Nuts and Bolts V (Character Creation)

• Atrributes

Str
Dex
Con
Int
Will
Per
Cha

Roll 3d6 for each

• Skills

You have 3 points to spend on skills. Each point represents a level. You may spend them in any combination. You could even place them all in the same skill, and start with it at 3. Whatever.
Sample Skill list,
Gambling
Climb
Track
Pick lock
Pick Pocket
Stealth
Spot
Listen
Ride
Swim
Balance
Intimidate
Charm
Haggle
Weapon (Pick one, such as Knife, pistol, rifle, or club)
Drive
Pilot
Boating
Brawling
Writing
Research
Artist
History
Science (pick one, such as chemistry, physics, or engineering)

• Special Ability

Special abilities are special abilities that not everyone has. Sometimes characters are a sort of natural savant when it comes to a skill. Or have a special power. Here is a sample list of a few.
Sharpshooter
Fast Reload
Quick Draw
Born behind the Wheel
Ace
Old Salt
Academic
Sprinter
Hard to Kill
Knock Out King
Eye for Detail
Photographic memory
Contacts
Duelist
Wealthy
Lucky
Jockey
Inspired
Combat Veteran
Mage

Characters may pick one special ability. They may pick a second, if they pick two disadvantages.

• The Rest

The rest is just the sundries. Name, age, sex, physical description, and equipment.

This is all very rough at the moment. I want to spin it about and see how it all shakes out.

As always comments welcome.

Nuts and Bolts IV (Sanity, or lack there of)

Horror/Fear/Sanity check
Some times people encounter an act of violence, or entity that floors them. Some thing truly horrific, weird, or strange. So seeing an angry savage dog wouldn't require it. But seeing an angry savage dog foaming at the mouth, the fur on its head slicked back by blood and gore, yes. Seeing someone shot, no. Finding a pile of corpses that have been machine gunned, yes. A group of people walking at night, no. Encountering the "Nightmarchers", yes. Reading about Kahōʻāliʻi, no. Encountering Kahōʻāliʻi, yes.
When making a check the character must roll under their Willpower. If successful, they have pulled themselves together and operate normally. If they fail they must runaway or stand frozen in horror. They also temporarily lose 1 willpower point till they have slept. Characters regenerate one point of temporarily lose will every time they sleep. So if they lose more than one in a day it takes days to regain them. Now if they a roll a 20 it is an automatic failure. In addition to the effects of a normal failure they also permanently lose one point of willpower, and gain a mental disorder.

(From here on out its a real rough draft. But thats the purpose of this to get it down. So I can look at it and mess with it more) roll 1d8 and consult the table
(Though I have a roll here. I think that this can be a good guide with out rolling as well.)

1	Psychosis
2-3	Phobia
4-6	Anxiety

Psychosis or Psychotic break the character suffers from abnormal social behavior and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and lack of motivation.

Phobia is an irrational fear of x. The phobia gained should have something to do with the experience that traumatizes the character. If attacked by a demon posses dog, one should not gain a fear of flying for example.

Anxiety is a grouping of stress related disorders. Suck as panic attacks, OCD, and PTSD. Roll randomly or pick one.

Now obviously this is all very rough as far as the mental disorders go. But its a good starting place.

(As always comments welcome)

Nuts and Bolts III (Or how do I shoot this mook in the face)

Combat
Lets face it, eventually your gonna have to punch some jackass in the face.
First we start with initiative. The order of the combat. This is determined by rolling a d20. Lowest acts first. Then you go up the line so to speak. Now if two opponents roll the same they act simultaneously. Both would act normally. Damage or other effect taking place after both have finished.
So an example.
Our character is jumped by two thugs outside of a gambling den. Initiative is rolled. Our man rolls a 5. Thug A rolls a 7, and Thug B rolls a 5. Both our character and Thug B act simultaneously. Both punch each other doing damage. Even though they both take damage neither assumes the appropriate penalties from the damage in the melee between them. Now we move to the next attack Thug A. Now our character suffers any penalties gains from the melee with Thug B.
Some examples of combat modifiers are as follows,
In hand to hand or melee combat the opponents positive dexterity bonus acts as a negative to the attackers to hit roll/attribute.
Light Haze -1 to hit
Thick fog -3 to hit
Darkness -6 to hit
Aiming for a specific body location
Head -5
Hand -6
Arm -4
Leg -3
Foot -5
Ranged combat
Point Blank +1
Short +/-0
Medium -2
Long -4
Extreme -6
Target has Cover
Partial -3
Full -6

Now damage. If a hit is successful your roll the appropriate dice as indicated for that weapon. This is subtracted from your characters hit point total. Once you have lost half your hit points (and every time you receive damage thereafter) you must make a willpower roll. If you fail you pass out till you make your willpower roll. You then must wait till the next round to make an action.
Any damage to the head you must make a willpower roll or be knocked out.

