City of Heroes Tabletop Game (WIP)

[Inc42]

So, in my free time I have been working on creating a CoH based d20 tabletop role playing game. Using a combination of Mids, Red Tomax, and Paragon Wiki I have been putting together a list of all ATs, power sets, and individual powers and defining what they do. The goal is to make something that feels as close to CoH as possible, but is still fun to play even for people that never played CoH.

This is still in very early stages of development, and I am going to hold off on sharing anything I have until I feel it is ready for some play testing. Mostly this thread is for me to think out loud about some of the major points of the game and get any opinions or ideas from you guys on it.

My goals to have a play test ready are:
-Fully establish the basics of the game. How do attacks work? How does Endurance work? Enhancements?
-Define each archetype and power so that players can play anything they could in the actual MMO in this game (Epic ATs will probably not be included in play test, I think those could have a separate document later)
-Have a collection of the most popular enemy groups defined to individual mobs so that the person running the game (I've been calling this the Announcer, like on Saturday morning cartoons) can have a decent amount of material to pull from
-Have a couple adventures pre-established, quite possibly based on TFs in the game, so that the person running can have examples to reference or run players through.

By this time I will likely run it through my own gaming group for at least a couple sessions before I release it for official testing.

Some ideas that I have been kicking around (please feel free to discuss):
-Enhancement slots will be given as they were in the game at appropriate levels. Actual enhancements never made sense to me story-wise, so instead players will be able to simply use a slot to boost an aspect of one of their powers. For instance if I have the Battle Ax set I can put a +damage, +accuracy, -recharge, or -endurance enhancement into Beheader. These enhancements will give bonuses that increase at certain levels automatically (representing Training Enhancements, Dual Orgin, and single origin). For now, possibly forever, IO sets will not be a thing, but I may do something at level 50 to do split enhancements. Using the above example of Beheader I may at level 50 be able to put in +40% damage, or +25% damage AND +25% accuracy.
-Enhancement Diversification I am on the fence about, but leaning more towards it will be there. The reason behind this is that I have played other Tabletop RPGs for years, and as a player one of the most annoying things is the one really overpowered person that is able to steal the spotlight and you get left in the dust because you didnt want to break something horribly. Having the balance there does make sense. I don't want to play with someone that has Fireball 6 slotted for damage, hasten 6 slotted for recharge, and stamina 6 slotted for recovery. That sounds great for that player, but me being balanced gets to stand in the back and watch. I dunno, I may have it as an optional rule that the person running the game decides.
-The formula that the game used to calculate if an attack hit is too complicated for most people I have played a TTRPG with, who frequently forget how to add. As such accuracy and to-hit will be converted to one stat that tries to keep the benefits that each give, but make it easier to do quick math. This also comes up in:
-Defenses I am playing with two ideas on. The first is that each player and enemy has a defense score for each type of defense in the game (Smashing, Lethal, Melee, ect). (Or for simplicity sake do I just use Melee, Ranged, and AOE? This would be difficult for things like Invulnerability having a weakness to Psychic, but it could be done.) The defense score would work like if you ever played D&D 4th edition, there you have your Armor Class, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, set numbers the enemy rolls an attack to beat. The other option I am thinking of is that the attacker rolls the attack and adds any bonuses, the defender rolls a defense and adds bonuses, and the higher number wins. While this could be fun it could be SUPER time consuming every time Fireball happens.
-What is a player able to do in a round? Should activation times be factored in, or should I designate some powers as "Quick Powers", which a player can use and still use another power as well? Kinda leaning towards the second, but I don't know if it takes away too much of the feel from the original game.
-Endurance will need a little work. Most powers End cost will be rounded to a nice whole number instead of fractions, and Stamina will allow everyone to recover X amount per round, able to be enhanced.
-Damage numbers I am leaning towards scaling down drastically, and health numbers as a result. It feels more super heroic to do great big numbers of damage, but it is more difficult math to do, especially when the person running the game has to take Fireball damage off of an entire group. It should be quick and easy to not slow the game down.
-Do I buff the enemies? A big part of CoH was that in a single mission you would defeat hundreds of people, but story-wise that makes less sense, and again I dont want Fireball blaster to make the tanker feel useless 90% of the time. But would it feel like CoH? This is one that I've put a lot of thought into lately.
-Speaking of Fireball blaster...friendly fire on or off? I had not even considered it being on, that doesnt feel like CoH to me, but story-wise it makes more sense that the tank would get hit by the fireball as well...maybe another optional rule?
-Instead of having giant thousand+ page documents referencing everything, I am going for multiple documents for quick searching and simplicity sake. There is a document covering the basics of the game, status effects, general info about ATs. Each AT has it's own book going into the details of each power. The enemies will have a book sorting by enemy group and another sorting by threat level, so the person running the game always has as easy of a time as I can provide to find what they are looking for. I have a document that is just a big list of every AT, power set, and description of each power to allow players that do not know the game to be able to read through and see what catches their eye. In the distribution file I release when ready to play test each document will be clearly name and likely organized into clearly named folders to make this as easy as possible. I mention this to show that even from the beginning I have been writing this in such a way as to be as organized as possible because I have seen plenty of other things (even D&D books) that were far too confusing. I am willing to give each power set it's own document for players to print out, but that is over 150 unique power sets and may be a bit much for a new player to see. We'll see.
-While I have cool ideas for things to add and change, like super speed interacting with attacks, I am going to hold off on these for the time being. At the moment this is to feel like CoH, not an original creation, so any suggestions for changes to how things work along these lines will probably not be used.
-I also want to find a way to balance recharge and endurance if possible, so players are not having to keep track of 20 different things every turn. I don't want to get rid of one of these entirely, but it may be the best option. Any ideas on this are appreciated.



