Squire_Ned
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Posts posted by Squire_Ned
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New developments in Rise of the Tenno:
I'm shifting away from a direct mechanical conversion to one that "feels" better. This move is for three good reasons.Mechanically converting a video game to a tabletop game is something I've wanted to do for a while now, and something like Deus Ex works well (though one could argue that it's already pretty straightforward to convert). While I love Warframe, and its mechanics can be relatively easily modeled, I have to admit that it's a unique challenge to adopt a MMOFPS, especially in beta, to a tabletop RPG because of the constant balance patches. For instance, I'm pretty sure that the Braton Vandal's supposed to have higher damage than the Braton, but as the stats on the wiki state it's pretty much been outpaced in the balance patches. The rapid fluidity means that simply slapping on a conversion would mean having to edit everything whenever Warframe itself changes, so while I'll still provide the option to convert stuff directly (especially if I ever "finish" the project and walk away), my edition will have statistics influenced by fiat, especially since the conversions often lose fine details (like the Burston doing slightly more damage per shot than the Braton (currently with a revision it'd be 1d10+5 vs 1d10+6, but when I last converted them they were both 1d10+4).
The closer I mechanically model weapons, warframes, and the like, the further I get from actually emulating play-there's too much desire to add granular details, or keep powers exactly as they are. Moving to a judgement call system will make this a lot quicker, and allow me to shift and change stuff to fit the tabletop (auto-hitting with powers is something that raises enormous tactical questions; either I'll have to do away with it or change some of them, since maps are also going to be much smaller scale in ROTT than in Warframe).
Math. I already know that I'm going to have to linear-model certain things because I don't want to get into the whole 15% thing, especially if worrying about smaller numbers and rounding and fairness (a wimpy +2 pistol getting to +3 off 15% while a nice +5 rifle is only getting to +6 off of 15%). This linear model will be scaled off of damage dice, mostly, so there will still be scaling, but it'll level the field for most low-level weapons. There'll be a bias towards burst and FA weapons, but to be honest FA is underrepresented in power, and I don't think any of the current burst-firing weapons in Warframe would cause major issues on the current scale.
These more arbitrary distinctions are going to be small-other than working with outdated versions of weapons and foes (and potentially modifying any new equipment based on whether there has been inflation or deflation of stuff like damage) there will be a certain degree of kludge involved; I'll tweak certain things up or down, essentially making a judgment call on rounding instead of using the conversion as it stands (indeed, rounding will be removed from the conversion system-converter's discretion prevails). In addition, there will also be qualities that allow a little more finetuning.
I still haven't gotten a playtest together; if anyone's interested they can PM me and I'll send over a "dumb" draft with exactly what I've got whenever they write.
I've decided to go straight for rules completion, which means that there probably won't be anything to show for a while. The reason for this is that I want to dump as much content in as I can, right at the end, to make sure that it's all compatible. I've got a decent sized arsenal in Warframe, but only the Volt as far as 'frames go (though I'll be building the Frost Prime when I get the parts), but I'm probably still going to make some wrong calls on the weapons I don't have. I hope to essentially include every Credits-purchasable weapon, plus the assorted alert/whatnot stuff I've acquired over the course of play, so basically my whole arsenal, sans some of the really small stuff. Sentinels aren't a core worry for me; they'll be modeled after the main release, though their weapons will be converted at that time.
Mechanically, I've decided to divorce the multiple attack options of the Paris and melee weapons, as well as add in two qualities, Slow and Lumbering, to add a little more dynamic to the game. A Slow attack may only be made once per turn, while a Lumbering attack eats up not only the Attack action it is used in but also the one afterward. The Paris' charge will have the Slow quality, while something like the Scindo's massive swing will use the Lumbering attack. As compensation, most Lumbering melee attacks will also have a special quality that essentially makes them hit during the time for both attacks in a Round, should a target come into range mid-swing.
I don't remember if I've detailed out the new Phase and Round system, so here it is:
Rise of the Tenno's time will be divided into a combat Round (about six seconds, though it's subjective based on conditions), which is then divided into two Phases (a more arbitrary time measurement, but about three seconds, though the events of a Phase, such as firing a burst from a weapon, often happen during a much shorter window). Each Phase allows an Attack Action, Movement Action, and Tertiary Action. Tertiary actions are a new type of action; some Warframe powers will use a Tertiary Action, but certain things such as standing up or reloading a weapon will require "any two actions", with the Tertiary action being used by this. Anything that requires a Tertiary Action can be done with an Attack Action or Movement Action, but certain things will preclude taking a Tertiary Action, which would then require a Tenno to sacrifice to use a power, for instance.
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I was working under the impression that teleporting simply hurts a lot, which is why the Tenno don't use it for travel, but could also explain how you survive when you die with nobody to revive you. You don't want to teleport, because it's horrifically painful.
That's also a plausible explanation, but it's a lot less gory.
Of course, it could be not so much that the teleportation is what is painful, and the more that the capture target knows what will come afterward.
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Major design indecision; I'd had the combat turn split into four rounds, each relegated a specific purpose. I think now that could be overly complex. Instead, I think that I'm going to switch to a two round system per turn (which is when shields regenerate, new powers can be used, etc.) and give each round a move and combat action with no differentiation. Held over attacks to be done mid-move still operate in the next round, as they had under the four-round system.
