GIN Ultra-Lite

[Acolyte]

The one thing I might add is a mention that eyeballing the situation might also net a bonus modifier, not just a penalty--there are situations between "automatic success" and "no penalty". And in IN, you might still roll to get/modify a check digit--sure, everyone's going to hear the disturbance of a human being killed in the neighboring house, but not everyone will know if it happened via a Song or a knife or what-have-you. Perception+4 might give the PCs more information that "wow something LOUD and NEARBY".

So, with a "Wing It!" modifier in place, what else needs to be discussed before we take this to the testing floor?

[Archangel Beth]

*nods to Acolyte's details*

[Acolyte]

I've been thinking about this over the last week or so, and after a chat with Rocket Man that helped me tease meaning out of the more GURPS-specific language, I think I can comment more sensibly than before.

First, the name! Because GIN UL clearly isn't appropriate, and new-IN-that-used-to-be-GIN-UL is unwieldy, he and I have taken to calling this IN:Reprise. Keeps the music motif and suggests fresh new things without a complete break. Also more fun than 3d6IN.

On salvaging the CD, because it's one really pretty thing you lose going to d666: why does that have to remove the CD? Assuming you have dice that are different enough to point at one and say "that's the CD", you can roll 3d6, total all of them (including the CD) to see success or failure, and use the CD die for degree of success. Mathwise, this does make high-CD successes more unlikely (if your CD is a 6, on average your total roll will be 13), especially at low skill levels, but...that doesn't necessarily bother me (more skilled people should perform more admirably, right?), and I don't think the difference will be monstrously pronounced. I'm certainly not averse to using degree of success instead of the CD, but it's not as if the CD can't be included in IN:Reprise.

Question about Forces and base characteristics: how do you model things with scores far below human normal? A squirrel must have a single Corporeal Force, meaning it's currently going to start with a Str of 6 and an Agi of 10, which is a bit wonky. What's the best way to handle that? (the Kyrios will surely want to know)

Question about automatic failures: Obviously, rolling an 18 is an Infernal Intervention. What about rolling a 17? My gut says there's no need for that to be a failure as well.

Songs: Double Forces+Song Level isn't wholly elegant, although it's pretty close to the right numbers. What about casting Songs as Skills--that is, off characteristics? Perhaps all Songs use the "power" characteristic (Str/Int/Will), or perhaps they use the "finesse" one (Agi/Pre/Per), or perhaps each Song says which it uses (example: Songs of Charm use the "power" characteristic, so to sing the Ethereal Song of Charm you roll Int+Ethereal Charm, whereas Songs of Light use the "finesse" ones, so to roll Corporeal Song of Light you roll Agi+Corporeal Light). This isn't exactly elegant either, but if the Skill TNs are in the right place, making the Songs work like Skills might not be a terrible idea. And your number of Forces still influences the Song TN, via their influence on characteristics. Perhaps this can lead to some good brainstorming. (Should Songs be so much harder to use, since you have to spend all those CPs on them and their use is already limited by Essence AND fears of creating Disturbance? I don't really think so.)

Risk: (pg 39 IN core) What's the best way to implement this rule with a 3d6 spread?

Reaction rolls: I almost never use these myself, relying on plot-driven, ad-hoc reactions that do take into account Cha and Status and such. Assuming the were migrating over, what would the new base TN be? How much should each level of Cha/Status add?

Using Essence to boost rolls: Is it best to simply acknowledge how the bellcurve more dramatically alters what you get for a point of Essence depending on what your TN already is and move on? A point of Essence at either end of the scale might get you almost no benefit, but one in the middle nets you a comparatively huge chance-of-success increase.

...and I think that's it for now. I am really itching to get playing IN with these rules.

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

First, the name! Because GIN UL clearly isn't appropriate, and new-IN-that-used-to-be-GIN-UL is unwieldy, he and I have taken to calling this IN:Reprise. Keeps the music motif and suggests fresh new things without a complete break. Also more fun than 3d6IN.

