Kiero
2010-06-28, 08:33 AM
Given my previous efforts with FATE and 40k (Throne Agents (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=437088)), this will surprise precisely no one. Diaspora (http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/diaspora-srd.html)wasn't around back then, if it were I would probably have used that as the base rather than Spirit of the Century.
I don't much like either Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, while the latter is by all accounts a bit better than the former, they're still vastly over-complicated and scaled at the wrong level for my tastes. Laundry lists of Talents is not my idea of fun.
Diaspora has all the elements needed; star cluster creation, space combat, platoon combat, an interesting spin on social combat. It's simple and generic allowing maximum customisation and tweaking to fit. For my purposes here, there are only a handful of things that need changing.
For Aspects I think six is a better number than ten, maybe keep the same Phases but for each it's one or maybe two for a particularly important Phase. Add a couple of "campaign Aspects" which relate to the themes of the game, being part of the crew, maybe the ship or Rogue Trader who employs them.
Skills top at Great (+4) and 20 points to spend in the column, rather than pyramid. Probably three Stunts (sticking with the Aspects/2 approach). That leaves room for advancement (more Skills, Stunts and Aspects). To be precise room for another four Aspects, two Stunts and 15 points of Skills if we treat an SotC character as the apex.
For Skills, I think Diaspora's 37 is too many, simply put.
Stress Track Skills:
Assets
Resolve
Stamina
Combat Skills:
Melee Weapons (Close Combat)
Ranged Weapons (Energy Weapons and Slug Throwers)
Unarmed Combat (Brawling)
Space Skills:
Gunnery
Navigation (only in-system for non-Navigators)
Pilot (same as Other)
Enginseer (Repair - same as Other)
Other Skills:
Agility
Charm
Culture (includes Arts)
Empathy
Enginseer (Repair) (same as Space, includes Demolitions and Tech)
Intimidation
Medicae (Medical)
Oratory
Profession (includes Animal Handler, Bureaucracy, Brokerage, Tactics - as Professions or components thereof)
Science (includes Tech)
Stealth
Survival
Pilot (same as Space, includes Aircraft)
Psyk
Vehicles
Stunts
Micro-G combat (no longer a Skill, allows use of combat skills without penalty)
EVA experience (in place of the EVA skill - might merge with Zero-G)
The other bit I'm less enamoured with is the weapons and armour business, with build points and whatnot. A bit too complicated for my liking, so a more simple format.
For weapons, a steal from the approach in Dresden Files:
Dresden Files breaks it down thusly:
Small pocket weapons, knives, saps, holdout pistol, etc = Weapon:1*
Swords, baseball bats, most pistols = Weapon:2
Two-handed weapons, over-sized pistols (Desert Eagle), rifles, shotguns, and most full-auto weapons = Weapon:3
Battlefield weaponry = Weapon:4+
Not really a system per se, but the scale is so compressed that most personal weapons fit in a range of 1 to 3. Can you hide it? Weapon:1. Is it a personal, carry it all the time, type of weapon? Weapon:2. Is it something that you would only carry when you mean business? Weapon:3 Need to knock out a tank? Weapon:4+
* Equivalent to the weapon Bonus in LoA.
So a knife is weapon 1, sword or club weapon 2, power sword or chainsword weapon 3 and so on. If people really want more gear-detail, I suppose I could go the full LoA hog and list out the common stuff.
For armour something like light armour (armoured bodygloves, flak jackets) absorbs a Minor consequence; medium (carapace armour, eldar mesh) absorbs one point of incoming Stress, along with a Minor or Moderate; heavy (powered armour) two points of incoming Stress along with two Minor or a Minor and a Moderate. There are also associated Aspects like "Bulky" for anything heavier than light.
Now my instinct would be to use either the simple psionic rules in Diaspora, or my own thoughts thus:
Psionics
Some initial thoughts. I think there does need to be a Psyk skill - so psykers can't just boost their Resolve to silly levels and have done. So if we roughly follow the model of the Force from the other, there's several stages.
Psyk skill is roughly a measure of a psyker's power. Thus Epic (+8) is an alpha-plus psyker. They are monstrous.
