Phonelobsters Mousetrap

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PhoneLobster
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Phonelobsters Mousetrap

Post by PhoneLobster »

Mousetrap

What's All This Then?
A bunch of folks have been asking me to put up my “current home brew materials”. By a bunch I mean like three, and one of them is not so much asking as just ranting about how I'm hiding it from him or something... But never let it be said I am not easily encouraged to talk about my own mad creations, so this is my current material.

No really, What's all this then?
This is the latest pure home brew rules set I am both working on and using. I usually write two sorts of home brew rules systems. Almost unreadable write as you go custom messes, and mildly readable written in advanced conventional rules sets. Luckily I happen to have this one in a state of partial, but useful completion and it's of the second sort.

That's not to say it's something that was ever intended to be shared. It still retains all the flaws you would expect from a home brew rules set. One of the worst of which, and which is going to take the most work in order to post this in a form that makes sense on a cold read through, being that like many such systems a few too many basic mechanics are informal assumptions known to the creator and his gaming group, but unfortunately not actually fully and clearly explained in the core rules document.

So This is “Slightly Revised Edition”
The main thing being done as part of posting this is an attempt to ensure all the rules as in use actually make it into the posted documents. Relatively easy to do with the fairly complete skill set documents etc... a bit harder with the core document and it's reliance on assumptions and familiarity that have been rolling around for years now.

Some additional small corrections for readability will be added here and there BUT very specifically the “revision” of this material will not go out of it's way to correct mechanical errors. Both the people with a genuine interest in this material, and also those with lets just say a... less, genuine interest, will I am sure find it more interesting that way, and after all, it's the flaws in materials like this that teach us the most. (And are also the most fun bit).

Formatting and Text
Of course a big part of the revision is putting all this into some sort of readable BBCode... which is a hassle. If anyone knows some good WYSIWYG BBCode converters it would be rather helpful... but anyway...

Normally I make a lot of use of bolding, and some mild use of coloured text in my reference documents. They also tend to be laid out for convenience of printing and handing out as leaflets or pages, rather than reading in order in either book or forum post form. I will try to retain some of the colouring and bolding unless it ends up too much of a code hassle.

Also I'm going to add in some commentary on stuff, maybe some side bars/examples. And I'm thinking I'm going to use Spoilers to do that.
So lets pre-empt some criticisms now
I'm keeping some perceived flaws of the system as it stands in there. So to kick of the bitch fests and the productive analysis both I should probably mention a few of them as I see them... in a giant spoiler side bar...

Basic poor writing
It's a home brew thing, I'm a bit sloppy, a bit lazy, some things are just a bit hacky. Some things are just a LOT hacky. For example... Illusion. That's hardly even worth mentioning in a general sense, but could have all sorts of interesting specific examples. This shouldn't even really make this list, it's not really the “stuff that should have been fixed but isn't”, even if it should be fixed. Because the nature of the writer and the material makes this one pure Wack-a-mole.

Need some more non combat junk
The system is somewhat lacking on “and the other stuff” material. Indeed. Pretty much entirely lacking. It's got some vague guidelines you can use for various individual bullshit actions associated with social actions, and indeed other things that can be somehow related to the other combat abilities you have. But what it lacks is a “+3 to Star Trek Trivia” so called “mechanic”, and it could probably use that. To be honest the only time it's come up in play has been Lock Picking, but really. It's a definite void.

However it's sort of problematic to fix. Social abilities, mobility abilities, and stealth abilities, are all rolled into the same primary minigame with combat, and are purchased with the same character building resource. That's been really beneficial for the primary minigame, but it also means that the “other stuff” category is... rather starved of material to use for trading off a theoretical “other stuff” character building resource, and having people trading off between choices that are seriously going to be limited to things like “star trek trivia” and “lock picking” and not a heck of a lot else is almost pointless.

I actually don't have a solid solution for that one. The current instructions are that arbitrary bullshit DC rolls are open to attempts to mother may I arbitrary bullshit bonuses for having a “character background in Star Trek Trivia”.

The Big Number Question
This one is I think my biggest current concern and top of my “check out/fix” list.

I was a bit sloppy with the basic numbers this time around. In the past I would draw up in advance strict bonus guidelines for expected numbers for, well, stuff, this time around I kinda winged it.

Now the idea was for the entire Low Tier section defence options, over all, WOULD in fact be more numerous and slightly better than attack options. The idea being the most important thing characters do and come out of their LT career with being the ability to survive the damn thing. But I have a rather strong suspicion that they are just a bit TOO good compared to attack options, specifically in the raw numeric bonuses to attack and defence.

Similarly Social Defence was always intended to be a smaller number to some extent. But it might be a little TOO small.

The likely solution is probably to run with some improved, or new small social defence bonus skills added to the social, and possibly profession, skill sets, and for an entirely new source of attack bonuses for normal attacks. Probably one tied to character Good Traits that grant associated bonuses against character Bad Traits.

Anything else wrong with the social rules?
Since after all these seem to be what everyone is most interested in.

Well. Social special attacks are fairly new and I'm not sure if they are sufficiently complete/correct yet. But the general idea seems sound and it's been popular in practice.

And the Social Targeting rule somehow displeases me. I always did want to have social attacks being a moderately reasonable mob clearer. But the interaction of the Multi-Target Penalty and it's potential removal or not... I'm not entirely sure this wouldn't have been better using the more standard targeting mechanics.

Points Based System Flaws
This system has a for the most part fairly typical points based character building system. Such systems have fairly typical problems. And this one has a lot of those. At various stages (before you run out of relevant things to spend points on) you CAN in fact put all your points in a pile of specialised awesome. The usual “egg shell with rocket launcher” build for instance (or Sumo Wrestlers with Water Pistols) that can plague points based games. There are SOME limits, its (just a little bit) hard to rack up altogether TOO much in one place, sort of, but it's certainly easy to for instance, start the game with some obscure meta abilities that don't do squat because you didn't invest in basic attack and defences.

However. This system is just the second points based system I'm using in a while. I used to do points based way back, then I didn't for a while. For a long while I gave out class packages. Nice grouped skill sets that interacted nicely with each other in combos but didn't directly stack on the same actions.

But really in the end, players really like to shop for abilities and put them into little custom piles that BOTH make for interesting sequences of tactics, AND stack up to enhance their individual tactics. And trail and error, and some actual honest consideration leads me to believe that for all the disadvantages points based systems are the most direct and beneficial way of providing something players really really love.

The other thing that concerns me about the points based system thing is that the “0 points” options thing I did... it MIGHT turn out to be really really bad at a conceptual level. But they're in there now fulfilling a strange but integral role and probably aren't coming back out without a fight.

These rules aren't complete. So what's missing?
Well lets see.

Vehicle and Fast movement (like horses) rules are missing. I've got stuff from earlier similar projects, but haven't ported them formally over yet. Also there should possibly be a Vehicle/Rider skill set.

The Monster skill set lacks associated items. It could probably also use about infinity additional skill options.

The background Culture stuff could use more... stuff...

The LT Base building rules may as well be second rate place holders. And having begun the MT base stuff, I keep looking back and thinking “those need changing”.

I should probably throw in an “Antisocial” social skill set, just for the flavour option.

I really need to have a bunch of animals and monsters written up (in part for the Beast Master skill set to, you know, DO anything). Maybe some default NPCs too. Definitely a thing to do...

But most of all what is missing is... everything after Low Tier. The idea is that this game will progress to higher levels, and the higher levels aren't there yet...

The Low Tier material is mostly complete. Certainly in a usable state, and certainly usable for multiple games, maybe a short campaign. Certainly I have started to put it to such a use as part of messing about with it. But that really is all there is and the Mid Tier documents I have been working on are largely only just being started at this stage.

Lago's gonna hate this, but...
Five moves of death. Seriously. Part of the product of having abilities that build customisable attacks and combos... means that you just plain cannot “solve” the five moves of death “problem”. It's pretty straightforward. Players get to build the characters they decide to, and that rather undermines efforts to force them not to move spam, or “combo spam” (though the second especially is a “problem” I have always found a little, weak, as far as problems go).

Now the system includes profitable combos, SOME motivation to break routines, and also a reasonable amount of situational variation that may cause you to use some differing options on a target by target, turn by turn and encounter by encounter basis.

But. Even by the end of LT a character will be one of the more diverse products of this system if they DO manage to push the number of their available “moves of death” up to such a large amount as FIVE.

And “worse” on a turn by turn basis, players may WELL be able to easily determine WHICH of their limited set of options is clearly the “best” choice. The interaction of the Damage Cap, keyword based attack bonuses, and attack buffs that are best suited vs Groups or best suited vs Bosses are going to result in some fairly clear options.

But the fact of the matter is fuck winds of fate and for that matter fuck all of the rather bullshit “goals” behind it. RPG rules are about describing scenarios clearly and succinctly as possible and giving PLAYERS the choice to describe their characters and the actions of their characters. At every step in the process of designing this system the goals of clarity and player choice have again and again conflicted with the narrow minded control freak mentality that motivates WoF and much of Frank and Lago's other less popular ideas.

In the end the variety and choices in the LT mechanics, seem, to be in approximately the right place, with the possible exception of my final concern...

Is Low Tier Too long? Too Short? Too Complex? or Too Shallow?
This one is... really rather hard to answer. Even if I could be assed to figure out how to clearly measure it... it's still a fairly vague judgement call to then determine whether the measurement is “the right place” or not.

An “end of LT character” is running around with 20 character points of skills. That COULD be up to no less than 40 distinct skills ... but is probably actually in practice pretty much 20ish. And those probably all roll into enhancing or altering maybe about 3-6 actions in about 1-3 tactics or “combos” that they do. They will, by the end of LT basically “max out” their LT equipment slots. Doing... a bunch of other stuff, but not altogether much and mostly only in a direct enhancement of options they already do rather than as a means of gaining any entirely new options.

The question is... are those the right places to be at? Should LT be shorter? Should there be less individual skills forming those actions/options? Should there be more or less options? Or should LT be even longer and bigger?