Armor reduces the amount of damage taken.

Automatic weapons
Short burst does x2 damage if successful
Long burst is -3 to hit and does x5 damage
If attacking multiple targets. Attacker must make successful attack roll as per usual. But the defender gets a chance to dodge. They must roll under the attackers roll or take normal damage.

(as always comments welcome)

Nuts and Bolts II (the meat of it)

OK, to the meat of it. Yeah I probably should finish out character creation. But that will have to wait a minute. Lets face it the mechanics are the biggest deal breakers right?
Tasks (ones that require a roll) are resolved by rolling a d20. It must be equal or under the appropriate attribute. Yeah a roll under system. I know that's a deal breaker some folks. I'm good with either. But your mileage may vary. The attribute may be modified by difficulty of the task or circumstance. For example the character has a dexterity of 14. They are picking an old skeleton key lock with proper tools so they get a bonus of +3. So they would have to roll a 17 or lower. Now the same character trying to pick a high security custom lock suffers a -3. So they would have to roll an 11. Besides difficulty other factors can effect things as well. So the same character attempting to pick the high security lock in a violent thunder storm would be an addition -3. So they would have to roll an 8 or lower.
Now skills modify the attribute as well. So referring to our example above say the character has a lock picking skill of +2. Using the storm example again. Instead of having to roll an 8 or lower. They would have to roll a 10 or lower.
Now regardless of skill or modifiers, a roll of a 20 is always a failure. While a roll of 1 is always a success.
Now combat uses the same unified mechanic. Having its own little quirks. But that's next time.

(as always comments welcome)

Nuts and Bolts

So the nut and bolts of it. I'm cooking up a system to use with my Hawaiian Noir game and more than likely my Empire game. So I figured I would start laying it out. Putting pen to paper as they say. Im going to start with the attributes. (Oh and as always, if not more so now. I welcome any kind of feedback) Its sort of old school, sorta not. It will be a unified system though. More on that later.

So the attributes,
Strength
Measure of a characters physical strength, and physical power
Dexterity
Represents the characters agility and manual dexterity
Constitution
Physical hardiness, how well a character deals with damage, disease, poison, and etc
Willpower
The measure of one mental strength and endurance. How well one deals with the adverse, weird, and madness
Perception
Represents a characters ability to perceive the world around them
Charisma
How well a character interacts with others

These attributes or stats are generated by rolling 3d6 for each of the attributes.
Depending on the number rolled it may generate an additional bonus, or penalty associated with that attribute. To be used in appropriate situations. (More on that later.)

3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
-3	-3	-2	-2	-1	-1	0	0	0	0	+1	+1	+2	+2	+3	+3

(The Table gets cut off but you get the idea)

Next time I will deal with skills and task resolution.

Whats it all about?

Hawaiian Noir, what is it all about?

It can be summed up in three basic concepts,

Hawaiian Paradise

Noir

Supernatural

OK, that's great. But what does that mean?

Its an exotic paradise. Warm weather, lush tropical setting, even a bit exotic. Beautiful beachs, humid jungle, and wild volcanoes.
But its also dark, gritty, slums, poverty, criminals, double crosses, murder, lost hope, and when things get bad they seem to turn even worse.
Then theres the dark other side. Things in the shadows. Corrupting magic. Spirits, and lore come over the veil to this side.

Its Red Harvest, Dark Passage, Kiss Me Deadly, Key Largo, and The Gun Runners. Combined with the supernatural, hawaiian folklore/mythology, spirits, corrupting magic, and madness.
Mixed with the Hawaiian Islands in the 1950's.

How much magic?

One of the considerations I have made about the Hawaiian Noir setting is how much magic? At first I was thinking balls out D&D/Weird Adventures level of magic. But I think I'm going to go with a more limited subtler level. Like CoC, where magic is unknown/thought not to be real by the vast majority of people. Its out there, and even a few in government know about it. Some governments secretly tried to harness it for their goals. But magic, and spirits are fickle things. It didn't always work out well. Certainly not enough to change the war let alone the outcome. More evil bent creatures, and such did have a heyday in the chaos though. Now that the world has returned to a relative calm. They have retreated back into the shadows. Weaving their conspiracies and plots to torment the earth.



Oh, as a side note.
Feel free to comment. Like it? Hate it? Whatever, feedback welcome.