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Smallville RPG Discussion
Capfalcon
Tunnel Snakes RuleCapital WastelandRegistered User regular
Tunnel Snakes RuleCapital WastelandRegistered User regular
Here is a Superman.
Here is some Superdrama.
The above map is an essential part of character creation in the Smallville RPG.
If you haven't heard of Smallville before, it's essentially the story of a young Clark Kent from his teenage years, when his powers manifested and how he learned to reconcile his heritage and his current life, to him moving off to Metropolis and becoming an up an coming reporter for the Daily Planet.
But, honestly, none of that's very important.
Because the Smallville's system has been used for everything from Generic Fantasy Adventure to a cross between I, Robot and House M.D. I can't make this stuff up, people.
Right, so. One thing to get out of the way is that this game runs on the power of TV drama rather than attempting to emulate reality. There's a world of difference between punching out a random thug's lights and punching out your archenemy who is threatening to drop your one, true soul-mate off of a tall building.
In this game, there's six attributes that get used pretty much all the time. Rather than describing how fast or tough your character is, these describe how strongly your character feels about Duty, Glory, Justice, Love, Power, and Truth. In addition, you write a sentence describing how your character views the attribute. They're ranked from a d4 to a d12. For example, Clark Kent has a measly Power - d4 (Power Corrupts). On the other hand, Zod has a Power - d10 (KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!)
More situationally, there's the relationships between characters. These also have are ranked from d4 to d12 and have a short description. Most of the time, high relationships are mutual. For example, Clark's relationship with Zod is a d8 (Zod's methods are dangerous) and Zod has Clark - d8 (Clark will join or die). As this example shows, high relationships doesn't mean you're best buddies. It means that the other person is important to you. Romeo is really important to Juliet, and vice versa. However, around the middle of Star Wars IV, Darth Vader is a whole lot more important to Luke (d10 - He murdered Obi Wan) than Luke is to Darth Vader (d4 - Some rebel who rescued the Princess). So, there's no reason they have to be mutual. For example, Jeffery might have Toni - d12 (She's the Love of my Life) while Toni might have Jeffery - d4 (The guy's a creepy stalker.)
Values and Relationships form the core of the game, being the dice you'll roll the most. But, there's rules for Powers (everything from Heat Rays to Flight), Gear (all those wonderful toys), Locations (Batcaves and Daily Planets), Extras (armies of faceless goons with various skills), and Distinctions. Distinctions deserve a special mention, as they are positive and negative qualities that let you get and/or spend "Plot Points," a meta-resource that lets you bend (or break!) the rules for a little.
I'd like to go into the character generation, but, honestly, it's going to be a pain to try to explain it without just copy pasting. And I hear stuff like that is frowned upon in these parts. So, if anyone is interested in this, I'm going to show just how flexible it can be by making the Gaang (and Zuko) from Avatar: The Last Airbender from around mid-Season Two. So, spoiler warning, I guess.
Capfalcon on
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I want to see where you're going with this....
Colour me interested.
Do players only get one of each die size (i.e. 1xd4, 1xd6, 1xd8 etc)?
So if the d12 was assigned they would be forced to use the d10 as their next highest maximum?
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We have our 5 Leads. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Zuko.
So, let's start at the beginning. The very beginning, for that matter.
ORIGIN
The origin stage starts with everyone drawing their Lead on the Relationships Map, and making one extra. An extra is a bunch of faceless goons/lawyers/crooks/reporters/scientists OR someone who really isn't that important. Each Extra has two specialties they can help leads with, decided when they . I think you get the picture). Since we have five people, everyone starts out with a free relationship step up to d6.
So, Aang decides to add Monk Gyatso, his mentor and only friend once Aang found out he was the Avatar.
His specialties are Airbending and Pranks.
Katara chooses her mother, Kya, her mother who was untimely taken from her (stretching the rules a bit here, but it makes sense.)
Her specialties are Waterbending and Comfort.
