This thread is, of course, linked to "If you were a witch..." in the General section. Here's one possible application of that whole thing, in a very bare form for now. Go grab the files attached to the post if you want to play with it. What follows are explanations on how it (will) works.
You're a witch living in the woods, near a lake and, for now, you have no particular obligation. You start in your cabin (I'm telling you because it's not written anywhere >.>...) where you can "Edit your witch" to make your very own little witch. It's all about stats for now.
++++ Attributes and their uses
* Body : Chopping wood, climbing, catching something, crafting, carrying heavy stuff, fatigue.
* Brains : Gathering, healing, brewing, cooking, learning/studying
* Spirit : Magic, spotting/searching, tests of will
* Charisma : tame animals, persuade/bluff/intimidate people, get good prices
You have 8 points to distribute among these. 5 is an average value, 10 would be quite exceptional and 1 would suck badly. For this "demo", charisma won't be of any use.
Then, you can click on "Skills".
+++ Witch skills
* Search : used to look for things and spot them. Ingredients and animals for example.
* Gather : used to gather ingredients (plants, ore, eggs, ...)
* Craft : used to create trinkets from various items. Necklaces, rings, amulets, ...
* Heal : used to heal wounds and sicknesses, wether through science or magic.
* Brew : used to make potions out of ingredients
* Cook : used to turn ingredients into delicious meals (your mileage may vary)
* Plants : your knowledge about plants. Useful to search and gather them.
* Animals : your knowledge of animals. Useful to spot, hunt them or heal them.
* Ores : your knowledge about ores. Useful to search and mine them
* Humans : your knowledge of humans. Useful in social exchanges and to heal them.
* Enchant : used to learn and cast enchanting spells (call rain, boil water, strong body, ...)
* Summon : used to summon spirits to help you, or to banish trickster spirits.
* Divine : used to divine the past, the present and the future. What's the weather tomorrow?
* Persuade : your simple presence could be enough to make people help you. A smile goes a long way.
* Bluff : how good are you at pretending and telling lies? You just say what people want to hear.
* Intimidate : heard about that witch who eats raw human brains for dessert? Better not bother her.
* Empathy : how much can you feel the true motives of people? Do people naturally trust you?
20 points to distribute among skills.
Only a very few are implemented right now : Search, Gather, Plants. This is to spur the imagination
. A starting witch should probably focus on a few of these with scores of 3 or 4 (which could be seen as a natural talent in a domain). This is really where you define what your witch is good at and will determine her type. A witch with high Body, a good knowledge of Animals and Intimidate could be a huntress, protecting the forest, keeping an eye on the balance of all species. A witch with high Brains, points into Enchant, Summon and Divine and Craft could be an intellectual witch, enchanting artifacts for her living. Another witch with good Brains and Spirit, as well as knowledge about plants and ores and a knack for brewing could make a fine alchemist. With some Persuade and Bluff and some Charisma to help, she could even make quite some gold by selling potions at decent prices.
Of course, for now, it's all about being a gatherer, so go with Search, Gather and Plants. Or don't, and see how hard it might be to gather when your witch was not cut for it
+++ The current demo
Once you're done creating your witch (you can still edit her by going to her cabin, for testing purpose), click OK till you're back at the cabin. Then Go Outside. Gather Ingredients, and pick one of the list.
+++ How gathering works
It has two phases. First, you must actually find the ingredient. Some ingredients might be all over the place or at least very easy to spot (bright colors). Others might be under other plants, high up in the trees, or simply naturally camouflaged by having common colors.
The game makes a simulated dice roll (20 sided die or 'd20') and adds various bonuses. If it's equal of higher than a set difficulty rating, you found the ingredient.
When searching for plants, it's your Search skill + Plants skill + Spirit bonus. Spirit is an attribute and an attribute bonus is simply the difference with the average value, 5. If you have a Spirit of 6, your Spirit bonus is +1. If your Spirit is 3, your Spirit bonus is -2 (which makes it a malus).
