Considering making a hack for Destiny, the wildly popular (and even more wildly aggravating) MMO shooter from Bungie. Three main classes, each with three subclasses, would make for nine distinct playbooks, plus 3 races with maybe different per-class bonuses.
Then you have all the special moves. Supers tracked by number of kills maybe? 2 kills gives you a grenade, five kills gives you your super? Stats from the game: Recovery, Armor, Agility, Strength, Discipline, Intellect. Perhaps there are no stat advances, but instead modifiers are tied to gear?
Not sure how to handle death and ghosts and whatnot. Wouldn’t consider moving forward until I got a solid grasp on that. People do die, for sure, including Guardians — but “respawning” is a thing, too… Perhaps death leaves the ghost unprotected, and unless the guardian can be revived quickly on the field they’ll be reborn, thanks to their ghost, in a new or altered form, or with some other change?
The game is kind of an empty place, but there’s so much lore there that it’s actually a really robust world. What say ye?
#destiny #destinyhack #pbta
Sounds pretty cool, I’d be worried about some copyright stuff, though. This is just for personal use? I play destiny, I think the lore is pretty cool, might be a neat thing. People coming up with their own lore. Would be neat if the psychic maelstrom had something to do with the ghosts and their history.
There are lots of hacks for copyrighted material, but so long as they’re personal use and non-profit, I don’t think it’s an issue – like fanfiction.
Yeah, there’s a ton of super cool lore that could be tapped, and potential for a lot more — which would allow for the collaboration between GM and players that I think is one of the shining cores of this system. The game is necessarily thin on that, but the lore hints at so much more that can be done, so many adventures, so many characters.
And I mean, there are wizards and knights! Sort of. Perfect for tabletop, right?
For sure, I just mean if you plan on publishing it or not is all.
For sure! I would say even appropriating it for FPS would be interesting too, AW as normal is pretty gritty for conflict. I can’t think of a hack that makes you pretty spongy with shields that regenerate and stuff. So would be pretty neat. Most interesting thing about it for me personally would be the Ghost stuff, their stories of finding guardians coming up in play could be super interesting.
I’ve seen some play with shields that I like, namely #impulsedrive, by Adrian Thoen. In it, your shields can suffer a bit of damage before discharging, and then you have to recharge them by, essentially, getting out of combat for a few seconds (and by rolling to see how successful that is). Powers, a number of moves, and even weapons overheating/needing to reload all work – amazingly – on that system.
I think that’d fit right in with Destiny without getting too crunchy for stat tracking.
And yeah, I’m fairly certain I could share and “publish” it online for free, but that would be something to check out just to be safe.
Wondering about social and more intellectual aspects. There’s plenty of lore for character interaction – things like settlements on the frontier, interacting with non-Guardians, etc. There’s also the solving of puzzles or mysteries.
But Guardians are different than regular folk: they’re undead, basically, and they have ghosts. Guardians don’t necessarily need to have, say, hacking knowhow, or knowledge on the world or the past (indeed, in-game the player Guardians are all centuries out of touch). Their ghosts do that work for them. The ghosts may even help in social situations, by interrogating or negotiating on the Guardians’ behalf.
So what to do with those Moves? “Parley,” “Spout Lore,” and the like. They’re definitely important in PbtA, and surely there needs to be some mechanical aspect to them, but they’re not really related to any of the main stats (intellect, for example, doesn’t mean in the game what you’d think, and there’s no charisma or social stat at all), and an argument could be made that Guardians, being space zombies with talking libraries floating around their heads, don’t need those things?
Yet, there’s Cayde, everybody’s favorite wisecracking Hunter Vanguard. Surely he’s an argument that Guardians are social creatures, who need to Parley and Spout Lore.
What to do, what to do…
I haven’t played much destiny but crafting MMOFPS’s into worthwhile tabletop games is an ambitious goal. I saw a 250 page halo guide that was “This gun does this, this gun does this” that was interesting…but had no GM section or adventure generator. Just stats for if you were a cop or a swat cop or a swat cop II or a grunt or a grunt XL or…
How tied do you want it to be to destiny? Maybe just use the framework of that FPS to make your own thing that’s loosely based on it but you make your own thing. Unless you really want it tied to the setting and all that.
I’d say work from basic gameplay (class, subclass, weapon type) and then build up the rest from the lore – the Grimoire Cards. There’s an amazing story there.
Too bad it wasn’t really in the game.
And I’d let Guardians keep coming back, just the same, over and over again. It’s part of what makes them different from everyone else.
