S.U.R.P.S. design document

Thanks, gonna check it out!

Offshore - Adult Games Developer

I suspect that the simplest way around this would be to give specific actions an XP weighting such that firing a single round from a gun is 1 XP but making a 4 hour surfing session in fact significantly more learning intensive and so may have a weighting of x5 or higher for instance. It would also help to explain how people such as the previously mentioned Motorcycle prodigies were so good so young. When they start racing at age 10 or even younger a single lap of the track is a massive learning curve and they are doing 10, 20, 30 lap races. This sort of thing would make your rock climbing, cheer leading, glee club amateur thespian who learnt hunting skills with her father whilst growing up Canadian agent a pretty formidable base to build on.

Iain

ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ This all looks very interesting and impressive! You have a lot of great ideas!

BS Team

Here could probably be a level system quite well remedy, if this could be installed. For example, not only the ability earns points, but also Kate herself, thus practicing level increases. Does not mean that she gains more life, but if she has enough experience, she gets 2-3 points for free distribution on already learned skills. At the same time, however, their current progress must also be taken into account. For example, if it increases an ability that already has 50% experience to the next level (using example 25x, but needs 50 to go to the next level), then that experience should be kept alive as well. She would now need 60 points, but her score would not be 0/60 but 25/60. I would only use this on abilities, not on attributes. To increase this should only be possible with active training. Here you can easily become stronger or more agile. To increase the intelligence during the game should be impossible. Here, their progress is reflected in new or better developed mental abilities.

Falloutbabe

Thanks Crush, but I also thought again. How about if you would take my first suggestion, but the multiplier is 10 instead of 100 .. 10 actions to have the first experiences. So that the ability comes up with a 0 at all. Then 10 more actions for level 1 20 for level 2 and so on. That adds up, and at the end you need 10 + 10 + 20 + 30 + 40 + 50 + 60 + 70 + 80 + 90 + 100 = 560 actions to get one ability to the max. But I also see a weak spot here. In the HCC and over the months should 560 Blowjobs and buttfucks be quite feasible. But there will certainly be no 560 ways to surf, or climb up a cliff face, hack a pc, ect.

Falloutbabe

Good discussion, guys, thank you. Bread is right that there are no plans to include fantasy races in Female Agent. :-)

Crushstation

Hey YB! I went for d10 mainly for simplicity (I find it easier to think in 10% increments). I'm secretly hoping that a flat probability curve will produce dramatic and unpredictable results more often, but I guess we'll need to playtest it to find out.

Crushstation

I think the existing fumble rule is fine, as the rule about not rolling for trivial challenges should mean that you don't need to roll too often. At least so long as failing a single roll results more in interesting complications than death or failure.

I have colleagues on work. Man, 45 years, 1.82m 90kg I say, typical figure. Small belly, strong upper arms, currently does not sport. The tows here packages of 30kg without grumbling. He currently has a student assistant who he is learning. The girl is also 1.80. slim sporty. But you push a 30kg package into her hand, and she almost collapses. Most RPGs do it the way that the man gets bonus on strength, but the woman (as Breadloaf just wrote) gets one on agility. In my opinion, the size should not be further rewarded or punished in character development. But here in the game there are bonuses or malis for rehearsals. Watching someone if you're 2m tall and only around 1.7m ... heavy, right? Crawl through a ventilation shaft? The smaller, the better, right? Jump up to the fire escape, which is 3m above the ground? With 1.40m difficult. But there are also samples, the size does not matter. You can climb with 1.40m as well as with 1.80m. Here then probably the weight is more important.

Falloutbabe

Thank you for your approval. But so slowly I have to be careful that they do not think you are a twink of me who wants to confirm himself. In terms of experience, my suggestion is a very strong improvement on the original, especially if every action brings just one point of experience. Alternative only now, if each stage needs the same amount of experience. So that level 1 needs 100 points, level 2 though 200, the number of completed 100 but continue to count. So you would need to level 10 and only 1,000 instead of 5,500 as in my example and in Crush his example 512,000 actions.

Falloutbabe

For the sake of this game I think that you should gain XP and level up skills even faster than Falloutbabe suggests. This is a somewhat light RPG game with more focus on porn and less on grinding skills, so I think it should be much easier than if you were making a spy version of Planescape Torment.

