Science Fiction RPG (LibArc Setting?)

[Hotfoot]

Well, this has been gnawing at the back of my brain lately, and I'll admit, I've wanted to do some tabletop stuff for a while now. I love a lot of the systems out there, but it always seems like I love parts of the systems, rather than the whole thing.

So, here's the plan of attack: I'm planning on making a tabletop RPG rules set, adaptable to most modern to high tech science fiction, a range of roughly S.W.A.T. to Star Wars, give or take.

Things I'm looking to include:

*A universal weapon construction system, allowing players to have significant freedom over their weapon choices.

*A detailed starship construction and combat system to give players control over their pimped out space trucks.

*Cybernetics rules, roughly on par with games like cyberpunk

*Psionics: Nothing crazy, but make it a legit character option. Will have some counters with regards to technology.

*Hacking that is not retarded. I have a pretty good idea of how to go about this part.

*This rules set should be capable of handling a LibArc SF setting with ease as well.

Other considerations:

*I am not a huge fan of single die systems. I would rather use 2d6 than 1d10, 3-4d6 instead of 1d20, and so on. Bell curve numbers should be the order of the day, by and large.

*Combat should be quick, lethal, and yet still fun. It should also scale nicely between guys with guns, guys with powered armor, and guys with tanks and air support.

*Less dice rolling is best. The more dice you have to roll, the longer things take, and the more players and GMs will go back and forth over modifiers and so forth.

Thoughts? If there's enough interest, maybe we could get together and even distribute this thing.

[Norseman]

Have you ever heard of GURPS? It seems to satisfy all your demands.

[Stofsk]

Traveller seems to be everything you're looking for in an RPG system, Hotfoot. It doesn't have a weapon design system but it does have a starship design system, cybernetics isn't very emphasised but they exist as an avenue for players to get augmentation for their characters, the dice mechanic is 2d6, plus whatever dice modifier is relevant to the roll being made (target is often 8+, higher for more difficult endeavours).

Psionics exist, but traveller has traditionally steered clear of Jedi-level powers. And unlike SW, there are technological counters to it (not to mention ways to boost it or take advantage of it).

Combat is definitely lethal. There is no real leveling system. The characters are skill based, you can increase a skill level but it takes time and effort to do so. Traveller awards players in the form of money, technology, social standing, and other story awards than simply "Oh look I leveled up".

[Hotfoot]

I have, and while it is a decent system, it lacks several things that I desire. I will be cribbing heavily from GURPS, WEG D6, SilCORE, and Fuzion.

Edit: Didn't see the post about Traveller. I'll be honest, I've only got T20, but something about the setting didn't really speak to me. I'll be honest, I have my own ideas about combat on the personal and tactical scale that most RPGs don't seem to do well. If you have a book I should look at, I'll gladly do so, but I doubt it will mesh entirely with what I have in mind for combat, and I've found that after a certain point, it's easier to build something from scratch than patch and patch.

[Stofsk]

T20 is decent for a d20 product, but if you don't like d20 it obviously won't suit your purposes.

Mongoose has published a new version of Traveller which is pretty good, I recommend taking a look at it. It's the basis for my post above.

[Norseman]

Once more GURPS has rules for everything, I do mean everything, no really *everything*. You might want to look into GURPS Space, GURPS Vehicles, GURPS Psionics, etc ;)

[Hotfoot]

Once more GURPS has rules for everything, I do mean everything, no really *everything*. You might want to look into GURPS Space, GURPS Vehicles, GURPS Psionics, etc ;)

I actually own most of those books and, honestly, it's not that helpful. The biggest downside to GURPS is that it has perhaps too many options. Even just the standard skill list is daunting, to say nothing of the myriad perks and flaws.

Put simply, for most of this, especially for combat, I have a very clear idea of what it is I want to do with key dynamics. The closest I've seen to the combat dynamic I'm looking for in starships is Mekton Zeta with a mix of SilCORE.

What's more, with most Sci-Fi systems, there seems to be a lack of granularity with regards to future tech. GURPS especially holds a very fine line at the tech levels between hard and soft sci-fi, with very little detail in between. You're either plucking along at STL speeds, or you're at above Star Wars tech.

I know there's ways around that, but this is rather what I mean. No one system does the things I want to do the way I want to do them. Even Traveller doesn't exactly do FTL the way I want to, instead opting for a Battletech-like jump drive that's limited to system to system jumps.

