Fallout: Equestia (Setting and Rules Expansion)

Uh....why would you lose a mutation even if you lost rads? You already mutated. It's too late to do anything about it at that point (aside from drastic surgery I guess?). The entire point is that mutations are permanent effects caused by an over-saturation of radiation. Just because the radiation goes away doesn't mean your mutation vanishes.

I also have no idea what the point of the coin flip for tables would be if we had a combined table offered, though it would essentially be exactly the same as the dice roll I suppose and would save us...a really minor amount of effort in bother combining the tables? Unless there were more good or bad than the other but....why would we do that? Assuming it was 50/50 there would be no actual difference between combining the tables and flipping for which one you got. At that point preferring a die result to a coin flip result is just arbitrary personal preference. But, just to be clear, my initial idea was both, not one or the other.

Ramsus wrote:Uh....why would you lose a mutation even if you lost rads? You already mutated. It's too late to do anything about it at that point (aside from drastic surgery I guess?). The entire point is that mutations are permanent effects caused by an over-saturation of radiation. Just because the radiation goes away doesn't mean your mutation vanishes.

Okay, fair point, i wasnt thinking clearly last night (yay for insomnia!) and i had the concept muddled with xp, which in some systems if you lose enough off you backtrack a level. Why i got those muddled i have no freaking clue.
But i feel my other point, that a player can dance back and forth over the 100 rads line to amass a large number of mutations without endangering themselves (beyond the effects of mutations that is), is still valid. Should there be a cap on the number of mutations you can aquire? I say yes. But should that cap simply be a case of "you can no longer mutate" or a case of "you are now dead". I think that spliting mutations by sevarity into lvs, and when you reach the appropriate rads (100 for lv 1, 200 for lv 2) you can roll up a random mutation of that lv, and you only get one mutation of each level. So to have 9 mutations you must have had 900 rads at one point. at 1000 rads you either die or become a ghoul.

As for tables, having one combined table of 50/50 results sounds best, although it would be more intersting to have some mutations with both positive and negative effects.

Prof. Charles Hoofington wrote:

Ramsus wrote:Uh....why would you lose a mutation even if you lost rads? You already mutated. It's too late to do anything about it at that point (aside from drastic surgery I guess?). The entire point is that mutations are permanent effects caused by an over-saturation of radiation. Just because the radiation goes away doesn't mean your mutation vanishes.

Okay, fair point, i wasnt thinking clearly last night (yay for insomnia!) and i had the concept muddled with xp, which in some systems if you lose enough off you backtrack a level. Why i got those muddled i have no freaking clue.
But i feel my other point, that a player can dance back and forth over the 100 rads line to amass a large number of mutations without endangering themselves (beyond the effects of mutations that is), is still valid. Should there be a cap on the number of mutations you can aquire? I say yes. But should that cap simply be a case of "you can no longer mutate" or a case of "you are now dead". I think that spliting mutations by sevarity into lvs, and when you reach the appropriate rads (100 for lv 1, 200 for lv 2) you can roll up a random mutation of that lv, and you only get one mutation of each level. So to have 9 mutations you must have had 900 rads at one point. at 1000 rads you either die or become a ghoul.

As for tables, having one combined table of 50/50 results sounds best, although it would be more intersting to have some mutations with both positive and negative effects.

When mutations were first being discussed, I always thought of them as a constantly rising value, with no way to decrease it. If you have mutation points and radiation points separate, you can have the latter decrease while the former stays the same. For example, you have 110 radiation points and 110 mutation points. If you drop down to 95 radiation points, and then gain 10 more, you'd be at 105 radiation points and 120 mutation points.

((For the record, I used the term "rads" before because you suggested mutations replace the "kill you if the value gets too high" current system.))

Here's an example of a mutation with positive and negative benefits. A mutation that causes electricity to course through your hooves constantly. Unless you're wearing rubber or some other non-conductive material, you'll power up any machinery that isn't receiving power already, overload any machinery that IS, metal floors wouldn't be the best idea to step on if there are other creatures or robots on the same floor (unless they're also insulated), and touching other creatures would be a bad idea. And before you say that that sounds mostly negative, keep in mind that a lot of things wouldn't be receiving power, and that overloading something isn't always a bad thing.

I think that's needlessly complicated. Simply saying you only gain mutations when you hit a certain number (100, 200, etc. whatever) the first time would easily suffice, work out just about the same, and be dirt simple.

I'm a fan of dirt-simple. A huge fan.

I'm happy to see I'm not the only one with the Fallout: Equestria idea. There's a lot of good stuff here. Personally I've found my biggest problem trying to come up with a F:E Pony Tales game is setting. When do you set it(before or after the original fic), where do you set it- I've found this to be my biggest problem, as I don't really have a mental map of everything in the fic and creating one would be very complicated- and how much or how little overlap of characters and places in the fic should there be? If you want to do something more along the lines of Fallout: New Vegas instead of Fallout 3 how would you do that, as in the fic the author has sort of blended the two (the NCR is created near/at the end and is in the Equestrian Wasteland as opposed to a more desert setting like the Mojave, etc). I'd be interested in seeing how others have thought to tackle this problem.