Breadloaf

I think that females should have a +1 in coordination. It isn't entirely conclusive, but from the reports I've read women have a greater range of motion (and thus higher flexibility) than men.

Breadloaf

I like the way some stats are based on skills, but it would be nice if multiple skills helped in some way, maybe fractions of a point for aditional related skills.

Chris L

I agree with Falloutbabe regarding the skill levels, especially the way she logically describes it. Valentino Rossi wasn't 90 years old when he became world champion the first time, after all... And I think the note about trolls and elves was lost in translation. I doubt that Crushstation means that they could be implemented in this game. Instead he shows how easily the rules can be altered if you made a fantasy of sci-fi game and wanted to use more races!

Breadloaf

Re-rolling the fumbles as you proposed sounds like a good idea. That way everone can fumble, but total noobs will fumble more often than legends in their craft (such as blowjobs).

Breadloaf

Maybe a way to work out female to not be just pure negative would be to simply make it give a -1 on contested rolls against males if that is what you are aiming for. That is still a massive penalty but if you are focused on the "fighting" versus aspect that would be a way without it possibly be as punishing. Along that reason would be that if she was physically fit then she shouldn't naturally receive punishments to say climbing since she would only be lifting her weight. But otherwise possibly give it a bonus elsewhere. Maybe perhaps a +1 in agreeableness and coordination. But ultimately do what you want.

On the topic of 10% fumbling, why did you decide to go with a single 1d10 (resulting in a flat probability distribution) instead of a system that generates more of a bell shaped distribution like say... a 3d4+traits roll as your core mechanic?

Beat me to it, that really rubbed me the wrong way.

You could just have an optional rule sidebar where the female trait is discussed. For example you could have the default be "no mechanical difference between sexes" with the current "female as penalty to build/strength" and if you want a more "realistic" trait you could do that too; but if you're going to argue that you're coming from "realism" at least put in the effort to be more nuanced than just physical penalties. That being said, a +1 bonus on a d10 roll is a 10% difference in outcome which is a pretty huge mechanical difference for what can be relatively small variations in observed means. (If you want a "realistic" female trait in a d10 system then I wouldn't stick any external penalties on the trait, instead I'd just have the trait tweak the distributions of the character generation tables for all traits (and of course, base the numbers on actual research if my goal is realism) but that's a waste of time with little payoff for a simple system meant for twine games.) All that being said, I *like* a game like Female Agent having the female trait function the way as it is currently written as it fits with the tone of the game, but if SURPS is supposed to be a universal rpg system intended for games aside from the chicksploitation genre then a trait like the current female trait shouldn't be an assumption baked into the system.

You're using "trait" to describe 3 different things, which makes it a bit confusing when you say the success roll should use the most appropriate trait. I'm guessing what's intended is the most appropriate primary trait should be used, since miscellaneous traits are just modifiers and secondary traits are much higher than primary traits and would effectively double count skills but its not clear. Maybe you could rename them to something like Attributes, Perks and Traits or something?

I am agree with you on this part, but if you want player to really feel like playing a female character as a meaning, you need to give them something. So yea they are smaller then men but that can't be all. Frodo was able to do is quest because he was small and subtle. So it was not only a -1 it was also a +1 somewhere else. Yes you could give them more creativity or you could give them better chance to persuade male character for example. But as someone who like to play female character, I don't really like the idea of playing a women for activate the 'hard mod'.... ;)

Marcmad

Hahaha I knew this would be controversial! :-D My thinking is that females *are* smaller and weaker than males, so I want something to reflect that in the rules, especially as I can see lots of opportunities for the heroine to fight bigger, stronger opponents. My personal feeling is that part of the point of playing a physically weaker character is to force you to do things more creatively. The Lord of the Rings wouldn't be such an interesting story if Frodo were just as strong as Boromir and Aragorn. I'm definitely persuadable on this, though, so if I'm wrong I'm more than willing to change it.

