Rolemaster and Juncture Points

Two dissimilar ideas:

1. Rolemaster had its famous hit location charts which were horribly destructive, and very descriptive. One reason is that many GM's find it hard to come up with interesting ways to describe attacks.

It is sad, but many GM's resort to 'you hit him with your sword'.

You could say that this is not necessary. That the GM if he really wants to could produce this, but I've seen GM struggle to produce any small amount of color. And most GM's I've seen don't have hardly any color.

Its not really that hard to get used to saying things like 'you jink left, but too slowly, and the bullet burns across your ribs'. A small example, and a little help may be all that's needed. Add in some practise, and most GM's should be able to make this a natural part of their repertoire, something that doesn't hardly require effort anymore.

Thus Multiverser needs some GM Aid, like a table, in this regard.

Now it is true that most players seem satisfied with less, but a well-done, but not overwrought and time wasting description of attacks seems preferable to the same players. Thus one is forced to chooe: same old slightly stale Wonder Bread, or a nice, fresh baguette from the bakery?

2. The Juncture Point is totally dissimilar. It allows the player to quickly hit the major points of a world's history, and interact with them while 'skipping the boring parts' as Zelazny described his writing style.

You could cover the centuries of slow growth between major changes. Or.....

The player has a conflict early in a world. He faces a sorceror or some odd tech. He wins, but the sorceror casts a spell to try to fling him into ethereal space next to the world as revenge.

The spell only partially works. Whenever there is a sufficiently dense tangle of world lines, the verser bumps against them, and is drawn back into the material world.

Another major conflict ensues. Possibly with the sorceror again who might be immortal, or might have been sleeping the centuries away.

Repeat and rinse over the millenia as the verser guides this world to a better design, and serves as the guardian angel of the planet.

Eventually the verser frees himself, or the end of the world comes.

One side note, this would allow the verser to see bias change in person.

Speaking as a referee, there are four reasons why I use less color of the sort you describe.

1. It is time consuming, particularly for smaller injuries that don't matter in the long term. It slows the already slow process of combat unnecessarily.
2. To a large degree, Gygax was right: hit points are not always identifiable injuries, but are often matters of fatigue, aches, using up your luck. That blow knocked you back a couple intensities on your damage value--but remember, damage value is a combination that includes will power, and thus part of what you are losing is the determination to keep going, and that is not something that lands on your right arm. The wounds are as much in your spirit as in your body.
3. I have many times had players argue with me that the wound I described could not have happened, because of their skill or their armor or the circumstances. They seem to think that if they can explain why the described injury could not have happened, they were not injured. Since the dice way they were injured, all this really means is I have to tell them, by fiat, that they are wrong, they were hurt that way, or I have to come up with some other description of an injury which is really just color in the first place to make it credible.
4. I find myself repeating myself.  I need to find ways to describe a lot of small injuries that are not going to impact the character's ability to keep fighting yet but are going to be noticeable in terms of damage accumulating. That means minor wounds here and there, mostly to torso and extremities (facial wounds are disfiguring and head wounds dangerous).  "You were injured" is sufficient, and avoids this complication.

The fourth point, I note, is not resolved by a chart, unless it is a particularly humongous chart. It also would have to cover ranges of damage against total damage value--three intensities against someone who can take eleven is very different from three intensities after reduction from someone who can take twenty-nine, and a chart is going to have a tough time describing that.

Thus the rule says that all injuries are general unless they are serious enough that they might be crippling, and in that case we roll for where the blow fell and whether it is crippling.

*****
I have run worlds in which versers get to see it at different points in history. You have seen the Vorgo worlds playtested here. Had Eric and David stayed with me as players, one of them would eventually have wound up in the world in which Adam is currently playing--which is the same vampire-infested world in which they fought in modern Philadelphia, only in Camelot. I run a similar multi-time story with Chronicles of Narnia, but I do not use it on the Web for copyright reasons.

I prefer to take players away from "the same world" and bring them back later, for a host of reasons. Chief among them is that a large part of what makes Multiverser fun is the variety of worlds, and even with the bias changes the same world is less different than a different world. I would not object to a scenario in which the villain sends the verser to another time in the same universe, but would prefer for that to have been the villains intent. I also don't like explanations of things that try to get too deep into the nature of the scriff and the connections between universes. These things are supposed to be very fluid, very undefined, and very uncontrolled. There is no such thing as a tangle of world lines. Scriff is like an ocean of oil in which universes float, never actually touching each other (because the viscosity of the scriff leaves at least a film between them when they bump), always changing their relationships. If the verser is knocked out of the world, he is in the scriff and can go anywhere. What causes him to return to the same world can never really be known or understood, and efforts to define it--well, ultimately, if the referee can define what causes a character to land in one world or another, the player can take control of it and determine where his character lands, and that is a choice that remains with the referee for a lot of very good reasons.

To borrow a thought from C. S. Lewis, Opheila dies not because Hamlet was too late nor because the branch was too weak, but because Shakespeare killed her. The verser goes where he goes because that's where the referee chooses to send him. The player can decide for himself whether it is random or whether it is controlled by some greater power or whether there is some causal science behind it, but he cannot know the answer to that, and the referee cannot impose an answer on the game, he can only run worlds he wants to run and let the player decide how that happens.