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Still working hard on Rise of the Tenno; got some updates:
I'm considering changing how accuracy works; the game will be plenty generous with accuracy modifiers without the firearm bonus, and I'm considering using a different system, which will have two key differences:
Accuracy will be "capped", meaning that you have an essential maximum bonus that you can get. This will make fully automatic weapons more powerful relative to other weapons. So, for instance, if your weapon accuracy is 15, and the target's Defense Value is 30, your maximum modifier is 45. You can have more modifiers (and you may actually do so), but any modifier above 15 only lets you ignore penalties in this case.
Recoil will draw from basic modifier, not the accuracy pool-this means that an automatic weapon with Accuracy 5 versus a pistol with Accuracy 5 will have the same chance of hitting, regardless of your modifier, and you don't lose out for using an automatic weapon and spraying a group if your skill is high; you'll be able to put at least a couple bullets down range if you're well-built or advanced to a certain degree before the accuracy cap even begins to matter.
This new system can balance automatic weapons better; the penalty for shifting targets will be taken from the accuracy cap (and be specific to weapons), but if you fire all your shots on the same target the accuracy cap is higher to reflect better chances to hit, meaning that an automatic weapon with an Accuracy cap of 15 (10) will be drawing from a potential maximum modifier of 15 (this would probably be a modded weapon, and to have 15 points in accuracy modifiers you'd need to be pretty good yourself).
In addition, I haven't mentioned much about how I'm hoping to manage mods and such, but I'm probably going to include something similar to the closed beta upgrade tree for weapons and warframes (this will be a money sink, not an XP sink) as well as the current mod system, a perfect hybrid of the two that allows for much more growth in the long run (and means that you can have a ton of sources to increase power, add special abilities, and such that can be weapon dependent very easily). -
See. I'm totally fine with banning for Cheat Engine, but I'd appreciate if the game didn't boot up happily with it running only to later announce "Hey, guess what, you're banned!"
I could see not wanting to tell people what hacks work or not, but let's be honest, nobody thinks that Cheat Engine isn't going to get detected; I was using it because I wanted to play the new Chasm demo and didn't want to get back what I'd had before by hand, but forgot to quit it in the meantime. If the launcher had simply refused to start, as is the case with several other MMO's I've played, or popped up a vaguely nondescript error, I would have noticed my mistake and not gotten banned from a game I've paid money for (again, not arguing that hackers shouldn't be banned because they've paid money-I don't want a refund, I've gotten 85 hours out of Warframe and enjoyed them all), but I would have appreciated a warning first.
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Please, please, please add a launch prevention thing for people with hacking software open. I had been messing around with Cheat Engine for another game and I booted up Warframe, without remembering to close it first, to find myself instantly banned.
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Newsflash:
Progress on Rise of the Tenno continues, though I haven't yet been able to do a playtest. Don't expect anything this weekend, because my roommate was administered to the hospital on Monday and is currently in surgery (this was something they'd known he would need for a while, but they didn't expect it to be needed quite so soon).
In the meantime, I'm still willing to forward copies of what I have so far to people, should they write. I've been unable to do long-term work, but soon I'm hoping to have some character sheets cobbled together, which is one of the necessities for the game to be released in its first-draft state.EDIT: I'm also working on preliminary tiles. I hope to have the first few rendered out in Blender soon, which will be followed by a collection of objects meant to work with them.
Preliminarily, I think that the tiles will range from 6x6 to 24x24 and be available at 75 dpi (for a start; they will eventually be available in up to 300dpi once I get a distribution method set up for them that will let me send 7200x7200 .png files around). 75dpi, however, should be more than sufficient for virtual tabletops, and there may also be a 150 dpi version of some of the tiles as well.
The nice thing about the tiles, as opposed to the game itself, is that while they mimic the Warframe style, they remain my IP and under my copyright/left (since they merely resemble the Warframe feel), so I don't have to worry about recalling them should Digital Extremes decide that they don't like the project, meaning that I'm a lot more free in terms of how I can distribute them. -
Good news, everyone!
I've made a playtest alpha, but unfortunately my playtest group had personal issues (this is an endemic problem with me, or perhaps my friends; I've never had a playtest actually work the first time), so I haven't gotten it tested yet.
There's still some stuff that's far too unfinished to put up on the internet, so I won't be releasing it yet (and, for instance, there's no stealth/hacking yet), though I've got weapons done (the forum wasn't letting me on to see what exactly I said I'd put in, so you get Dual Zoren, Skana, and Scindo, plus whatever I decide to put in before the final list).However, the playtesters who looked at the manuscript seemed happy with it, though obviously without actual practical testing that means very little. It'll be ~10 pages, so we'll see how much stuff gets into the final one. I had a heckuva time getting the tables set up for the cover system. I'll also release a "Writer's Cut" edition, which will include item conversion rules, as well as justifications and explanations for why systems work how they do; this is the sort of thing for people who want to invest a little more, plus it'll show some of the reason behind my madness (the system I use is... unconventional at best, slightly insane at worst).