Certainly does keep the motif... Though IN:Filk might be more accurate... O;D

On salvaging the CD, because it's one really pretty thing you lose going to d666: why does that have to remove the CD? Assuming you have dice that are different enough to point at one and say "that's the CD", you can roll 3d6, total all of them (including the CD) to see success or failure, and use the CD die for degree of success.

I'm inclined to think that just gets a bit... kludgey. I don't really think we can have the 3d6-bellcurve cake and eat the Check Digit one too. It's not a bad quick-and-dirty conversion tactic for stuff that really, really depends on the check digit -- Seraphim of Litheroy spring to mind! -- but I think ideally the whole thing would convert over to Degree of Success, eventually.

Question about Forces and base characteristics: how do you model things with scores far below human normal? A squirrel must have a single Corporeal Force, meaning it's currently going to start with a Str of 6 and an Agi of 10, which is a bit wonky. What's the best way to handle that? (the Kyrios will surely want to know)

Off the top of my head? I would give different starting values and/or different values for X in the "X*Forces = Points for characteristics" formula. So -- pulling numbers out of my ear -- a Small Animal (1-3 Forces) would start with 1 or 2 as the base for their characteristics, and multiply the Forces by 1 or 2. A Medium Animal (2-4 Forces; yes, there's overlap) would start with 2, multiply by 3 (or something like that). A Human-Sized Critter (4-6 Forces) can use 6 and 4. A Big Animal (4-6 Forces) could use 8 and 4+. Blue Whales... I dunno, around there, just handwave the conversion and say, "Look, they have X Corporeal Forces and Y Strength and Z hit points, and if you try to possess this, you may have another think coming."

(It would be amusing to me if the big whales (and other giant undersea things?) were all 6+ Forces and could hear the Symphony. And only Jordi's angels really knew this. RELEASE THE KRAKEN SOLDIERS OF GOD!)

The "different values for X" and "handwave" were both ideas I've had for a Jordi expansion for aaaaaaages. >_>

Question about automatic failures: Obviously, rolling an 18 is an Infernal Intervention. What about rolling a 17? My gut says there's no need for that to be a failure as well.

I'd playtest it both ways, but I'm betting that there's a use for an auto-failure in Reprise/Filk. Possibly not, but I'd playtest that, if possible. (Or note down the times people would've auto-failed and didn't.)

Songs: Double Forces+Song Level isn't wholly elegant, although it's pretty close to the right numbers. What about casting Songs as Skills--that is, off characteristics?

They get to be way too easy to cast, basically; that's why we put a penalty on them in GIN, equivalent to low-mana zones. It's still probably worth playtesting it (though you might also consider playtesting "it's the lower of the 2 characteristics of its realm" (handwave: because that's the area of the Symphony you're weakest in, and Songs require well-roundedness)!), but if the Performance bonuses are left in, you may get Songs working often enough that PCs depend on them more than they should, and have more Essence than expected (because they're not boosting their Songs' TNs). This risks that the resource-management part of the game (Essence!) has to depend more on the Disturbance and less on "if I spend X to try a Song..." calculations. It also risks that stuff will become a lot easier for them, which means that the opposition will wind up being bigger-stick, which wanders over into In Nomine Superheroes...

And while IN Superheroes is a fine way to play (if hard on the local architecture), I am not sure I'd want to encourage it as the default, instead of an option. O;>

Risk: (pg 39 IN core) What's the best way to implement this rule with a 3d6 spread?

Working from memory on this one... Try it as-is, maybe, and see how it works? The bonuses for taking extra time will be low, if I recall correctly, but should still be mildly worthwhile to lower-skilled characters. For doing things in a more risky way, to boost the CD... Take a penalty, and if you succeed, base degree of success off the pre-penalty score, and add some degree-of-success based on the penalty? (The penalty itself, half the penalty, twice the penalty...?)

Reaction rolls: I almost never use these myself, relying on plot-driven, ad-hoc reactions that do take into account Cha and Status and such. Assuming the were migrating over, what would the new base TN be? How much should each level of Cha/Status add?