If you'd like, I could go down the list of where each system fails me in some way, shape, or form.

I'm not trying to down you, but the only system mentioned so far I haven't sat down and read in rather severe detail is the current version of Traveller. Believe me, I've looked pretty much everywhere else for a system that satisfies me, and while several come close, very close indeed, there is yet one that I can say I would use above all others.

[Stofsk]

Traveller's jump drive isn't necessarily system to system, you can jump into interstellar deep space, you just better have enough fuel to jump away - otherwise it'll be a long, long time before your corpse gets anywhere.

[Hotfoot]

Just as a quick addendum to the above post, I remember being extremely dissatisfied with the GURPS Starship construction book, and on a quick glancing, I remember exactly why, and one of my major issues with GURPS as a whole.

GURPS is very, extremely, obsessively detail oriented. Its a decent system in play, once everything is decided, but deciding what TL everything is (even skills), the various (extremely numerous) ship components in excessive detail, that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm not looking for a system that lists around a dozen different tables of propulsion systems. I honestly don't care if the system is reaction, reactionless, ion, fusion, plasma, etc. For purposes of play, that really doesn't matter nine times out of ten. I'm looking for an effects based system, where the details can be filled in later (This ship has a slower sublight engine because of "blah").

What matters in this setup is that ships, characters, and equipment serve a purpose. This may seem a little rantish, but this comes down to one of my biggest pet peeves in a lot of RPGs: Overattention to detail. One of the reasons I am developing the universal weapon system is so that players can get the diversity of a lot of different configurations of weapons without needing endless tables of guns that are only slightly different from each other.

That's one of the things I'm going to be looking at in designing this game. What is the purpose of the choices given. If there is no purpose, then why spend time on it?

That said, I am pulling some inspiration from GURPS, but it's far from the complete package I'm looking for.


Stofsk:

Huh, I was under the impression that if you didn't exit in a gravity well, your jump drive exploded and destroyed the ship, or at least had a strong tendancy to. Regardless, I'm looking at a more B5/Star Wars FTL solution in general. I'm looking into the big book, since Amazon seems to have it for cheap, and I love pillaging ideas.

[frigidmagi]

So are you using the Libarc universe? If so I think Traveler will synch with it nicely. And GURPS is a good system but it can take hours even for experienced players to create a character, it's that bloody crazy.

[Hotfoot]

I want this to be able to use the LibArc universe and be a good basis for it, but to also be somewhat adaptable to other universe that share a similar technology base to start. Having a fun system to base Star Trek and Star Wars games in wouldn't hurt either, of course.

One thing I'll definately be poaching on that regard are the reality distortion levels from SilCORE, to allow for more high action like in Star Wars without having to gut the system.

[Stofsk]

Huh, I was under the impression that if you didn't exit in a gravity well, your jump drive exploded and destroyed the ship, or at least had a strong tendancy to. Regardless, I'm looking at a more B5/Star Wars FTL solution in general. I'm looking into the big book, since Amazon seems to have it for cheap, and I love pillaging ideas.

The jump drive actually misjumps within a 10 diameter radius of any gravity well, and between10-100 diameters the incidences misjump is higher-than-average. Past the 100 diameter limit jump becomes more routine.

But that's just the official traveller universe (OTU). You can make it whatever you want.

Also, to plug Mongoose again, in their core rulebook they have 3 alternative FTL drives including warp, hyperspace, and teleport. These aren't 'canon' though, they're included specifically because Mongoose is trying to make its version of Traveller applicable to generic settings (it has a line of 'canon' products but the actual rules they use are designed to be generic and modifiable).

[Hotfoot]

ACNut gave me a decent idea with regards to lifepath systems, which I intended to include in a generic fashion. The thought is this: Players get to choose certain aspects of their lifepath, and if they have low or high risk. High risk brings greater rewards, but also a greater chance for something bad. Obviously, nothing like starting dead, or with absolutely gimped stats, but bad things (tm) might happen.

In order to avoid the bad things, players may use their starting luck points, but doing so in this fashion reduces them on start.

I'll start my next post with some thoughts re: stats and skills.

[Hotfoot]

Attributes vs. Skills

Natural aptitudes often determine how well we can accomplish a given task, but training in that task makes sure we're capable of achieving success on a consistent basis. This thought is why I've always loved the SilCORE and similar dice pool systems. When the attribute is a bonus or a negative to your roll, it just generally feels more natural to me than straight 1-10 or 1-20 numbers that just add up with your skill total.

