allgeektout

[Note: This was written before the complete Lookouts run had ended up Penny-Arcade, so doesn't incorporate any but the first three comics.]

I have a pretty bad habit of working on everything I work on ever behind a brick wall, for a number of reasons, namely because a) I don’t like people seeing my work when it’s unfinished and b) I have a tendency to not finish anything (see: Tabula Rasa and The Handler’s Handbook, although I promise, I am still working on them!). As a mid-year resolution, however, (aka, I really needed a post), I’ve decided to put up some of my thoughts about what an RPG based off of the Penny-Arcade world of the Lookouts would be like.

This is all very rough, poorly formatted, and not all that well thought out. In addition, it takes obvious inspiration from many published RPGs, in particular World of Darkness, Mouse Guard (particularly interesting that I can even take inspiration from those, since I don’t have any books for them) and Savage Worlds.

THE CORE MECHANIC

• d6 Dice pool, count successes.
• 1-3 failure, 4-6 success
• Some kind of reward for all successes and/or 6s.

STATS

• Five stats, each with a maximum of five “dots” (because I felt like bubbling in dots on a character sheet when I came up with this).
• Point-buy, about 15-ish (?) points.
• Each stat has a submechanic dependent upon it, in order to prevent min-maxing.
• Stats are: Energy (Strength in other systems), Willpower, Friendliness (Charisma in other systems), Innocence (Sanity in other systems)

ENERGY

• Energy represents the Lookout’s capability to perform physical tasks.
• Sub-mechanic: Attacks are based on it? May need more

WILLPOWER

• Represents their capability to summon inner strength in difficult times.
• Sub-mechanic: Once per adventure (camping trip?) you can modify any dice roll by your Willpower pool. This reduces your pool by 1 (?) for the remainder of the trip.
• Needs to be something outside of the Willboost to make it useful, otherwise the -1 penalty is meaningless.

INNOCENCE

• Innocence is what separates a boy from a man; it is the goal of the Lookouts’ Masters to strip the child’s innocence away from them, turning him into a man capable of defending their village.
• Whenever you confront something frightening, or level up, you make an Innocence check. If you make no successes, then you lose one innocence dot (that can be redistributed?). If you make more failures than successes, than you automatically have one failure on your next check. Otherwise, everything remains the same.
• Certain conditions (such as something that the character is particularly afraid of) may penalize the Innocence check.

FRIENDLINESS

• Got nothing yet.

EXPERIENCE/LEVELING UP

• Instead of experience points, get “Merit Badges”
• Three to level up, and three or four levels to advance in rank (from “Kobold Scout” to “Phoenix Scout” for example).
• Include some ideas inside, including artwork. Encourage GM to come up with their own merit badges.
• Allows a more personalized form of experience; instead of “you get 1 xp”, it’s “you get the Merit Badge for Defeating Overwhelming Odds”.
• Also, each camping trip makes sure all surviving Lookouts gets at least one badge (like the Basilisk Badge)

MISC/TO DO

• GM known as the Troop Leader
• Figure out how the character advances
• Fifth ability score (maybe Dexterity-like?)
• Combat system
• Skills system (maybe different Lookouts specialize in different skills, like Tracking, so on)
• Should there be a class system?

So, if you managed to make it through those notes, tell me – what do you think? What changes should be made? Should all of my work be scrapped? And so on.

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