Disney Villains Victorious

Disney Villains Victorious is a new /tg/ homebrew project based on the idea of a world, not entirely unlike our own, in which all the villains from all the Disney animated feature films were not defeated at the ends of their movies but were instead victorious, completing their goals in part or in whole.

It is a world in which Ursula rules the seas, defied only by the uncatchable Pirate Lords and the might of Atlantis and its magitech-toting mercenaries. It is a world where the grasslands and jungles and forests are prowled not only by fearsome primal beasts like Shere Kahn and Scar but also by the ruthless, tireless hunters that stalk them. It is a world where Europe has been divvied up between evil sorcerous queens like Maleficent and mad, inquisitorial clergy men like Frollo, and Dark Gods like Hades and Chernobog, pictured here.

It is not, however, a world completely devoid of courage, heroism or hope. Around the world, the PCs' characters and their allies plot and plan, fight and strive and win their own victories against the villains that would rule them. The time to fight and to be free is now.

The world of Disney Villains Victorious

The Kings of Evil

The Sorcerer-Kings

• Sorcerer-Sultan Jafar of Agrabah
• Maleficent the Faerie Queen
• Grimhilde the Fair Queen of the Mirror Kingdom
• The Horned King of Prydain
• Doctor Facilier of the Shadowlands
• Queen La of the Leopard Kingdom
• Elsa the Frozen Queen of Arendelle
• Empress Yzma of the Sunless Empire
• Pontifex Immortalis Frollo of the Grand Archdiocese
• Tzekel-Kan of El Dorado

The Human Kings

• Shan-Yu of the Hun Dynasty
• Governor Radcliffe of Virginia
• Imperial President Lyle Tiberius Rourke of the Imperial Republic of Atlantis
• Alameda Slim, Sheriff of the Old West
• Mayor Doom of DOOMtown
• McLeah, Clayton and Gaston of the Elite Global Huntsman Club
• Chairman Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Co.

God-Kings and Spirit-Lords

• Hades of Olympia
• Ursula of All-Oceans
• Chernobog the God of Night, Lord of Bald Mountain
• The Spirit Realm

Beast-Kings

• Scar, High King of the Pridelands
• King Louis of the Kingdom of the Red Flower
• Bagheera, Lord of the Free Creatures
• Shere Khan of the Shere Khanate
• Kaa the Ancient of the Subjugate of Kaa
• Mor'du of the Land of the Bear
• King Ratigan of the Under-Empire

System Mechanics:

The most common roll is 3d6 + Attribute + Skill. The Target Number for something a hero would consider to be challenging is 20.

Combat

To attack someone you roll 3d6 + Attribute + Skill.
Attribute and Skill can be ROBUSTNESS! and Melee, Agility and Ranged, Charm and Deceit, Sensibility and Persuasion, or any other combination you can conceivably use to hurt someone, to break his will to fight or to make him reconsider his life.

To avoid an attack you roll 3d6 + Attribute + Skill.
Which Attribute and which Skill depends on how you are being attacked: ROBUSTNESS! or Agility + Prevent Harm to avoid physical attacks, Charisma + Endure to avoid social pressure, Sensibility + Endure to avoid being hurt by your opponent's lies, Intelligence + Endure to avoid being hurt by mind attacks. And so on.
Serious enemies do the same, while simple mooks, instead of rolling, just add 3 to their Attribute and Skill.

If the roll of the aggressor is equal to or greater than the roll of the defender, the aggressor deals one Strike to the Defender. If the margin of success of the aggressor is 10 or more, he deals two Strikes instead. 20, three Strikes instead. And so on.
If he takes a Strike, the Defender is defeated. Whether this means killed, knocked out, brought to tears, intimidated into submission or made to doubt his loyalties and leave the battle is up to the combination of Attribute and Skills used by the aggressor.

Player Characters and serious enemies don’t go down after the first Strike: they can take more than one. Player Characters can take 3 Strikes without going down. Any Strike after that finally takes them out.
Resisting the Strikes is, of course, an abstraction: you blocked the sword, you dodged the arrow, you landed gracefully, you resisted the social pressure, you didn't let yourself get hurt by your enemy's lies.