I think the answer to that is the answer to anyone GMing anyone Fallout setting of any type. You set it somewhere else but include some of the same elements or you just pretend like that thing didn't happen and steal elements from it to make your own stuff that will still be familiar to the players without them being able to actually predict exactly what's going to happen. Possibly with silly camoes. The great part of the fallout setting is that the occasional sillyness is encouraged, even stuff that would in theory conflict with decisions that include the camoeing character never having existed.

Funny... I was thinking about trying to make a FoE setting for Pony Tales. Looks like I'm joining the collaboration. Incoming Wall of Text!!


Here would be my thoughts on Radiation / Mutation, in keeping with the general flavor and mechanics of the Fallout games and FoE interpretation of ghouls. Unfortunately, you really can't consider Rads as anything more than book keeping.


Radiation: Whereas the games kill you at 1000 Rads, cut the Rad count for Pony Tales down to 100. Whereas the games would measure Rads in Rads/seconds, measure them in Rads/hours for Pony Tales. The games used 1 minute/true second, so rads of +1/second in the game would be equivalent to +6/Hour in Pony Tales. For ease of book keeping, lets cut that down to +5/Hour for "mildly" radiated areas (that implies a 20-hour life span if you were to stay in such a place). Why +5 out of 100 instead of +1 out of 20? Because lets not forget about creatures like The Glowing Ones, whose attacks inflict both damage and Rads, or things like radiated food/drink, which would reasonably only add 1 or 2 at most.

Radiation Sickness: Radiation sickness sets in at 20, 40, 60, and 80 Rads, starting with Endurance, then Agility, and finally Strength. Since all three of those have been roughly meshed into Athletics and Perception, I'm going to edit it slightly and say you take the following penalties:
20: -1 Athletics
40: -1 Athletics, -1 Perception
60: -2 Athletics, -2 Perception (chance of minor mutation)
80: -3 Athletics, -3 Perception (chance of significant mutation)
100: -5 Athletics, -5 Perception, Unconscious (chance of ghoulification - not sure how to implement that, though a player recently reaching this mark shouldn't inherently receive the same abilities of a 200-year old ghoul just on principle)

Mutations: Any mutations should be decided on a case-by-case basis based on the character being played or the scenario when the mutation happens. A minor mutation happening in a darkened room might cause the player to develop night vision, for example. Mutations shouldn't be all good, however, so consider creating them in the style of Flaws. You have Night Vision now, yes, but your eyes now glow, negating a significant chunk of your Stealth skill.



I had a general thought about Weapons as well and them using PiPs. Instead of using your normal PiPs, weapons would instead use "WiPs" (ain't I creative?), which are quite literally based on the ammo count in the gun. A Sniper Rifle with a 5-round clip would have 5 WiPs. Each weapon would have 2 powers, minimum (or one power and a "Reload" stat) - one power that sets the weapon's WiPs to some specific value (the Reload power, which might potentially require multiple turns) and another that uses those WiPs to attack ([-1w] Fire: Deal 1d12 to target creature). For things like Energy Weapons or Melee Weapons, you could include variable WiP attacks to allow for other effects. Random examples:

Plasma Pistol (Reloads to 10 WiPs)
[-1w] Fire: Deal 1d10 damage to target creature.
[-2w] Charged Shot: Deal 2d8 damage to target creature. Rolling 16+ on these dice inflicts double damage and disintegrates the target if it is reduced to 0hp. Rolling 8 or less inflicts no damage.

Chainsaw (Melee - No Reload)
[+1w] Swipe: Deal 1d12 damage to target creature.
[-Xw] Sustained Impact: Deal Xd10 damage (maximum 4d10) to target creature. Reroll any results of 3 or lower.

Each gun weapon would have a "Fire" attack, which is just a simple attack with the weapon. Small Guns (those that use Bullets) would typically only have that normal attack, excepting certain weapons that specifically work otherwise (like a double-barrel shotgun or a machine gun). Big Guns would work similarly, but would probably get 1 or 2 attacks per reload and would require multiple turns to load. Energy Weapons would have a "Fire" and potentially an "Overcharge," seeing as they essentially are battery powered. Melee Weapons would have a "Swing" or other appropriate attack action, and maybe a special attack, if appropriate. For special ammo (or weapon attachments), rather than granting a new power or something, it should read to change existing ones. Working off the Plasma Pistol example:

OverCharged Plasma Cell (Plasma Pistol)
-Reloads to 6 WiPs
Fire: Add 5 damage to the attack
Charged Shot: Increase the damage by 1d8

From there, weapon quality, ammo quality, and normal/special ammo rarity could be tweaked for balance. Just because you have a Fat [s]Man[/s] Pony doesn't mean you can go dropping nukes left and right. Finding just 1 would be a significant reward itself.

