Well, yesterday I had a rather interesting idea. I was recently introduced to Mutants and Masterminds (for those who don't know it: A open gaming licence based, class-less d20 superhero roleplaying game with incredible freedom in character creation, as it is entirely point based and allows almost everything)
One of my players complained to me that, in order to create a cool (for this player cool means wacky, exotic, totally insane and nearly unplayable) character in Planescape, he would have to go through a dozen books in search of templates, spells, feats and races.
Then it dawned to me: Wouldnt a slightly houseruled M&M rulesystem in the low power levels be very cool for Planescape? Finally my players can play their half-fiend/half-illithid chameleon-kobold binder-psions from the plane of dust in a system that allows all kinds of wacky stuff and makes character creation much simpler for stuff like that.
What do you think? Is M&M a good system for Planescape?
Planescape in M&M
Hmm. The equipment is indeed a problem. I think a possible solution would be to hand out mundane equipment without assigning points to it and just charge a point cost for magical items.
As for the episodic adventuring: I think that short one-shot adventures would work. Leveling up could just be achieved by awarding a few power points instead of experience points, I don't think that power level should be changed to often.
What would be a good PL to start? Around power level 3 to 5 for level one in DnD?
The biggest problem at the moment seems to be that my players aren't interested. :cry: They love their DnD, even though they complain all the time that the system is to restricting. Ah, well. Who's ever going to understand players. Perhaps I should try this idea in an online game.
This idea is getting more and more intriguing. Just to ask around a little: Are there any people on this forum who know both M&M and Planescape and are also willing to try the combination in an online game? I think I'd just start with one of the old premade adventures, since I'd have enough to do with the conversion of characters and monsters alone.
Well, I know plenty of Planescape and I've been looking to get into another game, but my knowledge of M&M is a little more limited. I've flipped through the source book and I have a pretty good grasp of the concepts, but I've never played in an actual game. If that's good enough for you though, count me in.
Nice to have you on board. To be totally honest: I only played in two campaigns and only played a bit with the rules but never got to master a game in it. Have some expirience as a DM in DnD, though, so it should work. Escecially in a forum game where I have lots of time.
You're absolutely right about the wonders of a classless system for playing funky character concepts. As for leveling up, to be honest I wouldn't worry about it too much; systems that measure characters by points instead of levels tend to let players grow organically as they accumulate points, rather than in discrete leaps and bounds. Equipment especially isn't that big a deal -- the monsters don't jump up in levels either, so you can have a character who sticks by his trusty bullwhip or the family's heirloom enchanted sword, rather than having to trade up every other adventure just to keep pace with the challenges.
If you're interested in a classless system, I strongly recommend Steve Jackson Games' GURPS system. In fact, a poster on these boards (rknop) had a good bit of a GURPS conversion for Planescape a while back, much of which is up at http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/Omar/planescape/gurps/ . Now, since then GURPS has come out with 4th Edition, but not a lot has changed, and I'd be willing to pitch in with some parts of a conversion. Presently on the GURPS forums (entirely free to poke around) there are a number of players that also do d20, and I know several of us are interested in Planescape: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=28276 is a draft of a hound archon template, http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=19988 did up Morte from Torment, etc.
If your players are worried about poking through a lot of books to write up a character in such a system, two things:
1.) It's worth it. It's so worth it. Only a character system that's concept-oriented rather than class-oriented can let you really play a person rather than a set of menu options.
For example, http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/Josef.pdf is my healer mage for a campaign I was aiming at. There's a lot of setting specifics there, but you can see that he's got a lot of personality: he's an abolitionist, active in politics, he's a member of the Jewish community, etc.
He's a starting character. So's Jack, a scout whom I must admit I designed to break d20 tropes: http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/Jack.pdf .
For a whopping high-powered character, check out my cute little necromancer/healer, Lara: http://earl.of.sandwich.net/Characters/Lara-Cabal.pdf . She's shy, wears glasses, studies a lot, and can rip your heart out of your chest like that guy in Indiana Jones. Tee hee!
2.) I don't know M&M very well (wasn't that originally for Palladium anyway?), but I do know that this is what you need for GURPS:
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG31-0004 is GURPS Lite 4e. It's like the SRD, except that starting characters aren't, uh, unplayably crippled. It's not the entirety of the GURPS system -- no magery or psi abilities -- but you can make an entirely competent mundane, such as a fighter, thief, or social character.
And that's it. The rest is add-ons and more options. Such as:
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0201 (also free -- and there's more freebies at e23, too, for d20 as well as GURPS) gives you a taste of what's in the full GURPS Basic Set for characters. This is the entire skills list for the system, at least their names, organized by category -- wanna make a smooth-talking superspy? A daredevil acrobat? An exotic weapons expert? Here's your first tool.
The actual Basic Set gives you all this and the ability to create a mage, psi, nonhuman (and I do mean nonhuman -- you can play a bodiless spirit, a machine, a celestial, an elemental... anything you and the GM can write up!), or combination of these, and a lot of other slots as well. There are a wide range of example characters -- a martial artist, an elven archer, a combat robot, a vampire...
GURPS Magic extends the magic system with more spells and a few variant magical systems. It's got the alchemy rules that Josef uses.
GURPS Powers provides a book full of new Advantages ("feats," you might say, but they're much broader in their applicability) -- psi powers, martial arts wuxia, superpowers, alien weirdness, high-tech gadgetry, magical oomph, allies from demons to angels...
GURPS Fantasy and Infinite Worlds are mainly books for the GM, and talk about campaign and setting design. Infinite Worlds is so Planescape-compatible it's unreal. (I mean, hello? Infinite worlds! ^_^ )
One reason I like GURPS is that it's extraordinarily well-researched and extensively playtested. A point-based system needs to come with a guarantee that powers and disadvantages a player buys are worth the points they pay (or get), and are balanced against other traits in the system. GURPS bases its combat system on real-world damage kinetics (if you're not afraid of a little math, here's the actual physics they use for it, holy cow: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=377817&postcount=16 ) and its game-design books, and published settings, are based on serious research. Josef's personality and community are playable because the setting book for that setting (GURPS Banestorm) contains extensive information on medieval Judaism, even including its notions of magic and science, and this information is integrated into the way the communities are set up in the world.
Personally, I'd play GURPS Planescape in a heartbeat. I'd drop other games I'm in to make room for it, if there were a good solid level of commitment to the project.
Well, quite frankly, while this really sounds interesting, I don't really have the time nor the muse to learn the rules of another system at the moment, because I just learned M&M a while ago and have semester end tests coming up in two months. So, while I have the time to start another adventure in a system that I already know, even though it might take some conversion, I don't have the time to learn a new system from scrap, great as it may be. I'll gladly take a look at gurps in a year or two, though.
*Ahem*
*Ahem*
Not yours, Duckluck. A non-Planescape game. :^)
Well, Duckluck, it seems like only you are willing to play at the moment. I'll put a prober reqruitement thread up, let's see if someone else is coming.
I think it would work fine, espcially considering how incredibly adaptible the M&M is. The biggest obstacle would probably be re-stating monsters, characters, and so forth to work in a HP-less environment. That and you'd probably have to adapt the way you use equipment to fit M&M's different set up.
Remember that M&M is designed for episodic adventuring. You fight a villain and do some cool stuff for a session or two and then go back and do a different adventure with the exact same character you started with, including equipment. You could either choose to increase the power-level every few sessions to simulate leveling up and buying new stuff, or you could just explain to your players that in M&M your abilities and equipment is fairly static and expect them to deal. It could be a rocky transition, but it's still very doable.
Good luck, and if you do try it, let us know how it does. I for one am pretty intrigued.