☀ C H A N G E L O G
- pinefallowpark
- Aug 21, 2020
- 5 min read
C H A N G E L O G
8 / 21 / 2020
The first major change is the rolling system. We will always copy/paste you the exact formula to use, so you do not need to understand this, but if you desire a deeper understanding of the changes, read on.
So far, Body, Mind, and Soul on the 2d6 seems fairly balanced, which I did expect, since I stole from an existing published TTRPG.
What is not balanced is uncontested rolls.
In games, you have two types of rolls: contested rolls, in which two people roll and the higher roll wins. But also uncontested rolls, which is like, “How well do you climb this tree? How successful are you at stealth?” You’re only rolling against your own abilities.
For uncontested rolls, I was originally planning for 1-6 being failure, 7-12 being mixed success, and 12+ being full success, with the scale occasionally adjusting on particularly hard or easy tasks. I don’t think this worked in the Prequel. Some people already have stats that are +5, meaning that it’s almost impossible to fail, and your stats will only rise as the game progresses. Additionally, Bless and Curse break this system entirely. If you add a 1d6, you’ll never roll a failure.
So, for uncontested rolls, we’re gonna throw away the 2d6 entirely.
Contested rolls will remain the same. You roll ATK vs. DEF on the 2d6, and the higher wins. You roll MIND vs. MIND on the 2d6, and the higher wins. Etc. Etc.
But for rolls where you have no specific enemy, such as “I want to jump across the gap” or “I want to throw the ball into the hoop,” we will now be rolling 1d50 + MODIFIER.
If you roll 1-20, it’s a failure.
If you roll 21-40, it’s a mixed success—you achieve what you wanted, but at a price determined by the DM.
If you roll 41-50, it’s a full success.
This means that your stats help you, but don’t 100% determine if you succeed or fail. This means that Curse and Bless help you, but don’t 100% determine if you succeed or fail.
I was originally going to go with a 1d30, with 1-10 being a fail, 11-20 being mixed, and 21-30 being a full success, because then your stats would impact it more, and there would be less chance. But then I remembered how your stats will increase throughout the story. A 1d50 means that in the beginning of the story, yes, there will be more elements of chance, since your stats are low, but it gives you room to grow. If I started with 1d30, I’d probably have to bump it up to 1d50 at some point in the story anyway, since as soon as you have a +10 to a stat, again, you’d never fail. So I’d rather just start at a 1d50 and give you something to work towards.
To summarize, we now have two types of dice rolls.
Contested rolls, which are you vs. enemy. You roll 2d6 + MODIFIER.
Uncontested rolls, which are you vs. your own ability. You roll 1d50 + MODIFIER. 1-20 is a fail, 21-40 is a mixed success, 41+ is a full success.
The following items have been affected by this change:
Tome of Summon Cat
Gravity Staff
Butterfly Net
Similarly, I didn’t picture Gross Talent being used to effectively take away enemies’ turns! I saw Gross Talent as more of a RP/stealth/persuasion/character-interaction tool, not combat. I’m of two minds on this. I like it because it gives non-BODY characters a cool combat tool. I dislike it because in many circumstances you will be up again one boss enemy, and if you keep Gross Talenting it and getting high MIND rolls, you could neuter the whole fight. It was also probably OP when the Gross Talent was used to paralyze groups of enemies.
So, I will leave the mechanics the same, but also apply logic. A rampaging dragon probably won’t be affected by Gross Talent. An angry centaur probably won’t either—unless, of course, you’ve already beaten the shit out of it and scared it a lot. Similarly, intimidation in general is going to follow the laws of logic from now on.
Out of combat, Gross Talent will remain the same; Gross Talent can be used in combat, but only if it makes reasonable sense.
All members are now eligible to submit secondary characters! These applications still require app checks, and we’ll still be rigorous to make sure that the OC is the most fitting for the environment that they can be. As a reminder, you can create:
Human parolees
Human staff members, like Champ or Toby
Magickal creatures who live on the park ground
Magickal creatures who are staff members, like Ken
In addition, you can create a third type of character: NPCs.
Say, for example, you have a really cool idea of a character that’s an evil soul-eater that was imprisoned centuries ago at Pinefallow. That’s not a very good choice for an OC. They’d be chained up and unable to interact with the other OCs unless the OCs sneaked out into the forest to speak with them specifically. I’d feel bad making you take up one of your character slots for a character you really can’t use much.
That’s why you can make NPCs that can be roleplayed with, that don’t count as one of your 2 characters! This is a great way to introduce nifty magickal ideas into the world and story for others to engage with, without having to take up one of your slots.
Additionally, if there’s an NPC I introduced that you’re really into—say, CHIEF PERIMEDES or YSOLDA—you can totally adopt them! I certainly won’t have time to control all of these NPCs after their sections are done, but I know people might still like to have them around and interact. Just DM me and we’ll talk it out.
(No, you can’t have Sneaky, Martha, Champ, Toby, or Carrie. :P )
A couple of caveats:
NPCs will never be able to participate in the story events. The only exception is if I see a perfect opportunity, but that is unlikely. You have to accept that NPCs are here for flavor and HC reasons only, not story. However, I would LOVE to use these NPCs for side quests!
2. NPCs are not OCs. Technically, I am going to let you create as many NPCs as you want, and you can use them for HC and RP channels, 21Q, etc. But if I start to sense that for you the line is blurry between NPC and OC—that is, if you are neglecting your main OCs in order to use your NPC—may ask you to back off on using that NPC for awhile. NPCs are not a way to artificially inflate your character slots.
NPCs cannot be park staff members. If someone really wanted to make, say, a gardener as an OC, but an NPC got there first, I don’t think that’s fair.
This is not a change, but just a piece of info: the Misty Maze was the only open-exploration dungeon. The rest of them are linear, and you take them room by room. I don’t tell you this to spoil the surprise, but to tell you that I believe that combat will be much simpler in the future on that account, and it will likely be easier to follow what happens in #yolo.
There are NEW SHOP ITEMS!!!!!!!!!!!! CHECK EM OUT!!
A jumble of minor changes:
All-or-Nothing Coin is now cheaper and a little more helpful
Tome of Summon Cat has been cheapened
Restock on certain magick items
I forgot to determine plot bonuses for event participation! All art you do that is related to the storyline gets 3 extra PFP points.
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