Division 4 Life

In XCC, you're a superstar athlete taking your chances in a live-on-pay-per-view death sport. It’s a modern-day world with a fantasy twist, and the game is simple: the Dungeon Judge, or DJ, creates an artificial dungeon under controlled — but lethal — conditions. Can you survive?

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Misroi
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Division 4 Life

Post by Misroi »

OK, I've been toying with the idea of running an XCrawl campaign for awhile, and I think I'm about to start one. However, I plan on starting the party as freshmen at Quantrill University, and they make it onto the XCrawl team there. Now, for the actual campaign, I want it to be a balance of actual "dungeon crawling," and having to deal with their real lives as well. This, of course, means they have to balance their academic pursuits as they play for their athletic scholarships! Here's the quick-n-dirty rules I came up with (any similarities to Pinnacle's Savage Worlds ruleset is probably not a coincidence, since I virtually stole it):

1. You start with a d8 in both Coursework and Training. You can choose to increase one by a die type (to a max of a d12), but this lowers the other by the same amount (to a min of a d4).

2. For Coursework, you decide how many hours you'll be taking this semester (average is 16). A lighter course load (12 to 14) nets you a +1 on the roll, while a heavier load (17-20) earns a -1 to the roll. Additional modifiers include a +1 for your freshman year (since these tend to be entry-level courses), a -1 for your senior year (as these are specialized courses and involve a great deal of attention), and a +1/-1 for every two points of Intelligence bonus/penalty your character has. Grades for the semester are rolled, and the outcome is found on the chart below:

2 or less: 0
3-4: 1.0
5-6: 2.0
7-8: 3.0
9-10: 4.0
11+: 5.0.

3. Training is the other half of this. There's something called a Mojo Pool in XCrawl, which is sort of like a team benny pool. You roll your Training die, and your contribution to the Mojo pool will be your roll minus 4. The more you put into the Training die, the more likely you will be prepared for the worst the the Crawls can put out.

Graduation takes place at 120 hours, and you must have a GPA of 2.5 or better.

Additionally, to supplement the glossing over of the boring part of college, the player would roll 2d12 (because they should do something but sit in your dicebag and wait for you to use greataxes), and consult a chart. A good roll might be that you made friends with a tutor, and gain a bonus to your Coursework roll next semester. A bad roll might be that you pissed off the prof, and he lowers your grade this semester by 1 point (e.g., 3.0 to 2.0). This doesn't include the actual Crawls themselves (which would be played out, since that's the real meat & potatoes of the game), the fun parts of campus life (parties, dealing with the locals, dorm life), and the strange marriage of fantasy and contemporary reality ("You guys have got to help us, bugbears came up from the steam tunnels and grabbed Dick and Jane!")

Things to develop/explore include Greek life (a -2 to your freshman year Coursework rolls, since you're being hazed, but a +1 to junior and senior year as you enjoy the advantages that a fraternity/sorority has to offer), and so on.

Thoughts? Criticism? Complaints?
DQuartermane
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Post by DQuartermane »

Very cool. I really don't have any advice but I think it is freaking sweet.
Harley Stroh
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Xcrawl U

Post by Harley Stroh »

How about when they go up against other rival university teams? And what happens when the rival team steals your school's mascot/Xcrawl trophy/girlfriend?

(And of course illicit inter-team romances and rivalries would have to spring up.)

And then there is the exotic foreign exchange student; breaking into the dean's tower-office (to change your grades); and the talent scouts from other schools headhunting for fresh Xcrawl talent!

//H
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Misroi
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Post by Misroi »

Yeah, a lot of those would likely be story things, and don't think I wouldn't plunder these kind of "classic collegiate" moments.

And, since players are loathe to split up, eventually an agent would show up who's willing to back them all, and they get their first Division III game. The inevitable allusions are made to the Dungeon Runnaz, the last full team that was picked up out of college. They were TPKed in their first outing, naturally.

Unfortunately, my players decided they wanted to play more "traditional" XCrawl games (if any D&D game that is a televised bloodsport can be called traditional).
DJ LaBoss
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Post by DJ LaBoss »

This is really interesting - I love the way you are working their academic life into the game.

Have you ever played the venerable space opera RPG Traveler? They have a system for figuring out the key events of your players back story with a few die rolls - roll well and you spend four years getting advanced combat training with the space marienes, roll poorly and you did four years in prison learning skills of an entirely different sort.

You could try to make a table up that would cover those kind of events.

Roll (D20) Result

1 Flunked out, too much partying.
2 Changed majors! (roll randomly)
3 Academic Probation - loose one season of Xcrawl training

and so forth

Let us know how it worked out in your campaign?

be well,

Brendan
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Warduke
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Post by Warduke »

DJ LaBoss wrote:Have you ever played the venerable space opera RPG Traveler? They have a system for figuring out the key events of your players back story with a few die rolls - roll well and you spend four years getting advanced combat training with the space marienes, roll poorly and you did four years in prison learning skills of an entirely different sort.
roll REALLY poorly, and you die in character generation. not many games can claim that. :)
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GnomeBoy
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Post by GnomeBoy »

Warduke wrote:roll REALLY poorly, and you die in character generation. not many games can claim that. :)
Yeah... what was up with that?
...
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Misroi
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Post by Misroi »

Heehee, Mongoose did one better with their supplement for Paranoia, "Criminal Histories." As the back says (and I paraphrase) "In other, older (non-fun) roleplaying-games, a character's prehistory could end up having him die before the game began. With 'Criminal Histories,' now your Troubleshooter can die MULTIPLE times before the game begins!"

As for academic probation and everything, I planned on keeping track of their grades to decide that. I wanted there to be a major decision each time: "OK, I've got to practice for regionals with the team, but my calculus homework is due!" Do they focus on training and get bonuses in the game (but suffer in school), do they dive into their schoolwork and improve their grades (but have issues on the crawls as their teamwork falls apart), or do they split the difference and hope for the best?

The random tables I wanted to give out bonuses or penalties, as well as develop future stories. Say an above average roll is "make friends with the brainy guy next to you: gain +1 on your next Coursework roll." That brainy guy would get a name, and might get involved as a team statistician or something. Heck, really good rolls might get you a permanent bonus (and the reverse would be true)!

Again, sadly, my players wanted to play straight up vanilla XCrawl, so that's what they're getting. I'll get back to this someday, I swear!
DJRubik
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Post by DJRubik »

DJ LaBoss wrote:Have you ever played the venerable space opera RPG Traveler? They have a system for figuring out the key events of your players back story with a few die rolls - roll well and you spend four years getting advanced combat training with the space marienes, roll poorly and you did four years in prison learning skills of an entirely different sort.

You could try to make a table up that would cover those kind of events.

Roll (D20) Result

1 Flunked out, too much partying.
2 Changed majors! (roll randomly)
3 Academic Probation - loose one season of Xcrawl training

and so forth

Let us know how it worked out in your campaign?

be well,

Brendan
On a random note, Hackmaster has something similar in its character creation tables. Particularly in the class books, where (as a random example) a wizard can wind up having spent all of his time in the student center and now has a permanent +1 to all attack rolls with darts, or perhaps they participated in the band and now have skill ranks in an appropriate musical instrument.
DJ LaBoss
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Post by DJ LaBoss »

Misroi wrote:
Again, sadly, my players wanted to play straight up vanilla XCrawl, so that's what they're getting. I'll get back to this someday, I swear!
Vanilla Xcrawl?? Now there's a phrase I never heard before!


:lol:

be well,

Brendan
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