So here's the issue: SilCORE is nice, but lacks granularity, since the range for difficulty consistently remains on a theoretical 1-6 range from the dice. However, once you add enough dice, you will statistically always get a 6 or greater, thus making certain tasks trivial. Also, every +1 bonus becomes huge in significance. For spending a long time developing a character, this becomes problematic.

While I am not totally opposed to straight addition systems like FUZION, where you add Stat + Skill + die roll, I've always felt it odd that a punk with a gun after a certain point becomes so little of a threat as to really not even exist.

Additionally, it has the issue of making attributes far more important than skills. One of the biggest flaws (and most quickly house-ruled by me) in FUZION is that your character points can be spent anywhere, and a point spent into an attribute is far more useful than a point spent into a skill, because a single attribute govern multiple skills.

One solution is to create set limits of what can be spent where, like in SilCORE, where you have attribute points and skill points, and while unused attribute points can be converted into skill points, it doesn't work the other way around.

I would like to explore other options though. Worst case, it will be the usual stat + skill + dice combination, which isn’t bad, as I know it works. Optioning a more WEG/Shadowrun Dice Pool system might not be a horrible idea. As a rule, I am opposed to many dice rolls, but those rolls can have lots of dice.

Now, as far as the attributes go, there’s your usual set, but let’s take a look at what an RPG needs. You have combat, so you need to attack, defend, know who is going when, take damage, and notice the bad guy. You have social situations, so you need something to affect others opinions of you, notice their reaction, and figure out what to do next. You have technology, so you need to know how things work, what you can do with them, and how to mess with them. You also have psionics, drugs, and so on, and all that comes with them. Now, I like the breakdown in SilCORE, but there are some things we don’t need. For example, a stat describing how pretty you are really isn’t needed. Appearance is out. How in tune you are with the universe really doesn’t matter, so Psyche is out. How much you weigh is really not an issue as far as I’m concerned, so Build is out. That leaves us with Agility, Fitness (Str, Con), Perception, Influence, Knowledge, Creativity, and Willpower. There are also the secondary (derived) stats of Strength, Stamina, and Health, most of which can be consolidated.

Fuzion has a decent set as well, but for right now, let’s focus on this: Agility is one of the most important stats in combat, because it determines how well you attack and generally how well you defend. Fitness, which we’ll call Constitution from now on, is important because it determines how much damage you’ll be able to take before going down. Perception is of decent utility in combat for detecting traps, and Influence is really only important to leaders. Now there are generally two schools of thought with regards to Agility: remove or reduce its dominance, or let it ride. Honestly, I’m of split minds about it. Not every combat skill should come down to agility, or he with the highest agility wins every time. I like how in SilCORE, initiative is based on perception, not agility, allowing more aware characters to have the first shot. In Fuzion, it’s broken down into Reflexes and Dexterity, and while Reflexes still include the attack rolls, Dexterity is used for defense and melee combat. A nice solution, but one I’m not sure I want to implement. If I start subdividing the attributes too much, we end up with something like Artesia with 15 major and 3 derived attributes, which is too much as far as I’m concerned.

Even the division between Knowledge and Creativity strikes me as odd, and I’d rather combine them into a single value that is a good balance between the two, because frankly being overly creative doesn’t amount to much if you don’t have much knowledge to draw upon, and more frankly the more attributes the more easily one can become overly dominant in the game.

So this brings us to Agility, Constitution, Wit, Influence, Perception, and Willpower. Wit plays the role of Agility for technical stuff and potentially psionics, Influence is for Social, Perception is useful in multiple areas, and Willpower plays the role of Constitution for mental attacks, be they by psionics, terror, or whatnot. So there we have a six-stat system that seems to boil it down to the basics, and yes, it shares a little symmetry with D20, but oh well. Now, I could break down Constitution into Strength, Toughness, and Stamina, but each of those is, at best, a secondary stat in a game that doesn’t revolve around burly men with swords. I’d rather break down those things into traits a player can take that give small bonuses to certain things, like a trait that gives them a bonus to their agility for tasks that require fine manipulation, like picking locks and pockets, or a trait that gives them a bonus to their constitution any time they have to make a check vs. a task that requires strength.


Now, on to Traits, Perks, and Flaws.