It's a hard one to answer. It feels like about the right place, but hell, I might change my mind yet...
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Core Rules

The Basic Mechanic
Pretty much every mechanic in the game is a fairly simple...

1d20 + Attack Bonus vs Defence

Succeeding if the Attack result equals or exceeds defence. Sometimes the margin of success (Attack result minus defence result) may be of importance.

Keywords and Bonus Notation
Most actions in the game are represented by a mixture of bonuses and keywords.

Keywords are written in Red when they appear in ability and item keyword lists, attack bonus lists, and are sometimes coloured in ability text bodies (as seems apropriate for clear reading of text).

Some Keywords DO things and invoke specific special mechanics like, Fire. Others are just there for other abilities to reference, like Weak.

Some keywords will have various additional notation like Multi-Target(All In 1) which should be explained elsewhere.

Keywords are commonly added to defences. When they are they will sometimes come with an attached number, like Armour 2 This represents a defence bonus of 2 points that will add to the defence total that keyword and it's number are applied to. These bonuses are typed and bonuses of this notation from the same keyword do not stack if you have for instance two Armour bonuses you only use the BETTER armour bonus. The exception is notation that includes a plus or minus symbol, this notation, for example Armour +1 DOES specifically stack, though it will usually also be mentioned in the body of ability text associated with the bonus that this is the case.

Attack bonus notation is typicall "+X vs Keyword ". This represents a bonus vs defences that have that keyword. Attack bonuses from different sources stack even if they apply to the SAME keyword, so if you somehow manage to get "+2 vs Slow " AND a "+1 vs Slow " from different skills/items on the same action you get to add them together and gain a total +3 bonus vs Slow targets. A fairly common sort of bonus is "+X vs All" This bonus simply applies regardless of target keywords.

Some attack and other notes may refer to keywords that read Non-Keyword This means "Something that DOESN'T have that keyword". So "+2 vs Non-Fast " means you get +2 against all targets that are NOT Fast.

Occasionally (very occasionally) an attack bonus or other note will list several keywords together, in which case the bonus applied only applies once if at least one such keyword is present. So for instance "+2 vs Cloth, Flesh, or Plastic " Applies a single +2 bonus if at least one of any of those keywords is on the target.

Basic Zone Mechanics
What's A zone?
Maps are broken up into almost entirely arbitrary area units called “Zones”. A smallish room is usually just 1 Zone, but doesn't have to be. A bridge across a chasm may well have one zone for each side of the chasm, and one zone for the bridge, or two or three zones for the bridge to make it longer. The exact size and shape of zones are defined by the GM (or architect responsible for building stuff) to create interesting and appropriate tactical outcomes, for instance the size of the bridge in zones depends on the tactical role it is expected to fulfil as a choke point or movement cost.

From time to time it may become important to describe additional zones only implied prior to their appearance. The chasm example may have implied additional zones or portions of zones representing chasm walls, the chasm floor, the air above or in the chasm etc... if flying or climbing or other differently mobile characters are present or if someone ends up somewhere unexpected by means of a throw or hazard.

Aside form that the definition of “what a zone is” is defined exclusively by it's interaction with other mechanics, like movement, ranges, areas of effect etc...

Zones and Movement
The basic movement action moves you just 1 zone to an adjacent zone, the basic run action moves you 2 zones. Other effects can move you multiple zones but typically zone movement in a single turn is a fairly small number.

Zones and Range
The basic range rules for zones are as follows.
Close-Range effects can only target characters in the same zone as the character using them.
Short-Range effects can only target characters in the same zone OR any adjacent zone to the character using them.
Long-Range effects can only target characters in any zone but suffer a -1 range penalty to attack per additional zone beyond short range. Some effects modify range penalties in various ways, the most common being Double-Range-Penalties and Half-Range-Penalties, which do exactly what they say they do.

Zones and Areas/Targeting
Attacks have keywords representing their targetting mechanics. Commonly...
Single-Target Represents a single attack roll against a single target.
Multi-Target Represents attacking multiple targets, however it will have additional notation in brackets representing how many and where, typically...
(Up to X) Will attack up to X targets of the attackers choice anywhere within range of the attack.
(Up to X in 1) Will attack up to X targets all in the same 1 Zone anywhere within range.
(X in 1) Will attack X targets all in the same 1 Zone anywhere within range. Only this time you cannot stop short of the target value and MUST target that many targets if there are at least that many targets available.
Commonly the target value X will not be a number and will instead be be “All” which means what it says it means.
Some targeting entries may also state “Bar Self” which means the effect does not target the character using it.
Some targeting entries will target more than one zone and will read as...
(X in Y) for X targets spread over each of Y zones anywhere in range.
(X each in Y) for X targets in each of Y zones anywhere in range.
(? in Y Adjacent Zones) for whatever targets in zones that are adjacent to each other, and in range.

LoS, LoF, LoK and other Lines
You can draw a “Line” on the map and determine what zones it passes through by starting at any point in an origin zone and ending at any point in a target zone (and potentially continuing onwards from there). All zones the line passes through any part of are “in the line”. Occasionally you may see related terminology used directly such as with examples like Multi-Target(All in a Line).

More commonly though you care about LoS or Line of Sight. Most attacks require that the target, or target zone of the attack must be within line of sight. So in order to shoot a character with a gun you need LoS to the target. Which simply requires drawing any Line from anywhere in your zone to anywhere in the target's zone without hitting sight blocking obstacles.

In addition most ranged attacks ALSO require Line of Fire or LoF. This requires that you have a LoS line that ALSO doesn't hit any PHYSICAL barriers that block the attack. As there may be some barrier types that block physical projectiles but not LoS this IS important. Some such transparent barriers have a breakable trait and will simply trigger an additional attack on the barrier, allowing an attack on the primary target if the barrier is destroyed or penetrated.

LoK is... line of knowledge. It is a bit more abstract. As long as you can see and you have LoS on a target you have “Knowledge” or LoK on them, which is one of the requirements to attack them. But with the aid of special abilities you can potentially target things or zones you cannot see. To do so you need LoK which is basically just knowledge of what it is you are trying to target outside of your line of sight. You can gain such knowledge from having been there before, having a friend who does have LoS give you information, or simply by guessing. But if you guess wrong you may end up missing or targeting unexpected things.

You can bypass LoF if you have a ranged attack with the Guided keyword. Guided attacks can draw wiggly lines that go around corners and stuff. However, they STILL require you to have. LoS (presumably there were transparent but impenetrable barriers in the way) or LoK on your target.

You can ignore LoK requirements on a Guided attack if it ALSO has the Smart keyword. Effectively the attack either makes choices by itself as it gains it's own LoS during movement, or feeds information back to you allowing you to do so. If you have both these keywords on an attack you CAN just shoot around a corner and decide what to target once the attack rounds the corner.

Zones and Size Ratings
Zones have size ratings. Size ratings are how many characters can comfortably fit in a zone. A zone with a size rating X can fit X characters into it comfortably without altering combat etc...

Once the number of characters in a zone exceeds the size rating of the zone they become Crowded, and suffer from the Grabbed keyword/effect limiting their actions to Wrestle actions, to even leave the zone a crowded character must succeed in an Escape action against another character in the zone. This Grabbed effect can only be ended by leaving the zone or by the number of characters in the zone dropping below the Size rating, unless a character opts to use an escape to place themselves in an adjacent zone just succeeding in an escape roll in a crowded zone is not enough.

Character size interacts with zone size such that small characters count as ½ a size unit, big characters count as 4 size units, and Capital characters are confusing and arbitrary.

Lighting Rules
Two things you find commonly lying around the place are Light and Shadow. Basically the lighting that fills an area and allows you to see.

Lighting is determined by the light sources on a zone by zone basis. “normal” lighting provides no modifiers. But some zones may be Bright or have Shadow in which case they will gain a bonus (usually between 1-4) to either Non-Blind social defenders against things attempting Stealth actions in bright zones OR a bonus TO Stealth actions attempted against Non-Blind targets by things in Shadow zones.

Cloud Effects
Another common zone filling effect is the Cloud effect. Clouds are smoke, dust, fog or... something... that obscures vision. A cloud effect blocks LoS entirely when you try to look through it. But if you try to look INTO a single zone of it OR OUT of single zone it it provides an Obfuscating 2 bonus to normal defence and Obfuscating and +2 vs Non-Blind to Stealth actions.

If you are trying to look into a cloud zone from a cloud zone, then you do not have LoS at all.


Time
Measuring game time, is a big deal. How long it takes to do... stuff... is clearly rather important. This system uses two basic measures of time. The Turn, and the Strategic Turn. The Turn is the basic time unit of the primary (combat) mini-game and everything associated with it. The Strategic Turn represents long term time outside of that and is used primarily for long distance travel, training and base building.

LT Strategic Time
Outside of combat, exploration/stealth and social encounters, (all of which use combat time), things happen in Strategic time.

At the LT phase of the game strategic time is mostly for travelling or sitting around in. But it does have a few rare interactions you will want to know about.

The Strategic Turn (ST)
Is a big long giant turn that takes days, often weeks, maybe even months. It is the default abstract time unit for “a whole bunch” of time. You need to spend strategic turns on things like Travel and Training skill sets ready to attempt new unlocks.

During a single strategic turn any number of normal Turns can occur.

Restock
Later on this is an action you may preform with Strategic Turns that lets you restock and repair various resources. For now it is just worth knowing it exists and you might run across one or two items or something that can be repaired, recharged, reloaded or refuelled with Restocks. Most LT items can be repaired or reloaded within time frames of LESS than a strategic turn, even if they don't have a specific combat time repair/reload associated with them.

Strategic Turns and Healing
You heal all your standard injuries (social or normal) and all other Temporary injuries in 1 strategic turn. Special injuries usually require special healing. If you end up with multiple combat time events during the same strategic turn any amount of healing (or not) may occur in between on a totally arbitrary and variable basis.

Other Strategic Actions
You can spend strategic turns doing “other stuff” if you like, for instance trying to hire an NPC specialist wilderness guide, building a raft, researching a foreign power, etc... Many of these actions fall into the arbitrary “other stuff” rules of the game. But that by no means suggests they are unproductive options. You may often want to consider spending a few “weeks” researching your enemies, looking for work, repairing your boat and other mysterious essentially arbitrary actions.