I'd just swipe the GURPS Reaction Roll table here, and give a +1. (Noting that an effective 18, gotten via bonuses, is not the same as a 6-6-6 rolled on the dice.)

Using Essence to boost rolls: Is it best to simply acknowledge how the bellcurve more dramatically alters what you get for a point of Essence depending on what your TN already is and move on?

Works for me. If it seems too powerful, you might rule that you have to spend 2 units of Essence to get a +1 to your TN, if you're doing it deliberately. (But allow it to be one-for-one for mortals doing it unconsciously, heh heh heh.) And yeah, it'd cause more disturbance in the Symphony, too.

...I hope that's useful ideas, at least. I'm a bit kidstracted here. >_<

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I'm inclined to think that just gets a bit... kludgey. I don't really think we can have the 3d6-bellcurve cake and eat the Check Digit one too.

Indeed. And this is the reason why I'd love to see an IN2e that incorporates ideas from this project but sticks with some version of a d666 mechanic. That way, you can have your cake (IN2e) and eat it, too (IN Reprise).

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

Off the top of my head? I would give different starting values and/or different values for X in the "X*Forces = Points for characteristics" formula. So -- pulling numbers out of my ear -- a Small Animal (1-3 Forces) would start with 1 or 2 as the base for their characteristics, and multiply the Forces by 1 or 2. A Medium Animal (2-4 Forces; yes, there's overlap) would start with 2, multiply by 3 (or something like that). A Human-Sized Critter (4-6 Forces) can use 6 and 4. A Big Animal (4-6 Forces) could use 8 and 4+. Blue Whales... I dunno, around there, just handwave the conversion and say, "Look, they have X Corporeal Forces and Y Strength and Z hit points, and if you try to possess this, you may have another think coming."

(It would be amusing to me if the big whales (and other giant undersea things?) were all 6+ Forces and could hear the Symphony. And only Jordi's angels really knew this. RELEASE THE KRAKEN SOLDIERS OF GOD!)

The "different values for X" and "handwave" were both ideas I've had for a Jordi expansion for aaaaaaages. >_>

Formalizing this a bit, GURPS has a concept called "Size". As written, it's based strictly on the notion of how a target's Size affects the Target Number to hit it, which is a bit mathy for Reprise (and possibly even for IN overall); but the idea of assigning an abstract Size rating to things and adjusting their basic characteristics accordingly is something I've also thought a lot about. The way I'd do it:

• Your Size determines the maximum number of Corporeal Forces you can have. That is, a human-sized creature can have up to 5 Corporeal Forces (Vessels get an exemption from this, due to being Vessels); larger creatures can have more, and smaller creatures can't have as many. Note that I'm using the same scale here that's used to define the number of Forces required fo a Kyriotate to possess a given animal.
• Technically, small bodies have less Strength than large bodies do; but then, they also tend to be more agile: compare the mobility of a rat as it darts around looking for cheese to the mobility of an elephant as it lumbers around. The simplest route to go here would be to call it a wash: just divvy up your Characteristic points as you see fit, with a suggestion that smaller creatures be biased toward Agility while larger one's are biased toward Strength; the more complex object would be to adjust the base values accordingly: for example, for each step down from human Size, reduce base Strength by 1 and increase base Agility by 1, and vice versa. This allows the usual range of Sizes to go as low as five steps down from humans (for a base of Str 1/Agl 11, and with a maximum of 0 Corporeal Forces) and as high as five steps up from humans (for a base of Strength 11/Agl 1, and with a maximum of 10 Corporeal Forces). An even more elaborate scheme would be to introduce an asymmetrical progression: smaller creatures lose two Strength per step down while only gaining one Agility per step, and must buy up their Strength to a minimum of 0; large creatures gain one point of Strength per step while losing two points of Agility, and must also maintain a minimum Agility of 0. This is a bit more complex, but might yield more acceptable results in terms of where Strength and Agility fall: in particular, large creatures have to devote an ever-increasing portion of their Corporeal characteristic points to offsetting the Agility penalty imposed by their Size, leaving them with proportionally less to devote to getting truly obnoxious levels of Strength.
• I'll have to run some numbers to see if Size's impact on Strength results in acceptable Body Hit totals; if not, it might be possible to factor Size directly into the Body Hits calculation. I'd prefer the former method; but only if the numbers support it.