Crushstation

The number of example skills I find pleasingly high. This helps to better define his character. Nice, of course, if you can learn new skills later in the game. You could also learn Thai. You travel as a backpacker not completely haphazard and certainly looks 2-4 weeks before in a dictionary or buys a learning cassette. Experience Blowjob 10 - no way If I count the blowjobs I've done so far, I'd still be # 1 It would take 140 years, even if you would give every day without break 10 Blowjobs. The same applies accordingly to other abilities. That has to be screwed down significantly. My suggestion, do not duplicate it, add the new level x100 or 1,000. 0 = 10, then 1 = 100 2 = 200 ……. 9 = 900 10 = 1,000 Since the counter starts at 0 again and again, to reach level 10 you would have to give 5,510 blowjobs. Actually, still a utopian value, but as a hooker in 3 years probably possible. And a big criticism on my part: Choose the character's p e c i e s. Currently, all characters must be humane. (Future versions could introduce fantasy or alien species at this point.) For real? Elves, trolls, dwarves, aliens. So far, the setting is still very real. Leave it at that.

Falloutbabe

There was already a first praise. Now that I have chased everything through Google, a slightly differentiated evaluation follows, On the positive side, I think you have the choice whether you want to define your character firmly or have individual points diced out. Do you have to make a choice here at the beginning, which then goes through the entire creation, or would you have the choice at every single point? Miscellaneous traits Helps tremendously to better define the character. Great, if that runs smoothly later. Skill level primer Great that now the individual stages are fixed. However, I think that the previously introduced character generation would have to be revised accordingly. Example, you have chosen 3x Ballet and therefore after 10-15 years of training has 3 levels. This already counts as an elite, but can still learn another 7 levels. So far, I have never had the mother tongue over 4. This also seems disproportionate if you are a layman with level 1, but could still improve 6 levels upwards. In addition, mentioned 10-15 years training for Level 3 at Ballet or 25 years for Strufe 4 of the native language. That would simply mean Kate would need another 45 years to level 10. My suggestion, 2 steps per level. 0 = unlearned 1-2 = beginners 3-4 = workers 5-6 = veteran 7-8 = Elite 9-10 = legend The second stage will be hiding a small bonus to the cube, which improves the chances of success.

Falloutbabe

Am still reading it right now but, I have to say, I don't think the ''Female'' miscellaneous traits have it's place in a rpg, It's like being a women is a weakness, If you still want to have something like this you should at least also give a bonus to something for balance purpose.

Marcmad

I'm bringing back the umlaut, no matter how much shit you or Dissonant Soundtrack give me about it, so you guys had better learn to love my charming anachronisms. esclavage also likes graded success rolls – we will definitely look into this. There is indeed currently a 10% chance of fumbling. Personally I like the idea that nobody can really expect a greater than 90% success rate at anything tricky, but we could introduce a more detailed fumble system (maybe a roll of 1 means a re-roll, if you roll higher than your Skill you fumble) if there's appetite for it? BJ is currently a social skill. I didn't put it in this doc so I could post it on some serious RPG reddits for feedback and good ideas. But in Discord earlier the team were discussing how many BJs should be required to level up. :-D

Crushstation

Ja, deutscher Freund! Warte ein paar Tage auf die deutsche Ausgabe.

Crushstation

Good job, but ..... Gibt's das auch auf deutsch?

Falloutbabe

I like it. It's well thought out and contains everything we need to flesh out the characters a lot more, without us having to spend hours and hours into creating a character (which may have happened to me during our RPG sessions). I only have some minor objections. Shouldn't "coördination" be spelled "coordination" unless you're using an exceptionally dated way of spelling? The only thing I would personally alter, rulewise, is the success rolls. I like when it's not strictly success and failure (which it very often isn't in real life), but more graded. Instead of success/failure (and fumble), I would use success/partial success/partial failure/failure (and fumble/perfection). Not sure I understood the fumble chance you described. Would that mean that we always have a 10% of fumbling? Because that seems quite high. And the more important question... Is "blowjob" a creative skill, knowledge skill, physical skill or a social skill?

Breadloaf

Love the level of depth and creativity put into this, will surely help to make every play through unique.

Net005

It all certainly looks interesting and promising, just have to wait and see how all of it feels in the game.

Lauren

Thanks, Dmitrii. I worry about that too! My hope is that, if we build the foundation right, the story can be laid on top of it quickly and easily. Our vision for Bangkok is for lots of content, with lots of player choice – so having one consistent rule set that lets us simulate everything from pole dancing, to prostitution, to parachuting will help us in the future.

Crushstation

That's a very good idea.My only fear is that the creation of this game can be very delayed.And so the idea is just cool.Can't wait to play:)))

Dmitrii