Travelling the world
Nothing to see here. This one needs work and currently is pretty much unwritten. The general idea is the world will be broken into “regions” much like combat scale zones written large and you jump about within them with short single ST hops. But really, this needs work.

Strategic Turns and Combat Time Encounters
You can have potentially large numbers of combat encounters within a single strategic turn. They happen at any time during the turn including near the start or end, arbitrarily selected, and if you are for instance, spending your ST restocking or healing you may have not yet done that, completely done that, or partially done that when a combat time encounter interrupts, on again, an arbitrary basis.

Performing an actual strategic action does not prevent you from engaging in Combat Time Encounters and visa versa. But sometimes a strategic action may effect the manner in which you enter a combat encounter, or the manner in which the combat encounters you...

Combat Turn Phases and Combat Time
Combat is broken up into Turns. Each Turn each character gets 1 normal Action (and potentially a bunch of “free” actions from various special abilities in various special circumstances).

However beyond that there is a specific timing order for actions which is important for the interaction of various abilities and events.

So here is the basic turn phase layout.

1) Start Of Turn Events
Certain actions, like activating special defences or occasional left over attacks from a prior turn activate now.
2) Very Fast Actions
If you have an action that is “Very Fast” it happens now, at the same time as all other characters perform their very fast actions.
You should probably not have very fast actions at all until at least MT.
3) Fast Actions
Characters with “Fast” actions all perform those actions at the same time now.
4) Normal Actions
Characters with “Normal” speed or actions without a speed notation act at the same time now.
5) Slow Actions
Characters with “Slow” actions all perform those actions at the same time now.
6) Very Slow Actions
Characters with “Very Slow” actions all perform those actions at the same time now.
You should probably not have very slow actions at all until at least MT.
7) Refund Phase
Occasionally an action will give you a “refund action” of some form in certain circumstances. It is rare, but if it happens, it happens now.
8) Use Blocks
Characters who are taking injuries and have Block options they wish to use. Use them now.
9 ) Apply Injuries
All unblocked injuries are now applied to characters.
10) Resource Phase
Effects that state they occur in the resource phase (most Energy gain effects for instance). Happen now.

Simultaneous Actions
Actions occurring in the same phase are considered simultaneous. Two characters for instance attacking each other in the normal action phase have their attacks land SIMULTANEOUSLY. They can interrupt each others actions with a Parry effect (even achieving a rare, confusing mutual, and often effectively redundant mutual parry) but otherwise they do not prevent each others actions.

If someone at the same timing moves away for instance, another character of the same timing may treat them as in EITHER zone for targeting purposes. In the case of a Grab this places the grabbing character in the destination zone and is considered a moving tackle.

Non-Simultaneous Actions
Actions occurring in different phases CAN, under specific circumstances prevent slower actions. A move action for instance in the Fast phase can and does change targeting during that turn for all SLOWER phase characters.

The confusing bit comes with the timing of Effects, Parries and Damage.

Damage Timing
All injuries are applied at the end of the turn this means that damage ALONE cannot prevent a character from performing their action even if they are slower than you, and even if the damage causes them to fall down removed from combat and/or dead at the end of the turn.

Effects Timing
Non damaging special effects begin right away and are applied effectively immediately at the end of the speed phase of the action. So if you for instance Throw a character they immediately count as having been thrown starting from the next speed phase of the same turn.

Again, one of the simplest effects available is to simply move your own character with a regular Move action.

Parry Timing
Parry works like other Effects, but is special because it can effect actions of the SAME timing as the parry action. As already mentioned in Simultaneous actions, parry can cancel an action (or some effects of an action) in the same timing phase as the parry action itself.

Acting in a Slower Phase
A character MAY wish to act in a phase SLOWER than the phase they normally act in. If so they simply hold their action until the later phase. Once an earlier phase has ended however you cannot go back to it!

Generally you only do this if you are really keen on potentially parrying a slower attack you know is coming. And it is fairly rare (but not impossible) for this to be a profitable option.

When Do Free Actions Happen?
At various times, but by default they happen DURING your standard action in it's speed phase, whenever that happens.

At the Beginning of your Turn vs At the Beginning of your Action
Is a pretty straightforward distinction. Beginning of your turn Is the Start of Turn phase. Beginning of your action is before other actions during your standard action, whenever that is.

Precedence of Action Declaration
Once you narrow your action down to a phase several characters MAY be acting simultaneously in that phase. As a general rule NPCs WILL act first if players wish to determine order of action declarations before deciding their own action for the turn. If players disagree on which of their own characters should act/declare first in such a situation they can make an arbitrary bonus free role off.

Precedence of Action RESOLUTION
Generally when you declare an action you roll and resolve it. This may apply immediate effects, or queue up damage for the end of turn damage phase. So once you determine order of declaration with NPCs first and roll offs and all that, you then start rolling and resolving straight away in that order.

Before Roll, On Hit, After Parry, After Block
“Before Roll”, “On Hit”, “After Parry” and “After Block” are specific timing terms that relate to attacks and are used for various triggered actions.

If you do something “Before Roll” you do it before making the related roll. This may apply for instance to some effects that enhance an attack you are ABOUT to make.

If you do something “On Hit” you do it after you have successfully rolled your attack. This may apply for instance to OTHER effects that enhance an attack you have JUST made. On hit happens BEFORE anyone has to declare if they are attempting a Parry action that applies to that attack.

"After Parry" must be declared, and if no one attempts a parry, is applied and no one can try and parry after that.. This timing is rare, possibly non-existent at present.

"After Block" applies after the block phase. Primarily for effects that require unblocked damage (or trigger off actual blocks, or something).

The Damage Cap
Each turn a target can be hit, and “effected” by any number of attacks, but is only damaged by ONE, the one that would deal them the most or “worst” damage.

This is very important for the turn sequence because of it's interaction with both action tactics of later acting characters and with block and parry mechanics. So be aware of, dun dun dun, THE DAMAGE CAP.

For purposes of determining which attack is “most damaging” count number of injuries dealt. For tie breakers “special” injuries are considered more important than “standard” injuries. If that STILL doesn't break ties let attackers decide which attack deals damage between them. If they cannot agree the highest margin of success on associated attack roll breaks the tie. If that still doesn't break ties (or you forgot it) the highest relevant attack bonus breaks the tie. If that STILL doesn't break the tie initiate a full scale thumb wrestling tournament.

Fuzzy Resolution
The combat phases sequence is long and potentially complex. BUT most turns will not actually use ALL phases with many being skipped over without any events taking place within them. The phase chart is there to help determine results in complex interactions and situations and should not be necessary much of the time.

Similarly if will often be more efficient and easier to resolve many actions out of sequence. For instance players may wish to allocate blocks AS they receive damage, rather than near the end of the turn, especially if the Damage Cap mechanic is not coming into effect. This is totally OK and you should again only resort to the phase sequence in cases of complex interactions, if someone is just blocking the only damage they take in the turn, or something like that, it is fine and encouraged.

How do Blocks Work?
Blocks are basically actions that allow characters to expend one of their available resources (usually energy or items) in order to cancel some portion of the injuries they are about to receive. Effectively they are a bit like extra hit points. Though one of the big deals about blocks, unlike hit points, is that they can let you avoid the negative effects of special injuries, like having an arm cut off, by cancelling the injury of the defenders choice.

A character can use any number of available blocks during the block phase to cancel any number of injuries they are receiving. Blocks do NOT change the outcome of the Damage Cap, blocks only start applying once the “most damaging attack” has been decided and you attempt to apply those injuries to the target character. So if you block all (or some of) the injuries of the most damaging attack you do NOT then have to block or in any way apply damage form any other attack that turn.

What's the resource phase for
The resource phase primarily exists for mechanical clarity and convenience. And by occurring at a specific time at the end of the turn it allows a number of potential energy and other resource recharge mechanics to avoid some of the shorter potential loop/re-use issues.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Oct 12, 2011 6:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Characters
Whats A Character?
You should know the answer and I don't want to try and spend too long describing the basic assumptions of RPGs here. But suffice it to say, if it isn't terrain, special effects or furniture it's probably a character. And characters come in two main flavours.

Named Characters - Named characters are the important ones. The PCs, major NPCs, the leaders heroes and villains of the game. They get the widest range of functional abilities with the smallest range of limitations. The skill set system is written up primarily with named characters as the main focus.

Un-Named Characters – Well, actually they CAN and probably do have names, but the point is you don't care about that, because these guys are the background cast and tend to suck in some shape or form. Un-named characters have distinct limits on their abilities and do not get access to things like Energy or Blocks without special shenanigans. Unamed characters fall into several categories based on mechanical variation and game role.

Building a Basic Character
Injuries and Energy
Decide if the character is a named, or unnamed character.

Named characters start the game with a base of 3 Max Injuries and 3 Max Energy.

Unnamed characters start the game with a base of 1 Max Injury and 0 Max Energy.

“Max Injuries” is the maximum number of standard injuries or damage a character can receive before being removed from combat. The last injury type they receive will determine the nature of the removed from combat effect (whether it is a KO, potential death, or a social effect).

“Max Energy” is the maximum points of Energy resource the character can store at a single time. Energy does... stuff...
Injuries instead of HP?
Now might be a good time to point this out. Some terms and keywords in this system are just a tiny bit off. It really would have been better if Max Injuries had just been “HP” or you know, something.

But as an iteration of a series of rules sets used with the same 2-3 groups over a long period of time some terms sneak in one way or another, and survive changes that would make them otherwise obsolete simply because there is some value in retaining the familiarity. The “injuries” terminology is so old now I have only vague memories of why it was ever like that. I probably SHOULD change it back, but...

See also why do things that should be “Leather” have keywords like “Plastic” instead, etc...
Normal Defence and Social Defence
Very soon you are going to accumulate your first defence bonuses (or penalties), and it might help to know what defences are.

Each character has a “Normal Defence” and a “Social Defence”.

Each is a tally of keywords and a total value that must be met or exceeded for certain actions to succeed against them.