That is not to say that there cannot be a particular reason why a character has landed in a particular universe--but that reason should involve the fiat of a god or some similarly unpredictable event, and not a scientific explanation. Scientific explanations make scriff travel technological, and while there is technological scriff travel, the scriff is not part of the natural realm and cannot be a legitimate study of science and technology.

--M. J. Young

1. It doesn't take as much time once you get skilled at it...as the MV rules acknowledge with their time reductions for a skill use by a pro and an expert.
2. This is not what everyone who is playing is thinking. One should be cautious of broadly using special terms.
3. This does happen, but A)Tell your player to grow up, politely. B)Practise, practise, practise...if you want to improve, you gotta practise.
4. I've had this problem, and you can work through it. I have.

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I'm not suggesting the character be shoved into the scriff. I'm suggesting more out of phase/aethereal space/out of time/the shadows of reality than scriff. I also thought it was because the sorceror did something wrong, I guess you'd call it a somewhat beneficial botch.

I know you've done the Contingency worlds. I have written one...Doom of the Mech Empire has a Contingency World for what happens when the Mech Pilots cause the collapse of the Galactic Empire, and institute Star Feudalism.

This is clearly not a contingency world. And there are a number of stories which fit this format. The last one I read was A Book Dragon which had the dragon sleeping away the centuries between interesting encounters. Its an attempt to give a feel for the whole of history, and a chance to seriously shape a world over time.

And since we're not talking about scriff, I see no problem with worldlines. I personally see no problem with them with scriff as they are not necessarily a technological concept. Free will, cause and effect on a grand scale, and major decision points with far-reaching consequences are not generally tech bias areas.

And from the existence of smaller multiverses the existence of some multiple universal structures is a logical result.

Now I just need a set of major turning points in a fictional history, and some details about each.

MJ, regarding the damage charts. You once told me in a game that if I really wanted to know where I got hit, I would have to stop fighting for 30 seconds to check out the injury. During that 30 seconds, I would be defenseless. Forgive me if this sounds overly rude, but that's just stupid!!!! Humans have this thing, maybe you've heard of it, it's called a Central Nervous System. I would know immediately where I got hit, because I would feel the injury. There would be no 30 seconds where I checked my body out to determine the location of the injury, I would know in about the time it took my nervous system to send the signal to my brain. Sorry for being a smartass, but that really didn't make sense when you said it to me.

MJ's ruling can be categorized as a 'stunt' rather than a 'rule', at least by me. There are anonymous injuries, but such, it seems to me should be the rarity, the spice, the 'stunt' rather than the typical, the normal, the 'rule'.

This seems to be an attempt to limit labor which in and of itself is not bad. But in my view, its better to state such even with a 'covering rationalization'. Many players who might be outraged at injustice will acquiesce to 'this is a time-saving measure'.

I do not think that spreading confusion is a good idea.

But enough of slamming MJ's gm-ing decisions...

Historical juncture points...BTW, this is a crude sketch...

1. Montheism to Pantheons....Its early in the Creation, and Humanity has fallen in this world. For amusement, lets make the races Blue, Green, and Purple.

The Purple Prince, a mighty ruler, and sorceror gets into a disagreement with the Creator. He decides that he's going to bluff the Creator by teaching everyone Polytheism. This will doom them, and the love of the Creator will lead him to accede to the Sorceror's wishes.

The verser arrives to save a remnant of Monotheists from the rampaging secret police. There is a confrontation with a magic weapon that can doom the sorceror.

2. A couple thousand years later, the world is full of nasty, evil scum. There is a small village of decent people. The Sorceror is back. He thinks its time to cash in on his chips with the Creator.
The Creator is not bluffing, and the world ends in ice as a ice comet slams into Aterra.

The only ones that are saved are the few who went into the deep caves.

Naturally, the Sorceror tries to destroy these once he realizes Paradise is attacking Aterra with a comet. This is where the verser comes in to save the village.

3. The magic bias has declined, and bronze is yielding to steel in swords. The sorceror is weaker, but he still has potent magic. The tattered remnants of the bronze wielders flee before his conquering horde.

4. The First Prophet comes to bring the truth to the people, and to do some miracles. However, the Sorceror wants to kill the agent of the Monotheistic God. The verser has to protect the child as he grows, and as he works miracles, and finally watch him die a martyr.

5. The Kingdom of Steel has grown up, and it has found its natural kindly instincts reinforced by finding ancient readings of holy texts. Justice is being created, and so is Law. The Sorceror turns up to corrupt this rising monarchy into something horrible. His power has waned a good bit as the magic bias is down around 4@, but he has picked up some skill with a sword.

Okay, thats enough for now...

Yeah, you're right. Enough slamming MJ.

Eric, is this what you're trying to do with Music Wars beta?

What I'm trying to do with Music Wars beta is turn you into a successful game designer, and reap a good world design out of it, to boot.

Other than that, I don't understand the question.

No, I'm not really doing a Historical Juncture Point approach to MWalpha or beta. I have a few more ideas than just three or four.