Grod_The_Giant
2013-01-20, 01:17 AM
Revised skills! Revised shipbuilding! Nearly complete!
Link to a newer draft, via Dropbox download (docx) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uypm36w4zp0trm/Fate%20of%20the%20Stars.docx)
A general note: These rules are build directly from FATE-- specifically, the Dresden Files RPG, with some input from the new FATE core preview PDFs (mainly for character creation). I will not be explaining basic FATE rules, or the things I've lifted wholesale from the Dresden Files RPG.
Character Creation
Step 1: Template
Unenhanced Human— Gets two extra points of refresh, but cannot take any powers, be they cybernetic or psionic
Cyborg— May select powers off the list of Cybernetic Powers. High Concept must reflect augmentation somehow. (Such as "CYBORG COP.")
Psion— May select powers off the list of Psionic Powers. High Concept must reflect psionic abilities somehow. (Such as "PSYCHIC FOR HIRE.")
Alien— May chose an alien race template and its associated powers. Must take all the listed powers, unless otherwise indicated. High Concept must reflect alien nature. (Such as "CAAHIRG INTELLIGENCE OFFICER.")
Step 2: High Concept and Trouble
Both are aspects, yes, yes.
Step 3: Name
Unless you're being played by Clint Eastwood, you need a moniker of some sort.
Step 4: The Three Backstory Phases
Phase One: Your First Adventure
Write down a few sentences about your first "real" adventure— the first book in the series about your character, so to speak. A resolution isn't necessary— something along the lines of "When [threat] arises, [character] has to [action]. But what will happen when [complication]?" works fine. Pick an aspect to go along with the story. Record your story on a notecard with your name and your character's name on it, but leave space on your sheet— we'll come back to this.
Phase Two: Who Have You Crossed Paths With?
Redistribute index cards so all players have someone else's card— pass to the left, shuffle and redistribute, or what have you. Your character has a supporting role in the story you're holding. Discuss with the player whose story is on the card, and add a few sentences about your character's role in their story. Generally, this means your character either helped the situation, complicated it, or did both. Pick an aspect to go along with it, and write both your friend's story and your contribution on your sheet. Note your contribution on the index card as well.
Phase Three: Who Else Have You Crossed Paths With?
Phase Three is the same as Phase Two, with the caveat that you must wind up with another player's story— not yours, and not the one you just contributed to. Again, work out a sentence or two about how your character contributed to your friend's story and pick an aspect. Record their story and your contribution (you don't have to write down the contribution from Phase Two if it doesn't affect your character).
Wrapping Up
Return all cards to the original player. You should have your original story, with contributions from two friends. Copy all three sections onto your character sheet.
Step 5: Skills
Now it's time to pick skills. Your GM should have provided you with the total number of skill points available, and the highest rank available. The default assumption for the beginning of a game is 20 skill points, with a skill cap of Great (+4). You may not have more skills of a given level than you have of the level immediately below it. Sample distributions include:
2 Great, 2 Good, 2 Fair, 2 Average (8 total skills)
1 Great, 2 Good, 3 Fair, 4 Average (10 total skills, recommended)
3 Good, 3 Fair, 5 Average (11 total skills)
2 Good, 4 Fair, 6 Average (12 total skills)
Step 6: Stunts and Powers
Finally, pick human stunts and extrahuman powers (if applicable). See various FATE books for example stunts, and rules on creating your own. See below for the list of powers. Remember that human stunts each reduce your effective refresh by 1, and powers by 1 or more. Your character must have at least one point of adjusted refresh remaining at the start of play.
The default starting refresh is 5.
Power Lists
Cybernetic Powers
Aquatic (or vacuum adaptation version)
Breath Weapon implanted projectile weapon
Claws implanted melee weapon
Pack Instincts group cyber link
Spider Walk
Supernatural Sense sense augments, inbuilt scanners, etc
Wings jetpack, grav lifters, etc
Glamours holo projections
Item of Power high-tech gizmo
Cloak of Shadows tech augments, yadda yadda
Mana Static EMP generators
Inhuman Speed
Inhuman Strength
Inhuman Toughness
The Catch (+1): armor-piercing bullets, anti-tech EMPs, etc
Supernatural Speed/Strength/Toughness: plausible but not really available
Mythic speed/strength/toughness: superpowers
Psionics
Channeling/Evocation: telepathy, telekinesis, ergokinesis (energy generation). Uses Conviction/Discipline, same as magic.
Ritual (telepathy): divinations, messages, etc. Replace lore with empathy.
Refinement
Focus items = tech boosters/mental comfort things
Cosmic Psion [-1]: your powers may reach foes in the same zone during space combat, and anywhere on the planet out of combat. MUST BE ABLE TO PERCIEVE TARGET SOMEHOW
Interstellar Psion [-2]: Replaces Cosmic Psion. Allows you to use powers anywhere in the universe you can perceive. (NPCS ONLY)
Misc Powers
Ritual (engineering): crafting only. Replace lore with science and discipline with engineering. No mental stress for failures, only extra time/resources.
Step 7: Stress and Consequences
Characters have three stress tracks— physical, social, and mental. Physique affects the length of your physical track, Presence affects the length of your social track, and Conviction affects the length of your mental track.
{table=head]Skill Rank|Track Size
Mediocre (+0)|2 boxes
Average (+1) to Fair (+2)|3 boxes
Good (+3) to Great (+4)|4 boxes
Superb (+5) and up|4 boxes, plus an additional mild consequence of the appropriate type for each rank above Great.[/table]
Characters have three consequence slots by default— one mild, one moderate, and one severe— which may be used with any stress track. Stunts and high skills may grant extra consequence slots.
The Skills
{table=head]Skill|Uses
Alertness|Passive awareness, physical combat initiative, avoiding surprise
Artillery|Attacks with large-scale weapons, knowledge about the same
Athletics|Climbing, jumping, sprinting, avoiding ranged attacks
Contacts |Gathering information, spreading rumors, knowing people
Conviction|Strength of mind and beliefs, psionic power. Determines mental stress capacity
Cyberwarfare|Hacking, computer searches, electronic warfare
Deceit |Lying, disguise, distractions, and so on
Discipline|Concentration, emotional control, mental defense
Engineering|Building things, fixing things, sabotaging things
Empathy |Reading people, making people open up, counseling, social initiative, psionic senses
Fighting|Melee combat— with and without weapons— and melee defense
Investigation|Active perception, searching, surveillance, analyzing clues
Medicine|First-aid, longer-term care, and medical knowledge
Performance |Composition, performing for an audience, artistic criticism
Physique|Breaking things, lifting things, long-term action, wrestling, other pure physical acts. Determines Physical stress capacity.