Some keywords have a number associated with them that adds together to form the total defence score. So for instance a character may have Normal Defence = Weak Body Fast 4 Armour 2

Both defences have a base value of 10 added so that should end up reading something like... Normal Defence 16 = 10+ Weak Body Fast 4 Armour 2

Normal defence is used against physical attacks. Social defence is used against social attacks, some mental attacks, and also against stealth actions.
The right defences?
Deciding on two defence scores was a hard one. There are good reasons to unify into ONE defence score... and there are good reasons to split further, especially into THREE scores (splitting social into a social defence and a stealth specific awareness defence).

In the end I settled on 2 defences despite the fact that being prettier meant it is harder for your enemies to hide from you.
Good Traits
This is the stand in for character attributes in this system. You get to have ONE “Good Trait” a small, but fairly game changing attribute that will shape your character in some notable way for most of their career.
Wait? No attributes?
Yes this is one of those ones. Your character does NOT have a direct set of numeric attributes like “Strength – 12, Manual Dexterity -9.5 Oral Dexterity – 2, Star Trek Trivia – 9000” or whatever. There are reasons to use attributes... and lots of reasons not to.

I have been experimenting with numeric attribute free systems for... well, several generations of rules now. And it actually works really well. Players are quite happy to NOT care if they have Dexterity 14 or Dexterity 17. All they care about is whether they get to write “Fast” or something on their character and talk about how Fast and agile they are. After a number of different ways to stick cool keywords and abilities like being somehow “Fast” on a character I have eventually settled on the good/bad attribute system and it's probably the best variant yet on a number of levels.

And no. The variable typed defence bonuses you are about to get from good trait selection are NOT the same thing as base attributes.
You select attributes off the following list. However Unnamed characters may select weaker versions of attributes depending on their “Unnamed Level” which is primarily a value used during early LT to create weaker enemies.

Fast
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Fast 0 to Normal Defence.
Add Fast to all actions.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Fast 2 to Normal Defence.
Add Fast to all actions.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Fast 4 to Normal Defence.
Add Fast to all actions.
Named Character –
Add Fast 4 to Normal Defence.
Add Fast to all actions.
When you perform any move action (ie Standard Move, Sneak or Charge action) you may expend 1 Energy to move an additional zone. The additional zone is before determining observers, but may be before OR after any attack in a charge type action.

Strong
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Strong 0 to Normal Defence.
Add Strong to all actions.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Strong 2 to Normal Defence.
Add Strong to all actions.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Strong 4 to Normal Defence.
Add Strongt to all actions.
Named Character –
Add Strong 4 to Normal Defence
Add Strong to all actions
You may add Devastating +1 to any Strong normal attack (on hit) at the cost of 1 Energy.

Tough
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Strong 0 to Normal Defence.
Add Strong to all actions.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Strong 1 to Normal Defence.
Add Strong to all actions.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Strong 2 to Normal Defence.
Add Strongt to all actions.
Gain +1 Max Injuries.
Named Character –
Add Strong 2 to Normal Defence
Gain +2 Max Injuries
You may add Strong to any non-weak action (on hit) at the cost of 1 Energy. Any time you upgrade any attack using any ability you ALSO apply this effect for no additional cost.
During the apply injuries phase you may expend up to 1 Energy per Special Injury to convert them to additional Standard Injuries.


Energetic
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Fast 0 to Normal Defence.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Fast 1 to Normal Defence.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Fast 3 to Normal Defence.
Gain +1 Max Energy
Named Character –
Add Fast 3 to Normal Defence
Gain +2 Max Energy
You may add Fast to any non-slow action (on hit) at the cost of 1 Energy. Any time you upgrade any attack using any ability you ALSO apply this effect for no additional cost.
At any turn that you regain any Energy in the Resource phase you regain an additional 1 Energy in that phase.

Pretty
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Pretty 0 to Normal Defence
Add Pretty 0 to Social Defence
Add Pretty to all actions.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Pretty 2 to Normal Defence
Add Pretty 1 to Social Defence
Add Pretty to all actions.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Pretty 4 to Normal Defence
Add Pretty 2 to Social Defence
Add Pretty to all actions.
Named Character –
Add Pretty 4 to Normal Defence
Add Pretty 2 to Social Defence
Add Pretty to all actions
You may spend 1 Energy to make any other Non-Pretty attack/action targeting you re-roll that attack/action. (Once per roll).

Tricky
Unnamed Civilian –
Add Tricky 0 to Normal Defence
Add Tricky 0 to Social Defence
Add Tricky to all actions.
Unnamed Veteran –
Add Tricky 1 to Normal Defence
Add Tricky 1 to Social Defence
Add Tricky to all actions.
Unnamed Elite –
Add Tricky 3 to Normal Defence
Add Tricky 3 to Social Defence
Add Pretty to all actions.
Named Character –
Add Tricky 3 to Normal Defence
Add Tricky 3 to Social Defence
Add Tricky to all actions
You may spend 1 Energy to reroll any roll against a Non-Tricky target. (Once per roll).
The Equality of Good Traits?
Frankly good traits are not precisely created equal. Hopefully they are in the same ball park for named characters but not so much with unnameds. There really IS no good reason to be a Veteran Tough instead of a Veteran Strong.

In addition it is entirely possible the 1 Energy and 1 Injury bonus for Elite Toughs and Elite Energetics are bonuses which are TOO GOOD and should go away.

Finally there may well be distinct variation in usefulness between the traits even for named characters. It was intended for these to be major character shaping abilities and that means they need a degree of complexity that can be hard to balance. Fast as a good trait for instance IS very good. But might be significantly more or less good depending on whether you take abilities from elsewhere that give you the ability to deal Parries and other Effects.
Bad Traits
To make your character more exciting much like the positive traits you will also pick one ONE trait that (sort of)weakens your character in some way.

Bad Traits do not bother differentiating between civilian, veteran and elite level NPCs. The major bonuses that come from bad traits tend to be Energy related abilities largely unavailable to characters without energy anyway.

Slow
Cannot be taken with Fast or Energetic good traits
Add Slow to your Normal Defence
Add Slow to your Actions
You may remove Slow from your all you actions and from your Defences for the remainder of the turn for a cost of 1 Energy at any time during the turn. Any time you expend energy to upgrade an action/defence you add this effect as well for free.

Weak
Cannot be taken with Strong or Tough good traits
Add Weak to your Normal Defence
Add Weak to your Actions
You may remove Weak from your all you actions and from your Defences for the remainder of the turn for a cost of 1 Energy at any time during the turn. Any time you expend energy to upgrade an action/defence you add this effect as well for free.


Clumsy
Add Slow to your Normal Defence (but not your actions)
All zone hazards gain +3 to attack against you
You trigger Move hazards once a turn even if stationary, you trigger Run hazards with normal moves.
You may expend 1 Energy in order to NOT trigger a zone hazard. This ability however cannot be used to avoid a zone hazard triggered by being thrown into one.

Fragile
Add Weak to your Normal Defence (but not your actions)
Cannot be taken with Tough good trait
Applies -1 Max Injury
During the apply injuries phase you may expend 1 Energy to block all Standard Injuries you are receiving (from normal attacks) and suffer one Sever or Decapitate Special Injury instead. (Yes this is a highly questionable ability, no it doesn't work on Standard Injuries from Social attacks).

Feeble
Cannot be taken with Energetic good trait. Cannot be taken if you have 0 Max Energy.
You have -1 Max Energy
If you have 0 Energy you may treat your remaining normal Injuries as an Energy pool and expend them as if they were Energy. Expended injuries are lost immediately, cannot be blocked and do NOT count towards the turn based Injury cap.

Decadent
Add Decadent to Normal and Social Defence
Add Decadent to all Social actions
Must spend All Energy Minimum 0 in order to target Pretty characters (or objects!) with anything other than Seductive actions.
If you succeed in any opposed action against a Pretty target you regain 1 Energy in the Resource phase.
No really “Decadent”?
“Decadent” is probably the bad trait I am LEAST happy with (aside perhaps from fragile) on a number of levels.

See I WANTED a bad trait “foil” to Pretty, and I didn't want to do “Ugly” (though I probably should). To be honest I don't even particularly like the name. But it is the best I could come up with. The mechanic is sorta... wrong as well.
Cowardly
Add Cowardly 1 to Normal AND Social Defence
Add Cowardly to all actions
Scary attacks against Cowardly targets gain Devastating +1

Stupid
Cannot be taken with Tricky basic trait
Add Stupid -1 to Normal AND Social Defence
Add Stupid to all actions
You may expend 1 Energy per 1 Block gained against any Social injury from an attack without Tricky
Wait a second! “Bad Traits” aren't very bad!
Well they are, I mean you get some bad keywords out of them. But, yeah, every single bad trait has some sort of potential bonus or up side to it. And these could be exploitable. The most basic example being a Weak character who simply ends up primarily making Weak actions ANYWAY and now can use their “Bad Trait” to actually change actions that would be weak anyway into actions that aren't.

But that is actually the INTENTION. Bad traits can one way or another be either exploited or at least ignored. And a good way to account for the “value” of a bad trait is to simply assume it is only bad FLAVOURED and that people are going to one way or another work around or even exploit them. So all bad traits are set up to be somewhat exploitable and it is assumed you ARE going to go around and at least somewhat exploit them.

Bad Traits aren't precisely equal
Bad traits are probably a bit more “wonky” than the good trait list (and a slightly longer list, oddly). Feeble is... probably too good, same with Cowardly and Stupid. Meanwhile the others, especially Fragile and Decadent, are probably too weak, poorly concieved, or possibly too situational.

Bad traits could probably use some improvements anyway.

Right number of options?
Bad and Good traits need to be relatively short lists. These are supposed to be major attributes you observe frequently and predictably in all the characters around you.

