BrikwaRPG- a version that's actually complete

[Colette]

BrikwaRPG:

Alright, so I have combined the various ideas around the forums (credit to IV's adventurer and silva's own unfinished BrikwaRPG) into a single BrikwaRPG system. So far this is the only “complete” version that I know of that includes stuff like leveling up and other rpg stuff, but by no means is it final. You guys can suggest stuff and add stuff to this.

Skill, Move, Armor, and Leveling Up:

The Limit:
The most important thing for an RPG minifig is their limit. A minifig’s limit is calculated by taking their skill, equating their dice with its number of sides, and adding any modifiers. For instance, a minifig with skill 1d8+1 would have a limit of (8) + (1) = 9. This is used to determine various characteristics of the minifig later on.

Skill and Leveling Up:
Level 1: 1d6
Level 2: 1d6 + 1
Level 3: 1d8
Level 4: 1d8 + 1
Level 5: 1d10

In order to level up, a minifig has to score twice its level number in kills. For example, a level 5 minifig with 1d10 skill would have to kill 10 minifigs. Knocking off hit points off of a structure or larger creation will yield 1 “kill” for every hit point lost.

Now normally this would require paper and pencil, but that would be boring, right? So I took the nova sword as an inspiration, and recommend that to keep track of levels and kills you stack 1x1 cylinders to keep track of levels, and 1x1 round plates to keep track of kills. When your character levels up, get rid of the “kills” plates, replace it with a 1x1 cylinder, and start over.

Move and Leveling Up:
Upgrading move is very simple- when you level up and your skill dice changes its number of sides, you gain one extra inch of move. So for instance, a minifig would start out with 5” of move and 1d6 skill, but 2 levels later when he receives a 1d8 as his skill, he will also upgrade to 6” of move, etc.

Armor and Leveling Up:
A minifig, who starts out with 1d6 armor, gains one point to armor (+1) for every level he gains, and +4 armor automatically converts to another d6 of armor.

Attributes:
Attributes consist of a character’s abilities, supernatural dice, and specializations. The total point cost of all of a character’s abilities, SD, and specializations must be under his/her limit. As a minifig levels up his limit also increases, thereby allowing him to purchase more abilities as he goes along. Of course, it is not mandatory to have any abilities at the beginning of a game.

Abilities:
Abilities are classified as those “extra” things a minifig is able to do, like piloting and stealth. They are probably better defined as the additional stuff you put on the back of stat cards.

If you want to use a home-brewed ability then for now the formula is (4+ its cp cost). For now I have assed all the normal abilities in the rulebook.

Piloting: +4 points cost, gains Piloting ability
Riding: +4 points cost, gains Riding ability
Mechanikal Aptitude: +6 points cost, gains Mechanikal Aptitude ability
Pathfinding: +5 points cost, gains Pathfinding ability
Stealth: +6 points cost, gains Stealth ability
Tracking: +5 points cost, gains Tracking ability
Gunnery: +6 points cost, gains Gunnery ability
Compensating: +6 points cost, gains Compensating (aka Heavy) ability
50% off Scouting 3-in-1 pack: +8 points cost, gains Pathfinding, Stealth, and Tracking abilities
Medikal Ability: Coming soon in the rulebook. Homebrew something for now.
Leadership: +7 points cost, gains Leadership ability. *Only one character in a party may have this ability. Gamemaster reserves the right to ban this ability at his discretion.

A good source of ideas for more abilities is IVHorseman’s Plastik Armory thread, although the bad thing is it doesn’t feature cp costs.

*At any point you may sell an attribute and use the points elsewhere (i.e if you had gunnery, but leveled up to level 5, then you could sell gunnery and get the Scouting 3-in-1 pack)

Supernatural Dice:
Supernatural dice are explained in this thread.

1d4: +3 points cost
1d6: +4 points cost
1d8: +5 points cost
1d10: +6 points cost
1d12: +7 points cost

Specialization:
Need to spend a few more points to fill up your limit? Specialization comes in here. You can upgrade your skill to a weapon for its equivalent in points cost, i.e a +1 specialization in pistols would cost 1 point. Subtracting your skill on other weapons subtracts from the point cost by an equivalent amount, i.e if caveman bob get’s +1 to using his club but -1 to everything else, then he incurs no additional points cost. Obviously the gamemaster as well as the other players reserve the right to beat up any player who tries to abuse specialization. As a general rule, I would limit the net worth of a specialization to +2 (after adding all the positive and negative modifiers together).