From the class/subclass, I’d pick the most ‘iconic’ powers, the ones that are the most prominent and ‘effective’. A lot of the subclass power choices are modifiers to extant powers, and really don’t need to be translated to a tabletop game.
(I’d love to play in this – I’d finally get to play the character I wanted to from (almost) Day one – Fallen. The Eliksni are regal, and tragic. The Traveller abandoned them, and something destroyed their civilization. What is left scavenges along, dreaming of lost glory. No unending reinforcements, no dark gods, no fragments of light to bring them back to life. Just striving and death.)
.
Sounds like a really fun game idea, but maybe start with Dungeon World instead of Apocalypse World?Dungeon world has already been hacked into the direction of exploration/World discovery/loot (the latter of witch sounds fairly important to initial design ideas). It’d still take a lot of work, but less so maybe. Also if the players are expected to be killing large amounts of enemies, consider implementing “mook” rules, like those in Feng Shui or Fantasy Flight Star Wars
Translating faithfully to the video game experience seems misguided, but I agree the lore is good and this kind of apocalypse should be fun to explore. I mean, the plot fodder that the setting and racial divides provides sounds great.
But where I find this misguided is that the gameplay parts you seem so focused on, do not excite me. Regular spawning of grenades/special attacks for kills seems inconsequential to the roleplay experience. Also, the lax death penalty doesn’t sound very engaging. Heck, the source game’s death mechanics for guardians are par for the course for any first person shooter, and don’t seem married to the lore of being a guardian. Removing stat advances, also a negative change imho; interpreting the effect of equipment as ability add ons for characters might be better than doing what you describe. And I disagree that the 9 subclasses would make 9 “distinct” playbooks
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, as I think about it and try to distill what the game really is, what it means, so that I can then extrapolate those core elements into the table version, I have to decide what parts of the lore, and indeed the whole game, exist as functions of the game rather than legitimate and essential parts of the setting.
Example: ghosts and coming back are obviously the plot-reason to explain basic game respawning, which is standard for a shooter — but respawning is not standard for a tabletop game (tabletop games have the mechanics to deal with player death and reintroduction to the world that videogames don’t). However, it’s still an interesting idea, lore-wise, as a thing that makes them unique and grants them their power — so, what to keep, and what to change?
Likewise with powers and even classes. For a bit I was thinking about how you’d concoct rarity for engrams enemies drop and how the gun stats would be decided, but then I thought, “Really? In a PbtA game?” A huge part of gameplay in Destiny is designed around easily repeatable, grindable content that keeps you coming back for more. So the lore encases and envelops that: you have the cryptarch, and the Vanguard, and the Gunsmith, and they all have ranks, and there are 30 million collectible random items that function basically as currency for one thing or another.
If Destiny were a different kind of game – a single-player game, or an RPG – how would it be different, and what parts of the lore would be different? Would we have the cryptarch, and engrams? Not in the same way, I don’t think. While there’s very interesting, intriguing lore built around very simple and obvious gameplay systems, and that’s part of the game’s charm (a little bit of fluff dialogue from a vendor hints at huge backstories), I’m not so sure that is necessarily what destiny is.
And I agree, too, about the classes/subclasses: in-game, even between the three classes Guardians don’t feel very unique at all. That is, they’re all (necessarily, for balance) capable of the same things, with the differences being most distinct in supers, and even those… Stormcaller is Bladedancer, folks: you go ham for a little while. There’s overlap.
So it’s with all that in mind that I’m considering making a non-Destiny, high-fantasy sci-fi (hi-fi?) game instead, one which employs the same key, fun elements while drawing in a bit from elsewhere.
Brian Reynolds I think that would be better as well. Take what’s interesting and leave the rest. Just getting interesting FPS in with some of the intrinsic “special moves”, would be great. You could still have the lore just pitch the stuff that gets in the way of roleplaying.
Distilling the elements:
1. A single major bastion of humanity in a sea of danger from multiple races/species/enemies (possible outposts of humanity can be included).
2. Players stand apart as one of the only forces capable of fighting the overwhelming dangers. I’d like to keep the undying mechanic, but with caveats: when their bodies die, players are vulnerable, and whatever is left, their “ghost,” perhaps a soul or essence, must be protected and can return a body to life, but doing so always has long-reaching, altering consequences. This preserves the players’ differences from the rest of humanity, and ties into their powers.