But. The lists probably COULD be a little bit longer. Especially for good traits. They could readily rack up to 8 or 10 entries for each trait list. Keyword inflation doesn't need to be a serious issue one or two more could be added, but even that isn't required for more traits as there can be some commonality in trait based keywords as already demonstrated with things like Fast and Energetic traits both having the “Fast” keyword as part of their... thing.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Oct 31, 2011 4:25 am, edited 3 times in total.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Basic Keywords
Basic keywords are a small set of keywords a character has that apply to ALL their defences, attacks, social attacks and actions. It is currently primarily used for things like being an Animal or Plant or being a specific Gender and mostly just exists for match up purposes of other abilities.

As a basic standard most characters will just have Animal and a gender (Male or Female) as their only basic keywords.

Gender keywords and homosexuality and stuff
Yikes. Hilariously, or frighteningly, there actually needs to be some accounting for this.

Some characters are going to respond differently to certain attacks, especially social Seductive type attacks, based on sexuality.

As such there ARE characters running around who just have things like Male on their basic keyword list but have the special exception that they treat themselves as Female for the purposes of defences only against Seductive attacks.

This is an odd way of describing characters, but it is a way of mechanically representing the blatantly obvious in a formal way that seems to get all the appropriate relationships correct.


Body Keywords
In addition to their basic keywords every character has a small set of “Body Keywords” that represent the material keywords of whatever their body is made out of.

Body keywords are added to any action, attack, or defence which has Body among it's keywords. So for instance when you punch someone with your fist, or if someone is attacking you and you aren't wearing a full suit of armour, you will apply your body material keywords.

The typical standard character has a body made out of Soft and Flesh.

Standard Actions
The standard action list is a list of standard actions normally available to basically all (or in some cases, most) characters. Many more complex actions either interact with, or build from, these standard actions.

Everything gets keywords
It is important to note that pretty much every action has keywords. Even if you aren't rolling the action as an attack, and you don't expect any sort of attack to target the action in some strange way as if it were a defence your actions STILL get keywords. In the case of non-attack actions this is most commonly important for special circumstances where an action can be a trigger for some event, effect or other action.

The prime example of this being Move triggered Zone Hazard attacks. Which will be covered later.
Move
The basic Move action is really simple. A character spends their Action for the turn and moves from their zone to an adjacent zone. The basic Move action has the keywords Move and Walk

Climbing
Any character with Walk movement can attempt to climb, either to get over some sort of zone boundary obstacle or to move along zone walls or into zones without floors.

A character with the Climb keyword can just do this. Other characters will have to roll a Climb check. Climb checks are (mostly) arbitrary “other stuff” rolls against a target number set by the GM representing the difficulty of climbing the surface. A few largely inconsequential “abilities” give small bonuses to your climb check, and as an arbitrary other stuff roll it should be possible to gain negotiated bonuses anyway.

Swimming
Any character character can attempt to swim in water (or other fluids?). Swimming for regular Walk characters is a bit hard. They cannot Run or Charge while swimming, they suffer -2 to all normal attacks and to normal defence (though some normal attacks may not work at all in, or through, water. Especially projectiles vs submerged targets).

Some water may be rough or have a current and may require an arbitrary “other stuff” swim check, just like the Climb check. And just like climb some abilities may give small bonuses, and negotiated bonuses are acceptable.

Characters with Swim can Run and Charge in water and suffer no penalties to attacks or defences for doing so. They MIGHT still have to make swim checks for special conditions, but if so should be given an arbitrary negotiated bonus.

Sometimes a character may for one reason or another sink. Most typically because certain heavy armours just do that to you when you wear them. In addition however a large amount or even a single large heavy held or pocketed item may cause a character to sink, though in the held or pocketed item case the character may opt to simply drop any held or pocketed item that would cause them to sink for free and have it sink without them.

There is no such thing as “water pressure” and we don't bother doing damage from water pressure. But you CAN drown. So lets side bar a drowning/holding you breath thing...
Holding your breath, drowning and suffocating
As an aside since we are doing swimming, your character can opt to hold their breath!

Each turn a character can hold their breath at the cost of 1 Energy. And if they are down to 0 Energy they can hold their breath for 1 additional turn (but then cannot hold their breath again until they perform a successful Rest action.

Holding your breath cannot be declared as an immediate response to an attack, and indeed should be declared at the beginning of a turn. But if you ARE holding your breath you may be immune to certain attacks (like say, a poisonous gas cloud zone hazard), or more commonly, immune to drowning attacks.

If for some reason you CANNOT breath, and you cannot hold your breath, (for instance, you are in an underwater zone), then each turn at the start of your action you suffer a Drowning Attack.
Drowning Attack Temporary-Damage Single-Target Special-Range +X vs All
Where X is the number of consecutive turns prior to this turn that this target has been subjected to a Drowning Attack (regardless of whether they hit). Drowning attacks deal standard injuries, but have the Temporary-Damage keyword and are restored entirely once you can successfully rest while breathing.

And yes. Suffocating uses the EXACT same attack as drowning.

And also yes, some characters may be immune to drowning or suffocation in certain or all circumstances. But that's not standard.
Jumping
Jumping any object smaller than a zone is an arbitrary other stuff effect. So hopping over a bench is generally just plain ignored, and hopping over a canyon somehow smaller than a zone is just an arbitrary roll.

Using jumping movement to move into or through air based zones IS possible, but generally requires you to add the Jump keyword to your move action, which requires special abilities.

This however has the specific exception of circumstances where a character can indeed move off the edge of an elevated zone. ANY character with normal Walk based movement CAN just jump off a cliff with lateral movement. Doing so temporarily adds to their Jump action.

Jumping (by either means) CAN end your movement in a zone that is entirely “Air based”. If so however the character will, without other abilities like flight, FALL at the start of their next action.

Flying
Characters cannot normally fly. If they end up in a zone in the air because of say, Jumping, or being thrown, they will generally Fall at the start of their next turn.

However characters with Fly can in fact just move into air based zones, and, as long as they retain Fly, they can do so so and NOT fall.

All this talk of flying and jumping requires a Falling side bar...
Falling Down
A character can fall. This typically happens when they find themselves in a zone up in the air with no means of support. They typically then will fall at the start of their action in the next turn.

Falling first of all moves the character typically it moves them DOWN. Because of the somewhat wobbly nature of zones which EXACT zone is beneath any other may not always be perfectly certain, or may have a number of potentially correct results LARGER than 1. If so the falling character should generally be permitted to determine which zone they land in.

Falling Damage
You are under attack! By Gravity! And possibly a Hard Surface! Oh No! Falling damage by default uses the following attack. And applies any time you fall 1 zone or further...

Falling Attack Applies material keywords of the surface fallen onto Falling Knock Single-Target Close-Range +X vs All
+2 if you fall onto a Hard material, -2 if you fall onto a Soft material.
Where X is the number of zones you fell
Knock means that if this attack hits it will also knock you over, placing you in the Knocked state.
Falling deals 1 normal injury. But if you fall long distances the falling attack also gains Devastating +Z where Z is the equal to the Range Penalty of the distance you fell.

Some special effects make you immune, or resistant, to falling damage. One of particular note is any attack with the Driver, keyword, which means it is an attack that lets you attempt to land on a target and on hit transfers falling damage onto the target. The exact details of Driver effects are outlined in the related attack abilities.

Gliding
One or two effects may permit a character to glide. This generally means that they can fall without damage and can do so slowly. While falling they must fall “downwards” at least 1 zone per turn of gliding, but may move laterally as normal. They count as adding Fly to their movement, but have the special Glide restrictions to movement and cannot fly freely.
Smashing Through Things
Movement is normally inhibited by obstacles like Walls and closed doors, or even characters explicitly standing in their path (characters using the Guard action).

However a character CAN try and move THROUGH such an obstacle.

Doing so grants them a free attack on the object (or character) in their path.

Some obstacles are considered “evadable”, such as a guarding character, and if the free attack selected has Escape and succeeds then the character may pass and continue their action. If they fail in the escape attack, then their action ends and they fail to move any further.

Other obstacles, like walls and doors, especially the fragile ones, can simply be smashed through. And if the attack deals enough damage (walls and doors typically getting no blocks) the character will smash through and may continue their movement and other actions.

Inhibiting Movement
A number of effects can effect a character's ability to move. Some are described in the attack and damage rules, for instance Knock and Grab (and later Pin), and in some circumstances Sever.

However it is worth noting some things here.

A character who has at least half their movement limbs (for the form of movement being attempted) damaged, severed or disabled in some way (most commonly by Sever attacks) has “Inhibited Movement” and can no longer perform any actions that grant the Run or Charge keywords.

A character who has ALL their movement limbs (for the form of movement being attempted) damaged, severed or disabled is considered “Immobile”. An “Immobile” character adds Immobile to their defence, they CAN still perform a normal Walk based move action, but it is interrupted and cancelled if ANYONE even ATTEMPTS to attack the immobile character (normal OR social). Immobile characters cannot perform Close-Range actions or attacks on targets unless the target is willing to be targeted, or has attempted a Close-Range action on the immobile character that same turn.

It is possible that some effects other than loss of limbs may apply either Inhibited Movement or Immobile.

Special Move Actions
Instead of performing a standard Move action a character may instead perform one of the following SPECIAL move actions.

Run
Instead of performing a basic Move action a character can instead Run.

Running expends their action and allows them to move TWO zones instead. It also costs 1 Energy, and a character with 0 Energy left may run one more time before requiring a successful Rest action before they can run again.

Running adds the Run keyword to your action. Most notable as a trigger for special actions and effects, most commonly Run triggered Zone Hazards.

Charge
Instead of performing a basic Move action a character can instead Charge.

Charging expends their action and allows them to move just the usual 1 zone, but then also permits them to make a single Close-Range normal attack in the destination zone.

Charging has no special cost but adds the keywords Run and Charge to the action.
Again most notable as special trigger conditions.

Stand
Instead of performing a basic Move action a character can instead Stand.

Standing doesn't move you anywhere at all. But it ends a Knocked effect on your character.
Rest
The basic Rest action is the means by which a default character regains Energy. A character must spend their Action for their turn “resting”.

In the Resources phase of that turn IF that character was NOT attacked that turn they regain 1 Energy. Note this is “Attacked” NOT “hit” or “damaged” even a completely blocked or missed attack DOES cancel a rest. However if a Parry (presumably by another character) completely cancels an attack action, then that cancelled attack does NOT cancel Rest attempts.