Example : Melane is a bright young girl with more wisdom and senses than is usual for her age. She has a Spirit of 8, which makes a bonus of +3. She has learned a lot about plants and how to brew them into potions from her own mother.
She has Plants(4), Brew(3), Search(3), Gather(4) (and a few other skills...).
Melane is looking for clovers to make a Fox's Wit potion that will help her understand a complex magic book she has been reading lately. Clovers are quite common in this forest, going with a Search difficulty rating of 10.
Melane rolls a 7. We add Search, Plants and Spirit bonus : 3 + 4 + 3 = 10. 7+10 = 17. This is over the difficulty rating of 10, which means Melane quickly found a patch of clovers near a large tree.
Now to actually gather these. They're really not difficult to pick up but there's a trick to avoiding them drying too fast. Anyway, this is represent by a Gather difficulty rating of 10 (yes, same value as searching). Ratings of 10 represent something quite easy to pick up for someone who knows the essential of his job. Someone who has no particular knowledge nor natural abilities for this will still have a 50% chance of getting it right.
Gather roll : d20 + Gather + Plants + Brains bonus.
We're testing the Brains attribute here, so let's say Melane has 5 points, giving no particular bonus. Melane might be wise and alert, she is not dumb nor clever. An average girl in that regard.
Melane rolls a 5. 5 + 4 + 4 + 0 = 13. This is still enough to gather clovers, in spite of a bad roll and no natural abilities. Melane can thank her training and knowledge for this.
There! Melane has gathered 1 unit of clover, and it goes in her Inventory.
Now, you can compare what happened to Melane to what happens to you in the demo. You'll get the detail of the rolls and bonuses each time to try to gather an ingredient. You'll also hear a sound that lets you know if it worked or not. Looking at the bright blue panel, you'll be able to know what happened : did you even find the ingredient? Did you fail at gathering it? Or did everything go well?
+++ Inventory
The "Ingredients" button on the top left of the screen allows you to see how much of each ingredient you've gathered. Sadly, you won't be able to use them in the demo. But in theory, you could use these for brewing or cooking, or maybe even as spell components... unless you decided to sell them (they may also be useful for healing).
+++ Fatigue
In the upper right corner, you'll also see your Fatigue points / Maximum. This is a way to represent the efforts spent and the passing of time. Searching costs 1 fatigue, Gathering another 1 point. If you fail to find an ingredient, only 1 point is consumed, since you only Searched, not Gathered.
When the maximum is reached (which is 25 + Body bonus x 2), it turns red to indicate you should go to bed.
NOTE : I messed up in the demo, the max fatigue is only 25+Body bonus :/
Also, in theory but not in the demo, going over that limit will hinder your skills. Going over the limit will also shift to the next day : you only recover your max fatigue by sleeping, so sleeping after going over means you'll start the next day with extra fatigue.
Example : Melane has average Body, no bonus, so her limit is 25. On the first day, she goes to sleep at 22 fatigue points. She recovers fully, starting the second day with 0 fatigue, ready for a full day. But this time, she goes to sleep at 28 fatigue. After sleeping, she starts with 3 fatigue.
The more days you spend going over the limit, the more likely you are to get sick.
(again, this is *not* in the demo. The fatigue meter is just there to see how it *would* work).
+++ Conclusion
Well, I think that's it. I'll edit the post if I've missed anything ^^;...
I'm approaching this with tabletop RPGs in mind (hence the dice rolls) because it forces me to make a simple (eh ^^;...) system, which means it should be easier to code and balance. Players actually won't need to know any of this to play as everything will be done under the hood (you won't see the details of the rolls, just flavor text saying if it worked or not). If players *are* interested, though, if only to distribute points efficiently, it's possible there'll be an option to show the rolls.
So... I'd like to know if this looks like something people would play and if there are any comments about the skills and such. It's all *very* in progress, skills might be added/removed/merged, formulas could change, etc...