Pilot|Chases, navigation, maneuvering vehicles
Presence|Charisma, command, intimidation, provocation, threats, reputation. Determines Social stress capacity.
Rapport|Idle conversation, opening up, first impressions, social defense.
Resources|Buying things, equipment, bribery.
Security|Lockpicking, bypassing security systems, casing targets
Scholarship|General knowledge, research, exposition, languages
Science|Lab work, scientific knowledge, inventing
Shooting|Ranged combat, knowledge about weapons. Includes other projectile weapons.
Sensors|Active and passive awareness in spacecraft; initiative in space combat, scanning
Stealth|Ambush, hiding, shadowing[/table]
Starships
Starships are a separate entity from the characters, with their own equipment, aspects, and refresh. Ships are laid out on a Blueprint— a grid representing the layout of the vessel. Each square of the grid is called a Compartment. The total size of the Blueprint is equal to the ship's refresh times ten.
Compartments may be either Empty or Functional— that is, they may contain either non-essential hallways, compartments, and storage areas, or they contain Technology required for the operation of the starship.
In addition, ships have a refresh, like a character, and accumulate Fate points, which may be spent by anyone in their crew. Ships may have an adjusted refresh of zero, but not lower. Ships have one key aspect, such as "Mercenary Battleship," and a Trouble. They also have Ship Points (~skill points) equal to their base refresh times four.
Finally, ships have a unique skill: Thrust. Thrust functions as a sort of halfway point between Athletics and Physique— it controls sprinting, lifting, and other such purely physical actions the spacecraft might undertake.
Building a Spaceship
Certain pieces of technology are required for any spaceship. These include:
A power plant, occupying a total number of compartments of at least the ship's refresh. If at least one compartment of the power plant is damaged but more remain, the ship gains a "Damaged Generator" aspect. Each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time. If the the power plant is totally disabled, all ship systems fail-- weapons, shields, engines, sensors, environmental plants, and EW suits
An environmental plant, occupying a total number of compartments of at least 1/4 the ship's refresh, rounded up. If at least one compartment environmental plant is damaged but more remain, the ship gains a "Faltering Atmosphere" aspect. Each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time. If the power plant is totally disabled, this is upgraded to a "No Atmosphere" aspect.
A bridge, occupying one compartment. From a bridge compartment, characters may control all weapons, engines, sensors, and EW equipment. When not in a bridge, characters may only control and gain bonuses from technology in the compartment they are currently occupying and immediately adjacent compartments.
One compartment for combat sensors (if the Sensors skill is to be used for anything other than routine navigation). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Battle-Damaged Sensors." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
One compartment for electronic warfare equipment (if the Cyberwarfare skill is to be used in battle). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Battle-Damaged Sensors." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
At least one Engine, although the exact power of the engines is determined by the expenditure of Ship Points (see below). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Damaged Engines." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
Fully equipping a ship requires the expenditure of Ship Points. These points may be spent on:
Close-range weapons, such as lasers and mass drivers, which may be used against foes in the same zone. These function identical to melee weapons in ground combat. One Ship Point buys one point of weapon.
Long-range weapons, such as missiles, which may be used against foes two or more zones away. These function identical to projectile weapons in ground combat. One Ship Point buys one point of weapon.
Shields. One Ship Point buys one point of armor.
Engines. One Ship Point buys one point of the Thrust skill. Ships must have at least one engine.
Additional compartments of key systems— power plant, environmental plant, bridge, sensors, and electronic warfare gear. One Ship Point buys one extra compartment
Aspects, such as "Prototype Sensor Suite" or "Stolen Manticoran Countermissiles." One Ship Point buys one Aspect. Ships can't have more aspects than their total refresh.
Stunts. Ships may purchase stunts for the following skills: Artillery, Cyberwarefare, Pilot, and Sensors. In addition to usual refresh adjustment, stunts cost two Ship Points.
Fighters cost 5 Ship Points, and have special rules (see below).
Artificial Intelligences may be purchased, in which case Ship Points may be spent as if they were Skill Points to purchase skills such as Scholarship.
All of this technology takes up space. In addition to the compartments taken up by the power plant, environmental plant, bridge, sensors, and electronic warfare gear, technology purchased with Ship Points takes up one Compartment per Ship Point spent on it.
Combat
Starships may have bodies, but they don't have their own minds— instead, it is the crew who use skills to fight. During each exchange— and naval exchanges are usually between 1 minute (for smaller ships) and 10 minutes (for larger warships)— each character may take an action, as normal, with the two caveats:
The technology in a given compartment may only be used once per exchange. For example, a ship with two compartments of electronic warfare gear and one compartment of sensors might be able to make two Cyberwarfare maneuvers per round, but only one assessment using Sensors. A ship with 4 compartments of missiles could make one Weapon 4 attack per turn, or two Weapon 2 attacks, or a Weapon 1 and a Weapon 3 attack…
The ship as a whole may only move once per exchange. That is, a ship can sprint using Thrust, maneuver using Pilot, or what have you, but it may not sprint and then maneuver in the same exchange.
Characters may attack, block, maneuver, and so on as normal when fighting a starship. Damage, however, is tracked very differently.
Damage
Starships are not living creatures, and so they do not have stress tracks, and they do not take consequences. Instead, for each shift of damage the vessel receives, randomly cross off one Compartment and record the total shifts of damage from the attack. These crossed off Compartments have Battle Damage. The ship and its crew suffer no consequences if the damaged compartment is empty. If the compartment is functional, however, the benefit it provides is lost until it can be repaired.
Repairing a Compartment
Fully repairing a compartment requires time and access to materials, workshops, and so on. In the heat of battle, compartments may be jury-rigged— returned to functionality for a scene— with an Engineering check with a DC equal to the shifts of damage that disabled the compartment.