......

Well not too much of that matches with the current ideas especially well.

I have to say lowering Radiation from 1000 to 100 is kind a bad idea. I have no idea about irl or skype games or such but, I certainly can't see GMs adhering to your radiation per/X amount of time suggestions. Instead they will probably just hand out amounts as they see fit. Considering this, it would be better to have 1000 as the max number to give the GM more freedom with how many they hand out for various levels of how radiative someplace/thing was or how long people were there/interacted with it. I like your inclusion of the temporary stat penalties.

I will say in response both to you and someone else who made a comment earlier that I can't remember, spending turns reloading or otherwise doing nothing is not fun. We should avoid building things like that into a system pretty much every time we can.

I'm glad that you at least seem to agree with me that special ammo should not be universal to all weapons.

Ramsus wrote:......

Well not too much of that matches with the current ideas especially well.

isnt that kinda the point? Throwing different ideas out there to see what works and dosent work.

Ramsus wrote:
I have to say lowering Radiation from 1000 to 100 is kind a bad idea. I have no idea about irl or skype games or such but, I certainly can't see GMs adhering to your radiation per/X amount of time suggestions. Instead they will probably just hand out amounts as they see fit. Considering this, it would be better to have 1000 as the max number to give the GM more freedom with how many they hand out for various levels of how radiative someplace/thing was or how long people were there/interacted with it. I like your inclusion of the temporary stat penalties.

I actualy like keeping it low at 100, makes it easier to keep track of. And of we follow the suggestion of allocating it out in 5's then we will see the effects quite often. At 1000 pts the PH would have to be hiting you with 30-50 rads at a time just to make radiation a threat to you, because otherwise you would only hit 100, maybe 200 by the end of the campagin. As for the per/x suggestion, well its simply an arbitarory number that alllows PH's to apply their own arbitory number to the situation based on what the devlopers (i.e us) agree on.

Ramsus wrote:
I will say in response both to you and someone else who made a comment earlier that I can't remember, spending turns reloading or otherwise doing nothing is not fun. We should avoid building things like that into a system pretty much every time we can.

If thats your take on it, fair enough, but i feel that reloading would balance out the larger more destuctive weapons. I am sure every one who has played the fallout games has memories of charging in to a mutie lair with a minigun, only to charge back out as you try to dodge sledgehammers and reload at the same time, before turning around again and aniliating the dude behind you.


Edit: not to go off on a tangent, but does anyone have any idea for perks? They are an important part of the fallout universe after all. Or should they be represented by additional options in the utility tallents, combat traits and boons sections (which to be honest is going to hapen anyway).

Yeah, I was just throwing ideas out, though admittedly I only had a chance to skim this topic before I threw those out.


Yes, Radiation would likely be thrown out in relatively arbitrary amounts, but having baseline values helps to make things more predictable. Now that I'm more properly awake, I can flesh out where those ideas were going a little more. For example, without a Pipbuck or other radiation detecting device, a character probably wouldn't be able to feel the radiation rate in an area unless it was a high rate, say +20. Otherwise, the only indication they'd have of radiation is an area is when they start feeling the sickness. Considering that the base game is d20 based, having a system on such a drastically different scale might be confusing. Likewise, a lower maximum number makes things easier to calculate and track rads (mentally, even) simply because the scale is narrower.
-Box of Preserved Food: +1 Rad
-Sparkle Cola: +1 Rad
-Highly-irradiated Food: +3 Rad
-Hit by a Glowing One's attack: +3 Rad/Hit


As for the reload mechanic, even Dungeons and Dragons included one, though those fights are far more tactical than Pony Tales. If you don't have a reload mechanic, you take away the strategic difference between a Missile Launcher and a .22 Pistol. A Missile Launcher would fire once, inflict a significant amount of damage to enemies, (we're talking easily 5d10 or more to multiple enemies) and require 2 or 3 turns to reload and prime the next missile, not to mention how unwieldy the thing would be. Whereas a Pistol could reasonably said to attack 2 or 3 times a turn ("double-tap"), and reloading it is as simple as click-slide-pull.

Hmm. Well, if rads on goes to 100 it makes it very hard for the GM to hand out things like what would be 3 rads on 1-1000 for say...drinking tap water in any old regular place that doesn't have water treatment but, isn't particularly radiated. On 1-100 the minimum is always 1 which is equivalent to 10 on 1-1000. Just for drinking water. I would figure most of the time, just like in the games, the GM isn't going to slap you with 10 points of rads for eating something or drinking. It's the slow accumulation of them from doing things you have to do that's the worry. When you gain 13 rads a day just from eating and drinking then you probably aren't rushing around to reduce them all the time. Then when you fall into that highly radioactive water (with the barrel of toxic material sunk down at the bottom perhaps) and get smacked with 10 rads a second, then you're getting in trouble in part due to both things. But, when eating and drinking is 8 rads or so a day and 20 is where you get your first penalty it becomes very very hard for everyone to not be debuffed basically all the time. It's not like radaway grows on trees. So then the GM has to either find a lot of excuses for people to find not at all radiated food and water or you're basically playing the game debuffed all the time.

