Element Born
A TRPG set in a lost world with an open character creation system that uses a d12 system
The Project
Element Born was my Capstone Project during my Fall Semester at NYU in 2018. However, it was a continuation of a Final Final Project from my Introduction to Narrative Design class done in a few weeks during the Spring 2017 Semester. I worked with Brenner Cheu-Chen and Mateo Juvera Molina in the Spring 2017 but continued on my own during Fall 2018 as the project was originally my idea and neither of them were in the same department anymore. Together we had worked on the starting lore, the Skill Points system, created a starting one shot and some of the starting mechanics as it started as an adaption of D&D 5th Edition rules. On my own I have expanded the Skills and the Lore, changed several mechanics to differentiate the rules from D&D, created PDF documents for all the rules with place holder art and diagrams, and even a interactive Character Sheet in a spreadsheet.
Choice in Character Creation
The point of Element Born was to be a RPG with a lot of potential for customization for players during character creation. It grew out of a displeasure in the sameness of every character of a particular class in D&D 5th Edition. While I love 5E for its approach ability for new players it does feel like a player only really make three choices for the mechanics of their character; race, class, and subclass. I wanted mechanics that would reflect my character and their backstory while being an unique combination that wasn't so commonly replicated.
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In Element Born everyone could be anything, it uses a Skill Buy system allowing players to handpick exactly the ones that they want. Everyone has the capacity for magic or can swing a sword. The intent was to have a character's statistics and Skills, their raw capabilities define precisely who they are instead of you having to take a Level in a Caster Class to gain the ability to cast a spell.
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However you start Character Creation by determining two things, your Direction and your Element. You Direction is a simplification of your early education and gives you some applicable starting Skills. In world the Direction is like your childhood dream job, it's what you thought you wanted to be and started looking into. The Direction serves as a starting place for new players to build off of but if you want full customization you can choose the Adventurer Direction which gives you additional Skill Points but no starting Skills. They are the closest this system gets to Classes but their associated Skills could be taken by anybody else.
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Their Element is the flavor of their magic. Element Born doesn't have fantasy races but the Elements are similar in the sense that they come with all sorts of role play baggage. There are 12 Elements determined by the month a character is born and some, like Light or Life, are held in high regard while others, like Shadow or Death, are actively despised. Some people would go as far as to only attempt to conceive children at certain months to give their children better odds. They also have minor boons allowing a player to exert a basic control over their Element and change the behavior of their magic. A magic ray shot by a Metal Elemenatlist may make the target bleed while one shot by an Air Elementalist may push them back or one shot by a Sound Elementalist might deafen them. In some cases some Skills and Spells may only be used by certain characters of certain Elements with special care being taken to ensure that each Element had a similar number of Skills available to it that not every other Element had.
The D12 System and Making it About Survival
From the beginning I wanted the mechanics to be a part of the world and the story. I believe that in games, especially tabletop RPG's, that the mechanics and the story should be connected. The world of Element Born, Erstia, is one in which humanity has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the appearance of monsters. Pushed back into a handful of cities, humanity hasn't been able to stop nature reclaiming the world. Players are those daring few who have trained to go out of the cities, to brave the dangers and survive, whether they be monster or hunger
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I took cues from psychological horror games and survival games. Not only will Players have Hit Points to worry about but they will need to manage their Fatigue and Morale if they want to survive. Fatigue increases as the players
travel, and lack of nourishment or rest will only make it worse. As it increases the effects get worse. While Morale shifts in response to specific events, did you just watch a friend die or did someone spend their time playing a song to cheer everyone up. It can be High and give benefits or low and penalize your character.
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To get these values to react properly over the course of an adventure I had to
do something that most tabletop RPG's gloss over or simplify, travel time. I created a framework for breaking up the day each of which has the potential to have some sort of random event. These may be like the standard random encounter of combat or something else like coming across lost ruins, resources, or even a storm. When was the last time weather was important in a role playing game. Sure it might be part of the introduction to set a mood but it is often forgotten about.
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This was a breakthrough for me in designing Element Born. All TRPGs put focus on their conflict resolution and unfortunately for most of them they are built exclusively for combat. That new direction of focusing my conflict resolution that was dynamic both in and out of combat led me to create my D12 system. For example in D&D everyone gets excited for a 20 on the D20 or devastated when there's a 1, otherwise commonly thought of as the Critical Success and the Critical Failure. These are thought of as automatic success or automatic failure. In the rules of 5E though, the Critical Success only exists in combat, doubling the damage dealt of an attack. Worse the Critical Failure doesn't even exist in the rules. There aren't even rules for gradations of success and failures.
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So my choice was for any conflict resolution was after the Difficulty Class (the value the character has to roll equal to or above) is set and the player rolls there is another step. For every six above the DC the result is the player gets a Raise. This could be the additional damage that the Critical Success in D&D grants or perhaps you learn more information, collect double the expected food, or perhaps even your success inspires your allies to try harder and boosts their Morale. However, if you fail for every six below the DC you have to choose a Fumble. This could be taking damage, breaking your tools, or give you wrong information in addition to your correct information but you don't know which is which.
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Now with a D12 it may seem hard to get a Raise or Fumble with them being set off by six. I still wanted to capture that pure joy of rolling the highest number on the die, so I let the DC's run high and included Dice Explosion. Simply put when you roll a 12 on the D12 you roll again and add the total. This creates moments when an impossible task suddenly becomes possible or even the undertaking of the smallest task has the most unexpected benefit to the party.
Missed Opportunities and Reflections
This was a project that I could have worked on for much longer than I did. Even now I still am thinking about ways that I could have changed things. So this section is a reflection on the shortcomings and the things that I wished I had addressed.
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One of the biggest is perhaps changing the Turn Order system which is still a relic of its origins. Going forward I want to change it to a more fluid system that allows a character to do more than they normally could in a turn but stacking penalties. The rough idea is to use an Action Point system where players spend points to take actions can basically take a penalty on checks if they spend more Action Points then they have.
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Another is the magic system was too rigid at times and too combat heavily. My vision was to make it fluid and allow players to experiment with different combinations. Simply put the Spell system sits somewhere between completely packaged and deconstructed and doesn't have the benefits of either. Looking back developing a fully deconstructed system would be more interesting simply because as it is right now it is just clunky and rarely allows for the customization I wanted.
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Thirdly is just filling out the Monsters and the mechanics of specific Events. The Bestiary is rather slim with only four actual monsters and a small handful of animals in it. The variety is simply not there and this is where my thoughts about the game return to the most as I'm constantly brain storming new monsters. Perhaps more importantly I didn't go through every potential Event and Environment and make sure the mechanics were properly addressed. Maybe this is unnecessary as the Game Manager will have to improvise anyway but there are only a few examples of what the penalties of a storm might be, what resources might arise, what kind of discoveries can be made where.
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Then there is the module that was made with Mateo and Brenner. I was unable to keep it updated as the mechanics changed and ultimately it wouldn't have taken much more changes beyond those already made for the Bestiary. All that needed to be taken into consideration is the new survival and travel rules. In the end it simply got overlooked for more important tasks.
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Finally, I never got to layout the rule book. The rules as they are right now are a series of word documents and spreadsheets converted into pdfs. They are peppered with some basic diagrams, tables, images, and the occasional placeholder art. I did have to spend a lot of time editing the rules but a better layout and more images would have really aided the readability of it.