Moving within a starship
Treat each compartment as a zone, with no border, but no line-of-sight into adjacent zones— starships tend to have a lot of bulkheads and pressure doors. Damaged compartments have a border equal to the shifts of damage that took them out. For example, to move through a compartment disabled by a 3-shift attack, a character would have to make a Good (+3) Athletics check.
If your character is within a compartment when it's damaged, he takes physical stress equal to the shifts of damage that take out the compartment.
Boarding Actions
Characters can attempt to cross from one ship to another under certain circumstances. Both vessels must be in the same zone, and the characters must tag or invoke an appropriate aspect, such as HULL TO HULL or BOARDING SHUTTLES. Treat this as a Sprint action, with a border strength of Average, plus the target vessel's shield strength.
Once inside, characters may attempt to damage the compartment they are in. Roll attacks against a difficulty of Average to damage technology.
Fighters
Fighters fall into two categories: manned and unmanned. Manned fighters have a player character pilot; unmanned fighters do not.
Manned fighters must be built as spacecraft, with no refresh and a base of 5 Ship Points. The mothership may spend additional Ship Points to increase this total. Fighters are assumed to have all the necessary technology already— the 5 Ship Points may be spent on weapons, shields, engines, and so on.
Attacks from fighters may never damage more than one compartment of a larger ship.
Unlike larger ships fighters have the unique ability to target specific areas of a ship. Pilots may make a Sensors check, opposed by their opponent's Cyberwarefare skill. For every shift of success, they learn the location of one piece of technology on the target ship. Further attacks may be made against that specific target. Instead of rolling for a random compartment anywhere on the ship, targeted attacks may only hit the target compartment or an immediately adjacent compartment. (Rolling a d10 is a good way to choose this)
Manned fighters use stress tracks and consequences just like characters. They have a default physical stress track of 3 boxes; Ship points may be spent to increase this to 4 boxes (one point), and from there to add additional minor consequences (one point per minor consequence). The player driving them may make one action per turn, as normal.
If a manned fighter is destroyed, the pilot must make an Athletics check against the incoming shifts of damage. On a failure, he takes the shifts damage as well as his vessel. On a success, he takes half the damage. Either way, he's floating in space now. Pilots may be assumed to have homing beacons, and may be picked up by any ship in the same zone as them who makes a Fair (+2) Sensors check to find them.
Unmanned fighters… will be filled in eventually. At the moment, I'm leaning towards their working the same as manned, but with one Ship Point buying two Skill Points worth of Artillery/Pilot/Sensors.
Expanded Options
Every Player a Captain
It's possible to play the game with each player controlling a single starship, so that the group as a whole represents a squadron or small fleet. In this case, ships have Ship Points equal to five times their base refresh, instead of four times, and may purchase ranks of skills at an exchange of two skill points per Ship Point. Each skill may be considered to belong to a NPC crewman.
Simplified Ships
If the blueprint option is too slow, all ships may be treated as manned fighters, with stress track lengths equal to their base refresh and four mild, three moderate, and two severe consequence slots. Additional consequence slots may be purchased with Ship points-- two Ship Points for a mild consequence slots, four for a moderate consequence slot, and six for a severe consequence slot. Technology may be purchased as normal, although the number of compartments it takes up is irrelevant.
During boarding actions ships may be considered to have 7 zones--the engine room, power plant, gun deck, bridge, sensor room, personnel area, and cargo deck. (Smaller ships may have fewer zones). These may be laid out in any fashion, and have border strengths of Mediocre (+0).
With this option, an engineering roll may remove stress. Roll Engineering against a difficulty of Mediocre (+0) and restore stress equal to the resulting shifts.
Players are admirals
The main idea here is that fleets have a single, quite high refresh level-- 15 or more-- representing the fleet as a whole. The total fleet refresh would be divided up into any combination of ships, buying weapons, shields, engines, et cetera on a ship-by-ship basis.
Ships would probably be handled as fighters/normal characters for simplicity, although it also might be possible to have one big blueprint with sections for each ship.
The latter idea might work better if the fleet never really splits up. Functionally, then, it would work much like a single ship-- it moves as one unit, generally concentrates fire, and whatnot. The big difference being that players can't really move from ship to ship easily. I suppose you could work it the same way if ships split off from the main group, though there might be some on-the-fly math that way.
The former idea would probably work better for very large groups, since you don't have to keep track of so much detail.
If it's just the PCs commanding one fairly tightly-grouped cluster, it should work OK, methinks. The fleet following one unit's lead for maneuvering, fire control, and suchlike through some sort of cyber link is a well-established trope. The difficulty comes if each PC is trying to order around bunches of individual ships. Itmight work OK, but only because the FATE system is fast. I dunno.
In unrelated news, the first game in a campaign using this system kicks off tomorrow. Character creation was yesterday, and the group actually covers all the "core" options-- there are two different alien species, a cyborg, a psion, and a pure human. We'll see how it goes.
Original first post:
WARNING: rambling
A friend of mine has been working on a mecha RPG for a school project. (Why yes, I do love my college sometimes) In some spitballing sessions, I came up with what I thought was a fairly elegant way of handling damage. He liked it, but didn't want to use it, due partly to time constraints and partly to (an understandable) "it's a good system, but not my system" attitude. Very well, says I. But... it's too good an idea not to use.
While I don't share my friend's love of giant robots, I do have a rather long-abiding love for giant spaceships. And it occurred to me that many of the same basic ideas could apply to both settings... and it's winter term, and I have scads of free time, so here we are.
Now. To business.
Goal Musings
There are sort of three levels that a system like this should be able to handle:
1. Everyone is a captain, with their own starship and crew.
2. All players share a single ship, working together to fly and fight it
3. The players have left the ship and are running around talking/punching shooting as individuals.
I don't know how possible it is to make them work with any kind of unified framework, but...
My thematic touchstone is the Honor Harrington series, by David Weber. (If you like this kind of thing and haven't heard of them, I highly recommend at least the first couple).
Mechanical Musings
Your character sheet has two sides, a ship and a captain. (Or an officer and a shared ship sheet, but that's not the point).
