Behemoth: Revelations

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 3:59 pm

That one's unofficial, Genius the Transgression.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 4:33 pm

Genius: the Transgression. It's actually better than most official nWoD games. It suffers from the fact that it uses nWoD mechanics (which suck), and a little bit from Roleplay/Rollplay syndrome, but I would definitely play a game of Transgression before I would play Awakening or Forsaken.

-Username17

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 8:36 pm

Thanks a lot!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:24 am

So basically it seems to me that whether your human is a priest of the monster, the pilot of he monster, a summoner of the monster, or transforms into the monster makes no difference at all. During the "human segments" of the game, you will play the human and during the monster segments of the game you will play the monster. And nothing in between will meet. So you have at least two character sheets.

Frankly, what system you use for human sized shenanigans doesn't really matter. It's not on the same scale as the monster combat, so there's no need to use the same system. Being a badass in human size is at most going to give some small bonus to some squad of infantry on the monster scale.

For the monsters, character "class" would be like shipping classes. You pick a basic chassis. Off the top of my head, the ones you need would include:

Quadriped (Giant Turtle, Giant Frog)
Dragon (Wings, Tail, Four Limbs)
Multi-headed Dragon (Wings, Two Limbs, Multiple Heads).
Humanoid (Ultraman, King Kong, Evangelion)
Tailed Humanoid (Godfuckingzilla)
Winged Insect (Mothra)
Wingless Insect (Them, Snare Beast)
Snake (Boa, Python, Caterpillars)
Bird (Two Legs, Wings)

That's nine classes. And that's before we get into different size classes, which you have mentioned wanting. But that's also a quandary. Why would anyone want to play the Pterodactyl Zord (Bird Chassis) when you can be fucking King Ghiddorah? Clearly there has to be some kind of cost/benefit analysis to being different shapes.

-Username17

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:09 am

Instead of classes, it might work better to start with a bare torso and add limbs to it. For example, adding a head costs something and gives you a bite attack and intelligence. Adding legs improves your move speed. Adding a tail improves your stability, gives you a slam attack, and looks awesome. And so on. You could assign abilities using some kind of point-buy system (GURPS), a slot-based system (DND feats), or some other resource scheme.

Using this system to answer your question: you play a basic Radioactive Fire Pterodactyl because only buying wings, a tail, a head, and vestigial legs leaves the rest of your budget available for a bitchin' heat beam. You don't play King Ghidorah because you simply don't have enough money to give all three of your heads lightning breath.

This system also lends itself nicely to battletech-style critical areas. Every chunk of your anatomy is explicitly linked to some set of abilities, so the effects of damage are immediately obvious. Furthermore, you could use the physical appearance of the limbs you're adding to both construct your crit layout and enforce realistic monster design. Assign every appendage a design, then make players plot their monsters out on graph paper during character construction. This both provides the mapping from hits to damage and it ensures that people don't buy 982735 arms. Plus, how many systems are out there that let your character portrait directly influence your character's mechanics?

Gnyahaha · Post by **Gnyahaha** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 1:48 pm

So, the first part of making a Behemoth is to decide on its structure.

Each body type has a certain point cot (BESM works for that) and the rest go to other body parts. The behemoth should get one schtick that goes with its Breed. For example, Godzilloid Behemoths should have fire breath. Tarrasquoids should have a carapace and Evangelion-types should have an inherrent proficiency with Behemoth weapons.

After the body type has been decided and the schtick has been given, the characters can add limbs or other parts to the body. New parts can be grown as the behemoth increases in power, up to a certain Structural Capacity. That means that the monster cannot have more limbs/heads etc than its body structure allows. That means that Godzilla can have up to two head but not more than four limbs, regardless of size.

Limbs inclube:
Extra arms
Tentacles
Armblades (oh yeah)
Wings
Secondary wings
Secondary tails
Extra heads

Organs include:
Extra sensory aparratus (antennae, eyes)
Radioactive fire gland (or freeze ray etc)
Extra Hearts
Umbra Detecting Brain
Extra Spines
Increased Muscle power
Carapace

Powers Include:
Regeneration
Dimensional Slide
Energy Form
Space/Umbral Flight
Mind Powers
Minion Generation

Powers will be linked to the organs, but the powers cost less if split between numerous organs. That means that you can buy breath weapon for both your heads at a lower cost, but it can only be fired from both heads. Should one head be cut off, then the power is no longer usable.