I'm still planning on releasing the (still unpolished) combat stuff tomorrow; I may wind up leaving the cover table out, since I'm pretty sure (99% or so) it won't paste in well, but I'll include a brief explanation of it. It essentially functions akin to Concealment in D&D (percentage chance of missing, only in this case it's a 1-x on a d20 chance of hitting the cover before the foe), but buffs armor instead of causing an instant miss. Of course, at high thickness, most shots will bounce off or just do nothing (in fact, 25cm of metal, or 50 of miscellaneous material, or 75 of flesh) is when anti-infantry weapons can't penetrate any further unless they have a special quality. If I add vehicles, this'll be basically a standard armor thickness (25cm's still pretty thick, though), and anti-vehicle weapons will attack the thickness instead of the armor of foes, plus deal massive damage, meaning that they basically disembowel even Warframes.
I still need to explicitly handle damage, incapacitation, and death. Technically, I don't think anyone could mess up on applying damage, having played the game Rise of the Tenno is based off of, but it's not exactly an unimportant thing.
Incapacitation will be important; Warframes provide Tenno with the ability to be revived from near-fatal injuries, while foes don't necessarily have that benefit.EDIT: If anyone wants a .pdf of this version, PM me and we'll work out a way to get it to you; I don't want many of these floating about because they're very unfinished and likely to be entirely changed and made from the tears of infants. Maybe not that last bit. But seriously, it's a test version more than a play version.
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Due to my sudden realization that I have a ton of deadlines coming up, I may not be able to finish and format enough of Rise of the Tenno for Saturday; it may come later in the weekend, or on the Friday following (tentative final date), since I'm still nowhere near ready to format it up and release it, and I've got a ton of stuff that I have to get done by Sunday. My apologies. I'll try to post some rules excerpts on Saturday to make up for it (I'm thinking the rules for ranged combat in their mostly finished forms should be a good appetizer).
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Example of Combat:
Ned decides he doesn't like some Grineer Lancers, so he's gonna take aim with his Lato and pop one in the head three times. The Lato is a Semiautomatic (3) weapon, so he can try three attacks this turn. Note that I am not calculating any movement or environmental modifiers, nor distance; the shot is being taken at ten meters, in ideal conditions, with no movement on the defender's behalf. The Grineer are also not in cover.
The first attack is made against the Grineer's base Defense Value of 30, modified by the Lato's accuracy to 32, and by Ned's Accuracy to 40. He has no chance of missing, so he rolls damage and checks to see if it penetrates the Grineer's armor. It does, but only barely; not enough to kill him.
The second attack is made against a modified Defense value; the recoil from the first shot, combined with the penalty for firing a second attack, reduces the Grineer's Defense to a more reasonable 22, which is then modified to 32. Still a doable shot by any means, with just a small chance of failure. This shot also hits, but the Lato doesn't look so impressive against the Grineer's mighty armor, being entirely deflected on a ccount of a bad damage roll.
The third attack is made against the Grineer's Defense modified by the recoil for the first two shots, and a heavier penalty for his third attack, which puts it at 14. Modified up to 24, the difficulty implies that the shot should still succeed, but there's a chance of it going either way. However, luck isn't with Ned, and his shot misses, so he decides to switch weapons.
The next round, Ned decides to put the Grineer in his place with a Burston. He modifies as normal, getting a modified Defense Value on the Grineer of 35 from the Burston's accuracy, then 43 from his personal skill with the weapon. The Grineer is still and in the Close Range distance, and there are still no environmental penalties, so Ned takes the shot and kills the Lancer, hitting him with all three rounds.
Zed decides to put down some covering fire for Ned, and opens up with his Braton against the Grineer, deciding to allocate one shot against each.
The Braton is an automatic weapon, so he is taking only one attack, but takes a penalty on all shots for moving between targets. He is also 20 meters away from his targets, putting him into Medium Range, which forfeits the Braton's accuracy bonus. Adding his Tenno/Warframe derived accuracy of 5 to the Grineers' Defense Value, he gets 35 for each-normally a good chance, but with a -5 penalty for attacking multiple targets, he needs less than 30 for the first, 27 for the second, 24 for the third, and 21 for the fourth, as his weapon's recoil factors into its automatic attack (unlike the Burston, which calculates recoil after each burst). He still has good odds, but one bullet per Grineer is unlikely to make much of a difference in the upcoming fight. -
Some quick stuff:
I've been crushed by work this weekend, and I'm not sure it'll be that much better for the upcoming week; so here's what to expect, provisionally:
One "Chapter" of the book, probably the one on combat (go figure), as well as the converted stuff. Acrobatics will be included here, Stealth and Hacking not so much, since I probably won't have time to get into detail on them. I may only include the Volt and Excalibur, but will include the weapons I said before, plus the Braton MK-1 for Grineer Lancers and Strun for Troopers (As well as rules for converting between low-quality standard issue weapons and the high-quality weapons used by elite foes and Tenno). In addition, I'll bake the Tenno skill stats into the Warframe for this release, but provide character sheet templates for both the Volt and Excalibur, as well as stat-blocks for all ten weapons already formatted in the PDF for easy copying into blank spaces on character sheets.So, in short, what you'll see is a sheet that says:
Warframe/Tenno
Health
Armor
ShieldsShield Regen
Acrobatics*
Stealth*
Hacking*
Ranged Accuracy *
Melee Accuracy*
Melee Damage Boost
*These will be split to a Warframe modifier and a Character modifier on the final sheet, with a sum next to it.
And then you'll have a couple blank spaces for weapons (this is dependent on how the Character Sheet winds up formatting in terms of size and such, but will be at least two, each of which have the following blanks:
Weapon Name, TypeDamage (with dice plus static modifier)
Accuracy
Range
Fire Rate
Critical Tier
Special 1*
Special 2*
Special 3*
*These may be left blank; not every weapon has special effects/rules, but none have more than three.