After a character takes a Strike, if he’s not down already, he’s going to carry that Strike around.
The Strikes a character is carrying are erased from his sheet each morning. Physical Strikes can also be removed by using Science while resting, the same way Social and Mental Strikes can be removed by using Persuasion, Bluff or Music while resting, or that Magical Strikes can be removed by using Occult while resting.
A character can lose a Strike by doing something cool related to his identity.

Attributes

Robustness: How physically BIG you are -- not in the size sense, but in the ripped/tough/muscley sense.
Agility: How graceful, smooth, and dextrous you are. Also how steady your hands are, if it comes down to that.
Intelligence: How smart you are, how well you can recover information from memory and do calculations, make logical arguments, etc.
Sensibility: How sensible and world-wise you are. Could be renamed to Common Sense with little difficulty.
Charisma: How charming you are. How much people like you. This is independent from looks, but not really.
Will: Everyone gets three. These are the heroic will that distinguishes you from 'average people'.
Will points can be spent to immediately break fear, enchantment, mind control, etc, and are often spent for Powers.

Average attribute should be between 7-9, with 4 being the human minimum and 12 being the human maximum, with the exception of Will.

Classes/Roles

Each Player Character belongs to one of the five basic roles. The Basic Roles, one for each Attribute, are very general concepts, easily customizable thanks to Traits, Powers and choice of Skills.

Strong Guy:
 He gets a rank in Athletic and a rank in Withstand
 Having HUGE GUTS and an even bigger heart, he can safely take 4 Strikes instead of 3.
 He rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest die every time he rolls on ROBUSTNESS!.
 He gets a Power of his choice taken from the Strong Guy’s list.
 With his character growth he gets new Powers.
Nimble Guy:
 He gets a rank in Acrobatics and a rank in Withstand.
 Being way faster than normal, he gets a +5 bonus to his Speed and ignores the speed penalties you normally get when climbing or moving furtively.
 He rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest die every time he rolls on Agility.
 He gets a Power of his choice taken from the Nimble Guy’s list.
 With his character growth he gets new Powers.
Smart Guy:
 He gets a rank in Academic, Science, Mechanic or Occult.
 Having always one more trick up his sleeves, he gets 4 Will Points instead of 3.
 He rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest die every time he rolls on Intelligence.
 He gets a Power of his choice taken from the Smart Guy’s list.
 With his character growth he gets new Powers.
Sensible Guy:
 He gets a rank in Insight.
 Knowing very well both himself and the people around him, he never gets Strikes from illusions or from the Skill Deceit.
 He rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest die every time he rolls on Sensibility.
 He gets a Power of his choice taken from the Sensible Guy’s list.
 With his character growth he gets new Powers.
Charming Guy:
 He gets a rank in Deceit, Music or Persuasion.
 Being a fast talker and a fast singer, he gets one extra Move each turn that he can use to roll on Deceit, Music or Persuasion.
 He rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest die every time he rolls on Charm.
 He gets a Power of his choice taken from the Charming Guy’s list.
 With his character growth he gets new Powers.

Skills

Skills are ranked from 1 to 6. The first rank of a skill gives +3 on a related category, and every rank past that gives +1 more. So a rank 1 skill gives +3, a rank 2 +4, a rank 3 +5, etc. The average person has one rank in skills relative to their daily life. Player Characters start with 10 skill ranks to divide as they see fit.

