Anyone Alive?

[apn]

With regards the lawyer, sounds like you're covering your ass which is a good thing - we all would like to see some form of the Saga hero RPG back in print but don't do it at the cost of your house/sanity!

I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the fighting/agility thing. I see where you're coming from (and yeah, Edge 4 really does make a big difference if say Cap has a handful of 4s and the last card is trump) but using Strength to hit (and damage, and resist) will always be a personal itch that will always need scratching. If that makes any sense.

I have 3 sets (all incomplete cards, but I think I can scrape together a full set out of them) but will eagerly watch for any news on the retro clone. A kickstarter (as I mentioned on RPG.net) with extra decks and so on, adventures, sourcebooks, hardback option. Oops fan love mouth foam again. Show me where to click to spend some money

[apn]

Also noticed this place has plenty of guests on here but only a couple of regular visitors. Maybe time to spark up some interest, possibly by putting out a 'example of play' document for MSHAG for those who wonder what the fuss is about (guests) and maybe remind others who played once upon a time what they are missing?

I had one Tim (Kirk) wrote for me a while back but god knows where it's gone - I need to dig it out if I can(unless Tim if you are reading you recall a poster n RPG.net nattering you for an example of play - that would be me)

[Tommy Brownell]

Sept 30, 2013 8:59:25 GMT -5 apn said:

With regards the lawyer, sounds like you're covering your ass which is a good thing - we all would like to see some form of the Saga hero RPG back in print but don't do it at the cost of your house/sanity!

Luckily, I don't have a house OR sanity!

[maxwellchris]

Very happy to hear about work being done on a retro-clone. I would love to see such a thing come to fruition.

So, no one has played around with adding a Fighting stat to SAGA?

My friend and I tested it this weekend, and it seemed to work okay.

It went like this: We gave Spider-Man an 11 "Fighting." I played a a 5 of Strength (still the trump suit for Fighting), and pulled a 6 of Intellect from the deck. My action total was 22.

This beat the enemy's total opposing difficulty (Agility 12 plus Narrator Card 5) of 17.

For Damage, we took the cards I played and added them to Spidey's Strength of 14 (since he was just keeping it simple and punching the guy), for a total of 25.

The villain's Strength was a 10, so he took 15 wounds from that punch!

(The bad guy then threw up a gravity field which we found we were not entirely sure how to adjudicate, but I can ask about that later if you folks are game)

So....does that seem like it works?

[apn]

Seeing as there is still life in the boards *clear!* Bzzzzt! Maybe we should start a thread about possible house rules or modifications that will speed up or improve the game. For me I'd like variable skills (ranked 1 to say, 6 adding value to the stat as opposed to a flat 4 points across the board) and maybe world class having a 'trump choice' whereby a card is drawn for world class trump. If the player doesn't like it, the GM draws a second card but the player MUST keep that card. It makes World Class seem more... special, to me. That way if you pull a low card or doom card for your first trump, it's not a bitter sweet pill. Unless of course you pull it for the second... Hey, even World Class guys have 'those' kind of days...

With regards Fighting, I think the problem lies in the fact that each stat has its own deck and by introducing another would screw up the probabilities of the Doom deck (from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6) unless you increase the number of Doom cards to keep the odds something like stock.

I dunno, maybe always use Agility for attacking/defending but if you want to use Strength to attack with, you can but it increases the difficulty (from Easy to Moderate say). That way it really only benefits the biggest strongest guys who will still be more effective than if they'd used Agility to attack with, but it brings down the reliance (or effectiveness if you like) on high strength.

[maxwellchris]

I forgot to add some things in my example (of course!), like the difficulty of Easy (4?) for Spidey to punch the guy, which meant that he just barely beat the opposing value of 21.

As far as suits and trumps, we just go with having "Fighting" trump from the Green Suit, just like Strength does. Didn't seem to mess things up too badly.

Increasing the difficulty to hit with Strength is an interesting idea, though.

