Question WA: The RPG

Hi everyone!!! I've started work on a tabletop RPG version of Whateley Academy!!! Using the D20 system, I hope to create a playable and enjoyable game that can be used to recreate the fun of the stories on this site. I'm currently only got the basic outline down, and even that is not complete. But, with the help of the Whateley Academy Community, I'd like to create something for all the gamers here to enjoy. On a side note, I hope to get some collaborators for the project, so I'd like any interested members of the site to PM me if they would like to join the team. I'll be creating a team google doc repository some time soon, and I'm not looking for only those with writing experience. This thread will be dedicated to posting playtest versions, as well as receiving feedback from the community. The basic outline for the game system is a game using a simular approach to that of D&D, with simular combat, player creation and levelling systems; but with a larger inventory of in-game equipment (featuring the option for gadgeteer players to create their own equipment), a magic-system exclusive to certain 'Mutations' (the form of classes in this RPG), as well as the ability to start off with a multiclass character, albiet with the secondary class drawn from traits
(e.g. playing a Gadgeteer with a additional Devisor trait, or adding a minor Warper trait to a exemplar character) rather than classes (such as pure Gadgeteer, Warper, Exemplar, or other such powers from the WA universe). It will also combine some of the power flexibility from the Mutants and Masterminds game, which I believe was one of the things used to create the original characters on paper. Other features will include a 'burnout' system, a optional campaign hopefully featuring some of the Original Timeline/Generation 2 characters as NPC's, and hopefully some assistance from the Canon authors in writing flavour text, the aforementioned campaign, and some of the more fluffy stuff. That's all for now folks!!!

Interesting idea, could it be played by e-mail essentially? I might be interested in working behind the scenes so to speak on it.

If you're interested in behind-the-scenes work, send me a PM. For everyone else, here is a small section of what I currently have on Character Creation. This section needs a lot of cleaning up (as it is newly written), and is a example of why I need help with this. As whateley academy's depth shows, one person cannot do something of this size alone. Anyway, this small section is subject to change, and honestly isn't finished yet. I hope to add races such as Sidhe, Demon, Human (need a better name than that since mutants are debatably human), Animal-mutation, Alien, GSD-mutation, and AI. I'm debating adding baseline as a race (so that players can play someone like Chou- help on this??). anyway, I'll post it below here:

Beta Testing Version: For review and improvement

Creating a Character
This section addresses the creation of characters in the Whateley Academy universe. As players take control of a student at Whateley Academy, they will be playing a mutant. Characters have statistics to allow them to perform difficulty checks (tests to see if they succeed at a certain action or detect something that they would have otherwise missed) using Four Six-sided die (4d6). The traits are Strength (your character’s physical prowess); Toughness (your character’s ability to resist damage); Agility (your character’s speed and dexterity); Motivation (your ability to resist psychological and mental harm); Perception (your ability to perceive the world with your senses); Aptitude (your character’s intelligence and problem-solving ability); Charisma (your character’s physical appearance, as well as your ability to charm others); and Essence (the measure of how much magic you can cast before passing out). If your character’s Strength is zero, they are unable to support their own weight. If their Agility is zero, they cannot move. If their Motivation is zero, they are unable to live life due to immense schizophrenia-like symptoms. If their perception is zero, they cannot perceive anything, let alone their own existence. If their Aptitude is zero, the character is brain-dead. If their Charisma is zero, they are stricken by such terrible Gross Structural Dystrophy that they died during their mutation, leaving behind a eldritch abomination of unholy potent. Essence is the exclusion, as while all beings may have miniscule amounts of essence, only magic-using characters are allowed to have this stat and to use it. It is a regenerating stat that depletes as magic is used, until it reaches zero. However, if a mage character has used their essence completely, they will fall unconscious. If the essence cost of a magical action falls five points below zero, the character dies and is lost to the void.

To generate the statistics, roll the four d6 die. Once the die are rolled, pick the highest three results, and discard the lowest result. If the lowest result is shared with another die, reroll one of the die, and continue until a higher or lower number comes up. After rolling, tally up the results, and the result can be assigned to a statistic. Compare the result to the table below to find the bonus or penalty that is given to a character possessing such a statistic. Repeat the process until you have all the stats bar Essence.