Long term goals:
-All ATs and power sets available
-Many pre-made adventures created, including some original ones, and have it set up so that other people can make their own adventures and submit them to be shared by all (out of game AE anyone?)
-All enemy groups fully established, and again set up for people to submit new groups/mobs as well.
-Maaaaaybe set up new power sets/accept submissions for them, so long as they can be appropriately balanced.
-Video guides explaining how to do things like roll characters and plan encounters
-Streamed/Recorded sessions of my gaming group playing this to use as examples and entertainment
-Demonstrate ways for people to play together online and hopefully provide a way for these players to find each other and coordinate this.

[Lupur]

Heya Inc42

I had a similar idea a while back.

Alas, due to not knowing anyone willing to playtest d20 type games ( my friends that d20 are either Pathfinder or D&D fanboys >.> ) it never really got very far.
Also, most of them objected to playing anything CoH related.. I may have been a tad pushy trying to get them to play the MMO :P

The idea was to make a simple print & go type of document, about 10 - 12 pages in total. 

A couple of pages of simple rules.
A couple of pages of example interactions.
The rest all about levelling, powersets and printable stuffs.

The link to the doc roughly outlining goals / rules is Here

The link to the Sheet with sample pages & extra rules is Here

As to the numbers, as you can see in the spreadsheet, I like the idea of keeping them relatively low, and letting the enh / upgrades take care of that..
Maybe even make the upgrades more expensive, as a legitimate & worthwhile resource sink ?

Also, regarding end / rech / debuffs, there are a couple of very brief notes somewhere, expanded is :

Beginning of turn:
   add end to your pool equal to end score ( cap 100 )
   take damage from auras / dots
   sub end from pool equal to running toggles / debuffs eg. enemy electrical aura
   remove rech counter from each power ( powers can be used when they have no rech counters, add counters equal to rech when used )
   remove debuff counter from each debuff

It's all pretty broad stuff, but I think you can see the angle I was going with it.

Not sure how you feel about the idea of tracking stuff with counters / tokens, but constantly writing stuff down seems kind of excessive.

Hope it helps with ideas or concepts, I'd be interested to see how you run with this.

Hopefully I'll manage to 'persuade' some friends to play.

o7 lup

p.s. i dont login often, but i do lurk alot, so apologies if i miss any replies / pms / things.

[Inc42]

I LIKE the counter idea, that could work really well. I will have to do quite a bit of math to try to get it to balance out, especially assuming that they invest a lot into recharge, but I think that has a lot of potential.