There will also be a short list of foes (as I've mentioned before), each with their own melee abilities (Tenno get a weapon, everyone else gets a static attack), as well as suggested weapons.
The rest of the rules will be a wargame-esque simple combat system, without rules yet for any missions or advancement, since I'm simplifying my focus for this week to solely the combat system. I'm not going to assign BP or such; it's up for players/GM's to figure out what they want to fight. That said, I hope to include rules for shields and grenades (though without gear acquisition, they'll be strictly NPC only/GM's discretion right now) with this version.
EDIT: Here, have a Snipetron:
Damage: 2d10+20
Accuracy Modifier: +5
Range: 133 meters
Firing Rate: Semiautomatic
Critical Category: Tier 3
Special:
Sniper: This weapon does not take penalties for attacking outside its Range, but still maintains its maximum shot distance.
Headshot: When this weapon's attack roll hits, roll another die. If the sums of any pair of the dice between the original attack and the new die add up to 11, 22, or 33, this weapon gets a critical hit. This can cause Exploding Criticals.
Brutal: This weapon doubles damage for criticals.
I've revised the Sniper Weapon Type Modifier to make it less brutally unkind to the ranges; Snipetrons can fire 499 meters following normal rules. Theoretically, the Paris can fire further, but has the Bolt rather than the Sniper special, meaning that it's likely to miss beyond its range which would be reduced by the Projectile quality (which governs weapons whose shots move slower, like Leech Ospreys, and is a tiered special quality akin to a mod). -
I'm bumping with current progress:
Right now, the idea is to put up the first combat draft next weekend (probably Saturday, but don't hold your breath), including rules for stealth, hacking, combat, and combat mobility.
To get down to details, here's what I'm hoping to have:
Stealth:
-Alert levels. This will be a four tier system; unseen, aware foe, aware foes, and aware ship, emulating Warframe's system but with some more restrictions.
-Lockdowns and Swarms. Lockdowns function exactly as they do in Warframe; the challenge comes when there are many foes, and require hacking to override. Swarms emulate the rush of foes when ships are first alerted in normal play; but also can be triggered by excessive force/progress toward objectives.
-Dropping awareness. It is possible to downgrade alert levels by spending time undetected. This system will almost certainly not be final, since it will be very complex and probably handled arbitrarily by a GM.
Hacking:
The first release of Rise of the Tenno will have hacking simply in a form of a test with difficulty based on the type of the console being hacked and the current situation. Lockdowns may be easy to override, while consoles for Spy missions would be more difficult.
Future releases may have a more in-depth hacking system, but for now a single roll, made over time until enough success is acquired, will be used.
Combat:
Combat rules are going to include a variety of things; the first combat system is going to be a four-phase system with alternating attack and movement phases, with the ability to sacrifice the attack phase to attack in the next move phase instead, or sacrifice the move phase for better defense in the next attack phase.
Rules will be included for simple melee and ranged combat. No maneuvers yet. However, rules will be included for the accuracy penalty from firing fewer shots than intended with automatic weapons, as well as the rules for hitting with multiple bullets with weapons that fire multiple shots, whether as a burst or distinct separate shot (e.g. the Lato's Semiautomatic (3) rating), including the difficulty of taking multiple shots, and multiple shots at different targets.
Combat Movement:
This is a little bit troublesome because there aren't a whole lot of ways to represent 3d space in ways that are useful for games, but the rules for using Acrobatics are already written and, at least as far as I can tell, pretty much working. Balance may be done-it's intentionally very easy to pull off fancy moves right now, since the desire is to emulate Tenno mobility.
Miscellanea:
I'm hoping to convert five ranged weapons (Snipetron, Burston, Braton, Bronco, Lato), three melee weapons (Furax, Dual Zoren, and Heat Sword), at least two Warframes (Volt and Excalibur), and three foes (Grineer Lancer, Grineer Shield Lancer, Infested Charger) and a boss (Vor). Foe conversions will be very arbitrary, balanced relative to weapons rather than to any statistics, since we don't get their exact statistics anywhere I've seen.
In addition, rules for "kludging" Tenno will be included; a simple point-buy system that allows specialization
Tiles won't be coming for a while; between a lot of personal work, headaches, and other issues, I won't be able to get my rendering environment set up for the cutaways as well as create the necessary detailed environments for tiles, nor have I really figured out exactly where I want to take the tiles (6"x6" is considered by some to be the industry standard, but I'm contemplating working on a larger scale to make the interior environments more diverse and complex, since I'm also planning to work more on digital use than print).
TL;DR:
Next weekend, I hope to release a version of Rise of the Tenno that will emulate the basics of a mission in Warframe, but not include any deeper roleplaying elements. Nothing will be guaranteed final, but it'll be playable(ish).
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In that case we need a ship build system and a weapon modification rule set... preferably limit the amount of points used by rolling 2x20 sided dice, the rolled sum is the points free to be used and the mod list containing a set price for every mod and its upgraded version...
On ships I'd prefer it to more of a selective transportation system between missions, like it would add a bit to stelth, consol hacking, emergency escape lines and stuff like that that would act as an over all bonus durring a game... Also facing the enemy in squads insted of solo opponents would be beneficial to keep along the games lines... Granting the player a stealth tree with assassination options to eliminate a number of members of the squad would be efficiant...