For Example: Bobby is starting a new game of Whateley Academy: the RPG. She starts by generating her character’s statistics. She rolls four six-sided die and comes up with two fours, a three and a two. She discards the two, and adds the other results to total eleven. She decides her character will not be the strongest, and assigns the eleven to her Strength Statistic. After repeating this process, she ends up assigning her stats in the following fashion: Strength (11), Toughness (15), Agility (13), Motivation (16); Perception (18- the highest stat available without bonuses), Aptitude (10- a result that will incur a penalty to tests using this stat), and Charisma (15). She leaves essence for later, but decides that she might play a magic-using character, which will require such a roll. She rolls a separate test for Essence, and writes the result (15) on a scrap piece of paper. As for bonuses, her character receives Strength (+0), Toughness (+2), Agility (+1), Motivation (+3), Perception (+4), Aptitude (-1), and Charisma (+2). Her optional essence rating would have no bonus, as it is treated differently to normal stats. She has now generated her character’s stats.


However, statistics are not the only parts of a character. Your characters Mutation is the set of powers they posses, and continue to unlock as they gain experience with using their powers. There are ten Mutations that a character can choose from. There are Exemplars (character possessing a variety of powers depending on their self-image of what a hero should be like), Espers (mental abilities that are triggered by certain actions), Psychics (a grouping including precognatives, telepaths, and empaths), Telekinetics (characters able to use telekinesis to shield themselves from harm, fly, and manipulate objects without touching them); Manifestors (mutants able to convert matter into set forms on the fly, apparently ‘creating’ them from thin air, and occasionally imbuing the resulting constructs with autonomy); Devisor/Gadgeteers (mutants able to create physics-defying technological devices, and then using them in combat (see Gadgets and Devices); Mages (magic users who can choose different ‘schools’ of magic usage to source their abilities from); Warpers (Mutants with the ability to warp the laws of physics in the space around them); Energizers (simular to Manifestors, except with the ability to generate energy rather than matter, and therefore perform actions such as boosting their speed, creating fire, or shorting out unshielded electronics); Shifters (mutants able to change shape and appearance (and even gender!!)); and finally Avatars (mutants who can host a spirit within themselves as a symbiotic relationship: the spirit gaining a host and a more stable mode of existence, and the Avatar gaining the collected knowledge and power of the spirit). To give your character powers though, you must purchase them with a pool of points, with which you can purchase ratings. Ratings first unlock the power, and then rank it up. Increasing the rating of a power provides increasing bonuses to the usage of the power. To generate the pool of points from which powers are purchased, characters roll two eight-sided di (2d8) and add the results. The generated pool is the maximum amount of points a character can put into their powers. Powers cannot normally be bought after character creation, but may be accidentally gained (see burnouts). A character can have multiple powers, with a maximum number of four powers. However, each rank of a power costs a increasing number of points. While the first rating above baseline (baseline being the capability ordinary human, and the amount your character is presumed to start with) costs one point to unlock (thereby granting that mutation to the character), each level above that ranking costs a additional point.

For Example: Moving on from generating her character’s stats, Bobby must now decide on her character’s mutant abilities. She wants to play a Warper with mage abilities. Bobby rolls the two d8 die, and scores a combined result of twelve points. She puts two points from that pool into her initially chosen mutations (Warper and Mage), splitting the amount half-half between the two powers. She now has one rank in each power, unlocking them for use. She then proceeds to put five more points into her Warper rating, bumping it up to Warper III (the third rank costs this due to the second rank costing two points, and the third rank costing three points on top of that). This leaves her with another five points to use. She puts two of these into her mage ability, bumping it up to Mage II, but decided to put the last three points into unlocking Rank II of the Devisor Mutation. Bobby has now created a mutant with Warper-III, Mage-II, and Devisor-II. Since she has decided to play a magic user, she fills in her essence statistic as 15, giving her 15 point of essence to use in-between periods of long rest.

