Of Dice and Numen
over 7 years ago – Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 11:25:51 PM

Hey everyone! Noelle here. Over 90% in less than 48 hours! You all are truly incredible. Thank you so much for your support. I'm so glad that it's looking like we'll be able to bring Kamigakari to the west (knock on wood?), and I can't wait to hear what kinds of characters and stories y'all can come up with!

Dice Mechanics

Today I'd like to talk about the core dice mechanic of Kamigakari: God Hunters, as well as all the bits and pieces surrounding it. Unlike other games, the dice rolls in this game are themselves loaded with choice, and every roll brings with it new opportunities beyond just pass or fail.

The game only uses six-sided dice and no other. When you make a check in order to see if you're successful at something, you're going to roll 2d6 and add a modifier to it (usually a stat of some kind, depending on what you're doing). This is, like many games, checked against a difficulty, and if you rolled equal to or over it, you succeed at what you're doing; roll less, and you fail. However!

Enter your numen pool. At the start of every game session, players roll 4d6, then set these dice aside. These become your numen dice and generally aren't touched except in two cases: influencing rolls, and paying for the costs of your talents.

Influencing

For influencing, what happens is, you roll your 2d6 as per normal. Then, you get to decide whether you want to swap any dice from your roll for dice in your numen pool. Generally, you have to keep at least one die you roll and not swap it, so this means in 2d6 rolls, you can only swap one die. However, talents and other abilities can make your rolls go up to 5d6 (maximum), letting you swap up to four dice.

By swapping, I mean this literally. Let's say your numen pool looks like this: 2, 3, 5, 5. You're called upon to make a check to see if you can climb a wall. You roll 2d6, and end up with a 5 and a 2. If your modifier is 5, and your difficulty is 13, then you're one shy of success. You look at your numen pool, and decide to swap the 2 in your roll, for the 3 in your pool. Now your numen pool looks like 2, 2, 5, 5 and your dice roll is 5+3+5 = 13. Success! You can only swap once per roll, but you can do this swap on every roll you make, even in combat.

Paying Costs

Speaking of combat, you get a whole slew of cool powers to use in over the top anime battles, so how do you pay for them? Some systems use MP or spell points, others Vancian casting slots. In Kamigakari: God Hunters, you use your numen pool! There are five types of costs: a specific number of die (1 to 6), an odd number, an even number, doubles (two dice of the same value, like 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, etc), or "steps" (two dice of adjacent values, like 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, or 5/6). There's also 'no' cost, of course.

Some abilities may require more than one type of cost. For example, you might see "4, 4" instead of Doubles, which means you need to pay two dice of specifically the number 4 to use the ability, whereas with Doubles, any combination of the same number is valid. You may also see something like "E, 6, 6" which means you need to pay a total of three dice, two of which must be specifically the number 6, and one of which can be any even number (2, 4, or 6).

Spent dice are removed from your numen pool and placed nearby as exhausted numen. Exhausted numen can't be used to influence your rolls, but fortunately you get them back eventually--either at the start of a new round in combat, or at the start of a new scene in narrative time. When they regenerate, you roll all exhausted numen dice and return them to your numen pool, ready to be used again.

Some abilities may also give you overflowing numen, or just Overflow. Overflow isn't a die, but rather a special kind of numen that can only be used to pay costs. When you use Overflow, it counts as a single die of any number you need it to be--so if you need Steps for example, but your numen pool is 2, 2, 5, 5 (stepless!), you can use an overflow and any one of your numen dice to count as the appropriate step die. However, again, Overflow can't be used to influence.

Damage

In Kamigakari: God Hunters, there is no separate damage roll. When you make your attack check to see if you hit, you are simultaneously checking to see how much damage you do. If you successfully hit, then you do this by taking the highest value die in your roll, and multiplying it by a stat called your Rank. Typically, your Rank is 1, but many Talents raise this number, sometimes sharply. Rank can go all the way up to 10 and can never drop below 1. Furthermore, you add a static number to this, primarily granted by your equipped weapon.

Enemy Attacking and Evasion

Kamigakari: God Hunters uses an opposed rolling system in combat, so there is no static armor class number. An attacker rolls to hit, and the defender rolls to evade. However, both to speed up play and also to enhance the way the system works, it's strongly encouraged for GMs to use a Mononoke's fixed values rather than rolling any dice at all. Furthermore, when combat begins, all PCs may attempt to make identification checks, reading the Crests of their enemies and comparing that to their knowledge to figure out what their abilities might be. In mechanical terms, this means PCs usually will know the exact number they need to roll in order to hit an enemy, or to dodge that enemy's attack.