As far as most of these things, they'll be somewhat determined by the way things turn out by the GM. If we were to automate the whole system, it'd be necessary to script this in; vehicles are really low on the priority list, since even though I love chase sections, the Tenno don't tend to pit military hardware versus each other; they're not a fan of armor-v-armor as far as we see. If they make it in they probably won't be modifiable, and the Tenno infiltration dart will almost certainly not have any combat role (other than perhaps hot extractions). To be honest, with the sort of guns being bandied about, only heavy armor would really play a role, and heavy armor is rather hard to find on vessels and in remote facilities; something like the Jackal or Hyena would be the enemy analogue.
While there will probably be vehicle rules in the final version of the game, it'll probably be in the same way that the d20 Starship Troopers adaptation got vehicles; they're there but they're not integral to the game itself. In addition, vehicles tend to slow games down a ton; they have special rules for movement that infantry don't (for instance, non-hovercraft usually have a turning radius), which means a lot more rules for something that potentialyl don't play into gameplay all that much. Standard vehicle use will probably entail rules for turning a vehicle gun on infantry (for instance, my Shadowrun group that used an attack helicopter inside a hangar for fire support), chase sections, and piloting through difficult environments, but not usage in traditional grid-based combat; close air support may have a part in some missions, but not tanks, APC's, or the like. If vehicles featured prominently in Warframe itself, I'd put them way higher on the priority list, but as is they're sort of side-notes, and if I'm going to conjecture I'll probably keep it on the socioeconomics of the Grineer empire and the underground.
Modifications will work as is in Warframe; gear will have 5 affinity levels (plus unranked), each of which gives 6 points of mod slots. These affinity levels will be far and few between, and are used to level up either the user's warframe, weapons, or abilities. Mods are found as rare item drops, like rolling on item tables in D&D.
EDIT: I'm beginning to focus on drafting the first release; currently I'm aiming to include:
Combat (obviously), including warframe and weapon conversions.
Basic Tenno creation, probably not the final version, since qualities will not be implemented for Tenno yet.
Stealth and hacking.
Battlefield movement.
My big focus for the long-term as far as the acrobatics system is to provide a ton of multi-level tiles that could be put into a rack and printed out on transparencies to provide a full representation of the environment, something that is very much feasible, but also very difficult to finish up (I've got a working tile rendering system in Blender, it's just a question of modeling the environment then cutting it up into height-determined levels), allowing 3-d combat relatively easily. For now, however, it'll be up to GM's to kludge things together. I recommend counting cubes, personally, for putting together a scene, since they'll hold small miniatures well, but they don't allow stuff like balconies (unless you get creative, e.g. tape). Stuff like Lego bricks also work well, but are also time-consuming and somewhat bad for supporting minis, since they're not on a 1" scale.
EDIT 2: I haven't made a note of this yet, but there's no source that I can find that actually talks about enemy statistics. I'll be estimating all of these, and they may be significantly different from the original to encourage more fluid play.
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Full book, and, given that I ever get my lazy butt into doing the work, hopefully a line of tools for it, such as a spreadsheet that'll do automatic conversions of weapons when fed in the appropriate values, maps (including z-levels, for the sake of vertical combat), and a form-fillable character sheet (that may or may not calculate certain values; I'm always torn on the prudence of doing that for house-rules sake).
EDIT: Of course, full book is relative. Right now I have several pages written and far less than 10% of the content; I've seen these go up to ~400 pages, but this'll probably cap at at most 100 pages. Well, technically speaking, I've seen a 700 page game, but it was so big and bloated it really shouldn't have been that big.
EDIT 2: Instead of working on writing or whatnot, I made a version with 3d text replacing the current one. So far no attempt has been made to replicate the original Warframe logo, but the eventual one will have the same bevel and metal style; this was just a method of acquainting myself with the 3d metal text in Blender. If you feel like checking it out, go here:
http://homoeoteleuton.com/WarframeFanStuff/Rise%20Of%20The%20Tenno%20Cover%20and%20Disclaimer3d.pdf
EDIT 3: I've put in the basics for bookmarking and layers; so once it comes out you'll be able to turn off the image layers to enjoy a printer-friendly version without any concerns.
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Made the first melee weapon conversion that I was happy with; the Dual Zoren.
There are several issues with my method; values for criticals, charge rate, and such are all unknown, and we can't use melee accuracy for our accuracy calculation because all the melee weapons are, IIRC, stated to have 100%.
Critical rates may wind up being guessed from anything that explicitly says they have a higher rate; and partially guestimated. It's likely that a Tenno's melee weapon training will supersede listed values, and weapons that explicitly increase criticals past
Tier 3 would get a bonus somehow (I'll figure out the exact value of this later, but it would be either accuracy or damage, probably accuracy but damage isn't ruled out). Charge rate is guesstimated. It seems to be listed in seconds on the wiki, but not for every weapon.
Warframes will probably also play a role in damage calculations, with the damage modifier probably being their tier (so a Tier 3 Rhino would do more damage in melee than a Tier 1 Volt.
First Draft Melee Weapon Conversions
Melee weapons do not have a range (they have this assigned by type), standard swing speed is used in place of the Accuracy for Accuracy Modifier, and Charge Attack and Normal Attack damage are averaged to represent fluid combat. Charge speed is entirely disregarded for accuracy/damage, but plays a role in Hit Order.
