Mechanics Open Discussion

Before I jump into the topic allow me to preface this by saying: We intend to implement some form of mechanics to help resolve/frame IC conflicts on the site but there is no timeline or indication on what shape that will take at this time.

Alright with that out of the way, I wanted to start a thread to discuss mechanics! Specifically, to give the players a chance to voice what they want from a mechanic system in roleplaying/writing focused site!

To me, I like it to frame the capabilities of my character to help provide some weight to advancement. I like it when it's opt-in and I'm allowed to just work out conflicts as narratively as possible. I also like it when it's a fun system that actually is enjoyable to use!

I'm a big fan of game design and have done a lot of this over my many many years of roleplaying both coming up with entirely homebrew systems, using or adopting other roleplaying systems, etc.

If you have any example of sites/systems that work all the better. If you hate them and want to never have to do anything more than spend Exp, let us know! If you can't roleplay without mashing numbers together, you're valid! But any system that works has gotta be specific to the needs of the people/community using it and since we've encountered a tense combat scenario in a few threads, I definitely wanna hear what everyone thinks.

Moving on ::
The XP system could be construed as favoritism, but it hasn't been around long enough to tell.

Stats Mean about as much as Masteries right now.  They don't seem to do or mean anything.  If they don't, they probably shouldnt be there and just replace them with like a tier thing.

I've seen shinigami in posts air walking..... Ichigo doesn't do this until he's mastered shunpo, and some shinigami never do it over the course of the show.   But because there's no real way to explain who can and can't do something, it just makes it seem like everyone's a master in something that really shouldn't be mastered yet.  

Just like the 2-3 characters with higher levels in their class evolution skill.  It does, nothing.  So, what's the point when you're still basically linked to having to apply after an arc for your first release?  Bleach is all about the unique flavor a character has, Ichigo uses his soul ability in the FIRST chapter.  He doesn't have his shikai or anything.  He still uses it, not once, but twice.

I like the idea of personal masteries, so you can make a mayuri like character, but these seem to be the only ones that matter at all.  The rest are just superfluous places to spend points.  What do you get for having 10 str? 50?  How about hoho at basic?  Journeyman?

A lot of class relevant mechanics seemed ignored for this same reason.  Because it gets standardized, stuff doesn't matter.  Blut does nothing as far as I can tell except flavor, same with pesquisa, threads, heirro.   I mean if you're an arrancar and you release, do you heal?  That's a thing that matters in bleach itself.  If it all just gets way sided to make every class a mirror of the others.  I get that we want "balance", but it seems like there's a better way than just making everyone literally a cookie cutter template.  Masters of hakuda are also immediately masters of zanjutsu?

Or shinigami having infinite access to things.  Now I'll admit, I have abused this myself, but other classes can they just poof shit into existence?  I mean I haven't seen a shinigami with mod soul creation as a skill, or RnD, but there's rengai?  That's an urahara thing.  It would be so much more interesting if the class faction had to invent these things than just POOF again.

Masteries being called skills also doesnt really make sense, you dont get skills from having them.  You just spend xp in them.  Let me explain, I will admit, I did this for entirely in character reasons, but I started with Journeyman in a skill, if someone like say, a shinigami did this with zanpakutou shouldn't they know bankai already?  The only other time they're going to touch the skill is to request a mastery from staff, which is more just begging for power cause its gated.  There's a lot of gating for things that don't seem to direct effect anything.  After all, you just apply for your release anyway.

I think the biggest question, is, is the system needed at all?  Right now it just seems to be a way to do math for virtually no reason.  There's no active way to tell what matters to your character and what doesn't.  When you're true "Power" as far as what I know from asking staff, is just releasing anyway.  If those 3 releases are all that matters in the grand scheme of power, then the rest doesn't need to be there.  If it doesn't, then it should be more clear as to why.

I think the best system I saw for shonen was one that was more based around totals with less math, where each point was something you could actually use.  I converted it to bleach and gundam and like 4 others for fun years ago.  It was originally used for a one piece board interestingly enough.  It was all about spending singular points based on events and plot, and had 2 forms of xp or points, master points and normal ones.  Normal ones would get you a generic skill or make one better, a longer shunpo, a new kido spell, removing the incantation from a kido spell.   Where master points did things like releases and people only got for finishing arcs and site-wide events.  Things like, releases, skills that could decimate other players into redemption arcs like Senka.  Then they just said the total value of the points you have is how powerful you are, and Master points only worked while you were using them, so you might have 10 points, then bankai for a simulated 4 or 5 more, some bankai could be more powerful and in trade off didn't last as long or whatever.  Just food for thought, doesn't have to be that.