3. Players’ gear and equipment takes on legendary status, like Excalibur (one of the original ideas fueling Destiny itself). Not only because of their heroic deeds, but because it is literally imbued with the magic space power that resides within them (in Destiny parlance, Light). They don’t fire ammo, they fire this power. Certain Moves and abilities tap this power. Leveling adds strengths and stats to this gear, which morphs and changes over time with the players — like the Dungeon World’s fighter’s signature weapon. This represents the loot mechanic in-game — there is legendary gear, and your stuff, too, is legendary, without worrying about a million little stats.
4. As the small, way-outnumbered, standalone force meant to take on the Enemy, players will go on quests and sorties to unique areas to fight tough, dangerous foes. As in Dungeon World, the primary backbone of the game is going into “dungeons,” taking out enemies, and returning triumphant. Just like Destiny, although there are, by the nature of the tabletop game, infinite dungeons, and not just a handful. (I made a joke at Destiny’s expense, haha)
5. Classes, and races, are traditional for fantasy RPG’s, but fueled or modified by sci-fi. So, warrior, rogue, mage, yes, but they should feel far more unique than in Destiny. Being whatever a warlock is should feel like belonging to a strange sect of studious tomekeepers guarding eldritch secrets. Rogues should feel like they can scout anywhere, get anywhere, and get back out, without dying, but also without always having to fight. Warriors should feel like they can go toe-to-toe in those fights, the stalwart protectors. But add other classes, too, common to fantasy – clerics? Monks? Berserkers? Beast tamers? All with their own sci-fi backing.
The Ghost-driven resurrection is absolutely essential to the setting, and the nature of the Guardians. It’s what makes them Guardians.
Do they change when they ‘die’ and return, over and over again. Kinda-sorta-maybe… 🙂
There’s a few grimoire bits that talk about Warlocks using it to learn more, and one particular Exo who does it, trying to regain the memories that he (and possibly everyone else) has lost, about fighting in the outer solar system…
Okay, so: Bastions are cities, outposts, or colonies where people eke out a mortal life, mostly safe from the dangers of the outside worlds. They can be large or small, few or many (I picture many, spread across the solar system, but the largest, in my mind, comprises the entire UK islands). Keeps are where the player characters are housed, often close to or a part of Bastions, but distinct and separate too (insert social stigma).
Players are Risen (or, Arisen, or, to look techy, how about “(a)Risen”), with different colloquial names based on race and culture. Gravers, gravewalkers, voidtouched, gravetouched, etc. They are “undying,” which means that when their bodies are killed, their spirits can repossess and rebuild their bodies, returning them to life, or they can replace their bodies. They do lose things in this act: memories, connection to humanity — in mechanical terms, they lose gear and moves. Haven’t decided how yet. As such, the bodies they inhabit are obviously not normal – shadowed eyes, glowy bits, etc. They stand out.
Races: human, autons (human consciousnesses that have been digitized and put into synthetic bodies. At first this was just for digital interfaces and battlebots, but the mind is too complex and had a hard time operating far simpler machinery without training, experience, and acclimation, so then lifelike organic systems were built so the digital minds could still function: respiratory systems, circulatory, digestive, etc. They breathe, have organs, eat, etc, just with synthetic systems. Identity, and wondering whether they are copies and what that means, are a big part of them).
In hitting classic fantasy races, also thinking something elven, but instead of something “fae” that was always on earth: humanoid with pointed ears, horns, fur, tails, slit-pupils/colored eyes (varying traits, player choice). Always identifiable by proportion: more elongated and slender, whether taller or shorter. Cat-people or demon-people or inbetween. Ash-skinned, charcoal-skinned, crimson. White hair, blue, green.
Then something more alien to fill the role of orcs. Call them irks, the descriptive word, irksome (irksome raiders incoming!). Can be player characters, but also make up an enemy faction. Insectoid, like Destiny’s fallen? Or lizardlike (dragonborn, saurian, argonian)? Or, to use Mass Effect as an example: Turian, or Krogan?
Enemy races include:
Ghouls. Corpses repurposed to fight for the dark forces, they combat bodily decay by growing new parts from biomass. Body harvesters, they “eat” the flesh of foes to carry back for use. Destiny’s Hive, their bodies, while rotten and frightful, may have armor that looks chitinous, bonelike, grown. They have their own religion, based around immortality. Religious interest in (a)Risen. Lower ranks are barely capable of cogent thought, with fresh corpses like zombies, but longer-“lived” ones, who’ve been supplemented with more growth, are smarter. They do have a hivelike mind connection, and there’s an unknown driving force that animates them.
