WOIN What are you doing / what hooked you about WOIN?

As a tangent to the call for WOIN reviews and mindshare, I thought it might be helpful and fun for folks to talk about either what they’re doing with WOIN today, or what hooked your interest in WOIN (if not doing anything with it), or both.

For myself, the hook was seeing it pop up at DTRPG several times, the open / community nature of it, and finally seeing the range of price and options via Amazon and DTRPG (esp. the lower b&w cost options).

currently, I’m working to get a sample game of NEW going (did a chargen and intro scenes with one player so far), and thinking about maybe writing a martial arts campaign for NOW.

I saw it quite a few years ago and got a beta of the rules. I really liked the modular magic system and we had been playing around with Shadowrun for a while and it was similar with the stat+skill d6s. We never got a game going though until recently when I wanted to play with some buddies and figured I would give the system a whirl with them. So far I have been reflavoring a homebrew campaign in a semi-WOIN setting where I have even been pulling in some Future races into a Fantasy setting (Spartans, Venetians, and Felans so far). Its been going over well and I think the players are picking up the system pretty quickly considering how infrequently we get to play. I already have to watch one player who has found ways that it appears to make an overpowered character, and its been challenging my understanding of the rules and ability to recall certain things (like you only get to attack 2x a round regardless of how many actions you get).

I have been building a site for the campaign and will likely share it at some point (even though it won't be a fully realized world, there may be somethings others can take from it).

I got into WOIN when I read the announcement that they were going to produce the Judge Dredd and Worlds of 2000AD RPG. I'm a huge fan of this comic, especially, Judge Dredd, and so my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to know what the game mechanics were like and how they worked. So I bought the N.E.W. rulebook and was just blown away by it. It was everything I wanted from a sci-fi RPG and more. In short, I became hooked on it. In no time at all WOIN had become my all-time favourite RPG system.
I created my The Ace of Spades Campaign for N.E.W., which involved a lot of work but is the most fun I've had in a long time. It is a combination of races, organisations and events from Space Opera and GURPS Space as well as the official N.E.W. background. I'm a solo gamer but don't find that a handicap with WOIN. My campaign is ongoing and has proven to be very successful as I share it here and on my own blog. I am so very much looking forward to the printed versions of N.O.W. and Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD. I do own O.L.D. and all of the printed supplements that have been produced so far. I'm happy to be called a WOIN fanboy.

Flips said:

(like you only get to attack 2x a round regardless of how many actions you get).

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If you attack twice with one weapon in your dominant hand, you get a free attack with the other, e.g. a shield punch or your second pistol. But if you don't have the ambidextrous trait you suffer a -2d6 penalty. If you got an accelerated weapon also, you could attack twice, get another attack for the acceleration and another free attack with the other hand for a total of 4 attacks in one round.

knikpiw said:

If you attack twice with one weapon in your dominant hand, you get a free attack with the other, e.g. a shield punch or your second pistol. But if you don't have the ambidextrous trait you suffer a -2d6 penalty. If you got an accelerated weapon also, you could attack twice, get another attack for the acceleration and another free attack with the other hand for a total of 4 attacks in one round.

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Thanks again! I missed these exceptions. In the case where i was looking to apply it, they were trying to use Accelerate (Displace 5, for an extra action) and Speed Flurry (Displace 4, for 2 attacks in one action) to be able to stand still and make 4 attacks a round for 1 minute. Maybe this is allowed, but it seemed awfully powerful for some Grade 6 character.

Flips said:

Thanks again! I missed these exceptions. In the case where i was looking to apply it, they were trying to use Accelerate (Displace 5, for an extra action) and Speed Flurry (Displace 4, for 2 attacks in one action) to be able to stand still and make 4 attacks a round for 1 minute. Maybe this is allowed, but it seemed awfully powerful for some Grade 6 character.

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You still can't have more than two attack actions (speed flurry is one attack action), so you'd have to use the third action for something else. Dual wielding is the specific exception to that.

I have only DM'd half of the starter pack's campaign with two other people, but I love W.O.I.N. I love how interchangeable it is between the three settings, and I own O.L.D. and N.E.W. I don't think I've got ahold of N.O.W. yet.