That means every exchange in combat is calculated against one's needs for their numen pool, and for how much damage the PC can do. Even if you roll a 6, is the heavy damage worth it when it could be used to fund explosively powerful talents? That's up to you!

Of course, a GM might decide an enemy is worth rolling for, making it quite a different, much more difficult battle...

Criticals and Fumbles

Lastly, the game employs a system of critical hits and critical fumbles. In Kamigakari: God Hunters, if you roll at least two sixes, you critically succeed. (Keep in mind however, you must naturally roll this; no influencing your way to a crit!) This not only means you automatically succeed, but the overwhelming surge of numen triggers an internal shift, allowing you to change one of your non-exhausted numen dice to any value you need it to be. However, if you roll comes up all ones, you critically fail, automatically shutting down what you were trying to do, and forcing you to change your highest-valued numen die to a one.

Also, as an aside, when you critical on an actual attack, you treat your highest die rolled as though it were a 10 (yes, a 10!), granting you incredibly high damage!

Conclusion

This is just a preview of what goes on with the dice rolling in this system. There are Talents that let you influence your entire roll, and ones that let you shift numen dice a digit or two. There are also abilities that negate the cost of Talents, or change them to being more easily used on a permanent basis. There's even Talents that increase the size of your numen pool altogether!

Sound like fun? I thought so too! And hopefully these little previews are helping to get you excited for the game. If you're a backer and you haven't checked it out yet, be sure to read update #4 from Amy asking for questions for an interview with the author of Kamigakari, Rikizo!

Interview with Rikizo!
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 10:22:57 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Regarding Collaborator Backer Tiers
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 08:05:27 PM

Hi, everyone! Amy here! First, let me say how humbled I am at the outpouring of support from you guys for this project. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be 60% funded in less than 24 hours, and my gratitude cannot be put into words.

Allow me to address a minor complaint I've noticed among the backer community regarded a lack of backer tiers which feature only the .PDF version of Kamigakari: God Hunters as a reward, instead "forcing" a PoD onto the backers.

Originally, Collaborator (and its Early Bird counterpart) were PDF-only tiers. After some thought, we decided that a Print-On-Demand copy would be added to each PDF-only tier as a bonus. It is simply a discount code for DriveThruRPG.com, our digital and print-on-demand publishing partner, that reduces a Kamigakari PoD's price to the cost of printing and shipping the book, ensuring that nobody makes money off of it. You are not obligated to use it.

If you only want the PDF? Give the code to a friend! Give it to a random stranger! Delete it, if you like. It's yours to do with whatever you want.

Hoping that cleared things up,

Amy Veeres
Project Manager
Serpent Sea Games

Anatomy of a Character 02
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 12:50:05 AM

50%! In what, as I'm writing this, has been less than ten hours! Y'all are really eager to hunt some gods, huh? Well, you can't do that without knowing what your Styles are going to be, and I figure as a nice present for getting us halfway there, I'm going to tell you all about 'em! This is Noelle, by the way, and once again reminding you that all terms are subject to change!

First though, I wanted to backtrack a moment and mention something in relation to Ancestry. Characters in Kamigakari: God Hunters of course have stats. They are: Strength, Agility, Intellect, Will, and Luck. Your Ancestry determines what your stats are, but it's not as if you pick Nightstalker and are stuck with whatever they get, no! Instead, you have an additional choice to make, called your Stat Type. Every Ancestry has three Stat Types: Martial, Utility, and Arcane. Essentially, this presents you with three stat arrays that are tilted either towards physical combat, magical combat, or more balanced between the two. For an example, here are Nightstalker's three Stat Types:

• Martial: Strength 5, Agility 4, Intellect 3, Will 2, Luck 1
• Utility: Strength 2, Agility 4, Intellect 4, Will 1, Luck 4
• Arcane: Strength 1, Agility 2, Intellect 5, Will 6, Luck 1

Each ancestry has different arrays, providing some choice in how your character turns out. You gain one additional point at character creation to increase one stat by one point as you like, and then every level afterwards, you get two points to distribute to two different (not the same!) stat.

Now, let's cover Styles. They're called Styles rather than Classes because in this game, narratively you gain your "Style" through your Shard--it imbues you with certain memories, and those memories tell you what to do. But because you can gain all kinds of memories, it's not right exactly to call them Classes... because even a starting character begins with two different Styles! And, depending on your choices later, you can get up to six total Styles! (Mind you, there's all kinds of other options to pick which are every bit as tempting...)