And seriously, you think it makes sense to have eating food be that similar in rad count to being attacked by a ghoul who emits radiation to the point of being almost painful to look at? One is supposed to represent a daily level non-threat, the other is supposed to be a serious danger.
Edit: Heck, just consider their relative sizes. If a candy bar had 1/3rd the rads as a glowing one transfers to you on contact it would be lit up like a lightbulb (well, ok, more likely it'd just be radioactive goo).

As for reloading, sure it happens in D&D with one kind of weapon. Out of the choice of like at even just base like 30. And there are feats and magical benefits to not have to reload. You guys are talking about reloading on probably around half the weapons and any utility or such to skip reloading would be a major boost of power. So then you have combats involving half of it just being people threateningly reloading weapons at each other.

Edit: And that thing about the rocket launcher only applies if we're using the mechanics you suggested. If rocket launchers have rare ammo and high pip cost attacks that do area effect damage, then the tactical difference from a pistol is quite a lot. I point out the not matter what this is still a turn based game. No matter what you're only "attacking" once per turn normally anyway. It doesn't matter how many times you're attacking in the flavor of that attack. It's still only actually one attack. To modify the system to allow multiple actual attacks a turn would pretty much be making it entirely unrecognizable as being derivative of Pony Tales.

I'd have to say I'm pretty torn on the RAD scale. 100 is such a nice, low number, but Ramsus does have a point with slow buildup and lower effects of radiation. I could say 500 as a middle ground, but percentages are so much easier on a 100 or 1000 scale, and percentages would probably factor in heavily when a PH is determining how many RADs to dole out to the players, at least for me. Both systems have their ups and downs. I'd say in the end though, go with the simpler option, in this case 100 scale, because Pony Tales is all about simplicity, and the less extra bookkeeping the better.

As for perks, the solution is rather simple. The level-up system in this game already allows you to choose traits and boons and such at certain levels. Just make some new fallout themed ones and rename them perks for the flavor of it. For example, a boon/trait choice could be like the Mysterious Stranger perk. Sometimes, he'll just show up in battle and give you a hand(hoof) briefly then leaves. Just designing the perks could be a lot of fun.

About re-loading, I recommend not designing while expecting players to re-load frequently. It certainly has tactical options, as have been mentioned, but it's not fun. As a game designer, I find it's best to try to avoid designing mechanics that players don't enjoy.

The tales combat system already uses a form of reloading in its [+] moves, but even the [+3] PiP moves give the players some small effect to do, so it doesn't feel like you just skipped your turn entirely.

Lapis-Lazily wrote:I'd have to say I'm pretty torn on the RAD scale. 100 is such a nice, low number, but Ramsus does have a point with slow buildup and lower effects of radiation. I could say 500 as a middle ground, but percentages are so much easier on a 100 or 1000 scale, and percentages would probably factor in heavily when a PH is determining how many RADs to dole out to the players, at least for me. Both systems have their ups and downs. I'd say in the end though, go with the simpler option, in this case 100 scale, because Pony Tales is all about simplicity, and the less extra bookkeeping the better.

This seems to make sense. Ramsus raises a valid point, that a 100 scale makes it harder to track minute changes of under 1%. However, if players have to track such minute changes in the first place every time they drink a glass of water, that's probably going to be a whole lot of busy-work and bookeeping. Using the 100 scale and emphasizing adding radiation in chunks is probably going to create a smoother experience for everyone.

Now we'd just need to figure out what the Rad Scale actually does to players and what game design role it should serve... Or if it should even be a separate scale at all. Lots of opportunities for ideas here.

Lapis-Lazily wrote:As for perks, the solution is rather simple. The level-up system in this game already allows you to choose traits and boons and such at certain levels. Just make some new fallout themed ones and rename them perks for the flavor of it. For example, a boon/trait choice could be like the Mysterious Stranger perk. Sometimes, he'll just show up in battle and give you a hand(hoof) briefly then leaves. Just designing the perks could be a lot of fun.

Sounds like an elegant solution.

Well, if we go with officially having it be 1-100, if a PH wants to have his game keep track of smaller numbers like that it's simple enough to just scale the 100 up to 1000. So, if I run a game or am in one I'll certainly be encouraging the PH to use the scaled up version.