Your enhancement system works a lot like it did in the game, just a simpler way to unslot an enhancement, however I am still leaning towards simply removing the loot style enhancements all together and allow players to do it when they level up. I may need to put some thought into how players change their enhancements if they so choose. I like getting rid of this system because it also allows getting rid of the influence/infamy/information system all together. This allows the reward for doing stuff to just be experience and allows a stronger focus on the story for those that wish it.

As far as simple print & go stuff, my first big project has been to document every variation of every power as it existed in the MMO...and that has been a lot. That is why I am thinking about doing a document for each power set for each AT, then people can print their character sheet, their primary and secondary power docs, and power pool info. With my current format the primary and secondary docs would be about 5 pages each, but I am far from finalized on that, I think I could get it down to 2-3...maybe 1 but I dont want it to be too squished...there is currently a lot of information to put on there. Plus if I do the counter idea, I'd like to leave places for people to put counters right on the powers themselves (or maybe players could use a d6 to count it, if numbers work)

[Felderburg]

FYI, the story bible that we have was released by the guy working on the official COH RPG before it was cancelled. The Paragon Wiki page for the story bible has links to his post; I suspect you may be able to contact him that way and gain his insight on the original project, if you desire: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Story_Bible

[Surelle]

Wow Inc42, what a great idea!

Definitely keep us posted on your progress!  I for one would be very interested in playing, and so would my kids.  My daughter runs a Pathfinder group and has for several years now.  This would be an even better switch for us to make.

[Inc42]

I will absolutely try to keep regular updates on my progress posted and update the first post as well :)

As far as the old official TTRPG, I have seen it and don't think it is what I am interested in with this project. I may consider aspects of it down the line, but as of right now I am not interested in adapting any previous system to use here, rather I may pull certain aspects of other games that I think would benefit this one and combine them with what I have been able to convert to table top terms of what the MMO did.

[Lupur]

Heya Inc42

This is gonna be somewhat wall'o texty, apologies.

*seems like a lot of my answers point at the doc / sheet for ideas / concepts, apologies again if it reads anything like 'rtfm' or something..

Enhancements
I like the idea of a Power every even level and 2 Enhancements every odd level, it is clean and very reminiscent of the game.
Unless you have gaining of basic stats ( base atack bonus, defence, res, etc ) with every level, it feels like the bonuses from the enhancements would need to be more 'global' in order to make it seem like it's really making a difference. Improvements to the character as a whole, rather than a single power / aspect that will be redundant at later levels anyway.
*I still think that the system of Powers / Enhancements I came up is a little more robust, and it provides players with a legitimate resource sink, make the adventuring a little more loot driven, and the hard numbers will be there for all to see.
ED
The easiest way is to say that you can only improve a certain aspect of a power once, or having a hard cap on each aspect ( see my sheet again )
Def / Res
Just stick to M // R // AoE and have little notes / exceptions in the powerset descriptions.
e.g. "Only provides 1/3 bonus Vs. Psychic atacks, rounded up."
Keep in mind that there WILL have to be some sort of Character sheet, and only so many people have A0 printers ( one of the reasons i went for only Positional Defences and 4 Damage / Res Types - Physical, Elemental, Magical, Toxic/Rad/thehardonetoresist )
Acc
I imagine something like
IF : ( D20 + ToHit buff - ToHit de-Buff ) > ( BaseDef + DefBuff - Defde-Buff ) = HIT!
Doesn't have to be overly complicated, just need to work on the base values to make the D20 result actually relevant.
Round
I would say that in no particular order it should be a limit of something like:
  Move
  Action
  Quick Action
May replace move with 1x Quick Action, Action with 2x Quick Action.
Action can be power use / activation or general interaction with the environment.
Quick Action can be Focus on Opponent ( target ), Activate / de-Activate Toggle, Use Insp, Make rude Hand Gesture, stuff like that.
eg. Move behind tank, Focus the Sapper, chomp on Blue Insp, Activate Darkest Night toggle
Insp
Continuing with the counter Idea of removing one at the start of your turn, a Insp can provide say 5 counters of Acc, giving you +5 chance to hit this turn, 4 next turn, 3 the next, etc.
Of course this will allow for things like +40 damage counters, so damage might have to be +3, Acc +5, Def +4, end +8 ( 100% of numbers from the number hat ), or they just need to be somewhat pricy / rare. A limit on use would be terribly saddening, but a limit on effects ( say +10 dam ? ) would be reasonable ( no matter how much inspiration you have, punching a hole through the centre of the earth might be somewhat frowned upon).
Activation Time
For the somewhat 'OP' powers from T7-T9, and those with considerable activation times, you can simulate this somewhat by having them start combat already on 'cool down' so that they cant be used for the first say 4 rounds of combat, as well as having a slightly larger CD than normal due to the strain or something...
This can be RP'd as your character building Inner Power / Rage / Chakra / Burrito Gas, whatever it is they are powered by.