Traits are bonuses and/or negatives that a player can purchase to give their character extra flavor, and they are always on. Example traits: Poor/Superior Sense, Nimble/Clumsy Fingers, Lucky/Unlucky Pheremones, Clever/Slow, Booksmart/Uneducated, Psionic Resiliance/Vulnerability, Toxin Resiliance/Vulnerability, Strong/Weak, Tough/Frail, Athletic/Out of Shape.

Perks are certain things the characters can do that make them special, but can only be activated if they have points to fuel these talents. Examples include Eidetic Memory, Danger Sense, Lucky

Flaws are bad things that follow a character around, and when they act on them to their detriment, they can gain points to use to activate their perks. Examples include Absent Minded, Unlucky, Flashbacks, Addiction

Perks and flaws are free, but you have to take at least one flaw if you pick up a perk, otherwise you have limited options to use the perk. Traits are bought and sold with either attribute points or skill points, I’ll decide which later.


A short bit on skills:

Less is more here. Fuzion has Handgun, Shotgun, Rifle, SMG, Heavy Weapons, etc. Shadowrun even keeps assault rifle and rifle on different skills. I much prefer the SilCORE system which breaks it down to Small Arms, Heavy Weapons, and Gunnery. If I had to break down small arms more, the most I would do is make a divide between Single Shot and Automatic weapons, but even that isn’t likely.

Skills should be more inclusive than exclusive. Smaller amounts of skills that do more should rule the day.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms?

[frigidmagi]

On firearms I would strongly call for pistols and rifles to be separate. Mainly because it is two separate skill sets! The stances, muscle memory and reactions for both are pretty different. If you can fire a rifle you can fire a shotgun and so on, but learning to fire a rifle is completely different from learning to fire a pistol.

I would like to see a kind of specialization for the skills that would be left open ended. Let me give an example let's say we have a character with the following skills.

Rifle
Pistol
Edged Weapons
Stealth
Etiquette
Pilot

That's pretty broad and undescriptive and in the end of the day for me everything on the character sheet exists to describe the character. But let's say we borrow from Shadowrun and say you can specialize at a cost to the general skill.

We get:

Rifle:Shotgun
Pistol: Revolver
Edged Weapons: Hatchets
Stealth: Move Silently Urban
Etiquette: Organized Crime
Pilot: Ground Car

We see a much more focused and interesting picture appear without ruining the general usefulness of the character in question. The idea would be instead of manufacturing list after list of specialization we simply say you can specialize and leave it to the players and the GMs how and what to Specialize in with some general guidelines. I'd also point out this lets us get away with fewer skills to cover more.

[Hotfoot]

On firearms I would strongly call for pistols and rifles to be separate. Mainly because it is two separate skill sets! The stances, muscle memory and reactions for both are pretty different. If you can fire a rifle you can fire a shotgun and so on, but learning to fire a rifle is completely different from learning to fire a pistol.

On a realism stance I agree with you completely. Every time I've tried to fire a pistol outside of a video game or a nerf gun has ended poorly, but I took to a shotgun in a heartbeat after years of other long guns.

From a gameplay perspective, I'm torn. On the one hand I want there to be fewer skills, not more, whenever possible. SilCore does okay on Small Arms including short and long guns, and I've rarely had an issue with it. I've always dreaded Cyberpunk and especially Shadowrun for the endless divisions that they have.

On the other hand, that's honestly one of the more sensible distinctions I've heard. I'll bite. I'm not so sure on edged/blunt/staff weapons, to be honest, but we'll get to that later.

I would like to see a kind of specialization for the skills that would be left open ended. Let me give an example let's say we have a character with the following skills.

Rifle
Pistol
Edged Weapons
Stealth
Etiquette
Pilot

That's pretty broad and undescriptive and in the end of the day for me everything on the character sheet exists to describe the character. But let's say we borrow from Shadowrun and say you can specialize at a cost to the general skill.

We get:

Rifle:Shotgun
Pistol: Revolver
Edged Weapons: Hatchets
Stealth: Move Silently Urban
Etiquette: Organized Crime
Pilot: Ground Car

We see a much more focused and interesting picture appear without ruining the general usefulness of the character in question. The idea would be instead of manufacturing list after list of specialization we simply say you can specialize and leave it to the players and the GMs how and what to Specialize in with some general guidelines. I'd also point out this lets us get away with fewer skills to cover more.

