The FARAD System: Survive, Live, Thrive.
The title and tagline of this roleplaying game system that I'm working on. Why do I have that for it currently? Originally it was called Myths and Legends for a few reasons before changing to its current name. Why MaL in the first place? Myths are imaginary fictitious stories, typically in some way involving powers beyond the ken of mortal man. Legends are stories that are unverifiable and handed down, but widely believed as historical or fact, much like urban legends are today. The story of the escaped psych ward patient with the hook for a hand? Completely fictional, but it spreads like wildfire and gets told around campfires across the nation and possibly further than that even. Legends are things that are still possible, even if completely false, and therefore believable and hard to refute without dissection of the subject matter in detail. So the title of the system upfront describes the sort of stories it is designed to deal with; the purely fantasy impossibilities of myth and the hard-rooted implausible but possible legends. Put more simply, magic and science, fiction and fact, lies and truth. Stories told by NPCs around the campfire within the game may describe details of a character's heroics or villainy and spread their legend, or be scoffed at as pure myth for things that they cannot possibly believe to be true. Then said character steps into their midst at the same time as a slobbering alien and an undead knight, striking both down and saying they didn't believe the stories either, before spinning a yarn of their own adventures. Wait. What? Exactly.
Before I get into that, the tagline: Survive, Live, Thrive. These are the tenants of the different levels of life and civilization as commonly described to me in school. To survive is simply to remain alive, to do that much and little else, constantly struggling. Depending on a player's preferences, character selection and starting location, they might do exactly that for some time, as do several of the NPCs withing the game system. To live is little better, surviving, but taking some measure of enjoyment of the simplest pleasures in life, the breaks in the monotony, the wonder and amazement of beauty around oneself and appreciation for it. Most people in life and within the game's system do this. To thrive, however, is to go far beyond the necessities of survival and the joys of life to have excess and continued growth. The rich, the ambitious, the strategic, these sorts of people and some others as well, tend to have this sort of lifestyle. I chose this tagline, which may change at a later date, to get to the gist of varying levels of play and characterization. Not every hero is world-renowned, some are just the hero to the fellow homeless under the bridge they cleared a troll out from under. Not every villain is a millionaire hating those less fortunate, some are simply another jealous individual seeing how much more food is given in appreciation to the hero and resentment grows to betrayal as the villain brings the troll's siblings and cousins back to the bridge to stomp on the hero and drive them onto their quest. Sure, it's a microcosm and extraordinarily unlikely the majority of players will want that sort of character, but the beauty of the system as I have it planned is not that every player has to start out that low, but that they can. The diverse range of possibility doesn't force players into certain roles, it allows statistical probability of common desired roles to happen, but those that want to be strange, quirky, weird, unusual, unique or just plain different can be.
Let's go back to the campfire with the alien and undead knight. This brings another aspect of the system that ties directly in to the variety of characters a player can choose to be. The entire system is comprised of checks and balances, but designed to freely allow cross-genre play and interesting little situations exactly like that and the troll bridge. It is designed for the scale of a singular small area for a player to choose to stay within, or for one to traverse galaxies as part of an intergalactic species or being brought by said species as a visitor, stowaway, slave or other reasonable hitchhiker, willing or not. Which brings me to some of the goals of this system.
- FARAD should be easy to use.
- Whether on pen and paper tabletop or online within interlinking servers, no singular player should have to have all of the rules memorized for their actions to be attempted, though certain things such as trying to catch an elephant as a normal human without enhancement of magic, technology or other means will be flattened by it. Sometimes, rocks fall, but on the average, the system should balance things out to give savvy players a chance to inspect an area ahead of time to notice weak foundations, cracks in cavern tunnels, and boulders sitting on the slanted surfaces of a valley. Rocks should not simply fall in the middle of meadows to squash a player without reason.
- FARAD is broad-spectrum roleplay.
- It is designed for ease of use in a table-top setting either with the aid of pen and paper or digital devices for keeping track of plot advancement and the like, as well as being able to be easily utilized for online game sessions in textual form, or even graphically if it develops that far. Unlike so many RPG systems, FARAD is designed to function for levels of technology, magic and other elements of gameplay in levels ranging from prehistoric wizards, to esper con-artists picking marks in industrious cities, to escaping the confines of the galaxy. No matter the style of sub-genre and crossbreeding of sub-genres, FARAD should be able to hold up to the rigors of play.
- FARAD is open-table designed.