Well here are a few other concerns. I still think it's kind of a problem to have people have almost no rads or be suffering stat penalties at all times. Another thing to consider is how often do we want people to get mutations? On 1-1000 every 100 interval made sense. But, on 1-100, 20 seems like nobody would ever manage to avoid mutations, even the careful players. So even if we do 40, 60, 80, that's only 3 mutations ever. 100 is going to kill you or ghoulify you, as there's no point in having a max amount of radiation if the point of it isn't "this is when you die". It is still supposed to represent radiation after-all. 3 mutations seems lower than I think we've all been thinking of so far. You certainly couldn't do 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 because...you'd probably end up hitting two at once and that's just kind of an ugly mechanic at that point. That or you're forcing the PH to hand out really really tiny amounts even for the big stuff. "Someone, threw a mini-nuke at you guys? 20 rads! ...Oh wait. No. Damnit. *sigh* 8 rads." So yeah, it's kinda problematic to have the numbers laid out in a way that the PH can't have people encounter minor and major amounts of radiation without mutating all the time and even twice at once just from one incident.

As for what the scale does, I actually really like the suggestion that it imposes temporary stat penalties. And as we've stated before I think the first time you hit certain points you should gain a mutation. Anyone have any issues with that? (Just confirming we're all on the same page there as I think we all are.)

I believe the solution might be easier than you think. Instead of having a scale of mutation for the times you reach 20, 40, 60, and 80, make mutation a thing that happens every time you get above 60 RADs, with an additional mutation occurring should you get above 80 RADs. I like this solution for two reasons.

1) It removes the Mutation meter, meaning less bookkeeping and more time for fun.

2) It means characters will only mutate when highly irradiated, as at 60 RADS, you're over halfway dead from radiation poisoning.

Using this solution also means that players who avoid radiation have a chance of not mutating, while heavy risk takers will mutate semi-often. I would say there would be a cap of some sort on how many times you can mutate upon reaching 60 and another for reaching 80, so that the risk-takers don't just become a pile of mutation bookkeeping. I'd set the cap around 3 mutations for reaching 60 RADs, and 5 for reaching 80 RADs.

Edit: I guess I should clarify that, in total, this system would allow a single player to mutate 8 times maximum, which may be too much for some. Putting the 80 RADs cap at 3 would make only a total of 6 mutations possible, but may be preferable to some people.

*nods*

I agree. If mutations aren't a core aspect of character advancement (and I actually like them being a mostly negative thing) then they should probably be kept as simple as possible.

EDIT - Psychologically speaking, if Radiation is something to be avoided - it should probably involve losing points rather than gaining points. Studies show that people respond much better to losing-something-good than gaining-something-bad.

For example, in traffic-control programs, systems that give out penalty points every time you violate a speed limit - with a fine happening once you reach 10 - are less effective than systems that let you START with 10 points and taking some of those points AWAY every time you violate a speed limit. In London, it's something of a joke that drivers almost look on penalty points like an accomplishment (cool, got another three points!). We're wired to like getting things and we're wired to dislike losing things.

This is a very small change, but if radiation is supposed to be avoided - tracking it by reducing some number will probably feel more real to the players than increasing some number.

Mutation meter? What mutation meter? I don't get how it's supposed to be simpler to remember "every time we hit 60 or 80 but, only this many times for each one". That's way more stuff to remember and.....weird.

Stairc, now you're proposing we keep the concept of the radiation meter but completely change it in a way that would be entirely foreign to any Fallout....anything. You don't lose non-radiation. That doesn't even make sense. And it's once again a needless complication for everyone who knows anything about Fallout to remember.

Ok, *sigh* maybe you guys might get my points if we do Pro/Con lists.

1-100 style
Pros:
+ Smaller numbers (good for if your players' math skills are so poor that they somehow find adding up 132+35 harder than adding up 27+13. Assuming of course they don't have access to a calculator of some sort.)
+ Uh....actually that's all I've seen so far.

Cons:
- Less fine handling for the PH
- Less ability for players to attempt the prevention of unwanted mutations
- Requires more complicated methods of determining when mutations occur
- Players almost constantly suffering stat penalties

1-1000 style
Pros:
+ More fine handling for PH
+ Cautious players have better control of their situation
+ Simpler method of determining when mutations occur (once every hundred, only the first time. Clean. Simple. No weird complications or things to keep track of.)
+ Wiggle room between low levels of rads and the first amount that gives penalties/mutations
+ Players of any Fallout game already show up familiar with what the numbers represent

Cons:
- Bigger numbers (confuses and scares some people into thinking it's more complicated even though it isn't)
- Uh.... *shrug* less time we have to spend thinking up weird rules to make the 1-100 or other styles function with any sense of ease of use?

Un-radiation style
Pros:
+ Supposedly psychologically more effective in scaring players (though I'd point out that nobody thinks gaining points of "dying" would ever be good)

Cons:
- Doesn't make any sense scientifically speaking
- Doesn't make any sense otherwise either
- Requires players familiar to Fallout to learn a new confusing way of using a concept that already had a grasp on
- Players familiar with Fallout will probably constantly forget it works this way, resulting in massive confusion repeatedly
- Hard to explain how this relates to the original concept and why it was necessary to replace it

Ramsus wrote:Stairc, now you're proposing we keep the concept of the radiation meter but completely change it in a way that would be entirely foreign to any Fallout....anything. You don't lose non-radiation. That doesn't even make sense. And it's once again a needless complication for everyone who knows anything about Fallout to remember.