Ships
The ship is more-or-less a big grid, composed of a certain number of boxes. Each box represents an area of your ship. Some of the boxes are blank, representing redundant systems and non-critical areas. BUT, some of them are filled in with the details on your ship's mechanics. Engines, reactors, weapon arrays, the bridge-- all of these things take up space. So your sheet looks sort of like this:
http://charliebrew.wikispaces.com/file/view/ship.jpg/399850264/800x304/ship.jpg
Ideally, besides the name, you'd also be able to list what the part is giving you. Also, the bonuses would be split up between boxes, so each engine might give +1 move in one box and +1 maneuverability in the other.
When the missiles start pouring in, damage is in terms of boxes, and randomly distributed-- if you take 5 hits, you'd roll 5d100 (or whatever) and cross off the indicated boxes. If the box is blank, it's a non-vital hit. If it's already crossed off, you move to an adjacent box. But if a part gets hit, the part is damaged/destroyed, and you lose the bonus. Attack goes down, speed goes down, whatever.
The players would have various skills and abilities and things to repair sections of the ship, wholly or partly-- giving us a sort of "damage control vs incoming damage" race.
Armor would be damage reduction. Shields would be a set of "floating boxes' off to the side, sort of a second health bar that can be depleted without the ship being damaged.
Building a ship... the DM could hand you one and be like "This is a Harrington-class dreadnought, have fun," or you could design your own. The two limiting factors for how much you can cram in your ship being physical space (filling in boxes) and power levels (you have X points to spend on ship parts, and each part costs [Y] points-- standard point-buy stuff). Maybe also funds, but that's starting to get too
Advancement... I can see it happening in two (not mutually exclusive) ways. Either miniaturization-- the same bonuses, but in fewer boxes, effectively increasing survivability-- or advancement-- new tech that provides bigger bonuses in the same space. Also, conceivably, "box within a box" armor plating, so a particular box can take two hits before being disabled.
Ideally, this system:
Gives a visual sense of incoming damage, rather than an abstraction.
Forces a balance between loading up on nice stuff-- there may also be a mechanic for power drain-- and being able to absorb damage.
Allows for randomized penalties and lucky shots without seeming either arbitrary or requiring anything like critical hit tables.
Provides the requisite "hey, check me out!" pull.
Characters
I'm not 100% sure of how I want to handle characters. At the moment, I'm thinking something along the lines of FATE. (I only have the Dresden Files RPG at the moment, though I've ordered Spirit of the Century as well). So characters would be represented by a set of 20-25 skills.
I've also thought about a tri-stat system, or a 6-stat, both with additive skills, D&D-style, but the first seems a bit too simple, and I'm not quite sure how to break down the latter.
Balance might be tricky here, as what skills are useful would depend highly on how much personal action the characters get involved in. It's probably better to err on the side of well-rounded, I suppose.
Skills might be divided along military specialties, one supposes. (In presentation, if not mechanically encouraged).
Helm gets piloting, astrogation, and suchlike skills
Tactical gets computers, electronic warfare, tactics and the like.
Command gets leadership and social skills
Engineering gets, well... engineering and suchlike
Marine gets personal combat skills.
Intelligence officer gets investigation, hacking, and so on.
Something like FATE's opposed skills/stunts system would work pretty well, methinks, along with being pre-tested.
Now... role-wise... on a shared ship...
Helm rolls for movement and maneuvers
Tactical controls attacks and defenses
Command provides bonuses for allies
Engineering runs around fixing things
Marine... waits for boarding action :\
Intelligence officer... provides bonuses/debuffs?
(The latter two are probably at their best out of the ship, while the first two are at their worst in the same situation).
On an individual ship, Command is going to be the only thing we really care about for the player, methinks. After all, you're the captain-- you've got minions to do the running around and pushing buttons for you. One could make a case for using command-y skills for everything, but that's kind of boring. And ignores the idea of crew quality.
So... maybe you've got a budget of points to spend on crew, based on your leadership/bureaucracy skills. (If we do FATE-style point buy for personal skills, that gives us a metric for buying crew skills). Each department has a score/skill level that you roll when doing maneuvers, engineering, whatever. Maybe you get one active roll/round, boosted by your leadership score, and the rest of the departments take 10 or something.
So... yeah. That's my ramble. Thoughts? Cool idea? Dumb idea? Madness? Feasible? Will never work? Interest in further development?
Slightly more detailed thoughts
A skill list, maybe, based on the one in Dresden Files:
Alertness
Astrogation
Athletics
Bureaucracy
Computers
Contacts
Deceit
Discipline
Electronic Warfare
Empathy
Endurance
Engineering
Espionage
Fists
Guns
Intimidation
Leadership
Medicine
Might
Piloting
Rapport
Scholarship
Stealth
Tactics
Weapons
Ships would have one broadside attack and one unified defense, for simplicity. Opposed rolls, with degrees of success providing extra damage.
2d6 instead of FATE dice?
Update: I just did a very crude ship-vs-ship exchange: 2d6+5 for attack and damage stats, with 3 points being a degree of success. No maneuvers or engineering, just blast-vs-blast. It was (at least to my biased, tired brain) surprisingly fun, despite the complete lack of player input.
It took 21 rounds to completely kill a ship-- I declared that the bridge being totally destroyed did the trick, although the poor vessel had little more than 10% of its original health left. (Probably knocking out all reactors would do the same).
It'd probably also be good to have a kind of "minimum health"-- when you've got less than X boxes left, the ship blows up/falls apart/whatever. X probably being a fraction of the total, with input from the highest command score on the ship and the highest engineering score on the ship.
The one ship got in the lead due to luck and pretty much stayed there, as damage and penalties racked up, which seems about right for 1-on-1-totally-matched.
Tracking damage and penalties wasn't that hard. I had to work out a rule for what happens when a targeted box is already destroyed-- start one above, then move clockwise; if you don't hit anything the shot is wasted. Not 100% sold on that one; might continue spiraling outwards. Would certainly speed things up-- as the losing vessel got shot full of holes, a lot of attacks started missing due to, well, holes.
In short, I declare the general idea sound. Next up: adding engineering and helm rolls.