In short, it just seems like none of this needs to be here until we know what it does.  Right now it doesn't seem like the experience you spend means anything at all.

Personally some sort of a comparison would be nice, give some meaning to the numbers and skills. Also fleshed out skills for all races, not just copy/pasted where some actually get more and others less.


However, I am a fan of numbers and having a detailed mechanics system with stats, skills and even techniques where you do checks and stuff would be something I most certainly would love.

I kinda miss that part of BG when techniques and buffs and everything mattered. Not just hey I got Blut on, but it does absolutely nothing to stop you from dealing the same damage to me as if I didn't have it.

So either some sort of comparison system or full on mechanical thing.

Not a fan of fully free form.

At some point some people will want to do world changing events and others will try to stop them and there will need to be a system in place for fights which must happen and where people actually compete to best one another to see who actually wins.

Not addressing anything just echoing back to make sure I understand the points.

To Yuki, the point seems to be: make the interactions between the stats clear, and make sure the system is straight forward to use, is that correct?

To Vance a lot of the feedback seems directed at making sure it's clear what the numbers mean in a tangible sense. What the skills do, at which level and why. Then also, making sure the races have some tangible mechanical differences. Also a note about wanting crafting to be a more central required thing for factions/items. Racial skills being tied to releases but blocked by them.

Anatoly, fairly clear just wanting a system in general, wanting buffs and things to exist/matter. Wanting to understand what your numbers mean and what the levels of skills indicate.

Let me know if there's something critical about these points I've missed.

Piling onto the discussion of Masteries should mean something, the Mastery for Kido should also determine which Kido you can do. An example being someone who's only a Beginner of Kido shouldn't be able to do, say, #90 Kurohitsugi with no problem. That should really only be able to be done by a Journeyman at worst, Master at best.

There's 6 ranks of Masteries, correct? Perhaps each rank allows you to do up to 20 tiers of spellls with the rank above it being able to do the previous 20 without enchantments? An example of this being a Journeyman can do all Kido spells, but needs to recite the spell for Kido spells 81 and higher.

DISCLAIMER: So, I wasn't going to comment on this because I personally feel any sort of time where I am "guiding" anything has past, especially in this context. I'm certainly experienced, and I've certainly seen a lot, but I am extremely content to be a passenger along for the ride enjoying what has been provided to all of us. Having said that, I talked with Adam last night and I both realize and accept that you are all adults and can just fucking ignore me if you want to.

Nobody is under any obligation to take what I have to say on this seriously, I'm just offering perspective.

Now then...

Let's agree on something fundamental: Mechanics are a way to frame competition. We will have moments where two characters want exclusive outcomes and the players also want exclusive outcomes. While the idea that we might all collaborate with every person that comes through the site's door is nice, it's actually really onerous. It places characters and players in a position where they constantly have to look to compromise what they think they can do in order to arrive to situation that neither party may "want" but agree to live with.

I want to take the philosophical arguments out of the picture and focus on 'the system'. I would like to advocate on behalf of mechanics and I would like it to go a bit "further" than I think has been proposed so far by my peers.

Here is a list of what I believe a successful Bleach mechanics system needs:
1) Clear progression
2) Value in incremental progress
3) Clear gates, such as releases or character 'classes'
4) Reasonable qualification/quantification of nebulous terms
5) A clear 'clock' on combat.

Let me break each of these out.

CLEAR PROGRESSION:
This is the most straight-forward point here and it's one that I think is the closest to already being in place. Simply put, what is the scale? Users starts with 1,000 XP and that's fine, but what is the model for how a character might look after 10 threads? 20? 40? Identify a sort of "character life-cycle" with references to mechanical markers like Reitasu score, Mastery totals, or notable releases.