Ok, *sigh* maybe you guys might get my points if we do Pro/Con lists.

Un-radiation style
Pros:
+ Supposedly psychologically more effective in scaring players (though I'd point out that nobody thinks gaining points of "dying" would ever be good)

Cons:
- Doesn't make any sense scientifically speaking
- Doesn't make any sense otherwise either
- Requires players familiar to Fallout to learn a new confusing way of using a concept that already had a grasp on
- Players familiar with Fallout will probably constantly forget it works this way, resulting in massive confusion repeatedly
- Hard to explain how this relates to the original concept and why it was necessary to replace it

Or...

"This meter represents your resistance to radiation. It's like your health bar represents how much damage you can take before dropping, this tracks how much more radiation you can rake before dying of radiation poisoning. It also factors in some of your items, which act as shields against radioactive contamination. Just like losing health means you're in more danger, the more your resistance to radiation goes down - the less it can stop from horribly mutating or dying in response to the constant radioactivity."

Do you still think it's hopelessly confusing and doesn't make any sense whatsoever?

I have a hunch that players, who are used to things like hitpoints and health bars, will be able to understand.

Hopelessly? No. It's still way more confusing, especially to anyone familiar with Fallout (likely to be 90% of people who would use this). Also, with that wording it adds an additional problem. Rad-X is a Fallout drug used specifically to give people temporary resistance to radiation (usually in percentages I believe). That would require reworking that too. Also RadAway would now be weird because it'd be called Away but be adding numbers to your meter.

Really, there'd be nothing wrong with your suggestion if it were for a brand new setting or such. But, since there's already an understood and simple mechanic people know for the setting it really just makes more sense to use that than introduce something new that requires numerous changes and will cause people confusion every time they forget we changed the system of dealing with radiation.

Also, as far as I've ever seen in games, movies, tv, etc. Whenever people talk about radiation, higher is bad, lower is good. Take geiger counters for example (which is more or less what the player radiation meter represents). Low is safe, high is dangerous. So yeah, it's still weird no matter what.

Edit: Also I'm kinda baffled as to why you guys are disagreeing with me on this. You state you desire simplicity and the 1-1000 is what is known already by people, functions in a very simple matter, and doesn't require more work on our part to get an end result that is simple for the player to understand. There are plenty of things we need to make from scratch, it doesn't really make sense to me to replace something that is part of the setting already and has a mechanic that matches exactly what we need it to do.

Ramsus wrote:Hopelessly? No. It's still way more confusing, especially to anyone familiar with Fallout (likely to be 90% of people who would use this).

You clearly understand the concept, since you're examining it. So I'm not sure it's actually confusing.

Also we don't have any trouble with the idea that "taking more damage" is measured by a loss in your starting health. We don't keep adding up damage from 0 until we reach 30 - at which point we fall unconscious. We start at 30 and count backwards. It doesn't seem to confuse people.

Ramsus wrote:Also, with that wording it adds an additional problem. Rad-X is a Fallout drug used specifically to give people temporary resistance to radiation (usually in percentages I believe). That would require reworking that too. Also RadAway would now be weird because it'd be called Away but be adding numbers to your meter.

Couldn't you just do the same thing as either damage resistance or temporary hitpoints? People seem to understand those just fine.

Ramsus wrote:Really, there'd be nothing wrong with your suggestion if it were for a brand new setting or such. But, since there's already an understood and simple mechanic people know for the setting it really just makes more sense to use that than introduce something new that requires numerous changes and will cause people confusion every time they forget we changed the system of dealing with radiation.

Since a lot of mechanics are going to be changed already, it doesn't seem like that would be a huge leap.

It can work fine either way of course, this is just slightly more in line with behavioral psychology studies.

Ramsus wrote:Also, as far as I've ever seen in games, movies, tv, etc. Whenever people talk about radiation, higher is bad, lower is good. Take geiger counters for example (which is more or less what the player radiation meter represents). Low is safe, high is dangerous. So yeah, it's still weird no matter what.

Having taken low damage is save and having taken high damage is dangerous too. And yet it's represented by losing health.

"Ten seconds to launch" is more dramatic when it counts backwards from ten rather than forward too.

If people from fallout are going to be dealing with dice and ponies, I think you underestimate their ability to match new concepts and mechanics to old ideas. After all, gamers understand health bars. And they'll have to understand hitpoints. Saying, "it's like a health-bar" or, "It's like hitpoints" will probably get the idea across without a problem. After all, you clearly understood it instantly.

TLDR: It would be a minor change either way, and I'm sure both methods of tracking radiation would work fine. Players should easily be able to understand what both ideas. One's slightly more in line with psychological experiments, the other's more similar to the original game. Neither method should cause significant problems.