Human avatars of Behemoths are regular human beings but have half the armor and toughness as well as one power from the Behemoth. The avatar of godzilla is a tough motherfucker, wont go odwn when shot and can breathe fire. Hes not even close to godzilla though.

Behemoths must have weak points. Massive damage can take them down, but in monster movies, theres this one weakness that people use to turn it around in the end. During character creation, the players must decide on a body part (or more, for point whoring) which, if struck double the damage.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 6:22 pm

This is relevant to my interests. Specifically how to order certain parts of the Form part in FAR.

I've taken to dividing up Form powers 3 ways (innate, trained, transformed); with physical, cognizant and .... I'm not sure on the last, spiritual, karmic, meta-thought, and a few others are potential ideas.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 7:26 pm

Vebyast wrote:Instead of classes, it might work better to start with a bare torso and add limbs to it.

I am sceptical. If you do this, then there will be an "optimal" shape for each character concept, and it may or may not look cool. Better would be to pick a few cool shapes and make surethere are reason to use all of them, rather than letting the viable shapes be emergently generated from your mechanics and end up with degenerate octopus or caterpillar builds.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:11 pm

Orion wrote:
Vebyast wrote:Instead of classes, it might work better to start with a bare torso and add limbs to it.
I am sceptical. If you do this, then there will be an "optimal" shape for each character concept, and it may or may not look cool. Better would be to pick a few cool shapes and make surethere are reason to use all of them, rather than letting the viable shapes be emergently generated from your mechanics and end up with degenerate octopus or caterpillar builds.

Worse than that, the primary purpose of having the different body types is so that you can have hit location tables. At the point where you're buying body parts and shit, you're just adding an extra layer of confusion. The only real options are the ones that have hit location tables and damage charts done up. Making the players recalculate the costs of those different chassis setups each time instead of printing the costs on the hit charts is a waste of everyone's table time.

-Username17

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:04 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Worse than that, the primary purpose of having the different body types is so that you can have hit location tables. At the point where you're buying body parts and shit, you're just adding an extra layer of confusion. The only real options are the ones that have hit location tables and damage charts done up. Making the players recalculate the costs of those different chassis setups each time instead of printing the costs on the hit charts is a waste of everyone's table time.

-Username17

Possibly workaround-able? You could have card-based randomization rather than a hit location e.g. Ghidorah could have three "Head" cards in his location stack - shuffle them and opponent has to pick a location card after they do damage.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:23 am

CCarter wrote:
Possibly workaround-able? You could have card-based randomization rather than a hit location e.g. Ghidorah could have three "Head" cards in his location stack - shuffle them and opponent has to pick a location card after they do damage.

Not if you want facing to matter. And if you have shells and weakpoints and stuff, you do.

Fundamentally you need to have an actual set of tables for hit locations from different directions for each body plan that is available in game. Which means that each available body plan may as well have its own costs and special rules.

-Username17

Gnyahaha · Post by **Gnyahaha** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:29 am

The cards idea sounded Viable. If you determine it randomly like that, or with the roll of a die, you dont have to consider facing or other such bullcockey and make the game more complicated.

For example, a behemoth pup is built with, lets say, 100 structure points. The Humanoid structure costs 20 points and is proficient with Behemoth Weapons (10 points). It can hold up to 6 arms, at 5 points each. Wings cost 30 points (each rank of maneuverability past that costs 5 points), armor costs 5 per point of armor.

Thus, Durga, the Behemoth, six-armed and dangerous, comes at 100 points with basic armor.

Hit locations could be determined with 2d6. The player marks the cards as they are bought. Thus, basic creature sturcture is 1, arms are 2-7 etc.

Power in behemoths is located in organs. That means that you slap the power to a certain body part. If you roll 2d6 and determine that a certain part is hit, then it might hit the organ and temorarily disable the power.

Come to think of it, the system could run as a card game with minimal use of dice. You built the character with ;cards; and use dice to determine hit and hit locations.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:58 am

Yeah just putting it out there. Cards won't do anything complex since it makes all hit locations equally probable, and the only way to do facing effects is to let an attacker draw again if they happen to be on the left and accidentally hit the right hand side head on the first draw.