INCREMENTAL PROGRESS:
The concept of a "shonen powerup" is fun and nice. There were a lot of character on BG that sat at one number for a long time and then something would happen and they'd pop off and gain like 50, 70, 100 rei. That's fine and well but please consider that some people also spend every time they can. A little bit matters, especially on mechanics. So what this means is that differences in numbers need to have a value.

If a system is implemented where there are big wide "tiers" of comparison this discourages feelings of progress. If If I am calculating a wound and we have a threshold at +50 and +100, do I feel anymore powerful if I beat you by 50 or if I beat you by 99? Mechanically no, but those are a lot of numbers of difference.

Likewise, I should feel progress as I move along in skill tiers. This is something that can much more easily be gated by attaching techniques or clearly "unlocked" abilities at each tier. We can be explicit here. But these skills can also effect combat elsewhere and that difference should be felt. Do these modify tiers? Do these provide raw numbers? Their incremental impact must be measured too.

GATING PROGRESS:
On the surface this appears easy; releases are a big deal. But are their reiatsu plateaus? Are there "classes" like we had on BG where there is a "prestige" sort of thing? What happens when a Hollow breaks their mask and becomes an Arrancar? What happens if they never break their mask and become a Vasto Lorde? Obviously these are questions which can be pioneered as they approach--we are factually all just getting started--but we should still be prepared to answer them.

Does a release make me inherently better? Are all releases equal? If they are not, how are they different? How do we incentivize character identity and then attach mechanical power to it?

This is a big question and the answers to this are both unfair and inappropriate to set right now. This is the "least relevant" of my points but it's something that has to be thought about because what you choose to do will inevitably be a consequence of choices in the other points.

QUALIFIED TERMS:
This is partially what I was talking about above with techniques and other types of "hard" resources to attach to vague terms. What does a Shunpo Mastery look like? Is my Utsusemi leaving behind multiple clones? Do I even have Utsusemi?

It's critically important that players be allowed room to breath. If you take that away then all skills become a false-choice. Innovation must exist, but by that same branch, you cannot let every individual redefine a skill in the context of their character otherwise you'll be endlessly policing outcomes on a 100% ad hoc basis.

All races and each individual race should have core "glossaries" which define the sandbox they are allowed to play in. It is their sandbox and they can build whatever they can imagine, but the system should be setting the type of sand and what tools are freely given to realize the vision.

This can be as simple as a scale which regularly indicates what "Strength" means by per-10 increments. Maybe per-20. Who knows, it's up to you to decide.

What are the components of a Kido? What is the definition of a Hado? Bakudo? The Bleach Wiki exists but that is the collected best intention of people parsing Kubo, it is not definitive and it has no numbers. You'll have to outdo those folks, sorry.

ENDING COMBAT:
Combat has to end. Often times players will communicate and this isnt a problem but the system NEEDS a way for someone to lose, even between characters on evening footing. We see this all the time in a protagonist running out of energy, receiving cumulative wounds, and so on.

This can be resolved by tracking and carefully qualifying wounds and health totals. Or by tracking and charging Stamina. Probably requires timing releases, maybe putting cooldowns on abilities. There are many things at play here that *can* be that clock. It doesn't really "matter" what it is, just that it needs to exist.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:
Should characters be defined by a tier system? Where an Academy Graduate is a "4-5" and the Captain Commander is an "0-2". I see sites use this. Should a character be defined by Reiatsu, with their totals gated by releases and masteries and able to rise as the rest of stuff rises?

So many questions. I hope this has helped frame how I hope we look at them.

Maybe we need some of it, maybe we need none of it.

I think at the least, you should prepare an answer for each of these major points even if the answer is "that's a no from me, dawg".

Good additional things to frame from both of you, I won't parrot it back as we've discussed further in Discord and I feel I have a good understanding of what you're both driving at. I'll be collecting some additional action items.

To set some kind of expectation, I intend this to be my weekend project, and hope to make headway in at least structuring a plan to deal with these questions and better frame discussion to more specific areas.

Unordered goal list:
Clarify what the numbers of stats mean, what reiatsu means, what the skill tiers do and make sure people have some expectation of what they can do.

Clarify the value of a release and what it means to attain one, and the future ones which also leads into

Better define the races, decide if they are meant to be functionally identical or if they have elements that stand out. How do we model the stand out racial skills, hierro, rasotengai, is there a difference between the Shinigami flash step and the Hollow/Arrancar Sonido?

