#Micha's DX3 posting

[michajawkan]

Double Cross is a very fun system to fiddle with bc it has the style of modular character-building I really enjoy where a lot of the complexity is frontloaded and then actually executing the things you've built is relatively straightforward Also I like how due to the premise the "classes" are the types of anime X-men powers your characters have and that a big part of it is mixing and matching the different bits and pieces into big stupid anime finishing moves and I'd love to talk about this more but wow I am so sleepy so maybe later just know that's it's good and fun okay byyyeee

[michajawkan]

Already thought of another thing I like so here's another Double Cross post this time about Renegade Beings

By default your player character is an Overed which is a human who's manifested powers via the Renegade Virus, but because the Renegade is more anime plot magic than it is actual Virus it can additionally infect just about anything else which can sometimes result in a Renegade Being, they're actually built roughly the same as a normal Player Character, the main change is they get a couple extra Renegade-exclusive powers for free as well as some further exclusive abilities you can learn with exp later

The first free on is Humanity's Neighbor, which allows them to disguise themselves off as humans and also raises their base encroachment slightly

the second is one Origin: which describes what non-human thing your character is derived from, the options are Animal, Colony, Cyber, Human (I'll get to it), Plant, Mineral, and Legend

aside from the self-explanatory ones Origin: Colony notes that it can be anything from a coral reef to a mold to a forest, Origin: Legend notes state it covers "Rumors, Urban Legends, or unified imagination of people"

Origin: Human makes more sense when the description notes it refers to itself as an origin for things with "human-like In appearance or physiology", making note of self-aware summons created by Overeds using certain powers, as well as things like clones

Other than those two the other additional powers they can learn are mostly related to manipulating Encroachment rate or buffing/debuffing things with the flavor of it being via enhanced control over the Renegade virus everyone is always fighting each other with

Beyond that I do also want to make note of an exclusive trait they're given access to in the Advanced Rulebook, which is Divinity, which describes a Renegade Being that has been at some point been treated as a god or devil or some other powerful mythological entity by people, the mechanical effect of this is the ability to summon a Natural Disaster once per scenario

It can only be done during the initiative of combat and can only affect buildings, vehicles, and troop-type enemies so it seems to be intended for use in dynamic entries where your character crashes through something to turn the tide of a fight right before it starts, which I find a bit niche but also very fun, so I'm a big fan

[michajawkan]

happy 2am I'm gonna talk about obscure Japanese tabletop systems again

the main theme in Double Cross both narratively and mechanically is balancing your normal life with your secret superpowered anime combat life, this is represented mostly by your character's Encroachment and Loises Encroachment is an abstraction of how much the Renegade Virus is affecting your character, based off of various choices in character creation it can range anywhere from 28 to the low 50s and that's where you start each session, it's raised when entering a scene and each time you make use of your powers, and if you breach 80, 100, and 120% you get access to certain special powers and add additional dice when you roll, the downside is that if you end a session at over 100% you character turns into an NPC monster called a Gjaum and you need to go make a new one So this is where Loises come in, a Lois is an NPC that's important to your character, whether it's a friend or a rival or an enemy it doesn't matter as long as it's someone that keeps them tethered, at the end of each session you go through Backtrack to lower your Encroachment, and you get to roll for each Lois you still have (up to a maximum of 7) and that's how much you reduce your encroachment by and as long as you're below 100% after that, you're golden

You can also have situations in which a Lois will become a Titus, which is representative of one of your relationship with a Lois breaking down through things like death, betrayal, rejection, etc etc; essentially anything that'd cause them to no longer tether you. You don't get to add them to your backtrack rolls while they're a Titus but you can Discard a Titus for a one-time boost, choosing to leave this relationship behind instead of trying to repair it to push your powers further for a moment

Collectively this creates a push-and-pull where you want to get involved in scenes and use your abilities but at the same time you want to keep your encroachment in a range you know you can roll out of once the session comes to a close, and for this you want to keep as many people as you can a part of your life, but at the same time leaving them behind can push you beyond your limits at key moments, and I think that's a fun concept altogether

Double Cross is a very fun system to fiddle with bc it has the style of modular character-building I really enjoy where a lot of the complexity is frontloaded and then actually executing the things you've built is relatively straightforward Also I like how due to the premise the "classes" are the types of anime X-men powers your characters have and that a big part of it is mixing and matching the different bits and pieces into big stupid anime finishing moves and I'd love to talk about this more but wow I am so sleepy so maybe later just know that's it's good and fun okay byyyeee

[michajawkan]

Now, about Sessions, This game is designed to emulate the tone and pacing of episodic battle anime, so you can think of each Session as a single episode of Inuyasha or Sailor Moon or whatever other series you can think of with a lot of monster-of-the-week format conflicts, which leads us to the Phases of a session First off the book makes note of Master Scenes, where the PCs aren't involved, basically think of them as opening vignettes or exposition cutaways or anything else like that, it then guides you through the Opening, Middle, Climax, and Ending phases, the Opening covering your daily Slice-of-Life type moments as well as introducing hints towards what the week's session's key threat you'll be handling is, the Middle being where all the PCs meet up and start investigating the threat and handling the smaller conflicts that result from that, finally you move into the Climax and face off against the mastermind, which, leads to one of the funnier passages in the book, where it says: "To best make a phenomenon into something tangible, the GM may create a representative character and give him strong powers with the Renegade virus. A battle with a character rather than an abstract idea will likely be easier to direct and players are more likely to have fun this way"

Essentially: "GMs: if the broader issue is more abstract, consider making a Problems Dragon about it"

and I just think that's fun-

After the Climax is where you go into Backtrack, as noted above, and then you move into the Ending, which is exactly what it sounds like, going over the aftermath of everything that occurred and doing the final wrap-up before next wee-- er, Session

I will say that I find this element of the system a bit rigid, but I also feel like it's working as intended and does a pretty good job of replicating the narrative flow it's trying to emulate and thus still find it to be an interesting bit of design to talk about

Double Cross is a very fun system to fiddle with bc it has the style of modular character-building I really enjoy where a lot of the complexity is frontloaded and then actually executing the things you've built is relatively straightforward Also I like how due to the premise the "classes" are the types of anime X-men powers your characters have and that a big part of it is mixing and matching the different bits and pieces into big stupid anime finishing moves and I'd love to talk about this more but wow I am so sleepy so maybe later just know that's it's good and fun okay byyyeee