*sigh* My point is not "we should not do this because it won't function". My point is "why do we need to?". 1-1000 requires the least effort on our parts and on the players. It is in fact the only one of the three examples that right now is already in a finished and workable state. Because it started that way. When it was first brought up, the concept was already in a fully functional state with no problems needed to be addressed at all. We can't say the for either of the other two. Also, I don't see how "we're already making people learn new things" means we should make them have to learn even more when they don't need to. Un-rads isn't a better system in any way. It's not more simple. It doesn't add anything to the setting at all. It just happens to be a different way of working a concept that already worked the way it was. If you don't want this to resemble Fallout at all, even when there is no reason for it not to, why are you working on a Fallout setting in the first place?

Seriously, you are talking about changing the PiP Boy. For no reason. That's like making a Star Wars system and deciding to rename the Force "the Nebulous Energy Application Process". Yes, it doesn't function any worse. But it is bizarre, requires numerous pointless changes to be made, and is an unnecessary slap in the face to the base concept.

Not exactly no reason Ramsus. It's sorta been demonstrated through both experiments and real world applications that people respond better to loss-aversion than gaining something they don't like. People are just hardwired this way. There are a lot of great examples.

At its core, trying to keep your health up - with radiation damage reducing it - will almost certainly feel more dangerous to players. There's examples the world over that people behave this way and truly impressive statistics that back it up. It's a substantial element of behavioral psychology.

Of course, I'm a big fan of simplicity too (heck, it's why I don't want to keep adding even more changeling options after the initial concerns were addressed) - and if the change confuses players too much, it definitely shouldn't be enacted. Your arguments in support of the existing system definitely have a lot of merit.

Either way would work fine - it's just part of great game design to figure out which will work 5% better.

So, it comes down to playtesting at this point. There's definitely benefits to using a loss-aversion system, but if player confusion outweighs the benefits - then it definitely shouldn't be implemented. The only way to figure it out is to try playtesting the loss-aversion system and see if it confuses players so much that it slows the game down.

Playtesting conquers all.

Ok, conversation ran away on me while I was at work, so let me try and go through these points:

Rasmus
Rads - And if you make certain actions give too few rads, it makes it seem overly trivial. Lets also consider time scale between the actions of eating a box of radiated food and getting attacked by a Glowing One, because I considered that as well when setting those values. I don't think the guide actually mentions a "turn length," so I'll arbitrarily assume the DnD standard of 6 seconds per turn. A Glowing One would attack you about once a turn and inflict 1-2 rads per hit (in 6 seconds, mind you). Extending out that unit and assuming we choose 1 Rad as the number, that's equivalent to 10 Rads per minute or 600 (yes, six HUNDRED) per hour. Even if I were to stretch that "time per turn" standard out to something much larger, you're still talking easily 100+ on an hourly scale. Eating a box of radiated food would probably take the better part of 3-5 minutes, which means you're talking 12-20 rads per hour if you're doing nothing more than feasting and gorging yourself. Even assuming you're simply shoveling food into your mouth as quickly as possible, that's maybe one box every 30 seconds to a minute. That comes out to 60-120 Rads/hour.. The two actions are not as immediately comparable as you might have thought. Any good RPG rulebook is nothing more than a series of guidelines though, and I fully agree that if a DM wanted to use a 1000-point scale for that, by all means they should be allowed. As a baseline though, I think 100 is easier to manage.

Reloading - You also forget that since we are talking a physical item, you could reload it outside of combat. Very few weapons would require multiple turns to reload, and it would likely only be the large weapons that require that multi-turn reload. Besides, I don't see much difference between a Reload attack and some of the "trivial effect" +PiP powers, such as Draw Blood, Psychic Surge, and others that don't really do much but add PiPs. Different system, admitted, but the point is the same. If the agreement is that for smaller weapons it's more of a hindrance, that's fine for me, but you KNOW there will be someone who stock piles Mini-Nukes (I tend to go through a Fallout 3 game accumulating roughly 15 of them by late game and never use them), and saying that a player could fire one off every turn would negate any challenge of a late game boss.

Rad-Away and Rad-X
Rad-Away removes a specific number of Rads in Fallout based on the currently non-existent Medicine skill (again, I skimmed the first few pages due to lack of time - if that got finalized in, ignore the "currently non-existent" part). If Medicine becomes Knowledge's Fallout Skill, then you could probably work in something like that ("Removes Rads equal to 3x your Medicine Skill"). If not, we can just put it at an arbitrary number, like 30. Rad-X could then be said to give you "Resist 5 Rads," or something like that, working exactly like combat resists work. Also, running back to the point of 100 vs 1000, if you were to have RadAway work based on your Skill Bonus similar to what I just exampled, that means we're talking large-number math ("Medicine times 3" vs "Medicine times 30"). The smaller numbers we can work with, the better - much easier to track and much more accessible.