Consider invention and what it means to invent and what is allowed to each race/faction.

The effects of powers and skills more concretely, what it means to have a 'buff', what it means to have hado, or medicine, or inventions, or a smokescreen release. What is a 'technique' if it exists at all?

And ultimately, the big one, have something in place to determine how we decide who wins a fight.

edit: Quick edit here. I wanted to note that I ultimately believe that whatever else if two people agree to write a thing they can write it, but if my follow up to that is 'but if they write unbelievably it'll hurt their requests' then I think I should be damn clear about what it means to be believable. Further, that having these understandings established makes the baseline of us agreeing what direction to take our stories much easier to navigate.

I may have missed something, doing this on a lunch break. I'll be doing another pass to collect other things to address.

TLDR:
>A system helps guide and incentivize RP rather than constraining it.
>Add some randomness to resolving conflicts
>Give stats and skills measurable value
>Decide whether abilities are just fluff for RP purposes or have some sort of measurable impact.


Preface: In truth I have limited experience with forum RP, my roleplaying knowledge is  instead rooted in years of playing tabletop RPG's and periodically diving into roleplay orientated games. That is why in the following I will go less into the specifics as some of the others have done and more into general principles of RP systems, how and why they work as well as some examples of what you might want to consider. Some of what I say may not be applicable to a Forum RP environment without being reworked, I will address the tweaks where I can and for anything I miss I would appreciate your suggestions.

Why have a system:

From what I've seen of the setup you have here, and in truth what I've seen of most RP games that are open to the public or in some way accommodate a decently large number of players there is an emphasis on "free-form RP" as the main way to play.

As I'm sure most of you know, free-form RP is roleplay without any kind of resolution mechanic. In other words, it is improv, collaborative storytelling ect. This is often seen as being more freeing to the player, allowing for greater creativity ect. On the other hand a robust system is often seen as a limiting factor, needless preoccupation with numbers or just an opportunity for powergaming.

It has been my experience that this is completely untrue. It is all well and good to allow people to free-form, in other words to talk amongst each other and agree on how their roleplay scenario will pan out. Doing that however, is doing oneself a disservice.

The functions of a good system I'd like to highlight are the following:

1.) Provide a method of conflict resolution
2.) Guide players into creating stories of a certain kind
3.) Take pressure off the player

The first, most people are familiar with. It's whether your character hits the other, who wins an argument, do you spot their attempts to pickpocket you ect. The benefits here are obvious, as there is no need to contemplate over what "makes sense" in a scenario. And even if both players were in complete agreement it still allows them to experience the uncertainty and excitement that comes with utilizing a system.

The second point is the one I'd put most emphasis here, a system always "trains" a player into playing a certain way. A well designed system does so in a way that is conducive to the experience they want the game to provide. This is why people go ahead and fight all the time in something like Dungeons and Dragons, you are rewarded for it. All the tools you have to affect the world are orientated towards it. This is a famous hurdle for newly minted Dungeon Masters who scratch their heads over why their players would rather behead the king than engage into a deep court drama over the future of the country. They are playing the wrong game, or rather they are playing the game wrong. All the warnings about "playing nice", "being a cooperative RPer" ect pale in comparison to the effect a good system can have. Someone who only cares about how strong they can make their character isn't a bad influence on the game at all, if one has a properly designed system. In that system his way to power is to create an experience that the system designer intended. That's how a person who just wants to get their character to the peak of power becomes the person who is generating a lot of great content for everyone to enjoy.

As for the third point. It is often understated how uncertain or pressured a player can feel in an environment with no system to let things slide and to do whatever others wish him to in order to appear as a "good roleplayer". This can often lead to resentment or create drama. This is especially beneficial to new players, who are often unsure of how things are done.
A system takes that pressure off. Now whatever happens is in the hands of the system, and if it doesn't go someone's way, oh well "Don't hate the player, hate the game".

With all of this theory out of the way, let me present you some practical examples.

Creating a system:

Core Mechanics:

The beginnings of the mechanics you have here seem to consist of a few attributes to represent the characters stats and their skills. This is pretty common in most RPG games. However as others have expressed, it doesn't really say much on it's own right now. The difference between a beginner and a master is unclear, and even if you were to clarify it with words it lacks "grounding" in something tangible. Before that can even begin to be resolved, you need some kind of core mechanic of resolution.

