BRC
2009-11-03, 11:56 PM
So, I was working in the scene shop today, and I had a notion.
"I'm going to design a ruleset for a post apocalyptic game".
So I started, I'm calling it After the End. It's a Skill based game, rather than a Class or Level based one.
To avoid scaring people off with a massive wall of text, I'll post this in a series of somewhat less massive walls of text as I type/think things up.
The game style I'm going for should focus on ingenuity and resourcefulness, both on the part of the players and of the characters. After the End is a dangerous world. You don't just get a pile of gold then walk to the nearest handy magic item shop and pick up a shiny new sword. A group of good AtE players should be able to be thrown into a bombed out city infested with hostile raiders and mutants with nothing but the clothes on their back. They should walk out of that city having scavenged, built, or stole enough weapons to overthrow a military junta, or perhaps start one.
The basic mechanic of After the End is the simple D20+modifier vs Target number. Modifier is based off Skills and Attributes.
Attributes
In After the End, there are four Attributes, each with a different purpose and governing a variety of skills.
Brawn: Brawn represents the character’s physical power. It affects both the physical punishment your character can deal out and how much they can take. It affects melee combat, your hit point total, the amount of weight you can carry.
Dexterity: Dexterity represents your fine motor control, your ability to make precise movements (as opposed to powerful ones). Dexterity affects your ability to dodge, to use ranged weapons, your ability to fight in melee, and your mobility.
Cunning: Cunning represents your character’s mental capacity and finesse. A cunning character is not necessarily well educated, just very good at using the skills they have. Cunning controls many skills, including the highly important knowledge and craft skills. It can also help you with combat.
Guile: Guile represents how much of a “People Person” a character is, their ability to influence and read people. Guile affects your social skills, and your ability to read and manipulate your opponents in combat.
Skills
Each Skill has a primary attribute and one or more secondary attributes. You add your entire primary attribute to the skill rank, and half of one of the secondary attributes.
For example, Marco has 3 ranks in Pistols, Dexterity 4, and Cunning 4. Dexterity is the primary attribute, so he adds his entire dexterity bonus. He decides to use Cunning as his secondary attribute for pistols checks, so he adds half his Cunning score, in this case 2, for a total modifier of +9.
Combat Skills
Brutal Fighting
Primary: Brawn
Secondary: Dexterity, Guile, Cunning.
Sometimes you don’t have time for any fancy guns, or swift dodging, sometimes you just need to smash somebody’s face in. Brutal Fighting helps with that. Brutal fighting is the art of simply overwhelming enemies with pure strength. Though a good arm is technically all you need to smash something in the face, it’s helpful to be able to control where it goes, to predict your enemies movements, and to know where your hit will do the most damage.
Brutal fighting covers fighting with your fists, and with clubs or large bladed weapons.
Agile Fighting
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Brawn, Cunning, Guile.
Agile Fighting is all about speed and precision, moving quickly to hit your opponents where it hurts. The main thing it requires is, of course, dexterity, but it helps to outsmart your foes, read their movements, and, of course, stab really hard.
Agile Fighting covers using daggers and other light blades that can be quickly moved around. Agile fighting also lets you wield Pistols in melee combat.
Dodge
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile.
Dodging is fairly self explanatory. It covers everything from avoiding blows in melee to bobbing and weaving so opponents can’t get good aim on you, to diving for cover against a grenade. A good dose of Guile helps you predict your opponents’ attacks so you can get a head start, and Cunning helps you figure out the type of attack you need to dodge and the best way to dodge it.
Pistols
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
Pistols refers to any sort of firearm designed to be fired one-handed. Aiming is, of course, the primary challenge, but cunning is useful for identifying where to aim, and Guile helps you predict how your foes will move.
Shortarms
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
Shorter weapons that are still meant to be used with two hands against close-range targets. Things like Shotguns, Assault rifles, SMG’s, are all shortarms. The attributes used are pretty much for the same reasons as pistols.