Well, some things are going to have to be different for balance and gameplay purposes. For example, in the FASA Warhammer 40,000 RPG's, the effects of certain in-universe items such as the Baleful eye (a cybernetic eye that shoots laser beams) work differently. They still eal damage, but if you look at it in the fluff they kill instantly. On the tabletop, things work quite differently. If you take Fey's magical abilities for example, you'd have to classify them under different effects, same for any mage actually. Unlike D&D-which has a team of designers who have had proffessional experience- it is quite hard for a hobby-level enthusiast like me to write a list of spells the length of a battleship. Instead, it's easier to dumb some things down, but keep them within the fluff. The reason why the mutation are like classes is because otherwise you don't really have a RPG that emulates the sort of gameplay I want it to have: the same sort of experience as Dungeons and Dragons. I do plan to write some supplements which may include instructions for building your own mutation, but as I've said: the current stuff there is subject to change. The final product might not reflect what is currently present, but at the same time it might as well be more-or-less the same. Thanks for the feedback though.

On a unrelated note, I'm looking for some help with the fluff by the Canon authors. Is it possible that you could release some background documentation (spoiler free) on the nature of Mutant powers?

In addition, I'm planning a system like the character progression in D&D, where you have a general class, with subclasses, and powers/abilities are unlocked as you gain xp. In WARPG (Whateley Academy Role Play Game) terms, the 'mutation' would split into a variety of specific uses of those powers, which would then have their own progression and ability unlocks, alongside some core mutation powers. For example, a Exemplar character could have three submutations, like (just off the top of my head) package deal; and two other ones which could be based of various role-model heroes from comics (low-level ones). You could progress along each one, but still get the strength and agility increses from the standard exemplar. You couldn't have all at once though. As for stuff like mimicing in-universe characters, I managed to create a pretty reasonable character sheet collection for Team Kimba using a slightly-modified version of D&D 5e. Although they are nowhere near playable, I could of balanced them quite easily to fit within the D&D ruleset. RPG's are all about your imagination, and with OP characters, the DM/GM just has to make the campaign harder.

You know, you should name your game "Range 4." It's where you are supposed to play with RPGs at Whateley...

Umm... For the "Beta Testing Version" post, I'd advise sticking things into separate, spoilerboxed sections, to avoid a Wall Of Text feel?

Like in the OC Lending Library ...

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Could we see those Team Kimba Character Sheets?

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I'm wondering if mutant powers might be best done using that class system, and a skill exp system...



Wait... What happens if Generator takes Baseline Psychic Training??? We've seen Baseline Magic Training... I guess that'll be the Esoteric Plotline...

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Could we get some examples of your subclass system? 'Cause I'm just wild guessing at stuff atm.

Sir Lee wrote: You know, you should name your game "Range 4." It's where you are supposed to play with RPGs at Whateley...

That's not what Chat Bleu says.

In response to Sir Lee, yeah...no. While Range 4 might be for Rocket Propelled Grenades, it's use as a name would not be easily identifiable as a Whateley Academy RPG. So, for now, the working title for the RPG is WARPG. Secondly, in reponse to Kristen, I'd like to request the creation of a RPG group that can have a section of the forums free to privately collaborate on the project (like the Independent fiction workshop). Otherwise, I'll continue with my plan to create a google-doc repository. I'd also like to request applications for help by the community, and to have a announcement about that for people who haven't seen this thread and might be interested in helping out. This is a zero-budget thing, and is strictly volunteer work. So any and all dedicated assistance is appreciated, and will merit you a writing credit in the finished product. As for releasing the finished RPG and future supplements, they will be released via something like mega links on the site for free, with the condition that the RPG is the shared copyright of Whateley Academy, and whoever is involved with it's writing. I'm pretty sure that's already implied, but if not, that's the only condition.

WARPG makes me read it as WAR-PG... But whatever.

^ So... you want Kirstin to do what she's gonna do anyway? Make a new section? I think I'll take a while, but not too long...

I was wondering if the upgrade was done in tandem with the section-make, but I guess not? I can't see a new section from the Index. I'd expect it to appear in the next week? Dunno how good that guess is.

You could set up a Discord with a Google Doc or something, to plan the post you're gonna make when the section is up. Gonna guess that this thread will move there once it's up.

Maybe update the Opening Post with new info as it comes in?

There's not many of us here, and we can PM you for Google Doc links if you set the doc up...