Link to a newer draft, via Dropbox download (docx) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uypm36w4zp0trm/Fate%20of%20the%20Stars.docx)
A general note: These rules are build directly from FATE-- specifically, the Dresden Files RPG, with some input from the new FATE core preview PDFs (mainly for character creation). I will not be explaining basic FATE rules, or the things I've lifted wholesale from the Dresden Files RPG.
Character Creation
Step 1: Template
Unenhanced Human— Gets two extra points of refresh, but cannot take any powers, be they cybernetic or psionic
Cyborg— May select powers off the list of Cybernetic Powers. High Concept must reflect augmentation somehow. (Such as "CYBORG COP.")
Psion— May select powers off the list of Psionic Powers. High Concept must reflect psionic abilities somehow. (Such as "PSYCHIC FOR HIRE.")
Alien— May chose an alien race template and its associated powers. Must take all the listed powers, unless otherwise indicated. High Concept must reflect alien nature. (Such as "CAAHIRG INTELLIGENCE OFFICER.")
Step 2: High Concept and Trouble
Both are aspects, yes, yes.
Step 3: Name
Unless you're being played by Clint Eastwood, you need a moniker of some sort.
Step 4: The Three Backstory Phases
Phase One: Your First Adventure
Write down a few sentences about your first "real" adventure— the first book in the series about your character, so to speak. A resolution isn't necessary— something along the lines of "When [threat] arises, [character] has to [action]. But what will happen when [complication]?" works fine. Pick an aspect to go along with the story. Record your story on a notecard with your name and your character's name on it, but leave space on your sheet— we'll come back to this.
Phase Two: Who Have You Crossed Paths With?
Redistribute index cards so all players have someone else's card— pass to the left, shuffle and redistribute, or what have you. Your character has a supporting role in the story you're holding. Discuss with the player whose story is on the card, and add a few sentences about your character's role in their story. Generally, this means your character either helped the situation, complicated it, or did both. Pick an aspect to go along with it, and write both your friend's story and your contribution on your sheet. Note your contribution on the index card as well.
Phase Three: Who Else Have You Crossed Paths With?
Phase Three is the same as Phase Two, with the caveat that you must wind up with another player's story— not yours, and not the one you just contributed to. Again, work out a sentence or two about how your character contributed to your friend's story and pick an aspect. Record their story and your contribution (you don't have to write down the contribution from Phase Two if it doesn't affect your character).
Wrapping Up
Return all cards to the original player. You should have your original story, with contributions from two friends. Copy all three sections onto your character sheet.
Step 5: Skills
Now it's time to pick skills. Your GM should have provided you with the total number of skill points available, and the highest rank available. The default assumption for the beginning of a game is 20 skill points, with a skill cap of Great (+4). You may not have more skills of a given level than you have of the level immediately below it. Sample distributions include:
2 Great, 2 Good, 2 Fair, 2 Average (8 total skills)
1 Great, 2 Good, 3 Fair, 4 Average (10 total skills, recommended)
3 Good, 3 Fair, 5 Average (11 total skills)
2 Good, 4 Fair, 6 Average (12 total skills)
Step 6: Stunts and Powers
Finally, pick human stunts and extrahuman powers (if applicable). See various FATE books for example stunts, and rules on creating your own. See below for the list of powers. Remember that human stunts each reduce your effective refresh by 1, and powers by 1 or more. Your character must have at least one point of adjusted refresh remaining at the start of play.
The default starting refresh is 5.
Power Lists
Cybernetic Powers
Aquatic (or vacuum adaptation version)
Breath Weapon implanted projectile weapon
Claws implanted melee weapon
Pack Instincts group cyber link
Spider Walk
Supernatural Sense sense augments, inbuilt scanners, etc
Wings jetpack, grav lifters, etc
Glamours holo projections
Item of Power high-tech gizmo
Cloak of Shadows tech augments, yadda yadda
Mana Static EMP generators
Inhuman Speed
Inhuman Strength
Inhuman Toughness
The Catch (+1): armor-piercing bullets, anti-tech EMPs, etc
Supernatural Speed/Strength/Toughness: plausible but not really available
Mythic speed/strength/toughness: superpowers
Psionics
Channeling/Evocation: telepathy, telekinesis, ergokinesis (energy generation). Uses Conviction/Discipline, same as magic.
Ritual (telepathy): divinations, messages, etc. Replace lore with empathy.
Refinement
Focus items = tech boosters/mental comfort things
Cosmic Psion [-1]: your powers may reach foes in the same zone during space combat, and anywhere on the planet out of combat. MUST BE ABLE TO PERCIEVE TARGET SOMEHOW
Interstellar Psion [-2]: Replaces Cosmic Psion. Allows you to use powers anywhere in the universe you can perceive. (NPCS ONLY)
Misc Powers
Ritual (engineering): crafting only. Replace lore with science and discipline with engineering. No mental stress for failures, only extra time/resources.
Step 7: Stress and Consequences
Characters have three stress tracks— physical, social, and mental. Physique affects the length of your physical track, Presence affects the length of your social track, and Conviction affects the length of your mental track.
{table=head]Skill Rank|Track Size
Mediocre (+0)|2 boxes
Average (+1) to Fair (+2)|3 boxes
Good (+3) to Great (+4)|4 boxes
Superb (+5) and up|4 boxes, plus an additional mild consequence of the appropriate type for each rank above Great.[/table]
Characters have three consequence slots by default— one mild, one moderate, and one severe— which may be used with any stress track. Stunts and high skills may grant extra consequence slots.
The Skills
{table=head]Skill|Uses
Alertness|Passive awareness, physical combat initiative, avoiding surprise
Artillery|Attacks with large-scale weapons, knowledge about the same
Athletics|Climbing, jumping, sprinting, avoiding ranged attacks
Contacts |Gathering information, spreading rumors, knowing people
Conviction|Strength of mind and beliefs, psionic power. Determines mental stress capacity
Cyberwarfare|Hacking, computer searches, electronic warfare
Deceit |Lying, disguise, distractions, and so on
Discipline|Concentration, emotional control, mental defense
Engineering|Building things, fixing things, sabotaging things
Empathy |Reading people, making people open up, counseling, social initiative, psionic senses
Fighting|Melee combat— with and without weapons— and melee defense
Investigation|Active perception, searching, surveillance, analyzing clues
Medicine|First-aid, longer-term care, and medical knowledge
Performance |Composition, performing for an audience, artistic criticism
Physique|Breaking things, lifting things, long-term action, wrestling, other pure physical acts. Determines Physical stress capacity.
