Light At The End Of The Tunnel, Albeit Very Dim

Post date: 12-Aug-2014 19:47:16

I find it very hard to believe that I've been working on this game reboot, off and on, for over four years. This started out as a simple streamlining of how FEATs are resolved, and has turned into a whole new game, albeit one recognizable as Marvel Super Heroes.

And now I can see an end to all this writing. A final form has started taking shape. I can't wait until this is done and I can start actually playing the game. But I have a few more tasks ahead of me before that blissful day.

WHERE WE STARTED

Just to get everyone up to speed, let's take a tour of the road that led me here today. As I stated before, I started this journey to streamline FEATs. What does that mean?

Let's review the rules from the Advanced Set. There are basically three ways you can make a FEAT: Combat, Popularity, and Everything Else.

Combat

How it Works: You find your Rank on the Universal Table, rolling percentile dice. The color of the FEAT Result is then found in the appropriate column of the Results Table to tell you the result of the FEAT.

At Issue: Unlike in most other systems, Marvel's Combat FEATs did not take the opponent's ability to get out of the way into account. The only way an opponent could avoid an attack was to Evade (Fighting) or Dodge (Agility), sacrificing their own turn to do so.

Popularity

How it Works: You find your Rank on the Universal Table, but you determine what FEAT Color you need to hit by determining the opponent's attitude towards the hero: Green for Friendly, Yellow for Neutral, Red for Unfriendly, and Impossible for Hostile.

At Issue: This system makes negotiating with anyone not your friend more difficult than it has to be, and doing so with enemies impossible (since they are by definition Hostile to you).

Everything Else

How it Works: You find both your Rank and your task's Intensity on the Universal Table. If the Intensity is lower than the Rank, you need a Green Result. If they are equal, you need a Yellow Result. If the Intensity is higher, you need a Red Result. Optional rules make any FEAT with an Intensity -4CS or more lower than the Rank automatically successful and any FEAT with an Intensity +2CS or more higher than the Rank impossible.

At Issue: Ok, this was my big issue with the RAW.

When I say "I'm equal to the task," what does that mean? It means I can expect to succeed about half the time, and fail half the time. If I meant anything else, I'd say "I'm more than equal to the task," or "I'm less than equal to the task."

By that logic, when the Rank and Intensity are equal (when I'm equal to the task), I should succeed half the time. In other words, a Yellow FEAT should succeed on a roll of 51 or better. Every time. By definition.

Look at the Universal Table below, from the Judge's Book:

Look for the first place where Row 51-55 intersects with a yellow square. It's Monstrous Rank. The second-to-last playable Rank. So only for Attributes or Powers of Monstrous Rank will you actually succeed half the time when you are supposedly "equal" to the task. For every rank lower than that, you are technically less than equal to the task when you are equal to the task, and the reverse is true for every Rank higher than Monstrous. This is true even for Popularity FEATs, where "Neutral" is thus anything but.

No wonder we had to spend so much Karma on FEATs. The Universal Table was slanted against successful FEATs.

My Four Plus Year Mission

I much prefer games where there's only one way to resolve actions. This game has three ways, and each has its own strengths and flaws. What I wanted to do was combine the best elements of all three. I wanted Ranks and Intensities compared to determine what we needed to roll, and I wanted to keep the multi-tiered results options of the Results Table.

A good chunk of my time was spent on trying to figure out how to do that. I struggled with how to get both of those seemingly conflicting goals achieved. I wound up redrawing the Universal Table in uncounted ways, even scrapping it altogether for a while. Then, finally, I realized the problem.

The Universal Table had a Rank Parasite.

By that I mean this: the Ranks didn't belong on the Universal Table. They needed to be listed separately, on their own table, where you could compare the Column Shifts between them. Then, you could take that CS value and apply that to the Universal Table. The result was the new Universal Table 2.0, shown below.

Now that's better. Look at the Universal Table now. You have the column headers as shifts between -9CS and +9CS, with No Shift at the center. This allows me to rewrite how FEATs works as follows:

First, find the Rank and the Intensity. Count back from the Intensity to the Rank. If the Intensity is to the left of the Rank the sign is positive, if to the right it is negative, and if they are equal there is no shift.

Next, apply that number to the appropriate column on the Universal Table. Roll the FEAT. There are five possible results:

• • Blue: Critical Failure

  • White: Failure

  • Green: Success

  • Yellow: Critical Success

  • Red: Resounding Success

This allows us to always take the opponent's abilities into account, both in combat, in attempts to persuade, and in all other cases. It still allows us to use the Results Table for combat resolution, since all the Results Table does is define what the levels of success or failure mean. And it ensures that you can still negotiate your way out of a problem rather than just using your fists, even against your most hated foes.

Where We Are Now

The fact that I rewrote how FEATs work necessitated my rewriting the rulebook for at least those chapters dealing with FEATs. Yet FEATs are so integral to all aspects of the game, from how gadgets are built to how Powers are defined, that I soon found myself tweaking more and more of the rulebook, until I have what is essentially a new edition of the rules truly distinct from the original. I've even redone all the Attributes so that FASERIP no longer applies. I've called my system the FEAT System.

I've organized my version into two books: Adventure and Character. Adventure tells you the mechanics of the game, FEATS, Distinctions, Drama Points (my replacement for Karma), Adventure Points (for gaining experience), movement rules, gadget-buildign, etc. Character tells you how to design characters and what the different parts of the character sheet mean, as well as how to spend Adventure Points to improve your character, and gives sample heroes and villains.

The Adventure Book is just about done; I only have the chapter on building gadgets left to do. The character book needs more work; I have to write all of the sample Powers, finish the character creation chapter and character advancement chapter, and write up all of the sample heroes.

So there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel. It's very faint, but it is there.