- Many rpg systems are designed to only be able to be operated by one storycrafter, or Game Master, and one set of players per world, never interacting to one another unless the GM (Game Master) intentionally creates a bridge between the two worlds in the form of temporary alliances, or even dimensional travel in some cases. Some teams may group together with the intent of going on adventures together only to be hindered or weakened when one key part of their team is unable to attend. FARAD seeks a different route. While GMs may choose to run their games with only one consistent group of friends, they now will have an easy way of letting players still continue to play with their games when one of their teammates is missing, or utilize the system in other ways. For example, if one GM wants to let a friend learn the system while playing on their own, they can teach them how to play with one-on-one game sessions and later incorporate that character's actions and reactions into the game sessions with other players, have players join and leave teams as desired without preventing gameplay. Should a group of GMs decide to operate different territories or different aspects of a shared set of game sessions, the system is also designed to be able to easily handle that as well. NPCs no longer need be stagnant and awaiting player adventurers to clear giant beetles out of their gardens if the players are otherwise distracted. They can give the job to other NPCs controlled by the GM, or to other players in a different session, or suffer the consequences of being unable to get aid in time. It's all up to the GMs on how best to utilize the nuances of the FARAD system, though they are all available with guidelines and tips to aid the GMs and their players. In the case of an computer version of this game, one could easily play solo against the system itself on the servers while surrounded by other players, or even run a local host for limited access, with the system balancing things so that their adventures in this 'alternate reality' can affect how their player does on the servers, albeit with limited transfer of certain items and the like to keep things balanced.
- FARAD is expansive.
- FARAD is made to later be expanded in increments so as to create more definition, levels of realism, and expressive distinction to each GM's arsenal on the paper version. While for the ease of player understanding and balance it is recommended to utilize the core books and additions with little deviation for the inexperienced GM, the FARAD system is made to allow utilization of homebrew creations so as to add spice and flair to game sessions. Wanting to add a new type of flower that releases toxic pollen into the air in a meadow? FARAD has templates to aid you. While the system will list a huge number of locations and sample data from continents, cities, villages, landmarks, shops and the like, no atlas or encyclopedia can contain the sum total of knowledge on a city, let alone a planet or beyond. For those that desire, it is easy to setup additional cities between ones listed in the system, or even to go further in some game sessions and continue to other planets or other realms of existence. On the computer version, the system would auto-balance homebrew inclusion of such things and fill in gaps in the design process, allowing local host game runs to operate with said creations, and giving platform for creators to submit their homebrew creations for review and possible inclusion (with both attribution and compensation to the creator) of said creations.
- FARAD is fractal and tree based.
- For those less versed in the terminology of gaming, trees are a process used by some games to develop skills, resources and other key aspects of gameplay. The root or trunk of a particular tree starts at one point with no prerequisites, and further abilities require that root or trunk, and possibly other prior forks or interconnecting branches from other trees. For example, a fire spell that utilizes a punch to deliver it would require a player be able to use magic, know how to cast the simplest of fire magic, and be able to punch. A character that was a floating skull probably couldn't cast it, but might be able to cast something akin to a headbutt that dispenses flames onto the bearer of the attack. Yes, FARAD has starter classes that define which root abilities a player's character has, but if a player wants to develop skills outside of their normal class, they can if they first develop all prerequisites to it. Now, fractals, on the other hand, are patterns that repeat themselves infinitely in simplicity but appear extraordinarily complex from a distant perspective. Take, for example, a nautilus seashell. It curves in a spiral with segmented sections getting smaller and smaller, or taken from the origin, larger and larger as it expands. Each generation of the shell's expansion blocks the older segment to strengthen its form. In the case of FARAD, a town may slowly expand itself outward, with the various interactions of NPCs with each other, with players, and with players interacting with each other, growing with complexity and detail with every successive day, slowly at first, but expanding more rapidly the larger it grows. Conversely, the more a player interacts with an individual NPC, the more detail they should be able to notice in their characterization.
- FARAD uses varied experience types.
- Experience points are something a player gains by the actions of their characters. Most rpg games have them in some way or another, and some other games have them as well, even if they aren't spendable and are instead just for keeping score. In a lot of RPGs, combat gives experience which can be spent on improving abilities and skills involved with further combat, leveling a player up. In others, experience is general and used for any ability or skill, combat or otherwise. Some even let the GM or system itself give experience for interactions with certain NPCs or playing the role of a character so closely in minute detail. FARAD has all three. Combat experience comes from being in combat or sparring, and is used to improve one's combat abilities and skills. Roleplay experience improves skills and abilities that deal with aspects of the game outside of combat. General experience is used to track when a character levels up, as well as being able to spend on either type of ability or those that cross types.
- FARAD has checks and balances
- FARAD has science and magic, as well as many other aspects of gameplay, that must be balanced. In the system, levels of technology, magic and pollution balance one another in varied locations to give a wide variety of effects to gameplay. More on that in another post to give it proper detail.
- FARAD is constantly active.
- Even if a player is gone from the table, the GM--or the system itself in the case of the computer version--can extrapolate out what a character spent its time doing while its player was away from the game, and the character might improve on its own due to the logic of the open-table system that allows NPCs to do the same thing. If a cavernous maze gets cleared out by adventurers, other monsters might move back in if it is left unguarded, providing a different challenge the next time they or other character returns.
- FARAD is meant to be explored and populated.
- The places within FARAD are designed to be explored, rewarding players with new locations, new foes, possible random finds, secrets, hidden quests, wandering traders and other NPCs, other players, encampments, homes, towns, cities and civilizations. Players and NPCs alike work with the space of the game to build or purchase their own living space or multiple dwellings, with rewards of shelter, storage space and other purposes as a result. But players should be aware that without proper security measures most places can be broken into!
That said, M.R.Maloney of Cracked Sky Games, signing off on this introduction to FARAD.
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