Rifles
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
The main thing that differentiates Rifles from Shortarms is the range they are supposed to be used at. Rifles are more accurate than shortarms and are supposed to be used against distant targets. Also, while a Shortarm can be fired from the hip with minimal aiming, a Rifle is almost always fired from the shoulder.
Heavy Weapons
Primary: Brawn
Secondary: Dexterity, Cunning
Most heavy weapons are bulky automatic contraptions. Aiming is less a concern than dealing with the intense recoil and staying upright. As such, Brawn is a more important character trait for this type of weapon. Of course, it’s still useful to be able to point the overheating bullet spewing deathtrap you call a weapon in the right direction, and to identify the best targets. Often Heavy weapons are mounted on a bipod or tripod, but sometimes they are handheld.
Thrown weapons
Primary: Strength
Secondary: Dexterity, Cunning
Thrown weapons refers to throwing things such that they hurt the people they hit. A good arm strength is necessary for this, but aiming and knowing where to aim is always useful.
Grenade Weapons
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity, Brawn
After The End, pretty much all survivors have the strength to hurl a grenade, so distance is less an issue than placement. As such, Cunning is the most important attribute for a Grenadier.
Craft Skills
Smiting
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Brawn, Dexterity
Smiting is the simplest of the Craft Skills, the simple of the craft skills. It covers the creation of simple things with minimal if any moving parts. Armor, melee weapons, parts for more complicated items, all these things are covered by Smiting.
Crafting
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
More complex than smiting, Crafting is the art of building complex devices like firearms, gas masks, grappling guns, crossbows, pretty much any handheld item with moving parts. A sharp mind is the most important tool, but a good steady hand is always useful.
Mechanics
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Mechanics is about big machines. This skill mainly covers to construction, repair, and maintenance of vehicles.
Electronics
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Working electricity is somewhat rare After the End, but it’s still useful to know how to fiddle with the wires. Electronics covers the alteration, repair, and construction of anything with an electronic component.
Survival Skills
Wilderness Survival
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity, Brawn
This skill covers surviving in the wastes, hunting giant groundhogs, finding clean water, sheltering from storms, all that sort of stuff. It’s mainly an exercise in brainpower, but physical strength and a good turn of speed are useful.
Scavenging
Primary: Cunning
This skill is more useful in urban areas. Scavenging covers your ability to find useful items in large amounts of junk. Parts for machines, food stuffs, whatever. When you need to find a needle in a haystack (or a pipe you can turn into the barrel of a gun big enough to take down a Supermoose in a collapsed building).
Athletics
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Brawn
Freerunning, jumping over gaps, scaling a wall, or just running really really fast. All these things are covered by the Athletics skill.
Driving
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Driving covers the operation of ground based vehicles. Of course, giving the state of things After the End, such vehicles tend to be rattling, smoking deathtraps, but at least you’ll know how to drive one.
Social Skills
Diplomacy
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Diplomacy is convincing somebody to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise by making them want to do it. Brining them around to your point of view with your natural charms, and maybe, just a little bit of logic.
Intimidate
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Brawn.
Intimidate is getting people to do what they normally wouldn’t by making them very scared of you. Force of personality is the best way to do this, but you can also just be really, really big.
Bluff
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Bluffing is getting people to do what they normally wouldn’t through deception. A sharp mind is useful, to help you think of a believable lie, but if you’re charming enough, people will care less about what you say than about how you say it.
Barter
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Barter specifically governs Deals. While Diplomacy makes people agree with you, the Barter skill is about getting the best deal possible. When wondering whether to use Barter or Diplomacy ask this question, are the parties exchanging anything. If the premise is one of equal exchange (as untrue as that may be).You can’t offer the bandits a paperclip and use the Barter skill.
Damage and Health
A character’s Hit Points are equal to 10 times their Brawn rating. However, every time a character takes their brawn rating in damage, they receive a cumulative -1 penalty on all rolls due to pain. At 0 HP a character is unconscious; at -(10+brawn) rating they are dead.
Armor
Armor reduces the damage a character takes. Armor has three ratings, Impact, Ballistic, and chemical.