It's a fantastic game, very well thought out, and I would like to do more with it. I just don't have a group to play with. Not in person, anyway. It's why I play by post here at Enworld, and why I Moderate a forum, http://remnantsofash.freeforums.net, where me and a very tiny group of people have started doing some online play.

Has anyone tried W.O.I.N. in play by post? Does it hold up? Are there issues?

tglassy said:

I have only DM'd half of the starter pack's campaign with two other people, but I love W.O.I.N. I love how interchangeable it is between the three settings, and I own O.L.D. and N.E.W. I don't think I've got ahold of N.O.W. yet.

It's a fantastic game, very well thought out, and I would like to do more with it. I just don't have a group to play with. Not in person, anyway. It's why I play by post here at Enworld, and why I Moderate a forum, http://remnantsofash.freeforums.net, where me and a very tiny group of people have started doing some online play.

Has anyone tried W.O.I.N. in play by post? Does it hold up? Are there issues?

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[MENTION=6855204]tglassy[/MENTION], I've been outlining a short adventure for a play by post trial run at the rpol pbp site. I was really hoping to find a game looking for players since I GM for my local group but WOIN games are few and far between. I'll share my experiences with pbp once the game is underway.

I now own all three. I bought the book/pdf combo deal for N.E.W. and the pdfs for O.L.D. and N.O.W.

Things I like...
1. It's a system. It really is a GURPS replacement for me. When I say system, I mean it has a consistent set of parts that work smoothly together. Everything is not a special case. You could realistically create almost any setting.
2. It solves the age old problem in game design where pushing one particular skill/attribute should lead to diminishing returns.
3. It increases the likelihood of a critical success in a very natural way. The better you are the larger your dice pool and the better your chance of getting three sixes.
4. Countdown dice are pretty awesome. I think the author knows where he hit a home run and this mechanic is a home run mechanic. It's creates far more realistic suspense to not know exactly when the end is coming. I will use this mechanic again elsewhere I'm sure.
5. The random generation tables are really awesome. Until now, I've considered GURPS Space to be the last word but WOIN is really good here. I do believe though the GURPS tech levels are better.


Challenges...
1. I think the game would be hard to play out of the box without a GM really committed to world design. Fortunately for me that is how I am so I don't consider this to be a fatal flaw. I'm going to create a campaign setting for N.E.W. Maybe I will share it when I'm finished. The game does mention often that you should create your own skills and careers but I fear new GMs aren't up to this task.
2. There is not critical failure mechanic. The obvious issue is that you don't want the chance rising with more skill so you can't use something like three ones. I'm still thinking about how to solve this issue. One possibility is to just say X below the target value. A critical failure is more likely on a difficult task.
3. I don't like the exploits that are daily etc... but that is my taste more than a game flaw. I would just change those exploits or delete them from my games.
4. I need to play more to see how well combat moves. I fear it might not but until I give it a real test I will only say here that it might be challenging. It might not too.
5. I don't like the luck dice but I'm considering reflavoring them for now as mutant dice. So all of my PCs first time around would play as mutants. Normal people wouldn't have any dice.


My advice to new N.E.W. players (couldn't resist).
1. Figure out the science. Including if PSI is a thing. Things like AI, Space Travel, etc...
2. Decide on races. The examples are decent so you can just default to those.
3. Figure out the socio-political setting.
4. Decide on careers, skills, etc...
5. Develop some region of space as your sandbox
6. Rollup characters & create adventures.


I know I have a lot of challenges above but I was speaking for all people. Some of them are not for me. If you want a good system I recommend it. If you need a built in campaign setting, then you may need to work on that or buy one if one is available. Not sure on that.

Emerikol said:

2. There is not critical failure mechanic. The obvious issue is that you don't want the chance rising with more skill so you can't use something like three ones. I'm still thinking about how to solve this issue. One possibility is to just say X below the target value. A critical failure is more likely on a difficult task.

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If you want one, this would work:

A miss/failure where at least half (round up) the dice are 1s.