Special Rests
Some effects revolve around “Special Rests”. For instance you need to perform a “special rest” in order to regain the ability to Run or Hold Your Breath after doing so at 0 remaining Energy. Similarly Resting while breathing freely can restore the special temporary injuries from Drowning attacks.

Special Rests function just like normal rests, but they restore... that thing they say they restore and they do NOT restore the 1 Energy of a normal rest action!

Energetic Characters
It is especially worth reminding you here that Energetic characters regain +1 Energy in any resource phase in which they regain any Energy. So if an Energetic Character successfully rests typically they will regain 2 points of Energy instead of the normal 1.
Guard
You guard the zone you are in.

Characters may only move into, out of or through the guarded zone with your permission, or by means of first succeeding in an attack against you with the Escape keyword (they may make an attack, with or without the escape keyword on, against you for free as part of attempting to move through your guard effect). Failure to apply a successful escape attack against you ends their movement, either preventing them from moving into or out of your zone depending on when and where you applied the guard effect.

Group attackers CAN attempt to bypass you, as a group, with a group attack which applies the Escape keyword.

When you are guarding you may also intercept any actions targeting characters or objects within your zone, substituting yourself for such a target during any attack.

If by the Refund Phase your Guard action has NOT been triggered in any way (no target substitution, no attempts by you to block movement using your guard attack), you may immediately perform another action in the Refund Phase.

The guard action technically has the Guard keyword for trigger purposes.
Equip
Character's care a lot about equipment and gear. Indeed this system is intended to make equipment management a highly dynamic and important process. This means it needs to be formalised and somewhat restrictive. The Equip action is the main action you use to manage your equipment. But before you can understand it you need to know a few bits and pieces.

Equipment Slots
Every character has a number of equipment slots they can put “things” in, like clothing, armour, weapons, and trinkets.

The standard character has the following equipment slots.
1 x Hat Slot - A slot for hats, helmets, masks and other major head gear.
2 x Shoes Slot - A slot for boots, shoes, and bare feet. Technically a “paired” slot in which you put just ONE “pair of” shoes items, but technically there are two feet and you might have a dagger hidden in one boot or somehow end up with one shoe on so... its a 2x slot by default as a result.
1 x Main Clothing/Armour Slot - A slot for you to put your cloths on in. Whether its a bikini, chain mail, or a chain mail bikini, this is where it goes.
1 x Cloak Slot - A slot for cloaks, capes, overcoats, extra skirts and all those other things. A place where you can wear some sort of extra clothes that go over your other clothes.
2 x Hand Slots - Most weapons require the use of a Hand slot in order to be actively and usably equipped, many actions require a free hand in order to be attempted, so your hands are really important slots.
4 x Pocket Slots - The next most important major slot after hands. The Pocket Slot is a place where you keep stuff you might want to use in a hurry, and a place where you can put items that are “active” when equipped in pocket slots (various miscellaneous items will do... stuff... if worn in a pocket slot).
4 x Pack Slots - These are slots where you can carry even more stuff, but it's in long term storage and doesn't DO anything while in your Pack slots.

Some items are “slotless” or use special one off unique slot types and stuff. But generally pretty much everything falls into the above slot regime, and the most important slots are Hands, Pockets and your Main Clothing/Armour.

Some items are “stackable” and permit you to stack multiple copies of the same item in one single slot.

Free Equipment Shifting
Even WITHOUT performing an Equip as your action for the turn you can move around your equipment a bit.

You can simply drop items in your hands or pockets for free, either at any time during your own action in a turn, OR in response to certain events that allow such an item drop, for instance if heavy items are causing you to sink while in water.

As part of an attack action you may move items from your Pockets to any empty Hands at no action cost. So you can draw a sword out of a pocket AND attack someone as part of the same action.

At the beginning of the first turn after you become alert you may shift any items from your pockets to any empty hands also at no action cost.
So why would my hands ever be empty?
Well. Why indeed?

Often your hand slots SHOULD have swords in them (or something) so you can also fit more swords in your pockets.

The important differentiation is this.

Other characters don't like to see you walking towards them carrying bared swords and shields in your hands.

Even swords and shields in pocket slots are going to alert the guards in certain contexts, but having a pair of drawn swords in hand is SERIOUSLY going to threaten opponents into becoming alarmed.

So typically the choice is fairly simple, when dressing for frontal screaming assaults, hell yeah, you hold swords in your hand slots from the get go. When trying to be more subtle and casual you most certainly DON'T do that.
The Equip Action Itself
The Equip action is used for further equipment muddling.

By performing the equip action you can do ONE of the following.

1) Move items from full hands into your pockets, and items from your pockets into your empty or emptied hands.
2) Move items from the zone you are in into your empty hands or pockets.
3) Move items from your Pack slots into empty hands or pockets.
4) Put on or take off a hat
5) Put on or take off a set of footwear
6) Put on or take off a cloak
7) Put on or take off a “special slot” type item (like say, a pair of gloves or gauntlets)
8) Contribute 1 turn towards putting on (or taking off) a main clothing item or main armour item.
9) “Disrobe” an item from another willing or helpless character (or contribute 1 turn towards doing so if it is a main clothing or armour item).

Main clothing and armour items CAN take longer than 1 turn to remove or put on. Which is especially important when people surprise you in the bath or in your pyjamas (which this system is seriously designed to have actually happen on a non-zero basis), or when you might want to get undressed in a hurry (say while sinking and drowning in a heavy suit of armour) or changed in a hurry (like say swapping out an “expended” dinner suit during combat time in order to refresh your ability to use Torn Shirt).

The time it takes to put on OR remove a main clothing or armour item (by default) is as follows.

Normal Clothing Item – 2 Turns
Normal Armour Item – 3 Turns
With the Skimpy Keyword – 1 less turn (to a minimum of 1)
With the Partial Keyword – 1 less turn (to a minimum of 1)
With the Light Keyword – 1 less turn (to a minimum of 1)
With the Heavy Keyword – 1 more turn
If it is a Complex Item – 1 more turn
If it is a Very Complex Item – 2 more turns (doesn't stack with complex)

Equipped Items and Defences
One major effect of many equipped items, especially clothing and armour. Is to change your Defence profiles, especially Normal Defence.

So when you equip a Clothing or Armour item in your Main Clothing/Armour slot you apply all it's keywords (and any related bonuses) to your defence and remove your Body keyword and your body material keywords from your defence.

If an item has the Partial keyword you retain the keywords and material keywords, and potentially related bonuses, of any clothing/armour items somehow “beneath” that item (see Armour Layering section), which by default will be your Body keyword and your body material keywords.

Layering Defensive items
By default this doesn't happen. But it IS possible through special abilities to end up with items in differing slots that apply keywords and bonuses to defence in a layered manner (for instance your Main Clothing/Armour slot is underneath your Cloak slot). And it is possible for some abilities to allow you to stack multiple layers of items in a single Main Clothing slot.

When you layer defensive items you treat the “upper most” layer as the one that applies it's effects and keywords. You ignore lower layers unless your upper layer item has the “Partial” keyword. In which case the next layer down counts too and so on through partial layers. You COULD theoretically end up with a character who has all the keywords and some or all of the bonuses of , say a Clothing item, AND an Armour Item AND their bare body at the same time. (this is in some ways a good thing, because you might milk some extra bonuses out of it, but also in many ways a BAD thing because you are going to have a lot of keywords for bad defensive match ups).

Expended defensive items and defences
Items can become “expended” in which case they are not destroyed, and are not removed, but ARE damaged and non-functional. This is especially notable for clothing and armour because Torn Shirt makes them the most commonly “expended” items in the game.

An expended armour or clothing item still applies all it's keywords to defence. However it no longer applies any positive modifiers associated with those keywords. So if you are wearing a simple suit that grants Metal Hard Armour 4 and you expend it, you STILL have Metal Hard Armour on your defence, but notably lose the +4 bonus to defence from the Armour keyword.

This also applies in the case of “layered” armours and layered partial armours, each layer if expended stops applying it's effects. Unless otherwise noted an expended upper layer does NOT remove itself OR gain the Partial keyword just for being expended, so if you had an upper layer of armour that was blocking a lower layer from applying to your defence it STILL blocks the lower layer from applying to defence when the upper layer is expended, and the upper layer will STILL need to be REMOVED (or destroyed or something) before you can apply the lower layer to defence.
Normal Attack
The Normal Attack action is an attempt to deal normal physical attack based Standard Injuries to a target, one at a time.

The standard default normal attack has Single-Target Close-Range and the keywords associated with the attack being used.

The default “Attack” a character can use is an Unarmed attack, this attack has the keywords Unarmed and Body and since it has Body it also applies the material keywords of the attacker's body.

Weapons and Attacks
The next most common form of “available attack” is an equipped weapon, like a Sword. Weapons have their own keywords that they will apply to any attack made with them, along with other properties. For instance a bonus to attack, like “+2 vs Soft” or a modification of the basic attack actions range, as for instance in the case of most projectile weapons which give your Basic Attack Long Range when you fire them.

Multiple Attack Rolls
Some attacks can, in a variety of ways, target multiple targets. This requires some ruling on precisely how many individual rolls an attack consists of when targeting multiple targets.

The rule is as follows. For each GROUP of IDENTICAL targets IN THE SAME ZONE you roll ONE attack. If your attack covers multiple zones, or multiple TYPES of target (anything other than groups of targets with identical attributes) you roll one dice per target type/zone.

So for instance if your attack targets 20 identical nameless troopers in two zones, a NEARLY identical nameless squad leader in one of those zones with some of them, and a named character with unique traits in the same zone as the squad leader, you roll 1 Dice against the nameless troopers in the zone on their own, 1 Dice against the nameless troopers sharing the zone with the other targets, 1 Dice against the squad leader (who is slightly different), and 1 Dice against the named character (who is clearly different).