Agreed. That's more or less how SilCORE does it and I'm fine with that. Give examples of specializations and leave the rest up to the players and the GMs. Oddly, I'd probably have pilot be a (Ground/Air/Space/Sea) type of skill, with a defaulting system similar to SilCORE, a negative for using a skill of the wrong type.

Still, some good stuff. Keep it coming.

[frigidmagi]

Oddly enough I've always felt ShadowRun was fairly minimalistic when it came to skills but then I cut my teeth on Gurps and DnD and operated quiet a bit in D20. When you're used to Dozens if not over a hundred skills dropping to a the much smaller list of ShadowRun is an interesting experience.

I'm guessing from the look of things skills are gonna be a bit part of the combat engine?

[Hotfoot]

Oddly enough I've always felt ShadowRun was fairly minimalistic when it came to skills but then I cut my teeth on Gurps and DnD and operated quiet a bit in D20. When you're used to Dozens if not over a hundred skills dropping to a the much smaller list of ShadowRun is an interesting experience.

I'm guessing from the look of things skills are gonna be a bit part of the combat engine?

Gurps has 60 pages worth of skills in 4th edition, and that's not counting the TL differences between them.

As far as combat goes, I'll likely be cribbing quite a bit from SilCORE, simply because that combat engine flows very smoothly. You have your attack skills, a defense skill, a skill that lets you go first in combat, and potentially a leadership skill that allows you to give your team an edge.

How well you hit will be a rather significant part of how much damage you end up doing, and a good enough hit should waste an opponent, by and large. To keep PCs from dying unceremoniously to bad rolls, there will be a luck pool that they can spend to avoid a bloody end.

Now the specific mechanics of that will likely have to wait until I figure out what dice mechanic I will be using, because I have to know what the average range between a success and a failure is. In SilCORE, the range is very small, a difference of 3 between the attack and the defense is considered bad-ass. In Fuzion, you can have a difference of 8 before crits are applied. Suffice to say that I'll be looking more at a Fuzion-like scale to start, and if it goes anywhere, it will actually go up.

[rhoenix]

I'm interested in seeing where this goes. Amusingly, it also drew attention to the fact that what GURPS books I have are either 2nd or 3rd edition (holy crap), and that I've never really played - mostly because of the anal-retentive attention to detail. GURPS' main problem is lack of some sort of abstraction layer between all the irritating details...and the actual fun of playing.

So Hotfoot, I say go for it. I'll help where I can, and I just might play once you get it running.

[frigidmagi]

Okay do we actually want to sit down and work out a skill list now or are there other issues to work out first?

[Hotfoot]

A list of the skills would not be a bad idea, as it's pretty much unlikely to change overall. I'll get some basic stuff posted later, I've just been puzzling over dice mechanics a lot and bouncing ideas off of people.

[Hotfoot]

Combat Related Skills:

Handguns
Long Guns
Archery
Hand to Hand
Melee
Defense
Combat Sense
Demolitions
Heavy Weapons
Gunnery (Specific)?
Athletics
Piloting (Specific)?
Stealth
Awareness (Tie to Combat Sense?)
Command/Tactics

Social Related Skills:

Deception
Persuasion
Interrogation
Disguise & Grooming

Detective Related Skills:

Investigation
Hacking
Education
Higher Ed (Specific)
Knowledge (Specific)
Tracking
Sleight of Hand
Security

Technical Skills

Mechanics
Electronics
Computers
Other Tech (Specific)
Jury Rig
Craft (Specific)
Forgery ?

Medical Skills

Medicine
Psychiatry
Surgery?
(Higher Ed and Knowledge should cover most other specific areas of knowledge here)

Psychic Related Skills:

Telepathy
Telekinesis
More?


How's this for an initial listing of skills?

[B4UTRUST]

How about forensics or something similar under detective? Or are you planning to have that sort of analysis type skill fall under one of the others?

[frigidmagi]

Why are Psionics skills?

[Hotfoot]

To answer each in turn:

Forensics is most likely a Higher Ed skill, depending on the area of forensics. Physics, Biology, Chemisty, Psychology, all would be areas for specific lab rats. Meanwhile a detective would get by on general education and investigation as a general rule.

Psionics are skills in so far as there is a skill for each grouping of psionic abilities. I'm planning on specific powers being purchased, but how well a given psion can use those powers should be tied to a related skill.