Does anyone remember this?
Way back then I offered to write a game for you lab rats that was based on William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands. I don't imagine that you actually play my games, but in my pleasant dreams you are pouring over my hastily scrawled manuscripts with glee, and maybe occasionally, that is the case.
drunken dissociative topic change
So recently I was reading this. And I was thinking it might be really nice if there were some way to randomly create clusters using this system. In the Diaspora RPG, creating the setting, the cluster of star systems that the game takes place in, is not totally random. It is more of a collaborative process in which everyone at the table makes sense of a few dice rolls by giving individual systems a number of aspects. I thought it would be really cool if there were some sort of table, containing maybe 100 sci-fi setting conventions, things like "ringworld" or "desert planet", stock things that people think of when they think of sci-fi settings. It's too bad FATE doesn't use percentile dice.
drunken dissociative topic change
You could even use such a system for a Sliders (the TV show) style game, like Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rifts, Planescape, Everquest, or Alternity Tangents. Simply replace the sci-fi alien world aspects with sci-fi parallel earth aspects, stuff like "parallel PCs", "cro-magnum world", "nazi victory", "ice age", or "kaiju monsters". I might even be able to dig up files from something like 15 years ago of a sci-fi parallel dimension setting called La Bracup (pronounced Bra Shoop). The setting used Lojban because of the peculiar way in which Lojban words are structured, enabling speakers to describe directions that don't exist. It's too bad that there isn't some simple percentile based system that could benefit from having FATE 3 style aspects stuck onto it.
.ui .e'enai no'icai (Lojban for drunken dissociative topic change)
And now we get back to Erin's Universal Percentile System, which for some reason is written in my notes using the abbreviation U%S. How would I have pronounced that? Erin's system allowed for smooth scaling between vastly different values without totally removing the possibility of success, without a weird jump, and without the addition of any weird scale value rules. If an average dude has a strength of 11, then something 4 times as strong has a strength of 44. If they arm wrestled the average dude would have a 20% chance of winning. Your trait divided by the sum of your trait and whatever you're up against equals your chance of success. Easy as pie. The Universal Percentile System is so slick that it deserves to have different builds just like FUDGE.
.ui .e'enai no'icai (Lojban has a lot of words that function grammatically like the English word, "wow!" These three words are used to express, "happy!", "dudes, I am messed up," and "this is probably a disjointed topic change, but bear with me," respectively.)
So for the game Monstruwacan, which I will develop more fully on it's own book page, all characters will have 5 attributes, Bravery (to attack or be brave), Ingenuity (to notice opportunities and avoid attacks), Memory (to remember things or use or repair complicated devices), Discipline (to resist damage and endure hardship), and Compassion (to interact with other humans and human-like debased creatures or hold onto one's humanity in the face of soul warping otherness). Players roll 2d10 for each attribute and add 10 split up between those they wish they had rolled higher in. (Or just hand each player 65 points to split up.)
And each PCs will go through 5 life phases, like normal FATE phases or life paths in Burning Wheel. Phase 1, write down a few things the character learned as a child. Phase 2, write down a few things the character learned on his grand tour of the Last Redoubt. Phase 3, write down a few things the character learned doing some other job before he or she decided to become a monstruwacan. Phase 4, write down a few things the character learned while training to become a monstruwacan or learned while serving as a monstruwacan watching the monsters from the safety of the Last Redoubt. Phase 5, write down why the PC feels the need to leave the Last Redoubt to explore the night lands out among the monsters (can be more than one reason).
Lastly the GM should hand out 5 plot tokens or fate points or whatever we finally decide to call them. They can be used normally for compels or to evoke any of the things you've written on your character sheet, gaining a 10% greater chance of success when they apply. Players earn 5 more after a boss fight or in play whenever the GM uses a compel on a PC.
So at the beginning of the game, the character sheet should have 5 stats on it, and roughly ten other things like, "He learned he is stronger than most others," or "She learned the importance of teamwork," or "He learned how to generate the energy that forms the final boundary against the monsters of the night," or "She learned the real reason that none of the monsters fly." Oh, and the sheet should have 5 tokens sitting on it at the start of the game.
Most monsters would only get four attributes, cruelty, malice, cunning, and will, to attack, inflict, avoid and resist damage, respectively. Particularly manlike ab-humans and beast-men may be able to use human devices or demonstrate human compassion so they may also have memory or compassion. (The GM should decide that after rolling a few aspects for the creature. Monsters should probably be generated with some random system, like just roll percentile dice for each attribute and then roll percentile dice a few times to randomly pick a few aspects off of a table of random monster aspects, and the aspects could benefit the monsters or the players could compel the aspects normally. That way a player could compel the timeless or gargantuan watcher of the south to not notice a lone monstruwacan crawling past it.