Impact shows how well the armor protects against low velocity damage spread over a larger area, melee attacks, grenades, ect are all protected from by Impact armor.
Ballistic armor protects from bullets.
Chemical armor protects from things like gas, areas with lots of radiation, and airborne diseases.
Combat
At the start of combat, characters roll 1d20+Dexterity to determine turn order. However, Initiative does not end there. A character may subtract 5 from their initiative (assuming this does not bring their score below 0) to gain additional actions.
In addition to standard actions, there is something called a Minor action. You may get a minor action by reducing your initiative score by 2.
Marco is attacked by a pipe-wielding raider. Marco rolls an 11, adding his dexterity of 4, for a total score of 15. However, he decides to take multiple actions this round, so he lowers his score to 8, giving him 2 actions and one minor action this round. The Pipe-wielding raider gets a 15, which he drops to 10 for 2 actions.
Melee Combat: Hitting things with sticks.
All weapons have 3 scores: Accuracy, Damage, and Step.
Accuracy effects, positively or negatively, the ability to hit a target.
Damage displays how much damage the weapon deals.
Step represents the ease by which the weapon can be made to deal more damage.
When you make a Melee attack, you roll an opposed check against your opponents dodge rating.
The Pipe wielding raider uses his two actions to move next to Marco and attack. The Raider has a Brutal combat score of 8, and his pipe has Accuracy -1, Damage 3, and step 4. Marco has a dodge score of 9, and armor with impact 3.
The Raider rolls a 14, and adds 7 (8-1 for the pipes accuracy) for a final score of 22. Marco rolls a 9, for a final score of 18. Because the Raider beat Marco’s dodge rating, he connects with the pipe, and because he beat Marco’s score by 4 (his pipe’s step rating), he deals an additional 3 damage, for a total of 6 (3 damage for just hitting, with an additional 3 for going up one step). However, Marco’s armor reduces that damage back down to 3.
So, the formula for damage is (Attack Roll-Dodge Roll/step rating x damage - Armor).
Ranged Combat: Eat Lead Sucka.
Ranged Combat differentiates from Melee combat primarily with it’s use of Stances. There are two stances, Firing and Mobile.
In Mobile stance, the weapon is held at the hip, shots are made quickly with little aiming, reducing accuracy but allowing the user full mobility. In Mobile stance weapons take the following accuracy modifiers, but are able to use their full dodge score and movement. It does not take an action to enter Mobile stance, but you can only do it on your action. By default you are in Mobile stance.
Pistols: -0
Shortarms: -1
Rifles: -5
Heavy: Cannot be used.
In Firing stance, the weapon is held at the shoulder, the braces themself so as to minimize the effects of recoil, and the position is held after firing. In the case of heavy weapons, they are still fired from the Hip, but the body must be positioned and ready to keep the gun on target. In Firing stance you can only use half your Dodge score and move at half speed, but your shots are more accurate. It takes an action to enter firing stance unless you are wielding a pistol, in which case it only takes a Minor action.
In firing stance, the following modifiers apply.
Pistols: +2
Shortarms: +1
Rifles: +0
Heavy: +0
It’s now Marco’s turn. He already has his pistol (Accuracy 1, Damage 4, Step 3) out, so he uses one action to move away from the Raider, he then uses his minor action to adopt Firing stance, and his second standard action to take a shot.
His Pistol score is 9, with his weapon’s accuracy and the bonus from adopting firing stance that’s a total of 12. Marco rolls a 10, for a final score of 22. The Raider’s dodge score is 7 and his scrapped together armor only provides ballistic protection of 1. The raider rolls a 9, for a final score of 16, which Marco beats by 6, causing his damage to go up 2 steps. The raider’s armor only reduces the damage by 1, for a total of 11 damage.
Things I have in my head but need to be fleshed out:
The system for salvage, weapons, and crafting.
The combat System.
armor.
Vehicles
Mutants
Hazards
Further Combat stuff.
Plus abunch of other things.
Questions, Comments, Suggestions?