• Acrobatics: Covers Jumping, balancing on things, climbing up things, and gymnastics.
• Athletics: Involves running long distances, climbing for long periods of time, and more running.
• Melee: Covers the usage of all melee weapons, one and two handed but not unarmed.
• Ranged: covers the use of all ranged weapons. If you aren't familiar with a particular ranged weapon (Say, from the Fae Lands using a gun) it takes a day of practice (or an hour of practice with a skilled instructor) to use the weapon properly. (you can use it improperly at -4)
• Brawl: Covers the use of fighting with unarmed combat or natural weapons in the case of beasts.
• Prevent Harm: Used to avoid taking a Strike from a physical source. This could involve just taking the hit and ignoring it or blocking it (Robustness), or dodging it and avoiding being struck (Agility)
• Endure: Used to avoid taking a Strike from a mental, spiritual, or social attack, usually using Sensibility or Intelligence. Also used to avoid taking Strikes from poison, dehydration, heat, sunlight, or other attacks that just can't be dodged/avoided using Robustness)
• Stealth: Covers hiding from people and moving around without being detected. What did you think 'stealth' was?
• Legerdemain: covers sleight-of-hand, minor 'magic' tricks, and escaping bonds/squeezing through spaces.
• Deceive: Used to Strike at an enemy in a Social manner. Also used to convince somebody of something that you think is not true -- or to use a disguise.
• Persuasion: Used to Strike at an enemy in a Social manner. Also used to convince somebody of your point of view, or get them to otherwise agree with you.
• Intimidate: Used to Strike at an enemy in a Social manner. Also used to force someone to agree with you/submit to your will.
• Academics: Used to remember or call up knowledge from the humanities or non-science inhumanities.
• Science : Used to remember or call up knowledge from the Sciences or used as Medicine against TN20 to remove a Strike from an ally in five minutes. For social strikes, consider this giving them some "happy pills" and calming them down or something.
• Occult: Used to remember or call up knowledge about magic, magicians, and unnatural beasts like dragons, orcs, Cauldronborn, etc.
• Mechanics: Used to repair mechanical devices (but not Atlantean devices), disable mechanical devices in a more complex way than smashing them, pick locks, and work with clockwork.
• Linguistics: Used to decipher scripts, break codes, and for each Rank you learn one new language. This includes speaking "(animal group, like Mammals, Lizards, Birds, etc) and speaking "human" for animals, which could be a language but is more often somehow magically communicating regardless of language.
• Travel: Covers riding animals, traveling large distances (finding shelter, food, etc), finding your way, and not getting lost without a map/compass combo.
• Driving: covers water, ground, and air vehicles that you are familiar with. If you've never driven a vehicle, you can't drive one without either an hour of instruction or a day of practice. If you've never driven this kind of vehicle in particular before, you need eight hours to get used to this kind of vehicle to do anything stupid. Driving doesn't cover getting to a workly commute or something, it covers stunt driving or trying to escape fast.
• Insight: Roll to detect someone Deceiving you, to find out someone's emotional state if they're trying to hide it, to spot things, to help search for things, to hear things, etc etc etc. It's a wide range of finding and perceiving.
• Music: Used to play music. This can be used to grant increasing bonuses to a roll of another character that can hear you and sing/play along with you. TN20 grants +2, TN25 grants +3, and TN30 grants +4 to a roll.
• Craft: Used to make things. What did you think it was? You should have the tools and material on your hands, but time and difficulty are largely set by the GM.

Traits

Traits are small bonuses that characters usually have. Players get three or more during character creation, unless their species restricts them to less. For example, Humans get three, but Beasts get only one due to their natural Traits. Generally speaking, a Power should be a Disney reference or a pop-culture reference if at all possible.
Usually, a Trait's bonus is to between one and three skills and grants a bonus between +2 and +4 to those rolls. The specificity of the situation and other restrictions/penalties can increase the boost or extend it to multiple roles and skills.
For example, the trait:
This man is obviously a Charlatan: +2 on Insight checks against people who are obviously villains.
This bonus could be changed to +3 by adding another condition like "Who you have seen wrong somebody before". Or, it could be extended to Insight and Endure if you wanted. Traits generally should not apply to every possible use of a roll -- you don't want them to become universally picked by characters using that skill. Traits should also modify skills exclusively instead of Attributes, unless there is a very specific purpose/penalty for the skill.
Traits can also be Passive, such as the case of
Does it have a steering wheel?: Ignore the usual time to learn how to drive a new vehicle.
If it isn't strong enough to be considered a Power.

