a third thing, since breaking the limitations of a system is a lot of fun for min/maxers, we did include a simple class system that restricts which abilities you can take (but can be easily bypassed via various options). We think this restriction will help breed creativity and it's been a lot of fun so far.


Wait, Where's the Stuff?
Oh, right, probably should show you the project as it currently stands in its tabletop incarnation. Other than those changes specifically stated in the linked handbook, BiTS follow Pony Tales in terms of rules. We'd like to see a *lot* more content added. New classes, new races, new traits, new flaws... New, new, new. Also, since dev work was originally done for a more general independent study, the flavor of races is closer to normal medieval fantasy than anything pony-related. That can easily change.

BiTS - Player's Handbook


Last edited by Stairc -Dan Felder on Tue Apr 01, 2014 8:44 am; edited 1 time in total
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Post  Philadelphus Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:50 pm

I was given the opportunity a while back to test-build a character, and while I was picking things for mechanical abilities, the names of the various moves and races sort of came together and the flavor practically wrote itself. And I love it so much I thought I'd pass it on (capitalized words are things like classes, races, moves, and traits that I worked into the flavor):

Philadelphus wrote:Ok, so my new character is a Human Cleric who's under the Illusion that he's a Zombie with a Trick Up His Sleeve (Illusion of Agony). He also has an inflated sense of his own self-worth and is under the Illusion of Awesomeness. First turn, he uses Illusion of Power for +5 energy, then Zombify on a creature followed by Illusion of Agony (as a Minor). He then uses Drain Delusions (Free) on the creature to deal 27 damage and gain 5 energy. He can then use Healing Word to give it 1d12+8 HP and force it to take that much damage. If it dies he can use Corpse Explosion to deal damage to anything in the burst, othewise just use Shield of Faith twice to give two allies Resist 10 till the end of the first turn.
So...36–47 damage first turn, though it's an awful lot of work for it.
Since you have leftover trait points you could take Talented and if the creature doesn't save against Zombify you could run around the battlefield burning it to death with your Healing hands.
"Stop! I just want to lay my hands on you!"
"Get away from me, you monster!"

Also, if anyone is interested, I'd be interested in running a short combat encounter or two using characters from this system in play-by-post format. Since the rules currently refer to tabletop we can do it using a simple ASCII grid. This wouldn't be a full-on campaign, just a combat encounter to see how everything works.
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Post  Xel Unknown Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:56 pm

Personally will say that I do think something akin to the point system for the traits would be a good overhull for the whole traits/items madness that PT has... But that's just me.
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:07 am

I remember that build! It was awesome.

Xel Unknown wrote:Personally will say that I do think something akin to the point system for the traits would be a good overhull for the whole traits/items madness that PT has... But that's just me.

Agreed. We should do that. It worked really well for Bits.
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Post  Xel Unknown Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:32 am

Also don't get the logic in adding a random "i" into that name... Sure there is a pony theme, but you are really forcing it dude. BTS works just fine in my opinion.
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:36 am

Try pronouncing it with the consonants. You get a sound like 'Bits', which is easier to say than "B-T-S".
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Post  Zarhon Sun Feb 16, 2014 12:40 am

This is tempting. Not sure if I got the commitment though.

What's the ultimate reasoning/future goal for this project? To make a whole standalone game/module out of it alone, to turn it into a module alternative, or to make it part of one of the original modules?

Is it intended to be played in a player versus player aspect, or coop-team versus DM-invented monsters aspect? What goes into a "game" of BTS, after one makes the characters?
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Sun Feb 16, 2014 1:41 am

My goal is to make the system that is an extraordinary amount of fun, without being massively complicated, to build powerful characters in. This should also provide a way for people to get their cool ideas into systems more easily and give everyone a chance to play with them (as well as try out crazy ideas that turn out to be good enough to add into PT/LL).

Play would be provided by players building teams to take on challenges generated by the community and compete for the highest scores. Playgroups can post their builds for various challenges online as well as try to break their personal records in live play. Also, if you like the kind of game - as some players have stated - where balance isn't a major worry of the system and players can be of radically different power levels... You can try out playing adventures in the system too.
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Post  Xel Unknown Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:24 pm

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:
Xel Unknown wrote:Personally will say that I do think something akin to the point system for the traits would be a good overhull for the whole traits/items madness that PT has... But that's just me.

Agreed. We should do that. It worked really well for Bits.
Something else... In my opinion I think a system turning into fewer points... (like turning the gold system form 1000 gold into 1 combat point) would be better for newer players... And like keeping the highest planned goal starting trait-line effect to have no more then like 3 points to get. Where like Full Plate being upgraded into Mithril Fullplate... Just to spitball some ideas on this topic of such a change. Maybe should build a page in traits or items about this possible overhaul.
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:00 pm

We'd probably want to use something larger than a 1 point scale - if we still want the handy reference of the base number of points (1000 gold in the case of the current system) being worth 1 standard action. The more points we have, the more flexible we can get in terms of design space. We'd probably want a bigger spread than just 1 point in the place of the current 1000. Either 100 or 10 is probably fine though (if we want to stick with a multiple of ten).
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Post  Xel Unknown Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:06 pm

But the system at a time was just at one point system... With how there was only traits before the items were given out there. So that's why I'd suggest keeping to such a low point system would be a hell lot easier to deal with for everyone.
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:09 pm

Indeed, it was. Just like utility talents were a 1-point system. We originally followed this path because we thought it was simplest and easiest.

However, the flexibility of a multi-point system allows us to design things outside a perfectly flat equality and, when cool ideas are a bit stronger or weaker than comparable options, provide that slight increase or decrease in cost. I feel this made design and development a little easier and expanded the types of things we could include in the game.
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