Latent Psyker: Someone who just has a psionic aspect. They can be compelled with all sorts of stuff like giving out a backwash that trained psykers can pick up and such. For free they can:
-Broadcast telepathy (mind-speech)
Trained Psyker: Someone with a psionic Aspect, and who has raised the Psyk skill to at least Average. For free they can use:
-Sense psionic weirdness (picking up on warp-disturbances)
-Clairsentience (sensing stuff you can't see)
-conducting an auto-seance
Psi-specialist: Trained psyker with Psyker Stunts (each power is it's own Stunt, required to be able use that power). They include:
-Telepathy (messing with people's heads)
-Telekinesis (moving stuff around)
-Astrotelepathy (sending messages over interstellar distances)
-Pre/post-cognition (reading the future and past)
-Astral projection ("going bodiless")
-Puppeting ("waring" another person's body)
-Psionic Blast (using Psyk offensively as an attack)
Broad powers is deliberate. How they work, mind, I still need some input on.
Alright, some more thoughts on how psionics works. I'm probably going to have slightly broader applicability with each Stunt than I did with the Star Wars game, since most psykers will only have one, and each power needs to be broader.
Should repeated use of psionics cause Stress to the psyker? They certainly seem to get tired, and there are reactions from the environment too, like frost and ice forming on things. Or perhaps the option to cause yourself Stress to boost what you're doing? Or both?
Should psykers be able to shunt Composure damage from psionics onto their Health track?
Anyway, here's some ideas for how the powers can work, mechanically.
Telepathy (messing with people's heads)
-Probe: Psyk v targets Resolve. 1 Shift gives just surface thoughts. 2 recent memories. 3 deeper memories. Overflow access to their entire memory. If the target gets Spin on their defense, they are aware of the probe attempt. (Or just use Cold Read?)
-Compulsion: Psyk v Resolve to place a temporary Aspect on the target. 1 FP to then compel that Aspect to force the target to behave in a particular way.
Telekinesis (moving stuff around)
-Gross manipulation: You can remotely move objects, substituting Psyk for Might. A successful check can increase this by one. A check is needed to move multiple objects at once.
-Fine manipulation: Psyk check to perform complex tasks with anything of a WF of 0 (ie 10lbs and under). Difficulty depends on the task, failures mean it takes longer.
Astrotelepathy (sending messages over interstellar distances)
-Broadcast: no idea how this one might work. Difficulty based on how far it is, and ambient warp conditions?
Pre/post-cognition (reading the future and past)
-Pre-cognition: Make a Psyk check at -2 to get an impression from the future.
-Post-cognition: Make a Psyk check to get an impression from the past.
-Warning: GM can make a Psyk check to warn the character of impending (within a minute or so) personal danger.
-Prescience: Functions the same as the Danger Sense Stunt.
The difficulty of a reading is based on the proximity in time from the present. The future is harder to read than the past, and tends to only give the most likely outcome rather than a true reading. Preparation can reduce the difficulty by up to three, depending on how comprehensive those activities are. A reading on a specific person, object or place when they are present reduces the difficulty by one.
Diff/Time
-4 Moments
-3 A minute
-2 An hour
-1 A day
0 A week
+1 A month
+2 A season
+3 A year
+4 A decade
+5 A half-century
+6 A century
+7 Several centuries
+8 A millenia
Astral projection ("going bodiless")
-You can leave your body at will, taking only your mind with you. Your body is paralysed and you are unaware of your surroundings while gone. Only the most basic impulses come through (like pain). You are invisible to blunts, but your passage can still affect the environment, stirring light objects and leaving psi-frost on surfaces you pass through. In a bodiless state you are immune to Stress on your Health track, but can still take Composure damage.
You still have access to all your usual psionic Stunts while bodiless, such as Telekinesis, Telepathy and Psionic Blast.
Do I need any more detailed thoughts on Astral combat, or is that just colour for Psionic Blast?
Puppeting ("waring" another person's body)
-You can take control of someone else's body, inhabiting their mind and using it as though it were your own. No check is necessary for a willing recipient, but against an unwilling target you must beat their Resolve. If they get Spin, they are aware something was up, and indeed a trace of the attempt is left behind.
If you're just trying to "hide" in someone else's mind rather than possess them, the difficulty is lowered by two.
This requires the Astral Projection Stunt.
Psionic Blast (using Psyk offensively as an attack)
-You can use your Psyk as a ranged attack. The exact manifestation is down to the character, but it requires either Telepathy or Telekinesis to take this Stunt. FP to add Aspect like Immobilised or Knocked Down or to push back a zone.
Other Psionic Stunts
Sanctioned - Resist the warp (+2 to Resolve checks against daemonic influence)
Kineblades - use Telekinesis as a defense against ranged attacks (in place of Athletics) - but must have small objects that can be used to block them
Telekinetic Prowess - Increase your effective Psyk for gross manipulation by two.
Instinctive Block - when armed with a psyk-reactive weapon (like a force sword) you can use your Psyk as a defense against ranged attacks, instead of Athletics.