Note that if the Multi-Attack keyword pops up that is different to Multi-Target. Multi-Attack can even coexist with multi-target. Multi-Attack ALWAYS assumes separate rolls, and is in fact a sort of cloning of the whole attack profile, so Multi-Attackx3 means you do the whole attack routine with whatever number of targets and whatever number of required rolls three times and typically can target different characters and zones (or the same ones unless restricted) with each of those attacks. Multi-Attack unless otherwise noted does NOT ignore or exceed the damage cap in anyway, it's individual attacks are all treated as normal separate attacks for damage cap purposes.
This has disadvantages...
Yeah. One single roll per attack WOULD be quicker, one attack per target regardless of homogeneity would give better smoother results.

But one attack roll per target would be far too punishing on misses (and rewarding on hits). One roll per target could rack you into 20 or so d20 rolls for some attacks EVEN in the early LT game, it could rack up to 60+, maybe even hundreds later.

The per-zone and indentical target groups limitations are all in all a compromise between the two. They have part of the disadvantages and part of the advantages of both options. Whether this is the right place is unclear... but you know, whatever, you have to pick something.
Group Attackers and Group Targets
Some characters are considered “group attackers” and have the Trooper keyword on their base profile to indicate this. Typically almost any group of identical unnamed characters are troopers.

When a group of Troopers in the same zone as each other make the same identical attack action on the same target or targets they do NOT make an individual attack each, in fact they are FORCED to make a single “Group Attack”.

Up to 10 Troopers can (and if making the same action MUST) co-operate in a single group attack. This attack acts identically to the base attack but ALSO gains a +X attack bonus vs All, where X is 1/2 the number of Troopers co-operating in the attack.

In addition Troopers are also considered group targets and when sharing the same zone any group of identical troopers are targeted not as individuals, but as a group. This means that any additional damage or effects of any attack can “overflow” onto the group, so if say, a Devastating +3 attack (an attack that normally deals 4 standard injuries to one target) hits a 1 Max Injury trooper it will damage him with 1 Injury AND then overflow the remaining 3 injuries onto his identical brethren in the same zone. This ALSO applies for special injuries, and also effects, so a damaging attack that deals a bonus Sever special injury, can knock out a single trooper AND sever the limb of one of his buddies, a damaging attack that also disarms a weapon can knock out a single trooper AND disarm one of his buddies, etc...

Multi-Target attacks are typically more useful in clearing troopers than devastating or extra damage attacks. But should a multi-target effect be combined with devastating (which can happen) the effects on Group Targets stack, and depending on the wording of the ability or the order in which the relevant keywords are applied it COULD indeed potentially multiply the devastating/additional injury effect by the value of the Multi-Target effect. Just take care since some damage enhancements are “on hit” upgrades that specifically state they effect individual targets while other upgrades specifically effect entire attack profiles.

When a Group attack is made against Group targets the Group attack gains an additional special damage effect. The attack will deal an additional number of bonus injuries equal to it's margin of success (capped to a maximum of the number of troopers involved).

All this is intended to significantly streamline large mobs of identical minor unnamed characters fighting both against each other and against named characters.
OK This looks flawed[/b]
There are indeed some notable flaws in the group attack/group target mechanics.

1) It's not as good to group attack as it is to make individual attacks.
There is some simalarity, but not enough. You probably ARE better off making 10 identical attacks with ten identical troopers from the 1 identical zone on the one identical target (even with the damage cap accounted for). But sorry group attacks are MANDATORY because we just can't have you rolling 10's or 100's of dice a turn just because someone brought 100 cheap identical goons to the battle.

2) Splitting attacks is still highly motivated.
Between the damage cap and the group attack requirement if you have 10 goons in a zone if they CAN attack multiple distinct targets (in order to break up their group attack) then they are probably best off doing so, and probably are best off doing so all the way up to 10 distinct targets. This is a bit of mixed news, both good and bad.

3) Splitting for special attacks is also motivated
A group of 10 identical goons against 1 distinct target are motivated to split their attacks into a standard attack, and maybe some combination of up to several special attacks like Grabs, Disarms and Parries. Now this is a bit less good. The damage cap already somewhat motivates this, and really any further motivation to do so from group attacks is probably unnecessary and excessive.

4) Of course there is the attack bonus thing.
The trade off for all the motivation to split these attacks is the group attack bonus. Which IS actually kinda nice. And with the current shortage of attack bonuses it is HIGHLY motivated for a group of goons to full group attack (or nearly full group attack) against any targets that have actually invested reasonably in the widely available defence bonuses in the game. Of course this makes for some questions about how much space is left in the system for the additional attack bonuses NON group attackers also need to keep up...
The “Off Hand” Attack
“Off Hand Attack” is a special term commonly used in special abilities. It is NOT actually a basic action available to characters without special abilities, but is common enough to bare mentioning. Typically it means you just get to make an additional attack usually at some point before, during, or after your standard attack action or other standard action, and usually with some cost or limitation and usually with an equipped/available weapon/attack profile not already used that same turn.

The Basic Attack vs the Special Attack
“Basic Attack” is a formal game term.

Sometimes an ability will say you get to make “an additional Basic Attack” this means you can make an attack. But it must be an official “Basic Attack” and cannot be a “Special Attack”. Other times an ability will specifically state that it lets you make “An Attack” or a “Special Attack” which means you can make basically any attack, Basic or Special.

Sometimes an ability will say that it in some way modifies a “Basic Attack”. Again this is used to specifically exclude “Special Attacks” from being modified by that ability. Often an ability that enhances an attack will ALSO state that it changes the basic attack into a special attack. This is especially notable because this is used as a means of making certain abilities that enhance attacks mutually exclusive in nature. Again if an ability just states it enhances “an Attack” that means it works on everything, special or basic.

Standard Injuries and Attack Damage
Normal Attacks deal damage to their targets. Unless otherwise noted a Normal Attack deals just ONE normal Standard Injury. If the attack gains any “Special Injury” keywords they deal ADDITIONAL special injuries. The Devastating +X keyword causes a single attack to deal additional standard injuries, and multiple instances of Devastating +X DO stack with each other.

Some attacks are Undamaging these attacks do not deal their default one standard injury. Typically undamaging attacks will most commonly be seen associated with attacks that deal special effects, so it is not unusual to encounter undamaging Parry or Knock attacks.

Standard Injuries and Defeat
When a character has a number of Standard Injuries equal to their Max Injuries they are defeated (this does NOT count special injuries, but DOES count both normal and social Standard Injuries).

The last injury they suffer determines the flavour of their defeat. So if it is a normal type injury (rather than say a social one) they are either knocked out or killed as seems appropriate for the damage type and the intentions of the attacker.

All defeats cause a “Removed From Combat” effect, where in the character is disabled and can no longer perform any combat actions.

Actual death however... is different. Even a “killing” defeat (or a Kill special injury) merely removes a character from combat. The bit where it does so in a “fatal” manner is FLAVOUR text. And while a character CAN be considered just plain outright dead at that moment, it is at the option of the controlling player to do so. They MAY instead consider their character to be “knocked out and in danger of dying”. In which case any form of informal first aid by another character some time “soon” will save their life in the long term, and they MAY even (very slowly) recover on their own if not further harassed (but they will not restore the removed from combat effect until their injuries are properly healed by Strategic Time or special effects).

The optional nature of death on defeat even applies to effects like “Decapitate” though in those cases one might have to assume that “it wasn't as bad as it looked” rather than “and I got better”.

While the “Death” state may well be purely optional and fluffy in the long term sense it DOES have formal implications in the short term as long as specific keywords or special injuries are involved. So being “Killed” with say, a special Kill injury is potentially formally different from say, merely being “KOed” with a special KO injury for the purposes of some special abilities (such as for instance certain forms of healing abilities).

Because making death purely optional is a bit of a screw you for certain things, like players feeling they are able to actually eliminate NPCs they REALLY want to eliminate, even if a player opts NOT to have their character die the helpless character can be killed with a close range standard action by another character (technically a normal attack action requiring no roll) as a coupe de grace. Presumably GMs should try to refrain from gratuitously doing this to PCs, and it wouldn't hurt to suggest to players that they should also refrain from gratuitously doing this to NPCs so as to avoid getting a reputation that would encourage others to do it unto them.

Special Attack Actions
Instead of performing a standard “Basic Attack” Normal Attack action a character may instead perform one of the following “Special Attacks”.

All of the following special attacks officially change the Normal Attack from being a Basic Attack to being a Special Attack instead.

Assassinate
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
May only be used on an Unready target
+0 Attack, +3 vs Targets with only 1 Remaining Injury
adds Assassin KO

The Assassin keyword is just for match ups. But the KO keyword adds an additonal “special injury” to the attack's damage result. The KO Injury does what it sounds like, it knocks the target out, removing them from combat.

It is especially worth noting that pretty much all active defence abilities, including most Parries and Blocks, and most notably including Torn Shirt may NOT be used by a character who is “Unready”. This means this attack has a pretty good chance of pulling off a one hit KO on the vast majority of targets with no means of reducing or cancelling it's effects if it hits.

Escape
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Wrestle (the attack can be made while Grabbed)
Adds Escape (on a success this attack breaks grab effects and bypasses Guard movement prevention)

The Escape special attack ensures that all characters have a basic means of breaking Grabs and bypassing Guarding characters.

Knock
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Knock (on a success the target of the attack is tripped or pushed over and enters the Knocked state)
Knock can be used against a target that is mounted on a steed or vehicle, if so the target is also knocked off their steed/vehicle on a success.

A basic action for pushing things over and pulling people off horses.

Characters in the Knocked state add Knocked to their basic keywords and are rendered Immobile. They also suffer a -3 vs All to all their rolled actions. They can end the state by performing any action with the Stand keyword (like say, the default Stand special move action)

Parry
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Parry (on a success this attack cancels the action of the target)

The default Parry action CAN target group attackers and cancel the effect of a group attack by hitting the “lead” attacker.

A basic action for stopping people from doing stuff. Especially handy for dealing with those awkward “uh oh I'm dead or just had an arm cut off and my Torn Shirt is already used up...” situations. Or at least attempting to.

A parry CAN cancel another parry. If two characters mutually parry each other both their actions are cancelled in some sort of divide by zero exception.