Weapons and Equipment:
Once more, the limit appears! This time, a minifig can haul around as many weapons and equipment (like shields, armor, and newspapers) as he desires so long as their total cp cost is less than his limit. I’ve been trying to come up with an alternative approach but I think ultimately the minifig is also constrained by how much he can carry and use in a single turn so I think it works out.

Here be Supplements and Extensions:

In the future I plan to have a special brikwaRPG scenario that features higher skill levels and the heroic ego, as well as other variants. I also plan on maybe adding images and better examples and having someone help me put it in pdf form.

(edited skill tiers)
(edited leveling up to be a bit more practical)
(edited attributes so in-game modification is now explicit)

[IVhorseman]

A good source of ideas for more abilities is IVHorseman’s Plastik Armory thread, although the bad thing is it doesn’t feature cp costs.

Make em up, yo. I don't use CP so I'm not making that my job - if anyone who wants to make some CP costs i'll update the OP with them (and criticize you for being wrong).


For Weapons and Equipment, a minifig should just be able to start with whatever they can hold. You could use the limit to determine an "initial gear" pricecap, but an easier and more fun way to keep track of it is just seeing what they can carry and how.

Armor increasing at every fourth level has two tiers of stat upgrades that you have to keep track of - why not just treat it like skill, but instead add a d6 instead of upgrading the die type? It's less to keep track of, which may or may not be what you're going for. Keeping pen and paper around in a tabletop RPG is pretty unavoidable, and low-effort character sheets are the best ones anyway. I wouldn't be too worried about eliminating that aspect of the game.

[stubby]

Skill and Leveling Up:
Level 1: 1d6
Level 2: 1d6 + 1
Level 3: 1d6 + 2
Level 4: 1d8
Level 5: 1d8 + 1
Level 6: 1d8 + 2
Level 7: 1d10

If Skill rolls work in BWRPG anything like they do in regular BW, then skill ratings with +1s and +2s on them fuck everything up.  Too many actions with Use ratings of 2 or 3 become automatic successes, and a 1d6+2 is way better than a 1d8.

Back when we had character advancement in BrikWars, we used a roll-under dice mechanic for it.  If you wanted to increase a die stat, you had to roll under a certain number rather than over it, which made it easy to increase low-level dice and tough to increase high-level dice.  For instance, consider the following rule:

When the Adventurer kills an opponent with a Skill rating, make one final roll of the Adventurer's Skill against the opponent's Skill.  If the Adventurer's roll is lower, then his Skill "levels up" and his Skill Die increases by one size.

This means that the adventurer can theoretically level up his Skill on any successful kill, but it's much more likely when he defeats an opponent more Skilled than himself, and much less likely when his Skill is higher than his opponent's.

[Colette]

The idea behind the 1d6+2 to 1d8 was that the character gets a slight skill loss but buffed move. I wanted to have a decent number of levels but I'll think about it some more (after all, the character does have to kill alot of minifigs to level up). In general, it all depends on how fast a minifig can earn kills and level up. If it takes long enough I might take the 1dn+2 levels out.

[IVhorseman]

I kinda like the munchkiny feel of automatic successes appearing while at a certain level. It's silly, but  

[Falk]

Rev. had a thread with tons ov special abilities somewhere, it was called Homebrew Special Abilities or something like that.

[*CRAZYHORSE*]

This means that the adventurer can theoretically level up his Skill on any successful kill, but it's much more likely when he defeats an opponent more Skilled than himself, and much less likely when his Skill is higher than his opponent's.

I think This is brilliant, this would push players to go and face the giant monster instead of slowly leveling up by killing a lot of canon fodder.

[Colette]

QuikwaRPG

The original BrikwaRPG is designed like a real RPG- it takes many quests to level up and get upgrades. Ultimately it is designed so only very few pwn characters make it to the top, while everyone else dies before then.

But the reality of brikwars is that we have limited time and very rarely do we have the opportunity to play/host multiple games back to back. So for people who want characters that can level up quickly yet still have a remnant of the RPG experience, I have designed QuikwaRPG.

Everything about QuikwaRPG is the same as normal BrikwaRPG except how one levels up. This means that the limit, skill, armor, and move increase the same way for every level, the characters just move through those levels faster.