Another option might be that since the main benefit of a card system is to enable completely way-out body shapes, it could become just a sub-system for handling locations on the "what the hell is that?" Monster Body Plan type. That is, most monster chassis could have a hit location chart specific to them, rolling on a standard location chart, while something totally alien (for which no chart is applicable) could use location cards.

Gnyahaha wrote: Hit locations could be determined with 2d6. The player marks the cards as they are bought. Thus, basic creature sturcture is 1, arms are 2-7 etc.

Can't roll a "1" on 2d6 dude. I'm not quite sure how the system here would work, but I suspect working out hit location tables for individual characters depending on body plan is going to get fairly awkward. If you are doing that I'd suggest a single linear roll (d10 or d20 or d%) - the average rolls on 2d6 will cluster around 7, so the chance of hitting any given body part will be changing weirdly as you add extra parts.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:33 pm

You need to have facing if you intend to have weak points. There has to be tactics based on what locations you are presenting to your foes. Otherwise, the weak points are just "sometimes, randomly, you explode".

If you want to include hit locations, you need to be able to affect hit locations with tactical choices. And that means having different hit location tables depending upon tactical position. Sorry, it just does.

-Username17

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 2:33 am

FrankTrollman wrote:You need to have facing if you intend to have weak points. There has to be tactics based on what locations you are presenting to your foes. Otherwise, the weak points are just "sometimes, randomly, you explode".

If you want to include hit locations, you need to be able to affect hit locations with tactical choices. And that means having different hit location tables depending upon tactical position. Sorry, it just does.

-Username17

I agree with you on two of three. If your character is at all physically differentiated, you need to able to use your position to influence how people can hit you, and that means that you need facing. However, I'm not sure that you need literal tables depending on tactical positions. If your system has even a little bit of information about the physical placement of weak points, you can infer all of your targeting information at hit time without much difficulty.

For example, let's consider an extremely simple example. Draw a line down the middle of the picture you have of your BattleTech hit boxes. If the enemy is in the 90-degree arc in front of you, they can hit anything on the paper except rear torso. If they're in the 90-degree arc behind you, they can hit anything on the paper except front torso. If they're to your left, they can hit anything drawn on the left side of the paper, and they're to your right, they can hit anything drawn on the right side of the paper. Simple as that.

More than that would be difficult, still doable. For example, you could assign vulnerability arcs to various body parts. An arm is vulnerable in a 270-degree arc centered on the location it comes off the body. A head is vulnerable in 360 degrees. Eyes are vulnerable in a 90-degree arc straight ahead. It's still a table, but it's not a simple lookup, and is therefore far more compact and far easier to internalize and apply.

Gnyahaha · Post by **Gnyahaha** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:51 am

Is there a site where we can check out Battle Mech rules? Apparently they fit Behemoth (with a few tweaks) and Id like to check them out.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 12:27 am

Grab the classic battletech quick start rules from here:
http://classicbattletech.com/index.php? ... oads#Rules
Be aware that there are many issues with the btech rules, but if you limit it to the quickstart rules I think you should be fine. Btech quickly runs off the RNG, so try an avoid that trap by having a limited number of small increments to your to-hit numbers.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:28 pm

Yes, I am a necromancer, I don't care.

Just out of curiosity, how does Monsterpocalypse compare to Battletech as a core system to use in such an RPG?

bhu · Post by **bhu** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:37 pm

to op: You may wish to watch the newer Gamera series as a link between the giant monster and a human is heavily implied though not as well explored as I would've liked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e32GJ8HU_W0
1st movie it's implied but not explored much at all, but the mythos is set up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Lm0sn0wog
2nd suggests link allows person to direct gamera and lets him draw strength from her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sihlDBcSX5Y
3rd move has a different monster with a linked human

The dubs are GODAWFUL so watch it subtitled, the script is closer to the original with the subtitling. But the world setting is kind of similar to what you're proposing.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jan 21, 2013 3:30 pm

Wasnt someone making a wrestling rpg? King Kong made his debut wrestling a dinosaur, and Ultraman wrestles everything, perhaps it could be suitable for this.