Put simply: "If I want to do X, how do I resolve it".

A character swings his sword, someone wishes to dodge. A character attempts to convince another, does he?

Most commonly here some comparison of stats happens. You might say "Whoever has higher agility wins!". Fair enough, but I find this a poor way to resolve situations. It makes it much too obvious who is going to win something and leaves no place for surprising turns and twists. For that, an attribute of randomness is needed. Most commonly this is rolling some dice.

It can be a 1d20, 3d6, 2d8 ect. Whatever combination of dice and sides is used, usually a bonus is added depending on the skills/stats/circumstances. For instance if you wanted to strike someone you would roll 3d6 + agility and the opponent would do the same. Higher number wins. This adds excitement and allows less skilled people to have a chance. If you decide to go this route I would heavily recommend finding an already made TTRPG system and stealing some mechanics from it regarding the dice rolls and attributes. The math has already been done and tested beyond anything you'd most likely be able to manage on your own.


Stats:

What stats are available is an important choice. You are painting the rest of your system and game with it. If you have only stats related to combat, such as "Strength", "Agility", "Speed" ect. That shows you expect players to mostly engage in combat, and they will follow suit. Depending on what you want to do, that is fine enough. Bleach is a shonen show after all, and shonens are heavily combat focused.

Inclusion of stats or skills such as persuasion, deception ect. Would allow players to focus in that direction instead. It is often here that most will voice a complaint "I don't want someone to be able to roll persuasion and make my character believe something". That is a fair complaint to bring up, but a system could be made so it avoids such an issue. What I would recommend is the following:

Before rolling players agree on the consequences for success and failure.

This is where the framing happens, it is possible for the same action to look completely different depending on how this is decided. In practice this would mostly be a case of going: "If I succeed I get X, but if I fail you get Y". So if someone doesn't want their character to be "forced" to believe something, they simply need to frame it with the other person in a way where that is not the case.


Progression:

Xp works  well enough, though I'd recommend watching out for what you reward it for. Rewarding XP should be done to incentivise behavior you want to see. If you reward word count you will get large wordy posts, if you reward frequency expect a lot of small posts ect.

It is easy to wave this away and reward "quality" or how "good" the RP is. But keep in mind that this is often a very subjective standard and  even if one is impartial accusations of bias are common and even warranted. It's not impossible to do well, but a decently clear and transparent set of standards should be set. This is also something a system would benefit from, it's much easier to assess someone's character arc of becoming a master manipulator if one looks at their posts and sees them rolling deception and the clear stakes they've decided on that particular roll.



Abilities:

Abilities such as shunpo, special abilities granted by the zanpaktou, hado ect. These can be done a number of ways:

They could just be descriptive and not mechanical at all, so it makes no difference other than fluff what one uses. For instance no matter what Hado is used you always just roll (reiatsu + hado skill +1d20) damage is calculated the same way for all of them ect ect.
They could be all uniquely created as a "special rule" for that specific ability, this takes work since each ability has to be uniquely designed. An example would be : Hado #31 deals a certain amount of damage, scales of something ect. Hado #4 has a different amount of damage, different effect maybe does something additional ect.
Would be creating a certain set of templates and then designing every other ability off of them. This would work well for custom special abilities such as ones granted by a zanpakuto. So damaging abilities could have a template that says they behave a certain way and then whether you are doing something akin to a getsuga or some other projectile you could use that template.



There is more to say here, but hopefully this is enough to at least give you guys some ideas.

Ewww dice

Keep constructive please haha. Dice/rng, in general, is a very useful tool but it is absolutely clear that there is no small amount of people here who consider this kind of roleplay from tabletop gaming two very distinct things despite enjoying both. Ideally a 'you got peanut butter in my chocolate!' situation, I think more likely we just have distinct tastes that don't necessarily commingle easily.

I have made some good progress on some initial baseline mechanics to help structure interactions. I am optimistic that I can pitch something that could even allow a person to resolve who ought to win a fight!