I'll comment on the rest later, when I have some more time.

[Archangel Beth]

I like the -2 Str, +1 Agi -- I think Agi 11 is a bit much for, say, mice! (Get 'em cornered, and it's relatively easy to stick a cup over a mouse for removal. Not to mention that the cats are generally pretty good at playing with the little squeak-toys (till they "break"...), and as larger animals, would presumably have lower Agi...)

Make sure that horses don't break the Agi levels -- dressage horses are pretty agile!

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens when you run the numbers.

[dataweaver]

Still looking for the Kyrio Force requirements; I know I've seen them before, but for the life of me I can't seem to find them.

Yes, cats are larger than mice, even in terms of the abstract scaling that we've been talking about here; but they're not that much bigger, so their "base Agility" isn't going to be much different: IIRC, cats require two Kyrio Forces to possess while mice require only one, meaning that a mouse's "baseline" Agility would only be one point higher than the cat's.

As well, cats tend to be skilled hunters, emphasis on "skilled"; chances are that your cat has high levels in tracking and fighting skills. In a typical cat-and-mouse situation, the cat's skill more than makes up for the mouse's slightly better baseline Agility; and that's not counting the fact that the mouse isn't going to have more than one Corporeal Force, whereas the cat will potentially have two.

As for the "catching a mouse in a cup" scenario: note that you had to corner the mouse first, leading to a significant situational modifier based on the fact that the mouse no longer has any room to maneuver. Try catching the mouse in a cup while it's scurrying around the kitchen and tell me that it doesn't have Agility of 11 or more.

And IIRC, horses are one Size larger than humans according to that Kyrio scale; so their Agility (using the asymmetric progression) would be 4 plus whatever characteristic points you devote to Agility. My guess is that horses tend to have two or three Corporeal Forces (as opposed to the one or two that humans have): if we say that the typical human would put 3 into Strength and 3 into Agility (which isn't possible, because that would require 1.5 Corporeal Forces) for scores of 9 in each, then the typical horse would be putting 5 into each of Strength and Agility, for a Strength of 12 and an Agility of 9.

Let's assume for the moment that "+1 Size" tends to mean "+1 Force". This is not an iron-clad requirement; just a rule of thumb. Also, I would expect animals to tend to focus their Forces toward the Corporeal Realm even more than humans do: it should not be uncommon to encounter an animal that has all of its Forces in the Corporeal Realm, especially at the low end of the scale; but even at the high end, it should be rare for an animal to put more than one Force each into the Ethereal and Celestial Realms; one might even be justified in saying that most animals aren't permitted to have more than two Ethereal or Celestial Forces (really smart species might be permitted more, while really dumb ones, such as insects, might not be allowed to have even one Ethereal or Celestial Force; in fact, a case could be made that a cap of one Force in each of the Ethereal and Celestial realms is typical, and only unusually clever animals such as dogs and cats are permitted two). For the most part, "more Forces" means "more Corporeal Forces" where animals are concerned. Certainly, once you get larger than humans you are unlikely to see additional Forces being spread out among three Realms.

So, as far as large animals are concerned, "+1 Size" would mean "+1 Strength", "-2 Agility", and "+4 Corporeal Characteristics". Assuming those Characteristic points are evenly divided, that would mean an average of +3 Strength and +0 Agility per +1 Size. If anything, we're underselling Strength for large animals.