The only difference between BrikwaRPG and QuikwaRPG is leveling up. In QuikwaRPG, one levels up by a system of Rolling Under (obviously stolen from stubby and IV)

Here is how rolling under works: When a player kills an enemy or destroys a creation, he will make one last roll. He will pit his own skill and the enemy’s skill against each other, and if the character’s skill is lower, then the character levels up. Inanimate objects with no skill are given a default “skill” of 1d4. A rolling-under system eliminates the need for a fixed number of kills to level up and therefore allows for rapid leveling-up in a single game.

Obviously I haven’t playtested this. I hope it’s not too radical of a departure from the normal BrikwaRPG experience.

Edit: People can start suggesting custom abilities and such with points costs.

[stubby]

First turn: Grab cartons of eggs.  Empty cartons on floor.  Roll Skill vs. 1d4 for each egg.  Level up fast.

[Craigallot]

I've already occasionally given this some thought for when / if I launch the Crimson Crusade (the thing I created a bunch of Sigfigs for) which will be kinda RP-y. I'll probably use an experience and cost system: experience is gained from fighting, defeating opponents or finishing quests and can be used to upgrade any of the mini's stats / purchase abilities. The most difficult thing will be making the different costs for these upgrades balanced, but I'll probably make the first 'extra armour point' cheaper than the second and do that with everything else as well to discourage people from simply making their character extremely armoured or something while sucking at everything else. Every time you manage to upgrade something your character is considered to have risen in 'level', rather than the other way around, 'cos that's more simple and level indicators aren't that necessary anyway. Everything else will just be Brikwars rules since hey, they work for me.

[Colette]

I've already occasionally given this some thought for when / if I launch the Crimson Crusade (the thing I created a bunch of Sigfigs for) which will be kinda RP-y. I'll probably use an experience and cost system: experience is gained from fighting, defeating opponents or finishing quests and can be used to upgrade any of the mini's stats / purchase abilities. The most difficult thing will be making the different costs for these upgrades balanced, but I'll probably make the first 'extra armour point' cheaper than the second and do that with everything else as well to discourage people from simply making their character extremely armoured or something while sucking at everything else. Every time you manage to upgrade something your character is considered to have risen in 'level', rather than the other way around, 'cos that's more simple and level indicators aren't that necessary anyway. Everything else will just be Brikwars rules since hey, they work for me.

I learned about sigfigs in chemistry class today. The teacher even told us about a kid who made an improvised flamethrower in his class 31 years ago. He also said up until a few years ago he would randomly light tables on fire during labs to test the students' ability to use a fire extinguisher. He's even going to get a cult eyeball and dump it in acid for teh lulz and warn us to wear safety goggles all the time.

I'm also going to shamelessly plug my own BrikwaRPG playtest coming to a school break near you. It is planned out to be four games long and each of the missions will be named after an element and will attempt to feature a variety of scenarios (fetch mission, escort mission, survival mission, etc.) It will feature immortals, ninja, and time travel.

[Craigallot]

I learned about sigfigs in chemistry class today. The teacher even told us about a kid who made an improvised flamethrower in his class 31 years ago. He also said up until a few years ago he would randomly light tables on fire during labs to test the students' ability to use a fire extinguisher. He's even going to get a cult eyeball and dump it in acid for teh lulz and warn us to wear safety goggles all the time.

That's the biggest load of crap I've ever read on this forum.

[Colette]

I learned about sigfigs in chemistry class today. The teacher even told us about a kid who made an improvised flamethrower in his class 31 years ago. He also said up until a few years ago he would randomly light tables on fire during labs to test the students' ability to use a fire extinguisher. He's even going to get a cult eyeball and dump it in acid for teh lulz and warn us to wear safety goggles all the time.

That's the biggest load of crap I've ever read on this forum.

Last class he told us about tracing phone calls, hiding a dead body, and hot wiring a car. There's a reason why he's called the best chemistry teacher.

[Craigallot]

Last class he told us about tracing phone calls, hiding a dead body, and hot wiring a car. There's a reason why he's called the best chemistry teacher.

Now I'm fully convinced something is wrong with you.

[Silverdream]

I had a science teacher similiar to Colette's.

He lit things on fire, and would rant about the apocalypse, darwinism and wrestling.

He also hit on many 9th grade girls.