As a few of you may remember, the project after Liber Zero (and its associated project Liber Blanc) is Alternative V, an atomic age horror game set in the pseudo '50s by default. Instead of "kill monsters, find treasure, become a hero" or "solve the mystery", the goal of the game will be to create scientific advancements while fighting off saboteurs, commies, mutants, and aliens. For that style of game, it doesn't make much sense to use standard character advancement and character levels, but I still would like to keep the game very close to the standard class-and-level system. How do you do that?
Here's a way: although characters will have classes (archetypes,) the levels will be applied to their projects. For example, take the default project of "land a rocket on the moon". You start the project at 1st level, much as you would a character. There's a level goal, similar to the goal of 9th level to start your own barony; when you reach that level, you're ready for your actual mission. There will probably be additional supporting projects, defined by the GM, such as "new rocket fuel", "space suit", and "protection from cosmic rays". And there can be side projects, designed by players, with the level goal set by the GM.
When you earn experience points, they go into any appropriate project; reaching the next level gets you closer to completion. Each level increase can earn you an additional related technological achievement appropriate to that level. As a guideline for now, consider a scientific or technological project to be equivalent to a D&D Magic-User, and compare the stated goal of the project to M-U spells; you can finish the project when the project is a high enough level to "cast" a "spell" equivalent to what the project does. Thus, if we make a rough comparison of "land on the moon" to the Teleportation spell (5th level,) our project needs to be 9th level before we can reach the moon.
The "spell list" for technological projects obviously needs to be worked out, and there may be other "project classes", like political projects, military projects, espionage projects, and public relations projects. But I think that's enough detail for me to get a better grasp of where Alternative V is heading, and what it will finally look like.
Very cool!
ReplyDeleteI am really liking this project, as "atomic horror" is a favorite genre of mine.
ReplyDeletebrilliant, and brilliantly TV-episodic: by completing this actual adventure, we've done what we needed to do to achieve this other untelevisable goal, which can be cheerfully handled in the wrap-up speeches (girl's parents will now meet young detective/with these prints we can now find out who killed your father etc) - I may swipe this for a level-less s&s (or Flash Gordon) game, because it allows for advancement without requiring the new PC to start as a shlub.
ReplyDeleteIn some sense it was always there in the game - why can't money alone buy a castle? Why do you unlock spells along with hit dice? But making it explicit - this is the goal you're working towards - and decoupling hit dice from that progression - a. makes more sense to me, and b. is a great adventure hook generator.
@richard: although it could be used for *character* advancement as well, I was just planning on modifying the spell research rules to create a training system.
ReplyDeleteWhy bother with the XP? Why not hand the character inventions or artefacts as part of the adventure?
ReplyDeletee.g. "In the back of the room is an odd looking device that you think might just be a drive unit. Now all you have to do is scale it up."
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ReplyDelete@zornhau: because in Alternative V, the default is "no adventures". Instead, you are working on a project that gets interrupted. The XP is a scaling device to let you know where you are in terms of completing the project. Until the project is complete, you have to deal with accidents and interventions. There's a brief analysis of this here:
ReplyDeleteAtomic Age Experience