Weapon Type Modifier: Long 1, Medium .8, Short .5.
Damage (derived): Charge Damage+Damage/10; round conventionally (i.e. .5 up, .49 down)
Accuracy Modifier: Swing Speed*(Weapon Type Modifier)/.5, rounding up
Damage Range: Damage (derived)/10, rounding down, in d10's.
Hit Order: (WTM+Swing Speed)/Charge Speed*10, rounding conventionally
Critical Category: (Critical Chance*100)/3 rounding up (Max 3!) [statistics for melee weapons seem to be missing from the wiki; I take a guess based on each weapon given its description and such.]
Dual Zoren (Statistics from Wiki):
Type: Melee (short)
Base Damage: 15.0
Base Firing Rate: 2.0
Accuracy: 100
Base Charge Damage: 50
We do not know its charge rate, or its firing rate. Charge rate is, I believe, better at low values.
Weapon Type Modifier: .5 (Small)
Damage: (15+50)/10= 6.5, round conventionally to 7
Accuracy: 2*.5/.5= +2
Damage Range: 7/10, round down, 1d10
Hit Order: .5+2=2.5/.5=5*10=50
Critical Category: (Information missing, but stated to be high; assume Tier 3).
Special Notes:
Multihit: This weapon attacks multiple foes in range; when used it may attack any foe and any foe who is adjacent to both that foe and the user; instead of rolling twice, the second hit uses the same attack value as the first, hitting any identical foe but potentially missing more agile foes.
Multihit (Alt): This weapon may make two attacks in a melee combat phase if the user takes a moving attack action (see Attacking in the Move Phase).
Small Melee: This weapon can only attack adjacent foes, and if used in a moving attack may only attack in the direction its user is moving.
EDIT: Fixed formatting manually, so there may be some glitches. This is what I get for using brackets.
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Not sure I saw that as any different.
Also, I'm going to both follow this avidly and lend advice where I can because this seems incredibly awesome and was an amazing idea. Relatedly, I'm going to be harsh on the design, numbers, mechanics, etc. because I want it to be good. Try not to take offense at anything I might say could be done better, as I really do just want you to have a better finished product. And feel free to call me out if I'm acting like an &#!, especially since I'm better at spotting flaws than actually creating stuff.
Thanks in advance, Ned.
Have you compared both? I'm not entirely sure as to what white text you're talking about; is it the main title or the Warframe.com link? Or is there something wrong with my PDF? If so, send me a screenshot; all the text should be black now, except for the Warframe.com link.
Criticism is amazing in any form; it helps make stuff not suck. I'm justifying everything I do in a Writer's Note section, so if I seem confrontational it's just because I'm explaining why I do certain things certain ways (I'm rather opinionated when it comes to game design), especially since a lot of tabletop games are sort of stuck in tradition (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not so much).
EDIT: Nevermind, I see the white text now. I'm working on a fix; it's something to do with the PDF rendering engine.
EDIT 2: Nevermind the rendering engine thing, it was Scribus not un-outlining my text. Fixed on the alt, so you can compare between the two.
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The main page one? I couldn't decide on what to make it; it's over a design that is rather painful. I'm contemplating shifting it down a good deal, just to avoid the black zone, then making it black. Good idea?
In the final thing I'd either swap out the cover art and/or render out a 3d logo in Blender.
EDIT: You can also try this one, if interested: http://homoeoteleuton.com/WarframeFanStuff/Rise%20Of%20The%20Tenno%20Cover%20and%20DisclaimerAlt.pdf
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I'm bumping this because I want feedback on my "art direction" (which is to say that I downloaded the Fan Website kit and then put the images together), both on the question of whether or not it works artistically, and also on whether or not DE takes offense at any of the stuff I've done. I'm pretty sure I fall within the lines here, but I want to make sure.
I haven't started putting all the rules and such into the document because they are far from written/final, but here's a link to the cover, disclaimer, and tentative intro blurb on my site.
http://homoeoteleuto... Disclaimer.pdf
EDIT: If it's an issue, I can put an offset behind the Warframe logo to make it more visible, or otherwise wash out the image behind it, but I didn't want to alter the image, obviously, without permission. I wasn't sure if I should use the logo, somewhere I read you should put it over images of Warframe, and other places I read that you shouldn't use it at all, so whatever the appropriate thing is I can do it. I'm not attached to the art at the hip, either, I'm more than happy to provide my own page backing stuff if that's an issue.
EDIT 2: Another thing to note is that I'm not using the logo on each page; I don't know that this is necessary, since I clearly state that both images are from the Warframe Fansite Kit, but I'm not sure about this.
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The issue with an AP based system, a la Jagged Alliance, is that it really encourages initiative concerns. Warframe's the sort of thing where everything should occur simultaneously (in my opinion), and splitting it in phases will do that. And, as you said, there are bog-down issues with it, and the question of movement/attacking and how to work them together.
Once the system's a little more mature, there will be maneuvers in addition to the current "dumb" movement system; you'll be able to transition between a move to an attack; several of these things, however, are rather fluid, and would essentially just be moving your combat round a short distance into your move round; melee combat should always be possible to have a simultaneous response (e.g. those gorram shield lancers), though not always, ergo the ability to choose which combat round comes in which order; sync up to match your opponents, or catch them off guard by going alternate.