"I'm going to design a ruleset for a post apocalyptic game".
So I started, I'm calling it After the End. It's a Skill based game, rather than a Class or Level based one.
To avoid scaring people off with a massive wall of text, I'll post this in a series of somewhat less massive walls of text as I type/think things up.
The game style I'm going for should focus on ingenuity and resourcefulness, both on the part of the players and of the characters. After the End is a dangerous world. You don't just get a pile of gold then walk to the nearest handy magic item shop and pick up a shiny new sword. A group of good AtE players should be able to be thrown into a bombed out city infested with hostile raiders and mutants with nothing but the clothes on their back. They should walk out of that city having scavenged, built, or stole enough weapons to overthrow a military junta, or perhaps start one.
The basic mechanic of After the End is the simple D20+modifier vs Target number. Modifier is based off Skills and Attributes.
Attributes
In After the End, there are four Attributes, each with a different purpose and governing a variety of skills.
Brawn: Brawn represents the character’s physical power. It affects both the physical punishment your character can deal out and how much they can take. It affects melee combat, your hit point total, the amount of weight you can carry.
Dexterity: Dexterity represents your fine motor control, your ability to make precise movements (as opposed to powerful ones). Dexterity affects your ability to dodge, to use ranged weapons, your ability to fight in melee, and your mobility.
Cunning: Cunning represents your character’s mental capacity and finesse. A cunning character is not necessarily well educated, just very good at using the skills they have. Cunning controls many skills, including the highly important knowledge and craft skills. It can also help you with combat.
Guile: Guile represents how much of a “People Person” a character is, their ability to influence and read people. Guile affects your social skills, and your ability to read and manipulate your opponents in combat.
Skills
Each Skill has a primary attribute and one or more secondary attributes. You add your entire primary attribute to the skill rank, and half of one of the secondary attributes.
For example, Marco has 3 ranks in Pistols, Dexterity 4, and Cunning 4. Dexterity is the primary attribute, so he adds his entire dexterity bonus. He decides to use Cunning as his secondary attribute for pistols checks, so he adds half his Cunning score, in this case 2, for a total modifier of +9.
Combat Skills
Brutal Fighting
Primary: Brawn
Secondary: Dexterity, Guile, Cunning.
Sometimes you don’t have time for any fancy guns, or swift dodging, sometimes you just need to smash somebody’s face in. Brutal Fighting helps with that. Brutal fighting is the art of simply overwhelming enemies with pure strength. Though a good arm is technically all you need to smash something in the face, it’s helpful to be able to control where it goes, to predict your enemies movements, and to know where your hit will do the most damage.
Brutal fighting covers fighting with your fists, and with clubs or large bladed weapons.
Agile Fighting
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Brawn, Cunning, Guile.
Agile Fighting is all about speed and precision, moving quickly to hit your opponents where it hurts. The main thing it requires is, of course, dexterity, but it helps to outsmart your foes, read their movements, and, of course, stab really hard.
Agile Fighting covers using daggers and other light blades that can be quickly moved around. Agile fighting also lets you wield Pistols in melee combat.
Dodge
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile.
Dodging is fairly self explanatory. It covers everything from avoiding blows in melee to bobbing and weaving so opponents can’t get good aim on you, to diving for cover against a grenade. A good dose of Guile helps you predict your opponents’ attacks so you can get a head start, and Cunning helps you figure out the type of attack you need to dodge and the best way to dodge it.
Pistols
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
Pistols refers to any sort of firearm designed to be fired one-handed. Aiming is, of course, the primary challenge, but cunning is useful for identifying where to aim, and Guile helps you predict how your foes will move.
Shortarms
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
Shorter weapons that are still meant to be used with two hands against close-range targets. Things like Shotguns, Assault rifles, SMG’s, are all shortarms. The attributes used are pretty much for the same reasons as pistols.
Rifles
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Cunning, Guile
The main thing that differentiates Rifles from Shortarms is the range they are supposed to be used at. Rifles are more accurate than shortarms and are supposed to be used against distant targets. Also, while a Shortarm can be fired from the hip with minimal aiming, a Rifle is almost always fired from the shoulder.