Pilot|Chases, navigation, maneuvering vehicles
Presence|Charisma, command, intimidation, provocation, threats, reputation. Determines Social stress capacity.
Rapport|Idle conversation, opening up, first impressions, social defense.
Resources|Buying things, equipment, bribery.
Security|Lockpicking, bypassing security systems, casing targets
Scholarship|General knowledge, research, exposition, languages
Science|Lab work, scientific knowledge, inventing
Shooting|Ranged combat, knowledge about weapons. Includes other projectile weapons.
Sensors|Active and passive awareness in spacecraft; initiative in space combat, scanning
Stealth|Ambush, hiding, shadowing[/table]
Starships
Starships are a separate entity from the characters, with their own equipment, aspects, and refresh. Ships are laid out on a Blueprint— a grid representing the layout of the vessel. Each square of the grid is called a Compartment. The total size of the Blueprint is equal to the ship's refresh times ten.
Compartments may be either Empty or Functional— that is, they may contain either non-essential hallways, compartments, and storage areas, or they contain Technology required for the operation of the starship.
In addition, ships have a refresh, like a character, and accumulate Fate points, which may be spent by anyone in their crew. Ships may have an adjusted refresh of zero, but not lower. Ships have one key aspect, such as "Mercenary Battleship," and a Trouble. They also have Ship Points (~skill points) equal to their base refresh times four.
Finally, ships have a unique skill: Thrust. Thrust functions as a sort of halfway point between Athletics and Physique— it controls sprinting, lifting, and other such purely physical actions the spacecraft might undertake.
Building a Spaceship
Certain pieces of technology are required for any spaceship. These include:
A power plant, occupying a total number of compartments of at least the ship's refresh. If at least one compartment of the power plant is damaged but more remain, the ship gains a "Damaged Generator" aspect. Each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time. If the the power plant is totally disabled, all ship systems fail-- weapons, shields, engines, sensors, environmental plants, and EW suits
An environmental plant, occupying a total number of compartments of at least 1/4 the ship's refresh, rounded up. If at least one compartment environmental plant is damaged but more remain, the ship gains a "Faltering Atmosphere" aspect. Each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time. If the power plant is totally disabled, this is upgraded to a "No Atmosphere" aspect.
A bridge, occupying one compartment. From a bridge compartment, characters may control all weapons, engines, sensors, and EW equipment. When not in a bridge, characters may only control and gain bonuses from technology in the compartment they are currently occupying and immediately adjacent compartments.
One compartment for combat sensors (if the Sensors skill is to be used for anything other than routine navigation). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Battle-Damaged Sensors." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
One compartment for electronic warfare equipment (if the Cyberwarfare skill is to be used in battle). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Battle-Damaged Sensors." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
At least one Engine, although the exact power of the engines is determined by the expenditure of Ship Points (see below). Damage to these compartments places aspects on the ship, such as "Damaged Engines." If more than one compartment is present, each additional damaged compartment allows the aspect to be tagged one more time.
Fully equipping a ship requires the expenditure of Ship Points. These points may be spent on:
Close-range weapons, such as lasers and mass drivers, which may be used against foes in the same zone. These function identical to melee weapons in ground combat. One Ship Point buys one point of weapon.
Long-range weapons, such as missiles, which may be used against foes two or more zones away. These function identical to projectile weapons in ground combat. One Ship Point buys one point of weapon.
Shields. One Ship Point buys one point of armor.
Engines. One Ship Point buys one point of the Thrust skill. Ships must have at least one engine.
Additional compartments of key systems— power plant, environmental plant, bridge, sensors, and electronic warfare gear. One Ship Point buys one extra compartment
Aspects, such as "Prototype Sensor Suite" or "Stolen Manticoran Countermissiles." One Ship Point buys one Aspect. Ships can't have more aspects than their total refresh.
Stunts. Ships may purchase stunts for the following skills: Artillery, Cyberwarefare, Pilot, and Sensors. In addition to usual refresh adjustment, stunts cost two Ship Points.
Fighters cost 5 Ship Points, and have special rules (see below).
Artificial Intelligences may be purchased, in which case Ship Points may be spent as if they were Skill Points to purchase skills such as Scholarship.
All of this technology takes up space. In addition to the compartments taken up by the power plant, environmental plant, bridge, sensors, and electronic warfare gear, technology purchased with Ship Points takes up one Compartment per Ship Point spent on it.
Combat
Starships may have bodies, but they don't have their own minds— instead, it is the crew who use skills to fight. During each exchange— and naval exchanges are usually between 1 minute (for smaller ships) and 10 minutes (for larger warships)— each character may take an action, as normal, with the two caveats:
The technology in a given compartment may only be used once per exchange. For example, a ship with two compartments of electronic warfare gear and one compartment of sensors might be able to make two Cyberwarfare maneuvers per round, but only one assessment using Sensors. A ship with 4 compartments of missiles could make one Weapon 4 attack per turn, or two Weapon 2 attacks, or a Weapon 1 and a Weapon 3 attack…
The ship as a whole may only move once per exchange. That is, a ship can sprint using Thrust, maneuver using Pilot, or what have you, but it may not sprint and then maneuver in the same exchange.
Characters may attack, block, maneuver, and so on as normal when fighting a starship. Damage, however, is tracked very differently.
Damage
Starships are not living creatures, and so they do not have stress tracks, and they do not take consequences. Instead, for each shift of damage the vessel receives, randomly cross off one Compartment and record the total shifts of damage from the attack. These crossed off Compartments have Battle Damage. The ship and its crew suffer no consequences if the damaged compartment is empty. If the compartment is functional, however, the benefit it provides is lost until it can be repaired.
Repairing a Compartment
Fully repairing a compartment requires time and access to materials, workshops, and so on. In the heat of battle, compartments may be jury-rigged— returned to functionality for a scene— with an Engineering check with a DC equal to the shifts of damage that disabled the compartment.