Powers

Powers are large, usually temporary bonuses that Heroes and Villains (but not most characters) have.
Generally, a character must spend a Will point to activate a power, but some powers like
Ride'm!: The Character may ride any animal large enough to carry their weight, whether it be a horse or giant spider or bony fish or whale as if it was a trained animal for the purposes of Travel.
are entirely passive. Powers should provide big bonuses to skills or cause flashy effects -- or both. However, a Power should never guarantee a success unless it is a Villain power, in which case go ahead, they're supposed to win. An example of a good (if bland) power would be
Force Of Will: Spend a Will point to gain +10 to Endure for one minute.

Powers are mostly up to GM discretion, and should really only be balanced against the Powers of the rest of the group.

Ideals

Ideals are small things that a character would like to do or that would further a character's line of growth. They don't need to be big and grandiose -- in fact, it's better if they're not. Fulfilling an Ideal in a way that is meaningful restores one Strike and one Will Point, as well as one Lesson at the end of the session.

A good example of an Ideal would be
Get into trouble
which gives the character a reason to do something (probably stupid, but hey) and moves the story along. Additionally, it could be something like
Get Glory
which would result in the player doing things for their own sake. Not particularly heroic, but heroic things are usually more Glorious.

Villains and friendly NPCs have Ideals too, but this is more of a aid for the GM than any real benefit for them; they don't gain Lessons, except in rare cases, but they do regain Will and Strikes -- but most characters can't use Will and have no Strikes.

Goals

Goals are large things a character knows in their heart that they must do, or a large change in the world the character wants to achieve.
Goals are one of the main means mechanically of character development; When a character completes a Goal, they mantle a tier from Zero to On-a-Roll to Hero.
Goals should be suitably large undertakings, but the players should avoid having "take down (X king)" as a goal, as that's something the player will be doing when they reach the Hero tier. Instead, players should settle for something like "free a county from Alameda Slim's grip" or some other large, difficult goal. Of course, it doesn't need to be strictly heroic. It could be something like "Personally take down a full-grown Madagascar Tyrannosaurus Rex" for a hunter character. When a character completes a goal, they get another one. No rest for the heroic.

Experience and Lessons

Experience is earned in 'lessons'. A lesson is earned when a character fulfills an Ideal, moves forward on a Goal in a meaningful way, or escapes a dangerous situation alive.

Lessons can be spent in the following ways: To increase or gain Skills, to gain Traits, to increase Attributes, and to acquire Powers.

The costs for each is depending on the speed of the game.

Fast: <10 sessions

2 points for a skill
4 points for a Trait
6 points for an Attribute
Powers are gained every 8 lessons

Standard: Between 10 and 30 sessions
2 points for a Skill
5 points for a Trait
8 points for an Attribute
Powers are gained every 10 lessons.

Long: >30 sessions
2 points for a Skill
5 points for a Trait
10 points for an Attribute
Powers are gained every 15 lessons

Tiers

There are three character tiers that players can achieve. (Villains can achieve more, but that's not the point)
First, is the Zero tier that all players start on. This tier has Three strikes, a skill cap of 4 ranks in a skill, and attribute caps at 12.
Next is the On-A-Roll tier that can be achieved after completing one Goal. This tier has Four strikes, a skill cap of 5 ranks in a skill, and attribute caps of 14. The player gets two goals instead of one, bringing their total goals to four.
Last is the Hero tier that is the capstone of player development. This tier has Five strikes, a skill cap of 6 ranks in a skill, and attribute caps of 16. The player gets two goals instead of one, bringing their total goals to five. The player should consider going after bigger targets -- like one of the Kings.

Equipment

If you want to attack using Melee or Ranged, you need a weapon. Improvised or lousy weapons, like bottles or the legs of a table, don’t grant any bonuses. Actual weapons, instead, do give you a bonus.
 One Handed Weapons give a +1 bonus.
 Two Handed Weapons give a +2 bonus.

Thrown Weapons can rely on ROBUSTNESS! or Agility, but Ranged Weapons (like guns, rifles, bows and crossbows) always rely on Agility, never on ROBUSTNESS!.