One thing that I haven't really touched on is that each individual Tenno will be given more stuff; Warframes will be important for abilities and mobility, but they will be largely dependent on their Tenno inside. Each Tenno will have skills that determine maneuvers and such, as well as traits and specialities a la D&D's feats, or, perhaps more accurately, Shadowrun's qualities (or Edges and Flaws for the old-timers). In fact, Health may be taken from the Warframe and moved to the Tenno piloting it, with the Warframe's health value playing into a defense value which is directly subtracted from all incoming damage (this would be composited with current Armor scores).
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Movement is handled by speed; there's not going to be a major mechanic for vertical movement because Tenno tend to move fluidly; the rule will basically be an Acrobatics test limited by the Speed of the Warframe; a Volt can go a really, really far distance while using Speed, but that doesn't necessarily apply to all Acrobatics (there will be a distinction between jump/run distances).
Foes that can't go vertically will have a low (if any) Acrobatics ability, so they will at best be able to vault things, perhaps with difficulty.
Here's some stuff I have written up:
Needed Gear:
To play Rise of the Tenno, players should have two twenty-sided dice and at least one ten-sided die. In a pinch, not all players need their own dice, but this will slow down play significantly.
The Roll:
Rolls are used to determine success for every action a Tenno or their opponents attempt which can reasonably fail. Rolls are made with two twenty-sided dice, usually referred to as d20 independently, or 2d20 for a pair.
Rolling Criticals:
If both d20 dice come up the same, or for weapons double digits come up within the “Critical Range”, a Critical is rolled. Criticals should be considered to be spectacular effects.
Outside of combat, Criticals are rare, and signify that a Tenno or opponent's action was spectacularly effective or catastrophic. For instance, when sneaking, a critical may imply that a character had a window to not only sneak up on a foe but also silently eliminate them or capture them.
In combat, Criticals double damage, though only for attacks that already hit. For instance, if both dice come up 20, there would be a critical, but since rolls of 40 automatically fail, there is no chance of success. There is no penalty for rolling a Critical in combat when the normal roll fails, although abilities that increase a chance of success and can be used after the original roll may be able to apply the critical so long as they do not involve rerolling the dice; only the final roll counts toward determining criticals.
Combat:
Combat in Rise of the Tenno is fast and violent; every round is critical in determining the outcome of any armed confrontation. Every character in the game, Tenno or not, has a Defense Value, which is the base difficulty to hit them, and every weapon has an accuracy value that, along with their users' skill with the weapon, aids their ability to hit their target.
Combat takes place in four rounds; Move 1,Combat 1, Move 2, and Combat 2. Each round always takes place in order; it is not possible for someone to take a Ranged Combat move in a Melee Combat round, though certain abilities may be used in any round.
The Move rounds are identical; in them warframes may move a number of meters equal to their Speed value, or take cover; which will provide a modifier to their defense equal to the cover's rating against foes attacking them in ranged combat from the direction of cover, if they forfeit their Melee Combat round in return. They may choose either of their combat rounds to be their Ranged Combat round.
Each combatant must take different actions in their combat rounds, dedicating one to be a Ranged Combat round and the other to be a Melee Combat round, in which they can take attack actions appropriately against targets in range or do an action that they could have done in their Move round (forfeiting their attack).
Melee Combat is resolved with each side rolling an attack against the other; whoever succeeds on their attack (against their opponent's Defense Value) will do damage to the other according to their melee weapon's abilities. Only the victor does damage. If a melee attack is not fought against (and only one attack can be countered in a turn), the attacker merely checks to see if he hits his target, and does not compete to see who takes damage. Only melee weapons or pistols may be used in the Melee Combat, and pistols may only make attacks against adjacent foes in this round. Melee Combat may not be used against foes in cover when the cover comes between the target and attacker.
Ranged Combat is resolved like an unopposed Melee Combat attack, using an appropriate ranged weapon. Melee weapons cannot be used in Ranged Combat, unless they are thrown (which may run the risk of the weapon being lost, in which case it must be retrieved before further use). Ranged Combat suffers from opponents being behind cover.
Warframe powers may be used in any round, according to the rules of the power. Some powers take multiple rounds to complete, or have effects that last multiple rounds.
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Can you post all the formulas you're using? And what about frame ability conversion? Movement? Armor? There's a lot to consider here, but as a tabletop fan, I so want to see this happen.
Furthermore, while you're trying to keep it as true to Frame as possible, what about bosses? Bosses are bullet sponges, and with the ease of strategy you get with a tabletop, there'd be none of the runnin' and gunnin' that makes them difficult. I know there are a couple threads about more interesting bosses, maybe work that kind of stuff into it so bosses aren't just "Attack. Go behind cover. Attack. Go behind cover..." ad infinitum.
I don't have frame conversions done, but many of them can be done simply; movement can be done on a class-based system, armor will probably use an entirely non-game derived system but use the original frame's values for a baseline.
Here's my formulae:
Weapon Type Modifier: Sniper 1, Semiauto .8, Pistol/Burst Rifle .5. Assault Rifle .3, Shotgun .1
Damage (derived): Damage/5; round conventionally (i.e. .5 up, .49 down)
Range: Accuracy *(Weapon Type Modifier)*2 in meters, round conventionally
Accuracy Modifier: Accuracy/(Weapon Type Modifier)/20, rounding up [this sounds broken, but it's just to determine scoring a hit, based on how many shots are fired; automatic fire is assumed]
Damage Range: Damage (derived)/Weapon Type Modifier/10, rounding down, in d10's
Fire Rate: Based on Weapon Type; all weapons may fire Semiauto, weapons with a firerate of 3.3+ or which explicitly fire in bursts may fire Burst, and weapons of a firerate 8 or higher fire in Automatic. Currently no effects.
