Looming Large and Toothy

That Crocodile has been eating me alive for these past few weeks

Pavel's art was finished and sent up a while ago. I chose not to post it right away, though. Its beautifully sinister; take a look:

That big, nasty looking piece of work has slithered into my brain and nested there.

I destroyed a perfectly sound notepad with page upon page of design that will (thankfully) never see the light of day. From that design-slag, I mined about three pages of pure, gameable gold. Here is the current form of some of it (describing the ways in which characters fight and abuse one another):

Combat (physical and social)

Violence (physical harm)

When you want to hurt or kill somebody, use these rules.

First, determine the order in which characters will act:

• Higher-tier combatants always go before lower-tier ones

• Within a tier, the highest-ranked combatants act in descending order

• Finally, equally skilled opponents roll 1d6, re-rolling ties, until their order of actions is decided 

• This action order remains until the end of combat

Second, attackers choose a target and roll 1d6 per Rank of their Violence, choosing the highest-rolling die as their total. For example, if their Violence Rank is 3, they roll 3d6. Assuming they rolled 2,4 and 5, their attack total would be 5.

Third, subtract the defender’s Rank in Violence from the attacker’s roll; any remainder is damage. For example, if our aggressor from the previous example was battling a Violence-2 thug, they would subtract 2 from their result, For a final total of 3 damage.

Fourth, the defender chooses whether to buy down damage with Willpower; if they will not or cannot, they are placed At the Mercy of the attacker.

Continue until every character has taken a turn. Any combatants left standing may continue the fight for subsequent rounds until a victor emerges.

Other things you can do in a fight

Characters retain their ability to take any action a typical person could; their timeframe is a handful of seconds, but they are operating at their physical peak due to the savage stresses of battle.

Characters can move around within the same area, typically sprinting or running toward or from their foes. If they attempt to leave the area, then the fight becomes a chase.

Characters can exchange brief banter, insults, expletives, and other short, direct communication during a fight. Anything more complex than seven words or so isn’t possible except in unusual circumstances.

Weapons

Armed characters are orders of magnitude more lethal in a scrap. When attacking with a weapon, add its damage to any attack which lands (ie, one which inflicts damage).

Here is a list of common weapons and their damage:

• Improvised weapon: 1

• Knife, truncheon, small weapon: 2

• Baseball bat, sword, impact weapon: 3

• Pistol, small caliber firearm: 5

• Rifle, high-caliber weapon: 7

• Shotgun, machine gun, military-grade weapon: 9

Monsters, being engines of death incarnate, always add 5 additional damage (on top of weaponry) to a successful attack.

Dominance (Emotional harm)

When you want to badger, bully, or otherwise intimidate someone, use these rules:

First, roleplay out the interaction. Talk tough, get mean, and try to threaten your target. If the GM decides that you’ve sufficiently cowed them, then that’s that. You win.

If not, or if you can’t think of what to say, or if you just want to show off, roll your Dominance Rank in d6s, choosing the highest. Subtract your target’s Dominance Rank: anything remaining is emotional damage.

As with Violence, a target can buy down emotional damage with their Willpower. If they can’t buy it all down, then they must Fight, Flight, or Obey as described below.

If a character can’t buy off all the emotional damage done to them, then their WP is reduced to 0.

Dominance is social, and hence much more fluid and subjective than the cut-and-clean turn order of Violent conflict. If there’s ever any confusion about the order in which things get said: 

1) If it’s a character’s turn in combat, they go first. Otherwise:

2) Highest-tiered dominators go first, in order of Rank, rolling off for turn order exactly as for combat.

Yes, you can use Dominance in combat instead of attacking physically. It’s awesome.

Willpower

When faced with danger or distress, a character can use their Willpower to resist panic or injury. Spend willpower equal to the damage inflicted (either physical or emotional) and it does no harm; it’s a close shave, or a petty put-down, but nothing more.

Mortal characters gain +1d6 WP every time either their Violence or Dominance increases beyond the other in rank. For example, they gain +1d6 when their Dominance rises from 1 to 2, but not again until either their Dominance or Violence increases to 3.

Monsters gain WP identically. In addition, they can take Wounds to buy down Violence attacks.

Wounds

When buying down a physical injury, you may take a Wound to increase your reserve by +1d6 temporarily. 

Wounds begin at severity 6. After any rolled action, at the end of every scene, and after attempting any action deemed by the GM to be physically strenuous, roll a single d6. If the number rolled is equal to or greater than the severity of your Wounds, you succumb to your injuries and perish.

After taking a wound, a character may take another to gain an additional +1d6 WP. However, each time they do so, they increase the severity of their wounds by 1 (from 6 to 5+, 5+ to 4+, etc.).

If a character’s wounds ever become severity 1+, they die after taking one of the above-described actions, or at the end of the scene.

Fight or Flight… Or Obedience

If a character is facing any remaining social damage after buying down a Dominance attack, they crack under the grinding social pressure of their adversary. They must choose between one of three unappealing options:

1) They can run. They retreat from the aggressor at their top speed, breaking social etiquette and losing face as they do. They attempt to quit the social battlefield and find a quiet place to recover willpower alone, or in the company of only deeply trusted friends.

2) They can submit. Devoid of coping mechanisms and emotionally exhausted, they can obey the commands of the aggressor. This isn’t mind control: its admitting defeat. The character retains the other options in this list, and can choose them at their discretion.

3) Finally, they can fight. True, they have no Willpower remaining, which makes them a fragile target, but they’re not thinking clearly and this dickbag is just begging for a fist to the teeth. They retain the option to flee after every assault.

Not every one of these options is always available; the GM will determine if escape or combat is possible and restrict a character’s options as they deem reasonable.

At your Mercy

When you have a character “at your mercy”, this means that you hold the power of life and death over them until the situation radically changes. You can kill, maim or otherwise mutilate them with impunity while you retain this advantage.

“…until the situation radically changes”

When this phrase is used, it is meant to imply a complete change of circumstances, such as would be experienced when standing on a building, then falling off.  If such a circumstance change begins, characters having an advantage that “ends when the situation radically changes” may exercise it one final time, or relinquish it and forfeit the advantage at their option.