Familiar System
That also implies that we're carrying every mechanic of Fallout over to this system as is. If we wanted to play Fallout, there is a Fallout d20 game, and modifying that to use Ponies would probably be much simpler than adapting Pony Tales with each and every mechanic of that game. Just because a system already exists doesn't make it "Simple," it just makes it convenient. That's why Armor Class and the concept of Missing was done away in Pony Tales as a design decision - they were existing systems that many RPG players were familiar with, but our version is by design simpler. Now this isn't to say that making a Fallout Campaign Setting is a waste of time - rather, it's saying that you should do the least amount of rule-changing/adding as possible to get the desired flavor of the setting (a fact that, I'll admit, I may not have myself held to in my last post), and those rule changes should be as concise and smooth as possible.


Pop Quiz: You've been in an area generating 15 Rads/Minute for 15 minutes and a Glowing One has attacked you 6 times for 10 Rads of damage each. What's your Rad Count?
Pop Quiz 2: You've been in an area generating 2 Rads/Minute for 15 minutes and a Glowing One has attacked you 6 times for 2 Rads of damage each. What's your Rad Count?

Now which one of those did you calculate mentally faster? That's the idea behind a smaller scale. A larger scale provides more finesse, yes, but does the game actually *need* that much finesse?


Stairc
Counting Up vs Counting Down - While that example about the speeding tickets is legit, when we're talking about measurable things and not just abstract concepts, it makes a bit more sense to count it as it is represented. "Losing" health is a bad thing, but so too is "Gaining" Rads - that wouldn't make much sense if you "lose" rads in a radiated area.


And if I can change the topic real quick, things seem to have gotten very hostile over the past 2 pages, or they're on the brink of being so. Just making sure everyone is conscious of that before we starting having a Megaspell War in here.

Um...what? That pop quiz makes no sense. The GM isn't going to ask you how much you've gained. He's just going to tell you. And you skipped all my other points about the flaws of the 1-100 system. Which were really way more important than the one you chose to address.

As for Medicine...what. What on earth did you think the Heal skill would do? Shoe repair?

If you can reload it outside of combat it doesn't need to be part of combat consideration. I see plenty of difference in reloading and minor effects. They have effects. They gain pips. You still accomplish something. They distinguish your low damage/effect choices between everyone else's. What is more fun? Everyone reloading half the time or half the time you healing some damage, your friend granting one of your party a save, and the enemy inflicting a low ongoing damage till save on someone? If you can't see the difference....phew. Well I just don't know how to communicate to you the difference between having choice to do something even if it's minor and having no choice to do nothing.

As for the stockpiling 15 nukes. There's two really simple solutions and many other more clever ones. Solution 1) They saved up all their uber weapons instead of blowing them all away. They shouldn't be punished for that choice. They win an awesome victory based on their choice. Solution 2) The big bad or whatever bother doing any recon on the party and knows they have a stockpile of nukes they're just waiting to use on him. He prepares for this.
(There's also Solution 3) Some of them turn out to be duds. But, it's kind of a dick move.)

I never said the Fallout rad system was simple because it exists. It just is simple and already exists. Changing it to 1-100 causes all sorts of balancing problems that we didn't have to worry about with the system that already existed and doesn't add anything it didn't do. Not even stuff it didn't do well. It's just a pointless waste of time on our parts and results in a system that's more complex with no benefit whatsoever. So, it's not that I'm favoring it because it's familiar. That's just a bonus (we are making a fallout system, it would be nice if at the end it at all felt like one). The fact is that it's just a better way of handling it. The fact that it basically came pre-made for us makes it seriously baffling to me that you guys want to replace it with something that works worse and requires us to attempt to replicate what it already did without any tweaking involved.

Oh right. To answer your maths question.... it took me about the same time to do both since I just used a calculator because I'm not actually great at math. As in most games this is the most common solution to any math problems aside from just staring at the guy(s) who are good at math until they give you the answer. But, again, a GM would have to be kinda nuts to hand people math equations instead of just telling them how many rads they gained.
Edit: Just to be fair I did them again without a calculator or any writing or typing (which players of any kind would have access to). It took me a couple seconds longer to do the first because I didn't know what 15X15 was offhand. Are you really saying we need to have a system that works poorer to save people a couple of seconds?
Edit 2: Though I just noticed you actually said calculate mentally faster. Which is like me asking how you plan to outrun the train on your way to school. You're not actually going to be doing that at all. The GM either has a computer or some paper in front of him (and if he doesn't have some sort of calculator on hand what the heck is he thinking?). Same goes for the players. So mental calculations are really only going to come up if that's just faster for you than doing math other ways. That only actually applies to the people who would already do that anyway and has nothing to do with how anyone should design a rpg system.

This is hostile? I'm mostly just confused with you guys. Then again Stairc and I have gotten into quite a few disagreements recently so, to me this just feel like "meh, warmer than room temperature?" (Heck, the earlier ammo one in this same thread was certainly worse than this.)

I didn't make a pro/con list to try to "win" an argument. I actually expected people to make their own or comment on the things I listed or add pros or cons to the list. I figured with our opinions split so many ways that would actually be the best way to solve the problem as it's about as objective as we're gonna get apparently.