(On a related note, I'm thinking that there might be Ethereal and Celestial analogs to "Size", with a small "Ethereal Size" reducing baseline Intelligence but slightly boosting baseline Precision, and a small "Celestial Size" reducing baseline Will but slightly increasing baseline Perception. Humans would be the "largest" of the Corporeal species in Ethereal and Celestial terms. I might be going a bit far: while it makes sense to give animals a higher base Perception to offset their probable shortage of Celestial Forces and to short-change them on both Will and Intelligence, the only justification I have for increasing their base Precision is to maintain the symmetry. Still, five out of six ain't bad…)

[dataweaver]

OK: using the following as the baseline,

Size  Str Agl
  1   -2  10
  2    0   9
  3    2   8
  4    4   7
  5    6   6
  6    7   4
  7    8   2
  8    9   0
  9   10  -2

…and assuming that Corporeal critters tend to have a total number of Forces equal to their Size, here's how Str and Agl are likely to pan out:

Size Forces Str Agl (Forces is "Corp,Eth,Cel")
  1   1,0,0  0  12
  2   1,1,0  2  11
  3   2,1,0  6  12
  4   2,1,1  8  11
  5   3,1,1 12  12
  6   4,1,1 15  12
  7   5,1,1 18  12
  8   6,1,1 21  12
  9   7,1,1 24  12

Note that I'm assuming that the typical Size 5 animal will have more Corporeal Forces than the typical human; that's because humans put more emphasis on the Ethereal than animals do.

Note also how Agility holds pretty much steady around 11 or 12; that's by design.

The only assumptions I'm making about characteristic points is that you can't "sell down" a characteristic below its base level, and you can't have negative scores. There might also be a ceiling imposed (e.g., at Size 5 you can't put more than 10 characteristic points into each of Str and Agl, with lower caps for smaller sizes and higher caps for larger sizes); but if so, steps up from human size should add at least two to each cap: otherwise, you'll run into cases where you won't be allowed to spend all of your characteristic points. Assuming that you're not allowed to allocate more than 2xSize to any one characteristics, here's the best you can possibly do:

Size Forces Str Agl (Forces is "Corp,Eth,Cel")
  1   1,0,0  0  12
  2   2,0,0  4  13
  3   3,0,0  8  14
  4   4,0,0 12  15
  5   5,0,0 16  16
  6   6,0,0 19  16
  7   7,0,0 22  16
  8   8,0,0 25  16
  9   9,0,0 28  16

Conversely, here's the worst you can do:

Size Forces Str Agl (Forces is "Corp,Eth,Cel")
  1   1,0,0  0  12
  2   0,1,1  0   9
  3   0,2,1  2   8
  4   0,2,2  4   7
  5   0,3,2  6   6
  6   0,3,3  7   4
  7   0,4,3  8   2
  8   0,4,4  9   0
  9   1,4,4 12*  0*     (* or 11 and 1, or 10 and 2.)

Note that Sizes 1 and 9 require at least one Corporeal Force each, in order to offset the negative Strength and Agility respectively. At the low end, you have no room to maneuver: you must spend 2 characteristic points in each. There is not going to be a Size 0. At the upper end, you have a little room to maneuver. If we were to extrapolate the chart to larger sizes (not recommended), you would need to devote another Corporeal Force every other step to offset the ever-increasing Agility penalty. Note also that in practice, you're not going to be hitting these minimums above Size 3 or so; and even that's pushing it: animals simply won't have anywhere else to put their Forces.

A slightly simpler approach: stop at Size 8; anything larger than that is the physical equivalent of a Superior. And when "downsizing", don't let baseline Strength go below 0. I'd say that elephants would be Size 7, and you'd have to go to extinct animals or the oceans (e.g., dinosaurs and some whales) to find Size 8 critters. So:

Size  Str Agl
  1    0  10
  2    0   9
  3    2   8
  4    4   7
  5    6   6
  6    7   4
  7    8   2
  8    9   0

[Archangel Beth]

Quick reply before sleep -- mouse also has a size modifier for being a small target to catch! O;> (And it might be easier if I weren't trying to catch it in a cup rather than my hand. Not sure. Don't want to get bitten reality-checking, either...)

[dataweaver]

Actually, the mouse's size is one of the things that the GM should consider when setting the situational modifier; there is no separate size modifier (that way lies a list of individual modifiers that get added together, which we're specifically trying to avoid). But yes, its small size does make it harder to catch. That said, the fact that it's small is countered by the fact that it can't go anywhere. In fact, I'd say that its restricted mobility is more significant than its small size.