Heavy Weapons
Primary: Brawn
Secondary: Dexterity, Cunning
Most heavy weapons are bulky automatic contraptions. Aiming is less a concern than dealing with the intense recoil and staying upright. As such, Brawn is a more important character trait for this type of weapon. Of course, it’s still useful to be able to point the overheating bullet spewing deathtrap you call a weapon in the right direction, and to identify the best targets. Often Heavy weapons are mounted on a bipod or tripod, but sometimes they are handheld.
Thrown weapons
Primary: Strength
Secondary: Dexterity, Cunning
Thrown weapons refers to throwing things such that they hurt the people they hit. A good arm strength is necessary for this, but aiming and knowing where to aim is always useful.
Grenade Weapons
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity, Brawn
After The End, pretty much all survivors have the strength to hurl a grenade, so distance is less an issue than placement. As such, Cunning is the most important attribute for a Grenadier.
Craft Skills
Smiting
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Brawn, Dexterity
Smiting is the simplest of the Craft Skills, the simple of the craft skills. It covers the creation of simple things with minimal if any moving parts. Armor, melee weapons, parts for more complicated items, all these things are covered by Smiting.
Crafting
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
More complex than smiting, Crafting is the art of building complex devices like firearms, gas masks, grappling guns, crossbows, pretty much any handheld item with moving parts. A sharp mind is the most important tool, but a good steady hand is always useful.
Mechanics
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Mechanics is about big machines. This skill mainly covers to construction, repair, and maintenance of vehicles.
Electronics
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Working electricity is somewhat rare After the End, but it’s still useful to know how to fiddle with the wires. Electronics covers the alteration, repair, and construction of anything with an electronic component.
Survival Skills
Wilderness Survival
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity, Brawn
This skill covers surviving in the wastes, hunting giant groundhogs, finding clean water, sheltering from storms, all that sort of stuff. It’s mainly an exercise in brainpower, but physical strength and a good turn of speed are useful.
Scavenging
Primary: Cunning
This skill is more useful in urban areas. Scavenging covers your ability to find useful items in large amounts of junk. Parts for machines, food stuffs, whatever. When you need to find a needle in a haystack (or a pipe you can turn into the barrel of a gun big enough to take down a Supermoose in a collapsed building).
Athletics
Primary: Dexterity
Secondary: Brawn
Freerunning, jumping over gaps, scaling a wall, or just running really really fast. All these things are covered by the Athletics skill.
Driving
Primary: Cunning
Secondary: Dexterity
Driving covers the operation of ground based vehicles. Of course, giving the state of things After the End, such vehicles tend to be rattling, smoking deathtraps, but at least you’ll know how to drive one.
Social Skills
Diplomacy
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Diplomacy is convincing somebody to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise by making them want to do it. Brining them around to your point of view with your natural charms, and maybe, just a little bit of logic.
Intimidate
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Brawn.
Intimidate is getting people to do what they normally wouldn’t by making them very scared of you. Force of personality is the best way to do this, but you can also just be really, really big.
Bluff
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Bluffing is getting people to do what they normally wouldn’t through deception. A sharp mind is useful, to help you think of a believable lie, but if you’re charming enough, people will care less about what you say than about how you say it.
Barter
Primary: Guile
Secondary: Cunning
Barter specifically governs Deals. While Diplomacy makes people agree with you, the Barter skill is about getting the best deal possible. When wondering whether to use Barter or Diplomacy ask this question, are the parties exchanging anything. If the premise is one of equal exchange (as untrue as that may be).You can’t offer the bandits a paperclip and use the Barter skill.
Damage and Health
A character’s Hit Points are equal to 10 times their Brawn rating. However, every time a character takes their brawn rating in damage, they receive a cumulative -1 penalty on all rolls due to pain. At 0 HP a character is unconscious; at -(10+brawn) rating they are dead.
Armor
Armor reduces the damage a character takes. Armor has three ratings, Impact, Ballistic, and chemical.