That's pretty much all I've got.

If there's anything else you need, I'm pretty good with concepts / figuring stuff out.. not much else though :/

Hope it helps.

o7 lup

*edit - spelling
**edit - spelling Mk.II

[Inc42]

Here are my current thoughts on these topics, none of which is final. I like getting the ideas and having the discussions, it makes me think about it in different ways, especially seeing points of view from people that play TTRPGs differently than I like to. If people don't understand or disagree with anything I am saying PLEASE tell me and ask me for details/examples or tell me what you dont like.


Enhancements I may do an optional rule for the loot aspect. Personally I love the idea of having a TTRPG not driven by loot at all, be it actual loot or currency that greatly affects game play outside of roleplay aspects, but for something more familiar the option will be there should the people playing want to use it.

Part of me likes Enhancements being global, but that introduces new problems of balancing issues for mobs and it moves away from the game's feel. I am thinking that every 10th level (or 5th? Play testing will be necessary for this decision) players will get a global +1 to accuracy, damage, and defenses (maybe others as well), but enhancements should affect individual powers.

I am leaning towards your advice on defenses, but I want to finish compiling the power data before I fully decide so I can see how much work the conversion will be. I am not as worried about the character sheet as I am simplicity of making the rolls, resistances I will likely leave alone.

I'm going to test a couple different accuracy models, one being exactly what you suggested, the other being a solid defense score, for instance a low level reflex scrapper may have a melee defense score of 16, the attacker has to roll higher to defeat it. I prefer the roll vs roll option, but I want to test and see how complicated/time consuming that is, especially for AOE attacks.

The actions in a round I agree with for now, but I need to play with the quick actions mechanic some. I want to make some of the heals, buffs, and debuffs quick actions, but I dont want that to mean "I use healing aura 4 times on my turn", so I will have to figure out a limit or re-evaluate some things.

Inspirations I have some ideas on, and I don't want them to just be random loot, I want them to be rewards for creativity, role playing, ect. I see it as a player does something cool and the person running the game rewards them with either an immediate boost or maybe a card they can cash in when they want to.

Activation times I am leaning towards having some powers be the quick/regular actions as previously discussed, some require a full round (ie no quick or move), and perhaps some that require an action on one turn to start and the next turn to finish (like Nova)

[Inc42]

I've decided to focus on getting a sample character sheet made, and it has me thinking about a couple things. Mostly toggle powers.

For a TTRPG, defensive toggles don't make much sense to me. I don't like the idea of the tank having to say he turns each one on and waste everyone's time, and I really don't like players having to calculate out endurance drain every time their turn starts, especially since most toggles end up costing something like .25/second, and toggle heavy power sets could have 4 or 5 of these to add up. Then we have to figure out how many seconds a turn is, how much drain vs recovery, ect. Also the character sheet becomes messy, "Melee Defense is X unless toggle 3 is not on" kind of messy. This seems like a lot of math the player will have to keep up with, and multiple toggle based characters (tanks, scrappers, ect) would slow the game down drastically, only one would have the rest of the table turned against him.

So what I am thinking is that defensive toggles are always considered on unless the player specifies otherwise or are suppressed through mez. Toggles also give a max endurance reduction when on, usually no more than 1 or 2 per toggle (remember that the per second cost wont apply since rounds will likely not last 1 second each) to keep nice whole numbers. The player makes their character sheet according to what they will run as a standard, and then has to keep track of when they mix it up (or maybe has a second partially filled out character sheet).

Other toggles like rad debuffs will be more costly, and I have to figure out how -end enhancements work, but that is the general idea I have so far.