[Tommy Brownell]

I've not messed with a Fighting stat because I haven't felt the need. Edges, Skills and Hindrances seem to cover the appropriate ground to me.

If anything, I might would consider making Agility the default attribute for attacks, or adjusting Bruiser so that it only requires having an Agility less than your Strength or something, rather than specifically 4 or less (so you could still apply it to Colossus or Thing if you liked).

[apn]

How about having 'floating' stats without a deck associated with them. Something like Speed. It would have a numerical value from 0 (average human adult) upwards, or even a negative value for someone like Modok or Blob. In any given physical action in combat the Speed stat would need to be applied to attack or defence as the player/GM sees fit. Keep strength to attack, make it a higher difficulty than using Agility, apply speed. The power of superspeed adds directly to the characters Speed score, making speedsters extremely hard to fight - as it should be. HOWEVER moving at such speed would require a check in built up or cluttered areas. Effectively its the only defence against someone who can move faster than the eye can follow! Using a stat like speed in this way you get moments like we always see in comics "How can someone so BIG move so fast?"

Example:

The Astounding Muscle Man (Agility 5, Strength 18, Speed 3) takes on the Jumpy Leaper, a cheeky villain with astonishing agility (Agility 12, Strength 7, Speed 4). Jumpy Leaper applies his Speed to defence (Agility+Speed=16) and AMM (Astounding Muscle Man) attacks with Strength (making it moderate difficulty) rather than Agility. Whilst he's about of average Agility, he'd have little chance of hitting JL. Using Strength it's still tricky, but Strength (18) + Speed (3) vs AMM total of 16 + Average (8) for the punch plus Narrator card is still 'hittable', albeit he may need edge and maybe a trump to make sure.

Other possible mods:

Accurate - when striking a foe the character (player) decides which cards are targeted, not the defender. This is a potent ability, and shouldn't be common, or cheap. It makes characters like Hawkeye far more potent, as it does Cyclops and Bullseye, even with a playing card or paper clip.

Intelligent attack - Reed Richards best weapon is his brain. Sure his elastic body enables him to trip up foes and what not, but its his mind you sure fear as he out thinks and out wits opponents. A separate check, once per battle of Intelligence vs Intelligence determines who has the upper hand. The winner gets an extra card in their hand (breaking the hand limit barrier) which MUST be spent in the battle against the foe you just outwitted, though it could be used to absorb damage as you predict their attack and use cover before it lands, or make them zig when they should have zagged, or even make them angry so they aren't thinking straight. Taunting can be used vs Intelligence in this way to the same effect, but the character with Taunting doesn't 'lose' if they fail the test and the target doesn't gain a card. Spiderman would be good at this, Deadpool would be world class. Flipside is that the target of the taunts ALWAYS goes for the Taunter, and gains a bonus +1 Edge if they hit the Taunting character.

Some of this stuff is top of the head musing, and may not work without tweaking, but as far as I can tell wouldn't break the game.

[maxwellchris]

Wow, these are all really cool suggestions! This game seems to be very resilient, in that adding a new piece here or there doesn't hurt it too much. We have noticed that our Fighting stat required a change to the Martial Arts skill, but that's about it (so far). The "Speed" ability is a very intriguing idea, tho....

[Tommy Brownell]

Oct 3, 2013 22:08:00 GMT -5 apn said:

Other possible mods:

Accurate - when striking a foe the character (player) decides which cards are targeted, not the defender. This is a potent ability, and shouldn't be common, or cheap. It makes characters like Hawkeye far more potent, as it does Cyclops and Bullseye, even with a playing card or paper clip.

I'm not sure how potent it is, since the number of times a player is facing another character with its hand of cards should be pretty rare since most NPCs, by default, use the Narrator's card, not their own hand. That said, I'd probably allow it as a Stunt for those occasions in which they are taking on a fully activated NPC.

[apn]

Edit: thinking of something else (more ideas to come) got wires crossed...