Some kind of robots. Autons who found themselves so distant from their mortal kin eventually learned to create new digital consciousnesses, writing new forms of life instead of copying old ones. With this realization they splintered, began manufacturing purpose-built forms which come in all shapes and sizes. Governed by a multitude of programs, they see themselves as the only worthy lifeform, and the natural evolution of all solar life. Like vex/geth.
Irks. Militaristic, once-proud, they’ve been reduced to a shadow of their former selves thanks to the onslaught of robots and ghouls. Now scattered scavengers, each small faction vies for power by being the biggest or strongest of their clan. Fiercely territorial, they scrounge for scraps, their fear of losing what little they have preventing them from returning to the might they once had. If disparate clans could be united, they’d be a force to be reckoned with.
Classes/playbooks:
Less certain here. Thinking maybe standard fantasy-esque playbooks, with players having access to “ways.” Ways, like Way of Terra, Way of Sol, Way of Nyx, are focuses that manifest as unique powers. So you can pick the gunslinger playbook and build and use cool guns, and be a rogue, who follows the Way of Sol: gives you bonus powers related to the sun. Solar flare (flashbang grenades), burning, igniting, etc.
Slinger (rogue). Deft and dexterous. Gunslingers wield guns, bladeslingers wield swords and knives.
Knight (warrior). Martially skilled, devoted to a particular training. Soldier-esque, with guns, or melee, with swords and hammers and the like.
Mancer (mage). Astromancers study the math of the universe (astrophysics), writing, codifying, and memorizing complex algorithms to achieve spectacular results (spells).
Others? Monks? Summoners? Berserkers? Shadowy assassins? Dragoniers? I’m thinking, perhaps, of leaving the base playbooks with 3, then adding in Ways as special orders or careers – like how in Destiny the Hunters and the Warlocks are distinct orders, with their own codes and tenets and dynamics. After all, why couldn’t a Mancer also be a monk (dedicated to an ascetic order or way of life/study)? Each player would quickly grow unique, and you could have overlap in the bases (two knights in a group, for example, but that might have vastly different outlooks and skillsets).
sounds pretty cool, dude!
Ways or Paths are sort of like the manifestations of the energy that animates (a)Risen. Sun (Sol/Phoenix), Night, Psion (telekinesis/magnetism), electricity, cold (frost/rime/entropy), wisper (as in, summoner of wisps), ion/atom (radiation/nuclear), helix (dual tree between monkish martial discipline and rage-induced berserking – each ability to unlock is a binary choice: do I want this move or that move; all discipline, all rage, or a mix?), and time.
Each way/path (pathway?) has a grenade/crowd control move, a shield/protection move, a movement/mobility move, at least one other (imbuing weaponry or single-target or utility, depending), and a super. All are charge-based.
“When you pour your daylight into an orb and throw it at a target, roll+stat and discharge this move. It cannot be used again until you Recharge.”
Flip the card, and flip it back when you recharge. The super can only be unlocked when you have all the others on the path, and it can only be used when you have a full charge on all abilities.
Brian Reynolds I’m a fan of the card mechanics, can’t remember which game I saw had done it. But they had it where if you got injuries you flipped over your basic move for the version of it when hurt. Thought that was pretty neat.
Basic stats, called “ways,” represent the ways your character handles a situation. Since, in theory, (a)Risen don’t rely on literal strength or dexterity — their power is determined by the resurrective force in their body, ala Destiny’s Light — it’s more about how they choose to employ that force. War, Wise, Wit, Will, and one more that I can’t think of a W word for besides Weird (don’t like weird, but if I can’t get a good word I’ll think of other, non-w words for the rest).
Way of War: for when you go hard and violent. Attacking, both shooting and melee, as well as intimidating.
Way of Wise: For when you use thought and intelligence to examine, learn, or deduce, or to make another dispassionate, calculating decision. Lining up a perfect shot, spouting lore, reading a situation, object, or even person.
Way of Wit: For when you use cleverness and quick thinking. Manipulation, lying, or fast reflexes.
Way of Will: for when you are tough and strong. Used to recover and recharge, to defend and endure, and to outlast and survive when you have nothing else.
Way of Weird: The actual measure of your resurrective (a)Risen power, this stat is used for using powers, resurrecting, and understanding alien concepts or ideas different from your own.
I think the corruptive, dark force in the solar system will be called Night or Nightfall (Nightfall is coming), with the light force being called Daylight. Then, maybe if they mix in some cool way, it could be daynight.