Critical Category: (Critical Chance*100)/3 rounding up (Max 3!)
The fire rate stuff is still highly tentative, pending looking at things.
You'll notice that shotguns and automatic weapons actually get more accuracy than their counterparts; this is full-burst accuracy/whether or not you actually hit with anything; shotguns will have a special weapon trait that decreases their damage/damage range as you approach further range brackets, and their range is short, so short they may have to get artificial boosts (none of them get more than a meter or two base range, which isn't the furthest possible range, but certainly close; they may be shifted to .2 instead), though their brutal damage gives them massive power at their closest range.
EDIT: And, of course, everything is still very unfinal.
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Oh, a quick side note: Weapons will have a damage range, unlike in current Warframe, as part of the compensation for the very much low-resolution new critical system (which goes 3%, 8%, and 10.5% on hits, with mildly less for inaccuracy). There are also super critical attacks, when two 11's are rolled for a 22, but this happens only once in a very blue moon.
In addition, the core die mechanic will be based on difficulty/modifiers; so an action may have a difficulty of anything from 5 (hard) to 35 (easy) and the goal is to roll under the result, with positive modifiers being good and negative modifiers being bad (all modifiers adjust the difficulty).
EDIT: Here's a converted weapon:
Lato (stats from wiki):
Type: Pistol
Base Damage: 24.0
Base Firing Rate: 6.7
Accuracy: 18.2
Base Clip Size: 15
Base Ammo Size: 200
Base Critical Chance: 2.5%
Polarities: None
We don't care about clip size; this isn't converted and is kept as is. We do care about accuracy, the fact that it's a Pistol, and its damage, as well as its critical Chance.
Damage: 24/5=4.8, round to 5
Firing Rate: Semiauto/Burst
Range: (18.2*.5*2)=18.2, rounds to 18 meters
Accuracy Modifier: +2
Damage Range: 1d10
Critical Category: .025*100= 2.5/3=.8333, round to 1
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So I decided to work on a new tabletop game, and, lacking inspiration (and playing too much Warframe), I decided it would be cool to create a game set in the Tenno's shoes.
I've decided to go with a 2d20 system; somewhat akin to a percentile system but with a 2-40 curve (this provides a great amount of customization, and the critical hit system uses doubles, either of die face results or digits in the final number [11, 22, 33]).
I'm a little uncertain as to the universe's lore; I've been treating the Corpus as transhuman (when you "capture" them you murder them and then extract something from them, which I've always felt is sort of like ripping a cortical stack in Eclipse Phase), though I'm more comfortable with my grip on the Grineer's clone empire and the Infested, since they will almost always serve the role of faceless enemies or assassination targets.
I'm hoping to be able to keep 1:1 compatibility with the game; not necessarily in outcome, but certainly in the idea that you will be able to calculate values off of gear and mods and simply figure out what they would be in the game's system; to a certain degree this would be a lossy conversion, but with conventions it would be possible to adapt the game to use any new gear/limited run gear that is not in the game itself (for instance, I won't put in the Vandals or Primes, since they're rare, but it won't be difficult to figure out their stats based off of their relation to standard things). I'll probably divide all the damage by 5 and all the health/shields by 20 (for faster, more lethal combat without requiring massive numbers of foes which means massive amounts of bookkeeping).
As is the game would be very combat focused, since we don't see a whole lot of the universe outside of combat (which is okay), though I'll probably implement some sort of requisition/black market system [it is implied that there are people other than the Tenno fighting/resisting the Grineer] to gain new gear rather than the credits/plat system (mind, there will be credits, but I'm picturing Eclipse Phase's reputation and Only War's gear requisition system as being perhaps more important, since many of the Tenno use Orokin-era technology which would be rather difficult to find in addition to the expense involved). The Corpus may also play into this; it's unlikely that the Tenno would form an alliance with them, but I picture the Tenno having a sort of Brotherhood of Steel relationship with them; they're reclusive and will just as happily deal peacefully with the Corpus as well as occasionally just going in violently to take what they want.
I'm also considering the potential that the Grineer are more of a military dictatorship, rather than the primary inhabitants of the solar system, with the idea that the Tenno are sort of infiltrating the populace. However, I make no claim to really understand the universe of Warframe better than anyone else.
I hope to have a first, combat-system focused, version up next week or the week after, then move on into making the Tenno into fully fleshed out characters outside of their combat-loving space ninja awesomeness.
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I can confirm this from personal experience. Happened to me at an alert on Apollodorus.
Actually happened twice, both times in the same type of room. I have a picture that can be accessed here:
http://imageshack.us...rroomglitc.png/
I also swear that I spelled glitch right on my end.
Rise Of The Tenno (Unofficial Roleplaying Game)
in Fan Zone
Posted
Redesigning my site ate the .pdf's, so they're no longer accessible. Since I'm still in the "rewrite-from-scratch-so-that-everything's-consistent" phase, that's okay.
I've decided to move from emulation into a strictly inspired form, so that I don't have to worry about certain things, so the critical hit system may be reworked.