Furthermore, while there are six Styles in the core book, each Style is broken down into two "Types"--Type A, and Type B. Generally speaking, Type A is the aggressive/offense-based version of the Style, and Type B is the protective/defense-based version. Before we get too worked up though, let me introduce the six Styles and how their Types manifest!

• Archslayer — Your memories contain the knowledge of every method, way, and means to kill gods. You are the sniper, the samurai, the assassin. With sword or gun in hand, it is you who are dedicated to godslaying the most. In your Type A, you are focused solely on dealing death. There's no bells or whistles here: if you want to murder, this is you. Your Type B meanwhile is focused on using your skills to protect others in the only way Archslayers would know how--through evasion and counterattacking.
• Dragon Host — You know the secret methods to manifest numen physically. It comes to you as crystals, shaped by your thoughts and will. You are the magical girl, the henshin hero, the Power Ranger. In your Type A, your transformation is focused on the weapons you wield, empowering your bullets and blades, or making the charge of your motorcycle that much more vicious (yes, there's a motorcycle weapon). In your Type B, you wear your transformation as shield and armor, making you and your allies impervious to harm.
• Dark Hunter — Most fear the creatures lurking in darkness. You, however, are the thing the creatures fear most, as there is no greater friend to you than shadow. You are the ninja, the cloaked hunter, the stalker in shadows. In your Type A, not even the darkest places can keep you pinned; you move where you want to strike the most damaging blow. In your Type B, you use your shadows to shift the battlefield (literally swapping positions) and support your allies through healing and numen manipulation.
• Elemental Adept — There are eight primal energies in the world, and at least one fills your soul. With a snap of your fingers, you light fires. With a huff of breath, you blow down houses. With a wave of your hand, reality itself warps into illusion. In your Type A, you use your element to inflict damage, which can either come from you, or bolster your allies. With your Type B, you shield yourself and others from harm using your element, and provide support in unexpected ways.
• Elder Mage — The memories that came to you are of ancient rites and old magicks. You wield numen like a paintbrush, coloring the world with your will. You could be a wizard, a witch, or even a particularly powerful magical girl. In your Type A, you are the black mage--explosions are your forte, but so is bolstering your allies. In your Type B, none under your care need fear harm, as you revitalize and restore what was once lost, or add to what was already there.
• Digital Sorcerer — Ever consider the sheer enormity of science, technology, and well, the internet? It's literal man-made magic, and Digital Sorcerers have replaced musty tomes with smartphones, chanted spells with executable programs. You could be a bard, an idol, or a techno-miko. In your Type A, you supply numen to your allies, making their abilities cost nothing, and their powers more powerful. In your Type B, you do it all: healing scripts, defense programs, numen overcharge apps, and more.

Now, when you pick your Styles, you get two, remember? The only stipulation on this is that you cannot pick the same Type of a Style. So you could not, for example, be Archslayer A/Archslayer A. However, you could be Archslayer A/Archslayer B. The A/B doesn't matter, either, so long as it's not the same Style. Archslayer B/Dragon Host B? Doable. Dark Hunter A/Digital Sorcerer A? You got it. Not all combinations may be optimal, as the split between physical and magical is a tough wall to break. But with over 100 (I think! I suck at math!) combinations, you're sure to find something fun!

(And hey, there's way more Styles in expansion books...)

What Ancestry and Style combination do you think you'd like most? I'd personally super love to try out a Nightstalker, maybe as Dark Hunter B/Elemental Adept A (with heckin' FIRE)? But at the same time, I admit to loving Archslayer B's counterattacks, and Dragon Host just has a cool setup.

I'm not sure what I'll do next. Maybe we should talk a lot about the dice mechanic and how your numen pool is used, complete with discussing damage calculating and how the game treats enemies? (Spoilers: so long as you pass an ID check, you always know your target number to dodge and to hit.) Hm, hm! So much to tell!

Anatomy of a Character 01
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 08:30:37 PM

Hey everyone, Noelle here! As of writing this, we're 30% funded and it only took us four hours to get there! That's pretty incredible if you ask me. I can't tell you how excited I am to be sharing a project I'm super in love with for all kinds of reasons, and it seems a lot of you are right there with me.

I'm going to be bringing you updates every few days or so with glimpses into the system behind Kamigakari: God Hunters, and giving more detail on what you can expect to find inside the cover. If you're not 100% sold on the project, or just craving to know more, watch this space for all the info you can handle!