Something Else

Today, other than realizing it's technically possible to gain a 25 square bonus to the distance of teleportation powers from items alone as an eladrin, was largely devoid of D&D (though gaining 125 feet or more distance with every move action is pretty impressive).

Instead, a friend of mine has been putting efforts into reviving an anime crossover role-playing chat room he'd started some time ago but wasn't able to develop.  The game itself is more or less free-form, within the boundaries of the select list of near-modern-day Japanese-metropolis-located anime currently approved for the setting.  There is no Dragonball here.  There is, however, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lupin III, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.  Only canon characters are currently allowed, and people need to apply for them.

In any case, he wants to create a simplistic game system as a form of mediation for the times when staff for the chat room aren't available to mediate disputes.  He wants to eliminate experience points in favor of tokens awarded for play.  There would be different kinds of tokens, each awarded as appropriate to the scene, and each could be used in a different way.  His initial list of eight tokens, while brainstorming, was Attack, Defense, Subversion, Power reserve, Legacy/history, Privilege, Mental, and Items/artifacts.

I suggested that his system didn't seem all that simple or concise as he described it with more detail and made some new suggestions, brainstorming myself.  The first was that tokens could be divided into two short lists of different types, say three each, which could be combined for new effects.  Instead of a somewhat vague list of eight tokens with eight basic effects, there would be a more concise list of six tokens in two different categories with nine possible base effects.  He seemed to like the idea, so I elaborated further.  I narrowed his token list to fit this picture:

Basic Tokens: Attack, Deliberate, Defend
Modifying Tokens: Boost, Legacy, Artifact

"Deliberate" was my word to encompass both Subversion and Mental.  Mental was meant as a token used for concentration, analyzing problems, and so forth, while Subversion was used as a sort of bluff, feint, or other means of diminishing a foe's defenses.  Deliberate would be used for both those things.  Boost is just s simplified word for "Power reserve," which was described as letting you "boost things."  I folded "Privelege" into "Legacy," since both of them were described as more or less the same thing: things you can "Just Do," "passive social stuff," et cetera.  (In society, privilege tends to be a result of legacy in some form or another.)

Going a step further, my friend mentioned wanting to have what sounded like the equivalent of daily powers in 4th Edition.  He wanted to incorporate things people could only do once in a while and that would last for an entire encounter.  I gave him the example of the fighter's harrier's ploy 1st-level daily power, which lets you shift your Dexterity modifier whenever the target moves until the end of the encounter, describing how it works and what it means in context.

I suggested that Basic Tokens — Attack, Deliberate, Defend — could be the equivalent of at-will powers, things any character can do all the time until exhausted, seriously wounded, unconscious, or what have you.  The Modifier Tokens, on the other hand — Boost, Legacy, Artifact — could only be used, say, once an encounter or once a day.  However, as one earns more tokens, one could use those modifiers as often as the number of tokens one has accumulated, since there won't be any experience levels gained or the like.

It's not a perfect system, of course, and it requires further consideration, but I like coming up with some fairly concise options on the fly and will enjoy contributing further ideas later.