Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Hacking 13th Age with Tenra Bansho Zero and Numenera

Tenra Bansho Zero has an awesome mechanic: the aiki-kiai-karma system. Basically each character has a set of Fates that, should they play to them in ways that their fellow players deem as cool, they get an aiki chit, which they can use for character advancement. So I got an idea to hack it into 13th Age, which has only one flaw: no actual advancement system beyond hand-waving. Now, granted, this game is open for hacking by design intent, so I don't really see it as a flaw.

But I still wanna hack it.

So the system doesn't have Fates, and I've thought about having everyone write them up. I even devised a Destiny system that would set down major plot points over the entirety of the campaign. But it started looking a little rail-roady and besides, as Carpe pointed out, we've already got some free-form elements in 13th Age: Backgrounds and the One Unique Thing! So we're going to use 'em. But first, the actual rewards system.

First of all, you've got what're called Awesome Chits. Whenever you do things in-line with your 
Backgrounds and One Unique Thing that someone else likes they give you an Awesome Chit. Awesome Chits are used for a few things:

  1. Add +5 to any d20 roll, cumulative. If you spend 5 points on a d20 roll you get a critical success.
  2. Halve the incoming damage of an attack by spending a number of Awesome Chits equal to the damage dealt/10.
  3. Add 5 damage/tier per point spent, to a max of 3 points.
  4. At the end of the session spend the extra Awesome Chits to buy the Incremental Advances talked about in the Core Book. 5 Awesome Chits get you one Incremental Advance. 
Those are just some basic ideas for now. None of these ideas have been playtested, so I have no idea if they actually work, but I do know this: 
  1. A d20 is the swingiest dice out there, and sometimes you just need the extra oomph. And sometimes you just need a crit. Badly.
  2. Crits from the GM suck. I'd like to make them not as...awful.
  3. Sometimes the damage you roll just needs some help.
  4. I want an actual reward system in my RPGs.
S'yeah, comment let me know what you think!