Moving within a starship
Treat each compartment as a zone, with no border, but no line-of-sight into adjacent zones— starships tend to have a lot of bulkheads and pressure doors. Damaged compartments have a border equal to the shifts of damage that took them out. For example, to move through a compartment disabled by a 3-shift attack, a character would have to make a Good (+3) Athletics check.
If your character is within a compartment when it's damaged, he takes physical stress equal to the shifts of damage that take out the compartment.
Boarding Actions
Characters can attempt to cross from one ship to another under certain circumstances. Both vessels must be in the same zone, and the characters must tag or invoke an appropriate aspect, such as HULL TO HULL or BOARDING SHUTTLES. Treat this as a Sprint action, with a border strength of Average, plus the target vessel's shield strength.
Once inside, characters may attempt to damage the compartment they are in. Roll attacks against a difficulty of Average to damage technology.
Fighters
Fighters fall into two categories: manned and unmanned. Manned fighters have a player character pilot; unmanned fighters do not.
Manned fighters must be built as spacecraft, with no refresh and a base of 5 Ship Points. The mothership may spend additional Ship Points to increase this total. Fighters are assumed to have all the necessary technology already— the 5 Ship Points may be spent on weapons, shields, engines, and so on.
Attacks from fighters may never damage more than one compartment of a larger ship.
Unlike larger ships fighters have the unique ability to target specific areas of a ship. Pilots may make a Sensors check, opposed by their opponent's Cyberwarefare skill. For every shift of success, they learn the location of one piece of technology on the target ship. Further attacks may be made against that specific target. Instead of rolling for a random compartment anywhere on the ship, targeted attacks may only hit the target compartment or an immediately adjacent compartment. (Rolling a d10 is a good way to choose this)
Manned fighters use stress tracks and consequences just like characters. They have a default physical stress track of 3 boxes; Ship points may be spent to increase this to 4 boxes (one point), and from there to add additional minor consequences (one point per minor consequence). The player driving them may make one action per turn, as normal.
If a manned fighter is destroyed, the pilot must make an Athletics check against the incoming shifts of damage. On a failure, he takes the shifts damage as well as his vessel. On a success, he takes half the damage. Either way, he's floating in space now. Pilots may be assumed to have homing beacons, and may be picked up by any ship in the same zone as them who makes a Fair (+2) Sensors check to find them.
Unmanned fighters… will be filled in eventually. At the moment, I'm leaning towards their working the same as manned, but with one Ship Point buying two Skill Points worth of Artillery/Pilot/Sensors.
Expanded Options
Every Player a Captain
It's possible to play the game with each player controlling a single starship, so that the group as a whole represents a squadron or small fleet. In this case, ships have Ship Points equal to five times their base refresh, instead of four times, and may purchase ranks of skills at an exchange of two skill points per Ship Point. Each skill may be considered to belong to a NPC crewman.
Simplified Ships
If the blueprint option is too slow, all ships may be treated as manned fighters, with stress track lengths equal to their base refresh and four mild, three moderate, and two severe consequence slots. Additional consequence slots may be purchased with Ship points-- two Ship Points for a mild consequence slots, four for a moderate consequence slot, and six for a severe consequence slot. Technology may be purchased as normal, although the number of compartments it takes up is irrelevant.
During boarding actions ships may be considered to have 7 zones--the engine room, power plant, gun deck, bridge, sensor room, personnel area, and cargo deck. (Smaller ships may have fewer zones). These may be laid out in any fashion, and have border strengths of Mediocre (+0).
With this option, an engineering roll may remove stress. Roll Engineering against a difficulty of Mediocre (+0) and restore stress equal to the resulting shifts.
Players are admirals
The main idea here is that fleets have a single, quite high refresh level-- 15 or more-- representing the fleet as a whole. The total fleet refresh would be divided up into any combination of ships, buying weapons, shields, engines, et cetera on a ship-by-ship basis.
Ships would probably be handled as fighters/normal characters for simplicity, although it also might be possible to have one big blueprint with sections for each ship.
The latter idea might work better if the fleet never really splits up. Functionally, then, it would work much like a single ship-- it moves as one unit, generally concentrates fire, and whatnot. The big difference being that players can't really move from ship to ship easily. I suppose you could work it the same way if ships split off from the main group, though there might be some on-the-fly math that way.
The former idea would probably work better for very large groups, since you don't have to keep track of so much detail.
If it's just the PCs commanding one fairly tightly-grouped cluster, it should work OK, methinks. The fleet following one unit's lead for maneuvering, fire control, and suchlike through some sort of cyber link is a well-established trope. The difficulty comes if each PC is trying to order around bunches of individual ships. Itmight work OK, but only because the FATE system is fast. I dunno.
In unrelated news, the first game in a campaign using this system kicks off tomorrow. Character creation was yesterday, and the group actually covers all the "core" options-- there are two different alien species, a cyborg, a psion, and a pure human. We'll see how it goes.
Original first post:
WARNING: rambling
A friend of mine has been working on a mecha RPG for a school project. (Why yes, I do love my college sometimes) In some spitballing sessions, I came up with what I thought was a fairly elegant way of handling damage. He liked it, but didn't want to use it, due partly to time constraints and partly to (an understandable) "it's a good system, but not my system" attitude. Very well, says I. But... it's too good an idea not to use.
While I don't share my friend's love of giant robots, I do have a rather long-abiding love for giant spaceships. And it occurred to me that many of the same basic ideas could apply to both settings... and it's winter term, and I have scads of free time, so here we are.
Now. To business.
Goal Musings
There are sort of three levels that a system like this should be able to handle:
1. Everyone is a captain, with their own starship and crew.
2. All players share a single ship, working together to fly and fight it
3. The players have left the ship and are running around talking/punching shooting as individuals.
I don't know how possible it is to make them work with any kind of unified framework, but...
My thematic touchstone is the Honor Harrington series, by David Weber. (If you like this kind of thing and haven't heard of them, I highly recommend at least the first couple).
Mechanical Musings
Your character sheet has two sides, a ship and a captain. (Or an officer and a shared ship sheet, but that's not the point).
