Nov 2017 Beta Test Goals

Goals

  1. Further explore general roleplaying rules
  2. Test simpler combat system
  3. Personalized Endeavor incantations
  4. Test simpler healing system
  5. Discuss at wrap

General Roleplaying Rules

For all:

  1. Roleplay weapons weight and use.  All weapons not part of the body have a weight that must be roleplayed.  Large weapons weigh more and are slower, smaller weapons weigh less and are quicker.  Weapons require effort to use, show your co-players how that effort manifests.  We should be worried when someone can swing a long sword like it was made of foam.
  2. Sufficient force.  You may use sufficient force in combat to ensure your combat partner has registered a hit.  If they are wearing armor and they do not feel your swing, they cannot be expected to react to it.  If they are not wearing armor, they only need to feel a weapon strike, not walk home with a bruise.
  3. React to everything.  Reward your co-participant with a reaction for their good roleplay.  Feel for weapon hits and react in pain and/or acknowledge the physics behind your form being hit with a weapon.  Failure to do so is against the rules.  Listen for Endeavor use, calls for attention, taunts and insults, compliments and attempts to charm.  No matter who does what in-game, you must have a reaction to it.
  4. Act as you expect to be treated.  The storytellers do not control character reactions, we provide a setting.  If your character wants to be treated a certain way, your character must demonstrate behavior that elicits the desired response in others.

Simpler combat system

For Swap Shift characters only.
Once you have done this in your swap shift, feel free to do it as your character after as an option.  Many do this anyway instead of counting numbers in their head, so you wouldn’t be alone.

  1. No numbers.  You will not be given numbers for armor or body.  If portraying a non-human creature, you will be told what affects you as normal (cold iron, silver, etc.), what banes and protections affect you (garlic, “spiritbane”, etc.).
    If you have tougher armor, it  means you can take more hits on average but it doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable.  All creatures have a finite life span.
    Goal: allows for greater immersion for all participants
  2. Roleplay: an alternative damage source.  You will always be affected by the standards (see below), but you will also allow for alternatives.  Weapons made of special materials are typically the only way to damage certain creatures, though the environment or status of the creature is also a factor.  Instead of just these standards, you will also see alternative noted as such.  Alternative damages will be explained at the beginning of your swap shift and when assigned certain roles.
    Goal:  reward exceptional roleplay and allow for emotion or palpable intent as a game mechanic of sorts; returns responsibility of the story to individualsFor example, an incorporeal spirit may not be affected by a normal weapon, but a truly impassioned character wielding a weapon would be.  Directed passion can damage incorporeal spirits regardless of weapon type as they thrive on emotions.  Exceptionally roleplayed emotional responses may even cause an incorporeal spirit to react differently, including fade back to the Veil.”Truly impassioned” or “exceptional roleplay” can be defined as roleplay that turns heads and is not “typical” for that character.  A Day One fighter type with a simple normal weapon who hits your spirit character would not do anything.  That same character who shows fear in fighting you may strengthen or weaken your spirit character as per storyteller direction.  But that same character who is *really* trying to attack your spirit character, demonstrates proper combat performance as befitting the weapon type, and seems to have something going on that stands out from the others deserves to be rewarded in some fashion.
  3. “Yes, and…” combat.  If a player demonstrates convincing roleplay of the damage they’re doing to your character, roleplay the effects accordingly.  This should always be the case.
    Goal:  Reward excellent roleplay, increase safety.For example, a two-handed fighter should not hit someone harder, nor should they break immersion with repeated OOC calls.  Instead, they should roleplay the heft of the weapon, swing it slower, and if they role-played very well their intent with that weapon, give it to them “thicker armor” or not.

Personalized Endeavor Incantations

For all:

Custom incantations for “magic” Endeavors.  Instead of calling out just a keyword that can be confusing to those who don’t know what that keyword means, create a personalized incant to say instead.  This does not apply to skilled hits which will continue to use regular simple keywords unless they are magical in nature.The incant must between 10 and 15 words, or 5-6 seconds.  This creates more effort shown, a personalized experience, more clearly defines what they’re doing instead of one or two seemingly arbitrary keywords.If the target of the effect understands what just happened, you should see the effect being role-played.  If not, they should ask for “clarify” at this point in beta.

Simpler healing system

For all:

Reminder: use props and observe time requirements.  Rapid healing does not exist in Mütvia except for Blood Magic which is a) a Dark Endeavor, and b) rarely used.  Anyone performing rapid healing can be assumed to either a) be using Dark Endeavors and punished IC accordingly, or b) cheating the time requirement.

For Swap Shift only:

Role-play extended healing, no Endeavor needed.  If your character has the proper tools and/or equipment to roleplay healing, they may heal someone over time without using a Threshold or needing an Endeavor.  If someone decides to spend a Threshold, healing time is reduced to existing durations.

Goal:  Simplify healing by making a more commonly known art, increase stakes in combat and subsequent damage, increase immersion and urgency, simplify endeavor list, increase reliance on crafters to provide balms, and provide more use for Threshold.

Limb wound — Minimum 2 minutes per limb.  More healing equipment means more wounds can be tended to.  Bandages, compresses, and poultices for normal wounds; splints and bandages for broken limbs,
Spend Threshold: reduce time to one minute

Torso wounds — Minimum 10 minutes.  Initial application stabilizes one wound but will not heal until 10 minutes has passed.  Three people can therefore stabilize someone in Bleed Out immediately, but still takes 10 minutes per wound to heal.
Spend Threshold: reduce time to one minute per wound.  If a sole healer is working on target, they cannot move to another wound until first one is healed, but multiple people can work on same target to all work in one minute to fully heal someone.

Cauterize — Anyone can do it, props are needed as usual.  Spend 20 seconds mock heating piece of metal (weapons work fine) of equal size or larger than the “wound”.  Apply to wound, wound is stabilized for five minutes, but Agony is afflicted for 10 seconds immediately after application.  The 20 seconds of metal-heating does NOT include the time it takes to get set up with a mock heat source.

Multiple and rapid uses of Cauterize are possible.  Spend 20 seconds as normal for the initial cauterize, then 10 seconds to reheat thereafter between cauterizes.

Anyone cauterized may consider scar makeup in that area, if normally visible.

Cauterize effectively resets the Bleed Out timers once three wound levels have been stabilized via this method.

Discuss at wrap

A quick poll of the storytellers may be conducted throughout the game and particularly after or during your swap shift to see how these tests progress.

At game wrap (12 PM, Sunday), we want to hear the pros and cons of what was experienced by all.  Our goal is to make it so seamless and transparent that aside from the occasional “it seemed too easy or too difficult to take that thing down” mentions, there is no noticeable stall or confusion in game play.  Instead, we’re hoping for heightened immersion throughout.