Impact shows how well the armor protects against low velocity damage spread over a larger area, melee attacks, grenades, ect are all protected from by Impact armor.
Ballistic armor protects from bullets.
Chemical armor protects from things like gas, areas with lots of radiation, and airborne diseases.
Combat
At the start of combat, characters roll 1d20+Dexterity to determine turn order. However, Initiative does not end there. A character may subtract 5 from their initiative (assuming this does not bring their score below 0) to gain additional actions.
In addition to standard actions, there is something called a Minor action. You may get a minor action by reducing your initiative score by 2.
Marco is attacked by a pipe-wielding raider. Marco rolls an 11, adding his dexterity of 4, for a total score of 15. However, he decides to take multiple actions this round, so he lowers his score to 8, giving him 2 actions and one minor action this round. The Pipe-wielding raider gets a 15, which he drops to 10 for 2 actions.
Melee Combat: Hitting things with sticks.
All weapons have 3 scores: Accuracy, Damage, and Step.
Accuracy effects, positively or negatively, the ability to hit a target.
Damage displays how much damage the weapon deals.
Step represents the ease by which the weapon can be made to deal more damage.
When you make a Melee attack, you roll an opposed check against your opponents dodge rating.
The Pipe wielding raider uses his two actions to move next to Marco and attack. The Raider has a Brutal combat score of 8, and his pipe has Accuracy -1, Damage 3, and step 4. Marco has a dodge score of 9, and armor with impact 3.
The Raider rolls a 14, and adds 7 (8-1 for the pipes accuracy) for a final score of 22. Marco rolls a 9, for a final score of 18. Because the Raider beat Marco’s dodge rating, he connects with the pipe, and because he beat Marco’s score by 4 (his pipe’s step rating), he deals an additional 3 damage, for a total of 6 (3 damage for just hitting, with an additional 3 for going up one step). However, Marco’s armor reduces that damage back down to 3.
So, the formula for damage is (Attack Roll-Dodge Roll/step rating x damage - Armor).
Ranged Combat: Eat Lead Sucka.
Ranged Combat differentiates from Melee combat primarily with it’s use of Stances. There are two stances, Firing and Mobile.
In Mobile stance, the weapon is held at the hip, shots are made quickly with little aiming, reducing accuracy but allowing the user full mobility. In Mobile stance weapons take the following accuracy modifiers, but are able to use their full dodge score and movement. It does not take an action to enter Mobile stance, but you can only do it on your action. By default you are in Mobile stance.
Pistols: -0
Shortarms: -1
Rifles: -5
Heavy: Cannot be used.
In Firing stance, the weapon is held at the shoulder, the braces themself so as to minimize the effects of recoil, and the position is held after firing. In the case of heavy weapons, they are still fired from the Hip, but the body must be positioned and ready to keep the gun on target. In Firing stance you can only use half your Dodge score and move at half speed, but your shots are more accurate. It takes an action to enter firing stance unless you are wielding a pistol, in which case it only takes a Minor action.
In firing stance, the following modifiers apply.
Pistols: +2
Shortarms: +1
Rifles: +0
Heavy: +0
It’s now Marco’s turn. He already has his pistol (Accuracy 1, Damage 4, Step 3) out, so he uses one action to move away from the Raider, he then uses his minor action to adopt Firing stance, and his second standard action to take a shot.
His Pistol score is 9, with his weapon’s accuracy and the bonus from adopting firing stance that’s a total of 12. Marco rolls a 10, for a final score of 22. The Raider’s dodge score is 7 and his scrapped together armor only provides ballistic protection of 1. The raider rolls a 9, for a final score of 16, which Marco beats by 6, causing his damage to go up 2 steps. The raider’s armor only reduces the damage by 1, for a total of 11 damage.
Things I have in my head but need to be fleshed out:
The system for salvage, weapons, and crafting.
The combat System.
armor.
Vehicles
Mutants
Hazards
Further Combat stuff.
Plus abunch of other things.
Questions, Comments, Suggestions?