Astral Prodigy - you can still use your body while projecting, but using both counts as a supplementary action (does this need to be a Stunt?).
But there could be an alternative approach from Dresden Files I'm missing out on.
I don't much like either Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, while the latter is by all accounts a bit better than the former, they're still vastly over-complicated and scaled at the wrong level for my tastes. Laundry lists of Talents is not my idea of fun.
Diaspora has all the elements needed; star cluster creation, space combat, platoon combat, an interesting spin on social combat. It's simple and generic allowing maximum customisation and tweaking to fit. For my purposes here, there are only a handful of things that need changing.
For Aspects I think six is a better number than ten, maybe keep the same Phases but for each it's one or maybe two for a particularly important Phase. Add a couple of "campaign Aspects" which relate to the themes of the game, being part of the crew, maybe the ship or Rogue Trader who employs them.
Skills top at Great (+4) and 20 points to spend in the column, rather than pyramid. Probably three Stunts (sticking with the Aspects/2 approach). That leaves room for advancement (more Skills, Stunts and Aspects). To be precise room for another four Aspects, two Stunts and 15 points of Skills if we treat an SotC character as the apex.
For Skills, I think Diaspora's 37 is too many, simply put.
Stress Track Skills:
Assets
Resolve
Stamina
Combat Skills:
Melee Weapons (Close Combat)
Ranged Weapons (Energy Weapons and Slug Throwers)
Unarmed Combat (Brawling)
Space Skills:
Gunnery
Navigation (only in-system for non-Navigators)
Pilot (same as Other)
Enginseer (Repair - same as Other)
Other Skills:
Agility
Charm
Culture (includes Arts)
Empathy
Enginseer (Repair) (same as Space, includes Demolitions and Tech)
Intimidation
Medicae (Medical)
Oratory
Profession (includes Animal Handler, Bureaucracy, Brokerage, Tactics - as Professions or components thereof)
Science (includes Tech)
Stealth
Survival
Pilot (same as Space, includes Aircraft)
Psyk
Vehicles
Stunts
Micro-G combat (no longer a Skill, allows use of combat skills without penalty)
EVA experience (in place of the EVA skill - might merge with Zero-G)
The other bit I'm less enamoured with is the weapons and armour business, with build points and whatnot. A bit too complicated for my liking, so a more simple format.
For weapons, a steal from the approach in Dresden Files:
Dresden Files breaks it down thusly:
Small pocket weapons, knives, saps, holdout pistol, etc = Weapon:1*
Swords, baseball bats, most pistols = Weapon:2
Two-handed weapons, over-sized pistols (Desert Eagle), rifles, shotguns, and most full-auto weapons = Weapon:3
Battlefield weaponry = Weapon:4+
Not really a system per se, but the scale is so compressed that most personal weapons fit in a range of 1 to 3. Can you hide it? Weapon:1. Is it a personal, carry it all the time, type of weapon? Weapon:2. Is it something that you would only carry when you mean business? Weapon:3 Need to knock out a tank? Weapon:4+
* Equivalent to the weapon Bonus in LoA.
So a knife is weapon 1, sword or club weapon 2, power sword or chainsword weapon 3 and so on. If people really want more gear-detail, I suppose I could go the full LoA hog and list out the common stuff.
For armour something like light armour (armoured bodygloves, flak jackets) absorbs a Minor consequence; medium (carapace armour, eldar mesh) absorbs one point of incoming Stress, along with a Minor or Moderate; heavy (powered armour) two points of incoming Stress along with two Minor or a Minor and a Moderate. There are also associated Aspects like "Bulky" for anything heavier than light.
Now my instinct would be to use either the simple psionic rules in Diaspora, or my own thoughts thus:
Psionics
Some initial thoughts. I think there does need to be a Psyk skill - so psykers can't just boost their Resolve to silly levels and have done. So if we roughly follow the model of the Force from the other, there's several stages.
Psyk skill is roughly a measure of a psyker's power. Thus Epic (+8) is an alpha-plus psyker. They are monstrous.
Latent Psyker: Someone who just has a psionic aspect. They can be compelled with all sorts of stuff like giving out a backwash that trained psykers can pick up and such. For free they can:
-Broadcast telepathy (mind-speech)
Trained Psyker: Someone with a psionic Aspect, and who has raised the Psyk skill to at least Average. For free they can use:
-Sense psionic weirdness (picking up on warp-disturbances)
-Clairsentience (sensing stuff you can't see)
-conducting an auto-seance
Psi-specialist: Trained psyker with Psyker Stunts (each power is it's own Stunt, required to be able use that power). They include:
-Telepathy (messing with people's heads)
-Telekinesis (moving stuff around)
-Astrotelepathy (sending messages over interstellar distances)
-Pre/post-cognition (reading the future and past)
-Astral projection ("going bodiless")
-Puppeting ("waring" another person's body)
-Psionic Blast (using Psyk offensively as an attack)
Broad powers is deliberate. How they work, mind, I still need some input on.