Ships
The ship is more-or-less a big grid, composed of a certain number of boxes. Each box represents an area of your ship. Some of the boxes are blank, representing redundant systems and non-critical areas. BUT, some of them are filled in with the details on your ship's mechanics. Engines, reactors, weapon arrays, the bridge-- all of these things take up space. So your sheet looks sort of like this:
http://charliebrew.wikispaces.com/file/view/ship.jpg/399850264/800x304/ship.jpg
Ideally, besides the name, you'd also be able to list what the part is giving you. Also, the bonuses would be split up between boxes, so each engine might give +1 move in one box and +1 maneuverability in the other.
When the missiles start pouring in, damage is in terms of boxes, and randomly distributed-- if you take 5 hits, you'd roll 5d100 (or whatever) and cross off the indicated boxes. If the box is blank, it's a non-vital hit. If it's already crossed off, you move to an adjacent box. But if a part gets hit, the part is damaged/destroyed, and you lose the bonus. Attack goes down, speed goes down, whatever.
The players would have various skills and abilities and things to repair sections of the ship, wholly or partly-- giving us a sort of "damage control vs incoming damage" race.
Armor would be damage reduction. Shields would be a set of "floating boxes' off to the side, sort of a second health bar that can be depleted without the ship being damaged.
Building a ship... the DM could hand you one and be like "This is a Harrington-class dreadnought, have fun," or you could design your own. The two limiting factors for how much you can cram in your ship being physical space (filling in boxes) and power levels (you have X points to spend on ship parts, and each part costs [Y] points-- standard point-buy stuff). Maybe also funds, but that's starting to get too
Advancement... I can see it happening in two (not mutually exclusive) ways. Either miniaturization-- the same bonuses, but in fewer boxes, effectively increasing survivability-- or advancement-- new tech that provides bigger bonuses in the same space. Also, conceivably, "box within a box" armor plating, so a particular box can take two hits before being disabled.
Ideally, this system:
Gives a visual sense of incoming damage, rather than an abstraction.
Forces a balance between loading up on nice stuff-- there may also be a mechanic for power drain-- and being able to absorb damage.
Allows for randomized penalties and lucky shots without seeming either arbitrary or requiring anything like critical hit tables.
Provides the requisite "hey, check me out!" pull.
Characters
I'm not 100% sure of how I want to handle characters. At the moment, I'm thinking something along the lines of FATE. (I only have the Dresden Files RPG at the moment, though I've ordered Spirit of the Century as well). So characters would be represented by a set of 20-25 skills.
I've also thought about a tri-stat system, or a 6-stat, both with additive skills, D&D-style, but the first seems a bit too simple, and I'm not quite sure how to break down the latter.
Balance might be tricky here, as what skills are useful would depend highly on how much personal action the characters get involved in. It's probably better to err on the side of well-rounded, I suppose.
Skills might be divided along military specialties, one supposes. (In presentation, if not mechanically encouraged).
Helm gets piloting, astrogation, and suchlike skills
Tactical gets computers, electronic warfare, tactics and the like.
Command gets leadership and social skills
Engineering gets, well... engineering and suchlike
Marine gets personal combat skills.
Intelligence officer gets investigation, hacking, and so on.
Something like FATE's opposed skills/stunts system would work pretty well, methinks, along with being pre-tested.
Now... role-wise... on a shared ship...
Helm rolls for movement and maneuvers
Tactical controls attacks and defenses
Command provides bonuses for allies
Engineering runs around fixing things
Marine... waits for boarding action :\
Intelligence officer... provides bonuses/debuffs?
(The latter two are probably at their best out of the ship, while the first two are at their worst in the same situation).
On an individual ship, Command is going to be the only thing we really care about for the player, methinks. After all, you're the captain-- you've got minions to do the running around and pushing buttons for you. One could make a case for using command-y skills for everything, but that's kind of boring. And ignores the idea of crew quality.
So... maybe you've got a budget of points to spend on crew, based on your leadership/bureaucracy skills. (If we do FATE-style point buy for personal skills, that gives us a metric for buying crew skills). Each department has a score/skill level that you roll when doing maneuvers, engineering, whatever. Maybe you get one active roll/round, boosted by your leadership score, and the rest of the departments take 10 or something.
So... yeah. That's my ramble. Thoughts? Cool idea? Dumb idea? Madness? Feasible? Will never work? Interest in further development?
Slightly more detailed thoughts
A skill list, maybe, based on the one in Dresden Files:
Alertness
Astrogation
Athletics
Bureaucracy
Computers
Contacts
Deceit
Discipline
Electronic Warfare
Empathy
Endurance
Engineering
Espionage
Fists
Guns
Intimidation
Leadership
Medicine
Might
Piloting
Rapport
Scholarship
Stealth
Tactics
Weapons
Ships would have one broadside attack and one unified defense, for simplicity. Opposed rolls, with degrees of success providing extra damage.
2d6 instead of FATE dice?
Update: I just did a very crude ship-vs-ship exchange: 2d6+5 for attack and damage stats, with 3 points being a degree of success. No maneuvers or engineering, just blast-vs-blast. It was (at least to my biased, tired brain) surprisingly fun, despite the complete lack of player input.
It took 21 rounds to completely kill a ship-- I declared that the bridge being totally destroyed did the trick, although the poor vessel had little more than 10% of its original health left. (Probably knocking out all reactors would do the same).
It'd probably also be good to have a kind of "minimum health"-- when you've got less than X boxes left, the ship blows up/falls apart/whatever. X probably being a fraction of the total, with input from the highest command score on the ship and the highest engineering score on the ship.
The one ship got in the lead due to luck and pretty much stayed there, as damage and penalties racked up, which seems about right for 1-on-1-totally-matched.
Tracking damage and penalties wasn't that hard. I had to work out a rule for what happens when a targeted box is already destroyed-- start one above, then move clockwise; if you don't hit anything the shot is wasted. Not 100% sold on that one; might continue spiraling outwards. Would certainly speed things up-- as the losing vessel got shot full of holes, a lot of attacks started missing due to, well, holes.
In short, I declare the general idea sound. Next up: adding engineering and helm rolls.