Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Gruntwork for Gigacrawler

So here are the things that should probably happen to Gigacrawler before anyone goes around calling it a game. If you're feeling creative, here's what we need...

-Alterations. We have plenty of mutations/cyborg stuff/etc. though some industrious soul(s) should take a look at them and think: can I pretty much build most of the "playable" aliens and mutants I can think of using these rules? Like: Wookie, blob guy, animal-people (if you've got one of those animal encyclopedias at home that'd be good, any given Green Lantern (except Mogo or Dkrtzy RRR--though if you can rig a sentient mathematical progression as a playable PC race, you rock), any miniature you own (etc.). Claws, teeth and extra limbs will cover 9o% of it but is there, say a chameleon-like ability in there?

-At least half again as many martial arts. Go crazy.

-Devices. We got lots of devices. While covering every possible sci-fi device is not necessary (we need something left over for treasure) someone could look through the list and make sure that all the basic modern adventuring gear is represented: a plausible range of low-level weapons, life-support devices, ten-foot pole, flashlight, etc. Look through a modern RPG and your camping/hiking/mountain climbing shopping list and make sure it's mostly covered.

-More spells. You might wanna take a look at the extant spells and make sure there's a decent spread of low, medium, and high-level stuff. And you can never have enough madness and weirdness. There's like 45 so far.

-Setting features. Looking good here--especially on the tech end. Maybe a few more esoteric/magical ideas. Also, we could arguably use more monsters, so if there's any beastie you want in there before the game goes "official", there you go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool. Maybe once these are a bit more fleshed out, I can gather some critical mass to be able to make some sort of test run of Gigacrawler using the London Hackspace as a venue. Or maybe we can flesh it out by attempting to play it.

C'nor (Outermost_Toe) said...

Hmm. I think that we should include some kind of page for "Packages" used to make races, simply so that it's easier to look them up.

wolakhotakagayapi said...
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wolakhotakagayapi said...
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Unknown said...

Hey Zak (and everyone else too)
I just had an awesome idea. It is related to Gigacrawler. I wanted to email it to you, but I couldn't find your email address, so I'm just going to post it here; which is probably best anyway. For the longest time I was struggling on how to layout adventures in the gigastructure, but I think I've figured it out - it involves the use of geomorphs, but not in a contiguous, dungeony way:

This is useful for any large and dense complex or city or all-encompassing sphere. Instead of mapping out the entire thing or large sections of the thing, break it up into sectors. Each sector whould have a different flavor - living spaces, manufacturing building/area, back alley, ghetto, rich area, docks, sewers, etc.

For each sector write a general description of what and who will be found there, what sorts of things one might find by digging around, and obstacles/interactive elements of the sector's enviroment. These sectors could be stored on index cards.

You can then randomly determine (or pick) how many and in what order of sectors the party must go through to get to their destination. Or, since the destination is known, randomly pick a sector that the group stops/is stopped in along the way. This could even be used to offer tough travel decisions, for example: option A is through 10 relatively safe sectors and option B is through 3 very dangerous sectors, and it would be useful to do a Warriors/Behind Enemy Lines kind of adventure too, where along the way the party must stop in each sector they travel through and have some kind of encounter. You could even make a rudimentary flow chart for the sectors using various modes of transport to get to "Coney Island".

Finally, create some abstract geomorphs of varioius intersections and spatial arrengements, or use the awesome ones created and being created by bloggers like Risus Monkey (sorry, I forgot the others that are doing it). When rp-ing an encounter, whip out one of these geomorphs at random to be the lay out of the situation at hand. Add the window dressing of the sector's flavor to the blank canvas of the geomorph, for example: the lines that represent the walls of a sewer could just as easily be the building walls and store fronts for a city street. The players don't have to see the geomorph itself, just the GM's interpretation of it on the map in front of them.

I'm sure this is not a new idea, but it just struck me all of a sudden.