What follows is a rough draft. I would also like to now establish two very important tenants when it comes to mechanics:

1. They are optional.
You should never be required to jump into a bizarre quasi RPG math systems design nonsense to want to write here. Ever. At any point. Mechanics should not be prescriptive, writing first, then mechanics later. If you and your thread partner(s) agree, you trump anything within the mechanical system. This means, most seriously, that no matter what the numbers say, you cannot force someone else's character anywhere but likewise, nobody has the ability to do that to you either.

Use these rules to guide the believability of your story but do not become a slave to them! Staff is always here to help. At least, I am.

2. Nothing is perfect
https://youtu.be/yGsHq-mZI8U?t=73
Not just to taste, of course, but that for example, a very good roleplaying system like Dungeons and Dragons has flaws! It had a fulltime team of at least three designers and twenty-five people helping and you can still take issue with a lot of the design choices. We have far less and a much broader directive and so there will be flaws and issues that must be addressed as we go understanding that this is a process and the rules are a living document that we will iterate and improve on.

Be ready to move things around if you wanna engage in it, be ready for things to change. We'll be continually working to improve these for the people who find them most useful.

Special thanks to everyone who helped me refine these ideas and principles. Veterans of other sites will recognize the inspirations.

-----
So this system has three things which help define your character's abilities. You have:
1) Stats
2) Skills
3) Releases

Stats determine your raw ability. Skills represent your expertise and talent and Releases represent the growth of your character's overall story.

Stats
Right now there are no rules on how you can spend your stats but if this becomes an obvious issue then expect that at some point there may be minimums and maximums on how you can assign them.

Power - Represents raw 'physical' ability, how much force you can exert in your martial ability.
Spirit - Represents raw 'spiritual' ability, how much power your spellcasting ability.
Agility - Represents movement ability, evading attacks and is the primary 'defensive' attribute.
Durability - Represents how much punishment you can take, and determines the damage taken by attacks.

I'll get into how these stats interact in a moment but some baselines to establish, in a comparison having 15 points over another person is an 'advantageous' position, and 45 is considered a 'dominant' position.

For example, someone who has 45 power physically attacking someone with 30 agility is likely to be able to land hits with regularity. Someone who has 75 power attacking someone with 30 agility is unlikely to miss. This is, of course, not factoring skills, but should serve as a baseline for comparison.

As such it can be said that the tiers of these differences are:

0-14 = +0
15-44 = +1
45-64 = +2
65-79= +3
80+ = +4

Or, 15/45/65/80 respectively. Skill comparisons can also be considered to affect this tier by moving it up, if your skill is greater, or down if it is lesser.

None
Beginner
Basic
Apprentice
Journeyman
Master

If you have equivalent skills, no change occurs. If you have say, Apprentice and they have Basic, the tier would shift one in your favour.

Okay, that's a lot of prefacing let's stop bullshitting and get into why all this matters! Trying to cut a man in half!

Combat is broken up into turns, a very simple YOU GO, I GO system. Like posting order, this applies to combat as well because not all fights will be clean one on ones. When you target someone with an attack, they are able to respond to it without any action, but the resolution of that attack occurs on their turn.

So how do you attack? Characters typically have two methods, attacking through their martial skill (Zanjutsu, say, for Shinigami) or through their spellcasting skill (like a Hollow's Cero). There are exceptions to this, but let's keep it simple for now.

Power maps to the martial skill, and Spirit to the spellcasting. So let's say we have Shinigami A attacking Quincy B with a swing of his Zanpakuto. First things first, we compare the attacker's offensive stat to the defender's durability to determine the base tier. A has 30 power, B has 15 durability. This means that A has an advantage of +1 presently.

Now, it is the defender's chance to respond to the attack, B has three choices, typically.

A) He can do nothing. This means the attack instantly goes 2 tiers in the attacker's favour. Bleak.
B) He can block the attack with his own martial skill, or use a spellcasting ability to defend himself if he can create barriers, these would also use power and spirit respectively, but always move one rank in favour of the attacker. Sometimes the best defense is a defensive stat.
C) Try to avoid, this would use their movement skill and their agility stat.

B decides to try to dodge. They have 20 agility and we already know A's power, it's 30. This means that nobody has a clear advantage. Next, we compare their skills. A is a Journeyman in Zanjutsu and B is an Apprentice of Hirenkyaku, this moves the advantage one further in favour of the attacker due to A's skill in Zanjutsu.