Alright, some more thoughts on how psionics works. I'm probably going to have slightly broader applicability with each Stunt than I did with the Star Wars game, since most psykers will only have one, and each power needs to be broader.
Should repeated use of psionics cause Stress to the psyker? They certainly seem to get tired, and there are reactions from the environment too, like frost and ice forming on things. Or perhaps the option to cause yourself Stress to boost what you're doing? Or both?
Should psykers be able to shunt Composure damage from psionics onto their Health track?
Anyway, here's some ideas for how the powers can work, mechanically.
Telepathy (messing with people's heads)
-Probe: Psyk v targets Resolve. 1 Shift gives just surface thoughts. 2 recent memories. 3 deeper memories. Overflow access to their entire memory. If the target gets Spin on their defense, they are aware of the probe attempt. (Or just use Cold Read?)
-Compulsion: Psyk v Resolve to place a temporary Aspect on the target. 1 FP to then compel that Aspect to force the target to behave in a particular way.
Telekinesis (moving stuff around)
-Gross manipulation: You can remotely move objects, substituting Psyk for Might. A successful check can increase this by one. A check is needed to move multiple objects at once.
-Fine manipulation: Psyk check to perform complex tasks with anything of a WF of 0 (ie 10lbs and under). Difficulty depends on the task, failures mean it takes longer.
Astrotelepathy (sending messages over interstellar distances)
-Broadcast: no idea how this one might work. Difficulty based on how far it is, and ambient warp conditions?
Pre/post-cognition (reading the future and past)
-Pre-cognition: Make a Psyk check at -2 to get an impression from the future.
-Post-cognition: Make a Psyk check to get an impression from the past.
-Warning: GM can make a Psyk check to warn the character of impending (within a minute or so) personal danger.
-Prescience: Functions the same as the Danger Sense Stunt.
The difficulty of a reading is based on the proximity in time from the present. The future is harder to read than the past, and tends to only give the most likely outcome rather than a true reading. Preparation can reduce the difficulty by up to three, depending on how comprehensive those activities are. A reading on a specific person, object or place when they are present reduces the difficulty by one.
Diff/Time
-4 Moments
-3 A minute
-2 An hour
-1 A day
0 A week
+1 A month
+2 A season
+3 A year
+4 A decade
+5 A half-century
+6 A century
+7 Several centuries
+8 A millenia
Astral projection ("going bodiless")
-You can leave your body at will, taking only your mind with you. Your body is paralysed and you are unaware of your surroundings while gone. Only the most basic impulses come through (like pain). You are invisible to blunts, but your passage can still affect the environment, stirring light objects and leaving psi-frost on surfaces you pass through. In a bodiless state you are immune to Stress on your Health track, but can still take Composure damage.
You still have access to all your usual psionic Stunts while bodiless, such as Telekinesis, Telepathy and Psionic Blast.
Do I need any more detailed thoughts on Astral combat, or is that just colour for Psionic Blast?
Puppeting ("waring" another person's body)
-You can take control of someone else's body, inhabiting their mind and using it as though it were your own. No check is necessary for a willing recipient, but against an unwilling target you must beat their Resolve. If they get Spin, they are aware something was up, and indeed a trace of the attempt is left behind.
If you're just trying to "hide" in someone else's mind rather than possess them, the difficulty is lowered by two.
This requires the Astral Projection Stunt.
Psionic Blast (using Psyk offensively as an attack)
-You can use your Psyk as a ranged attack. The exact manifestation is down to the character, but it requires either Telepathy or Telekinesis to take this Stunt. FP to add Aspect like Immobilised or Knocked Down or to push back a zone.
Other Psionic Stunts
Sanctioned - Resist the warp (+2 to Resolve checks against daemonic influence)
Kineblades - use Telekinesis as a defense against ranged attacks (in place of Athletics) - but must have small objects that can be used to block them
Telekinetic Prowess - Increase your effective Psyk for gross manipulation by two.
Instinctive Block - when armed with a psyk-reactive weapon (like a force sword) you can use your Psyk as a defense against ranged attacks, instead of Athletics.
Astral Prodigy - you can still use your body while projecting, but using both counts as a supplementary action (does this need to be a Stunt?).
But there could be an alternative approach from Dresden Files I'm missing out on.