You wouldn’t think this post would have anything to do with RPG’s, would you? Seriously though, I’m considering dropping the comments; so few people comment (and, I must assume, read the site) that it just seams pointless.
Not that the few people who do actually comment aren’t welcome and enjoyable; it just seems that the comments are highlighting the absence of visitors more than I’d like them to.
Anyways, reverse engineering. Oh wait, did I mention that my right foot is really swollen? I don’t know why, exactly, though it appears that something (possibly a spider) bit me. Now it’s swollen and feels weird. I don’t know…
Okay, just felt like sharing that. Now: reverse engineering. As you no-doubt have noticed (assuming you’ve read any of the past, say, five posts) I’ve been trying to work out my first RPG campaign using the Tri-Stat system. Mostly, I’ve been focusing on the game mechanics. It’s an excellent system, but certain things just aren’t quite the way I’d like them to be, so I have the undeniable urge to tinker. Which, as I explained in a previous post, is relatively easy with a system like Tri-Stat dX.
The “dX” in Tri-Stat dX represents the scalability of the system: change the power level by changing the dice, from d4 to d20. This is an interesting (and, as far as I know, unique) idea, but I have to question the actual usefulness in most games. One of the great things about BESM (the original implementation of the Tri-Stat system) is that it uses d6’s; everybody has d6’s (that’s a six-sided die). And really, few character concepts need stat ratings beyond the normal 12; if you your character does, there’s more likely than not an attribute that will cover the effect you’re looking for nicely.
All of that isn’t a big deal, though; Tri-Stat dX is designed to be used with any type of die, so sticking with d6 is no problem. Having the added option to go beyond that, should the need ever arise, is a nice touch. Keeping things at d6, though, should keep things simple and easy; at the very least, we’ll never be short of dice.
Attributes, however, have become overly-complicated since BESM. The introduction of Power Modifier Values is, in my opinion, a good thing: they add more options for the player and allow for the further customizing of certain attributes. The problem is with their implementation: they follow progressions that nothing else in the book does and add an extra level of complexity as-implemented.
Trying to come up with a more flexible, elegant setup for PMV’s has been the focus of most of my work up till now, and now that (hopefully) those have been straightened out, I can move on to other things, like the attributes themselves. A number of attributes have odd progressions (some based on the original Range PMV) and (always IMHO) need to be adjusted.
What I’ve found in my tinkering, interestingly enough, is that most of the changes I’m making are turning Tri-Stat dX into BESM. Really it’s not that surprising: apart from the scaling, PMV’s, margin of attributes, and attribute costs, the games are nearly identical. Deep-down, Tri-Stat dX is BESM, it’s just not readily apparent.
For example: the Healing attribute is identical in both BESM and Tri-Stat dX, with the only difference being that in BESM the attribute is only usable on one other person at a time. In Tri-Stat dX, the targets PMV is used to define how many people you can heal at once. It’s much more flexible in Tri-Stat dX, but requires the tracking of the Targets PMV.
My hope now is to get the increased flexibility of the Tri-Stat dX Core rules with the ease-of-use of BESM. Here’s hoping.