I am also going to have a space next to each defense/resistance for what the base is, no toggles, in case of mez or whatever. This allows for auto defenses to also be taken into consideration.

Any thoughts?

[Mouse-Man]

I have a couple different drafts i did trying to make a CoH version on a tabletop board game.
One of the ideas i had was that you would have a dice pool for your Endurance... say 10 die. Each power would use these die for both damage and endurance.
All rolls would be a success on a roll of 5 or 6. Each success would do 1 point of damage.
Accuracy enhancements would increase the chance of each die succeeding. As an example, a +1 Accuracy would make the roll a 4, 5 or 6 to succeed.
As you used them they would leave the endurance pool and would replenish 1 die at the end of each turn. Endurance enhancements would decrease the number of die you would have to discard for endurance, possibly in 1/4 increments. toggle powers would lock your endurance die in place, so you could not use it for anything else.
One of my design goals was to try to get each powerset to fit on one printed page. Here's an example of one version that I tinkered with...

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s22.postimg.org%2Fdefl161a8%2FBlaster_Primary_Archery_v_1_0.jpg

I may revisit this again, I had some other ideas for an abstracted combat system that took place on card tiles the you could randomize for the different missions. it's one of those long term puzzly projects you get in your head every once in a while.

[Inc42]

I like that power sheet a lot. I had only briefly considered and immediately dismissed the idea of using only six sided dice, but seeing that setup makes me a bit more torn.

On the one hand there is the option like Mouse-Man's, one type of die, nice small round numbers, overall simplifying a lot of the powers. This leads to faster and easier game play, character creation, and leveling. From a development side I can see this being more difficult to create and try to maintain authenticity to the MMO while keeping everything relatively balanced, on the player side I can see this being a lot of fun.

On the other hand is the more complicated system I had been planning so far that would require a standard set of polyhedral dice (20, 12, 10, 6, and 4 sided dice) and using numbers more closely based on what the MMO used, reduced somewhat for ease of game play, but not as simple as the other option. From a development standpoint I have been far less concerned about balance and far more concerned with "Is this going to be too hard to understand" and "How long will this make a player's turn take". From a player side I think what I had been planning so far could still be fun, but would it be as fun for people that didnt play the MMO or people that are not experienced in D20 systems? And it would NEVER be considered "fast paced".

Even with Mouse-man's permission I would not completely take that system. I like parts of it a lot, but a few things I would do differently. Still, it has me really questioning the route to go here.


Edit: And as a side note, most of the work I have done so far besides general planning would not be wasted by changing to a simpler system at this point. I could easily make that change, I just have to decide if that is something I WANT to do and then start coming up with the rules to try out first.

[Mouse-Man]

By all means, take what you will... based off of coH there's no way I'd end up publishing it as anything other than free print-and-play stuff... I'm just happy that my musings on the system weren't just crazy pipe dreaming.

[Inc42]

I certainly appreciate it. I love the format, if nothing else I may borrow heavily from that. You've given me a lot to think about on everything else though.

[The Fifth Horseman]

The actions in a round I agree with for now, but I need to play with the quick actions mechanic some. I want to make some of the heals, buffs, and debuffs quick actions, but I dont want that to mean "I use healing aura 4 times on my turn", so I will have to figure out a limit or re-evaluate some things.

Perhaps only allow each power to be used once per turn? With spending the full action on it allowing improved (double) effect instead?

Another option would be to make them all regular actions and take a page from the game itself (cf: powerexec_auto ): spend a quick action to prepare a power as auto-fire, then allow it to be used as a quick action on next turn(s).

[Lupur]

Perhaps only allow each power to be used once per turn? With spending the full action on it allowing improved (double) effect instead?

Another option would be to make them all regular actions and take a page from the game itself (cf: powerexec_auto ): spend a quick action to prepare a power as auto-fire, then allow it to be used as a quick action on next turn(s).

Just wanted to point out that I still think that having 'Cool Down' on powers reflecting recharge, as well as having the tier 7+ powers start with some CD on them to prevent just one-shotting stuff in the first few turns is my preffered approach.

I dunno, not much to add, just chillin while I wait for stuff to happen :)

o7 lup