Hey everybody! It's been a long time! This summer I've been working evening and night on that RPG I last mentioned here back in the summer of 2011.
I'm really quite happy with the progress, and I've been running some playtests to try to get in good shape for the imminent (read: next year) release of the first edition of the Quick Start Guide and the first third of the first Adventure, In the Cold Light of Day.
The setting is low space opera (Refuge : Star Wars :: low fantasy : high fantasy) - very gritty, very mundane, with everyday people attempting to survive. Aliens are bizarre and unintelligible, FTL is slow and dangerous (getting from one side of known space to the other, about ~50 LY, takes seven months at the slowest and safest and two months at the fastest and most hazardous) and humanity's last defense, the IFS, is on the slow road to collapse.
Craft are prohibitively expensive for most people, forcing them to be submerged into decades of debt to pay for even a used one. Portable energy weapons are few and far-between. No artificial gravity.
Combat is heavily influenced by the STALKER FPS series, Cyberpunk 2013's Friday Night Firefight and Phoenix Command and is lethal to say the least. Rifles do 5d8 damage where the standard human HP total is 20 and 10 is the maximum damage threshold before taking a critical hit - that's where limbs start being blown off. So combat is all about armor, cover, aiming, suppressing fire, teamwork and tactical decision-making. This makes grenades about as terrifying as they are in real life - no one wants to have to choose between running out in the open to get shot and sitting on a live grenade.
This is space opera at its grittiest.
The system is an almost unrecognizable d20 (traditional class/level, with options for point-buy/level instead):
Six attributes rated from 1-10 - Dexterity / Agility / Constitution / Intelligence / Perception / Charisma.
Six dependent scores - Abilities (DEX), Action Points (AGI), Hit Points (CON), Skill Points (INT), Traits (PER), Assistance (CHA)
Six classes - Soldier (DEX), Scout (AGI), Support (CON), Techie (INT), Spacer (PER), Ambassador (CHA)
Six skill groups - Combat (Soldier), Finesse (Scout), Fitness (Support), Intellectual (Techie), Environmental (Spacer), Social (Ambassador)
And six Universal Skills, one from each skill group - Aim (DEX), Dodge (AGI), Fortitude (CON), Willpower (INT), Awareness (PER), Charisma (CHA)
Core roll is d10 + skill + attribute modifier (that's the d20 part).
That's the entire system. The core rules - chargen, skills and combat - fit on six pages, and the rest (traits/abilities/detailed skill uses/basic setting info/equipment/craft/NPC pregens) fit on 20. The long game includes converting it into a generic universal system for modern/fantasy, but we'll see.
The first playtest got a group of non-gamers up and playing with full chargen within an hour and change.
Hey everybody! It's been a long time! This summer I've been working evening and night on that RPG I last mentioned here back in the summer of 2011
.
I'm really quite happy with the progress, and I've been running some playtests to try to get in good shape for the imminent (read: next year) release of the first edition of the Quick Start Guide and the first third of the first Adventure, In the Cold Light of Day.
The setting is low space opera (Refuge : Star Wars :: low fantasy : high fantasy) - very gritty, very mundane, with everyday people attempting to survive. Aliens are bizarre and unintelligible, FTL is slow and dangerous (getting from one side of known space to the other, about ~50 LY, takes seven months at the slowest and safest and two months at the fastest and most hazardous) and humanity's last defense, the IFS, is on the slow road to collapse.
Craft are prohibitively expensive for most people, forcing them to be submerged into decades of debt to pay for even a used one. Portable energy weapons are few and far-between. No artificial gravity.
Combat is heavily influenced by the STALKER FPS series, Cyberpunk 2013's Friday Night Firefight and Phoenix Command and is lethal to say the least. Rifles do 5d8 damage where the standard human HP total is 20 and 10 is the maximum damage threshold before taking a critical hit - that's where limbs start being blown off. So combat is all about armor, cover, aiming, suppressing fire, teamwork and tactical decision-making. This makes grenades about as terrifying as they are in real life - no one wants to have to choose between running out in the open to get shot and sitting on a live grenade.
This is space opera at its grittiest.
The system is an almost unrecognizable d20 (traditional class/level, with options for point-buy/level instead):
That's the entire system. The core rules - chargen, skills and combat - fit on six pages, and the rest (traits/abilities/detailed skill uses/basic setting info/equipment/craft/NPC pregens) fit on 20. The long game includes converting it into a generic universal system for modern/fantasy, but we'll see.
The first playtest got a group of non-gamers up and playing with full chargen within an hour and change.
Take a look! Let me know what you think!
Refuge - TV Tropes page in-progress
Devblog
Overview
Mechanics
Quick Start Guide Download
3D SPACE MAP!
edited 25th Jul '13 8:58:19 AM by Reverse