Certain weapons give special bonuses or have particular requirements.
 Great Swords give +3 to Melee, but can only be used effectively by someone with ROBUSTNESS! 10. Anyone with less ROBUSTNESS! than that takes a -2 penalty for every point of difference between his ROBUSTNESS! and 10.
 Crossbows give a +3 bonus to Ranged, but it takes two consecutive Moves to reload them.
 Bows can only be used effectively by someone with ROBUSTNESS! 8. Anyone with less ROBUSTNESS! than that takes a -2 penalty for every point of difference between his ROBUSTNESS! and 8.
 Shotguns give a +4 bonus to Ranged, but can only be used effectively by someone with ROBUSTNESS! 10. Anyone with less ROBUSTNESS! than that takes a -2 penalty for every point of difference between his ROBUSTNESS! and 10.

Extremely well done weapons, like the sword of a prince or the shotgun of a great hunter, grant a bonus one point higher than normal.

SHIELDS
Shields give a +1 to Withstand against physical attacks.

ARMORS
Light Armors give a +1 to Withstand against physical attacks.
Medium Armors give a +2 to Withstand against physical attacks, but they also decrease Speed by 4 meters.
Heavy Armors give a +3 to Withstand against physical attacks, but they also decrease Speed by 4 meters and Agility by 1 point.

Character Creation

1: Choose a Species.
1.5: Choose a Country of Origin.
2: Assign Attributes. You have 10 points to spread around the five Attributes, and spending one point raises them by one level.
3: Choose a Role. There are five Roles, one for each attribute. Note the bonuses you get for each Role.
4: Spend Skill Points. There are 22 skills, and you get 10 ranks to divide as you see fit. Skills can't be raised above rank 4 at character creation. Remember to add any skills from your species or role.
5: Choose Traits. Some species have less traits available than others due to Racial traits, as depicted in Species. Humans gain three traits at character creation.
6: Choose Powers. Characters get two or more powers at character creation; One from your country of origin, and one from your Role. You can buy more later, and some species give powers.
7: Choose Ideals. The average hero has three ideals. Choose well, these are how your character advances.
8: Choose Goals. The average starting character has three Goals. These goals are things your character should be ultimately working towards, but out of your character's reach at the beginning of the game.
That's it. Customize your character (name, apperance) and get ready to play!

What we still need done

We need:
A list of solid traits for general use and for specific realms.
A description of what mechanically each of the three Tiers (Zero, On-A-Roll, Hero) actually does per class.
The attribute and skill distinction between the Human and Beast characters.

For the non-rulesy among us: We need clarification on each individual Realm
We need origins for the players: what countries would provide suitable origins?

The King, The Land, The Rule

King is the Land mechanic, idea. Each King is the Land is divided into three parts: the King, the Land and the Rule.

The King part describes the basic powers of the Ruler. For Elsa it would be Frost, for Ursula it would be the Sea, for Hades Death and so on. These determine how the King is influencing the land - for example, Ursula's capable of controlling waters, spying through sea creatures, and casting other-water related spells as if the waters were an extension of her. Basically, the King describes with what the King fucks with the players.

The Land part describes the basic geography of the land. It also describes monsters, animals, hazards and other shit the players can run into. So for example, Ursula's current realm is the ocean. The players can run into storms, giant sea monsters, tidal waves, and so on. Basically, the Land describes the natural hazards the players will run into.

The Rule part describes how the King fucks with the players. Whether he's openly destructive, controlling or corrupting. Ursula has no patience for subtlety now that she's holding the Trident, so she'll start throwing storms and monsters at the players as soon as they cross her borders.

Finally, their influence is not the same everywhere. Each area is described by these three stats, which also come with varying strengths (again, in threes). So you have a weak influence, medium influence and strong influence. Ursula's realm that's weak in King but strong in Land is a treacherous gorge, with shallow waters. Another part that's weak in King but strong in Land is the deep sea, where ancient horrors that give Ursula pause reside.

So the players can then decide which way they want to travel. Do they want to risk facing the full might of an angry King, or try going through a territory where they'll be hidden, but under constant threat from the elements?

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