Sokka's pick is his dad, Hakoda, his role model who he thinks he can never measure up to.
His specialties are Planning and Leading.
Toph picks her fabulously wealthy parents, who never seemed to understand her.
Their specialties are Contacts and Resources
Last up is Zuko. Now Zuko has a ton of interesting characters to pick from, what with almost everyone he has a close relationships being a friend or foe to the Gaang throughout the show. So we've got Fire Lord Ozai, Azula, Uncle [strike]Awesome[/strike] Iroh, Mai, and his mother, Ursa.
Of course, that's all because we're kind of doing this backwards, what with making the game match the characters rather than using the game system to generate interesting characters. But that's beside the point.
Just for a change of pace, we're going to go with Azula, his sister. All these parents are getting a little monotonous.
Azula's specialties are Firebending and Liar (Azula ALWAYS lies.).
Aang
So, Aang is going to go with "Katara's my only friend right now."
Since he was born the Avatar, we've got a two options here. Gifted, meaning you were a born with, well, special gifts, like intelligence, athletics, or something along those lines. However, since most of the other benders are going to be gifted, and it actually kind of works for the setting, Aang is going to be Alien.
For picking the Alien origin, Aang gets to:
Step up Duty or Truth twice, or step both up once.
Pick a Heritage.
Pick an ability or step up a heritage
Add a new distinction.
So, Aang is going to step up both Duty and Truth, since he doesn't really have a huge leaning one way or the other. So, his Duty is now at a d6 - The Avatar is supposed to protect the world, and his Truth is at a d6. Now, Aang's had some problems with truth before. There's the whole Bato of the Water Tribe thing and the whole Great Divide business. But we won't go there. But, he's felt pretty bad about when his lies hurt his friends. But, he seems almost gleeful when he's tricking other people in order to get out of a fight or to keep the peace. So, let's say that his statement is Truth - My friends get the whole truth, usually.
Heritage is easy. He's the Avatar. He get some neat powers that only work when he blows a plot point on them (Traveling to the Spirit World, going into the Avatar State, etc. In fact, at the North Pole, Koizilla was probably Aang taking plot points that he had gotten for getting captured by Zuko and making it rain), and he gets a plot point every time being the Avatar is inconvenient. You could make an argument that he should also have an Airbender heritage, but that's going to spread this a bit thin, so we're going to stick with The Avatar to step up. So, now his Avatar heritage is a d6, since we stepped it up from a d4.
Last up is a new distinction. They're mostly adjectives that people would use to describe your character. There's a pretty big list of them, but for Aang, we're going to go with Impulsive. Aang is pretty goofy and will do a lot in the name of fun.
So, here's what we've got for Aang so far.
Aang
Values
Duty – d6 “ The Avatar is supposed to protect the world.”
Glory – d4
Justice – d4
Truth – d6 “My friends get the whole truth, usually.”
Power – d4
Love –d4
Relationships
Katara – d6 “She’s my only friend right now.”
Sokka – d4
Toph – d4
Zuko – d4
Assets
Impulsive – d4
Earn a Plot Point and Add a d6 to the Trouble Pool when you act rashly
Extras
Monk Gyatso - 2d4
Locations
N/A
Everyone else still has to choose their origin, but I figured I'd give all of you something for the night.
That, and I'm having some problems with the relationship map in Paint. If anyone has a good recommendation for some software that does flowcharts well, it would go along way to making this move quicker.
I guess one more tidbit for the road wouldn't hurt.
Zuko is going to be Rich.
Katara are going to be Gifted.
Toph is going to be Strange.
And poor ol' Sokka is going to be Ordinary.
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If any of the others. Toph kicks the most ass.
A pity I can't be this douche
you're only a feature,kid..
Are you open to other suggestions, Falcon? Or did you have other scenarios you were playing around with?
That, and character creation is half the fun!
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What setting/genre encapsulates the story? (e.g. fantasy, sci-fi, western, steampunk etc.)?
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