That's it, the attack resolves at a +2 advantage to A, but what does that mean?

How do wounds work?
A wound is determined by the advantage of an attack. An advantage of +1 in favour of the defender is a miss, otherwise, if it is in favour of the attacker it goes:

+0 - Menial Wound
+1 - Minor Wound
+2 - Moderate Wound
+3 - Serious Wound
+4 - Severe Wound

A character may fight on until the receive a Serious wound. Wounds work in ascending order:

Menial<Minor<Moderate<Serious<Severe

Characters may only have a single wound of each type at a time, when they receive a second of the same type, that wound is erased and a more serious one is dealt. For example, if someone is dealt three Minor wounds, they would first receive a Minor wound. Then, they would erase that Minor wound and take a Moderate wound. Then, they would receive a Minor wound, resulting in them having a single Minor and a single Moderate wound. A fourth Minor wound would then jump all the way to Serious.

A good depiction of each level of wound might be:

Menial - Represent small trivial wounds, simple scratches, a minor bit of fatigue, a slight distraction or being a little off balance.
Minor - Represent light wounds that don't necessarily require much attention, small cuts, distractions or being off-balance.
Moderate - Represent more significant and meaningful wounds, gashes, being utterly off-balance or distracted.
Serious - Represent the consequence of losing a battle, wounds that make it hard to stand or move. Anything that removes a character from combat and would require some time to full recover or significant talent to heal. Broken bones, nearly severed limbs, broken spirits.
Severe - Represent grave wounds, loss of limb, loss of mobility, utterly and totally defeated the character is unlikely able to function at all under their own power and would likely die if left on their own.

It's all fairly flat, there isn't a lot of joy or dynamics to be found in this system as is but it should do well to help frame conflicts and give stats a reason to exist. Consider spicing up your combat with a 2d20-20 roll for the attacker! This creates a rang- okay fine but really give it a try!

Techniques
One last thing, techniques! Techniques are elements of skills and releases that break the rules of mechanics in ways advantageous for the wielder. Some day, in an age of stamina and other more complex mechanics, these techniques will be more dynamic and plentiful. As it stands, they are limited in use and available only to releases and journeyman and above for martial skills, and master for every other skill. Techniques allow you to do things like substitute stats in checks they normally do not apply, like agility as an offensive stat in a limited capacity or attacking twice in a single round with a -1 penalty on the second attack. Techniques are unique and vary, there are a few suggested but likely you will have to at some point get some help making the mechanics for a unique technique of your very own.

A very rough draft of the racial skill outlines can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPLYiVLRYRgFqFT2IZrgeNYa9SoncK-Wc5G4alYaOMA/edit?usp=sharing

Two things of note. Most of the races are identical, I'll address that in a bit but essentially the thing that makes a race unique mechanically will be
A) Releases
B) Techniques typical to releases/skills
C) Their casting skill and what it can be used for
D) The custom skills typically available

I just want to add on two things here:

1] If the site is selling itself as a story-driven place, then mechanics would seem to matter less.

I, for one, do like to see numbers go up and enjoy having things to work towards unlocking. If nothing else Stats and Skills feel good to have as a way to measure my character’s worth while I’m writing them. But we’re trying to tell compelling stories, not see who has the biggest REIATSU.

If people are here for that, that’s fine with me, I like a good dick measuring contest just like anyone else, but I’d rather measure the dick of my writing ability over my ability to accrue points. A system where you earn power ups from writing compelling arcs is very appealing to me, whatever form that takes. I think we should ask, “How many mechanics do we need to tell the stories we want to tell?”

2] Staff are here to write with us.

Systems that require checks and approvals and requests to be read pile on the work more and more for those people behind the scenes making everything run. An ideal system runs on its own with very little hand-holding from anyone. Having to balance techniques and powers would put a lot of work on staff that a streamlined system doesn’t.

This extends to the request system, as well. Blue, Master of the Data Grid, came to me with this spreadsheet he put together with rough estimates of requests and threads. This is just the reading that staff may have to do in the coming months. If we are to design a system that lasts, then we need to take into account the workload on the people making this whole thing possible for us.