Disarm
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Disarm (on a success this attack removes an item from the target, throwing the item as per a Throw effect)

If this action targets a main clothing item, a main armour item or other item that takes multiple turns to remove or equip then it only “partially” removes the item, applying just 1 turn worth of removal.

A basic action for knocking swords and hats off things.

Grab
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Grab (on a success the target of the attack is grabbed by the attack and enters the Grabbed state)

A basic action for holding onto things.

Characters in the Grabbed state add Grabbed to their basic keywords and are rendered Immobile, the attacking character adds the Grabbing keyword to their own basic keywords and counts as “grabbing” the grabbed character. They can only perform actions with the Wreslte
keyword and can only end the state by succeeding in an Escape action against the Grabbing character.

If multiple targets are grabbing a character they have to remove EACH of them with an Escape action. If multiple targets are being grabbed each has to succeed in escape all characters grabbing them.

Grabbed characters move with the Grabbing character's move actions, but the grabbing character MAY opt to allow the Grabbed character to move, in which case the grabbing character moves with them instead.

A Grabbing character may at opt to end the Grabbing state at any time in their own turn at no action cost.

Throw
Modifies a Basic Attack into a Special Attack
May only be used against a target you are already Grabbing
Adds Undamaging to attack (the attack will not deal a standard injury of damage)
Adds Throw (on a success this attack throws the target to any location in the same or an adjacent zone. You May use this effect to throw them into zone hazards triggering zone hazard effects, or throw them up in the air or off edges to trigger falling)

A basic action for throwing things around.

Torn Shirt
This basic action is a basic Block effect available only to Named Characters.

During the block phase any named character may expend their equipped main clothing or armour item to gain 1 Block with the keywords of the item and the Block keyword.

This single block allows them to cancel 1 normal type Standard OR Special Injury during the block phase. Unless otherwise noted this block can NOT be used against Social typed injuries.

The injury blocked is one of the DEFENDERS choice. Typically a defender will reserve torn shirt to either block the last normal injury that would remove them from combat, or the first really undesirable special injury like a severed limb or a KO or kill effect.

You may NOT use torn shirt (or indeed any actions unless otherwise noted) when you are Unready
Hide and Sneak
Stealth is (intended to be) an important aspect of this game. There are several default stealth actions that may share certain common special mechanics.

Stealth Targeting
Stealth “attacks” target Social Defence (instead of normal defence), but deal no damage, instead they determine whether or not you have successfully hidden in some way.

When making a stealth attack you do NOT target ALL observers, you just target the “best observer not yet targeted this turn”.

This means that if a single character is attempting a stealth action they ONLY target the opposing character (or one of the tied opposing characters) MOST likely to observe them (has the best social defence against their action). If they succeed NONE of the observing characters see them.

A character may opt to NOT apply their stealth action to some observers (typically allies) in which case the observing ally will automatically see their action (or whatever) and NOT be counted towards “best observers” for determining who you are rolling against. (basically just a way to ensure that standing next to an eagle eyed ally doesn't make you fail all your stealth checks against blind and stupid enemy guards).

If MORE than one character is attempting to be sneaky in a turn then any observer that has ALREADY been (successfully) rolled against with a stealth action is REMOVED from the “best observers” targetting for further stealth actions that turn. Unless there are no further observers, in which case the last “best observer” is rolled against by any remaining stealth actions.

This means, among other things, that in situations of having mixed observers and mixed levels of sneaky people the sneakiest (probably) end up sneaking against the most observant, and the clunky great clumsy fools end up sneaking against the half blind stupid guards.

Stealth Modifiers
Stealth actions are modified by range, and by lighting.

You can look up the lighting notes in the basic zone mechanics section, but basically trying to be stealthy in a bright or shadowy zone can apply either a -1 to -4 penalty or a +1 to +4 bonus (both vs Non-Blind observers only) respectively.

Range modifies Stealth actions DIFFERENTLY to attack actions. The long range modifier is added as a BONUS to stealth actions instead of a penalty. Being further away makes you HARDER to see.

Stealth Persistence
Once a stealth action has succeeded it is “persistent”. If you hide, and continue to hide as your action you REMAIN hidden and potentially do so WITHOUT FURTHER ROLLS.

As long as the bonuses to your Stealth action, or the defence targeted by the action does not change you do NOT need to roll again to maintain the successful action.

Even if the modifiers/defence DOES change you ONLY need to roll again if they WORSEN for the stealthy character.

The general up shot is that as long as you hide and stay still, or sneak and move AWAY from observers, you only have to roll ONE stealth check for an action/effect that may cost and apply over multiple turns. Meanwhile trying to sneak closer, or if a more eagle eyed look out turns up, or if someone turns the lights on, you will have to reroll your sneaky action.

Stealth persistence ends when a character ceases to perform stealth actions.

Stealth and Alert status
Stealth actions target Social Defence. And unless otherwise noted ARE effected by the Alert defence bonus.

Stealth and Surprise
One of the primary uses of stealth is to sneak up on people so you can attack them while they are Unready

When a character has successfully performed a stealth action they treat ALL observers they succeeded against as Unready starting from that turn and extending as long as Stealth Persistence applies. This extends potentially into a turn in which you perform actions other than stealth actions, for instance you successfully sneak up to a target, then on the next turn attack them and they are unready in the turn you make your surprise attack.

An Unready target adds Unready to their basic keyword list and cannot perform any actions.

In more complex situations where mixed groups of characters do or do not observe mixed groups of other characters it is possible for a target to merely be unready towards SPECIFIC characters, in which case they MAY perform actions but MAY NOT perform actions that interact with the character they are unready towards, and they DO add unready to their basic keywords but ONLY towards actions involving the character they are unready towards.

Failing A Stealth Action
When you fail a stealth action the observer you have rolled against HAS SEEN YOU. That observer may then immediately tell all his friends and acquaintances for free.

If for some reason he DOESN'T tell anyone (or even someone) then any observers NOT informed trigger a reroll of your stealth attempt thus allowing a result where you for instance, try and hide from everyone including an observant ally, who then sees you, tells no one (or just not everyone), and lets you potentially succeed or fail against other less forgiving observers.

Characters who observe you are no longer potentially unready towards you, and MAY become Alert depending on your appearance, the nature of your failed action, and the context it occurs in (so armed guards in a restricted area almost certainly become Alert, and possible also rather aggressive).

The Alert State
Any character that recognises a physical threat is “Alert”. So if you see someone moving towards you with a bared sword, especially someone who just failed to sneak, you can choose to become Alert (or chose not to, but then let the consequences be on your head).

In addition any character INITIATING a physical threat on another character is ALSO “Alert”. So if YOU have a bared sword and attempt to swing it at someone then YOU may become alert (and probably should).

An Alert character adds Alert 5 to their social defence.

You may NOT simply be permanently alert. You get tired and distracted. This means even professional guards are rarely Alert unless something has happened in their observation or been reported to them through the propagation of alarm.

Propagating Alarm and Other Information
Once a character becomes Alert to some form of threat they may spread the Alert state to any character in their zone or an adjacent zone at no action cost, though characters may CHOOSE to ignore them and not become Alert, if they insist. Propagating alarm beyond that is complex.

Some locations may have ACTUAL alarms, like bells or horns, which can be activated by a character with an action and will spread an alarm over a certain area (typically by adding some large penalty to a Causing A Disturbance roll).

Otherwise alarm is propagated by two things. 1) Runners, characters actually running off to tell other characters about the alarm. And 2) Causing A Disturbance, which is something that just happens automatically as a result of combat and other non-stealth actions being attempted.

Not ALL Alerts and Alarms are created equal. If a sneaky sword baring threat is sighted and characters become alerted, spread alarm to other areas informing everyone about that guy sneakily trying to attack the guards at the southern gate house this does NOT mean guards are alerted to, or will in anyway respond to some OTHER character SUCCESSFULLY sneaking near the north guard house. In addition if BOTH the sneaky characters are spotted then the alarm and information about them will propogate SEPARATELY, and you may end up in situations where some characters no of one alarm but not the other, or both, or neigther.

Hide
The Hide action is one of the basic stealth actions it uses your standard action for a turn and on a success hides you from observers while you remain Immobile in the zone you are in.

It has the keywords Hide Stealth
and applies a +5 bonus vs All.

Hide is especially easy, but doesn't let you MOVE anywhere. The bonus compared to sneak means you can try and hide from even alert patrols or ambush people with a predictable path more easily than you can actively sneak towards someone.

Sneak
The Sneak action is one of the basic stealth actions it uses your standard action for a turn and on a success hides you from observers while you move to an adjacent zone. Best Observer is determined based on all the zones you are passing through, so you roll based on the hardest place you try to sneak through.

It has the keywords Sneak Move Stealth
and applies a +0 bonus vs All.

Sneak is the action you use to try and move away or move towards observers.

Cause A Disturbance
This is a “free action” used to emulate people noticing stuff that is not especially stealthy. Like, say, you attempting to smash a door down, or engaging in combat in a distant zone.

It has the keywords Stealth
-5 vs All if any attack actions (normal OR social) are attempted
-4 vs Non-Deaf if any Loud action is performed, including anyone who simply opts to Yell for free during whatever else they do (like say, a guard fighting off attackers would probably choose to).
Up to a +10 bonus for intervening barriers, especially sound dampening ones.

Cause A disturbance is rolled by a group of characters who may well NOT be allied and NOT have a shared idea about what they actually want other people to observe. You may NOT opt to “auto fail” your Cause A Disturbance action against anyone, and neither can those noisy bastards you are fighting against.

Conceal
The Conceal action is a basic stealth action that lets you try and hide items about your person.

It has the keywords Conceal Deceptive Stealth
and adds the Disguise keyword if you are trying disguise the nature of the item rather than merely hide it.
It gets +2 vs All if the item is Small
It gets -4 vs All if the item is Big
Some items specifically have a Conceal bonus that applies to this action.

Primarily conceal is used to hide weapons and sometimes armours so that a character doesn't cause Alert or Alarm on sight, or is permitted to smuggle items into areas where they are restricted or frowned upon, like the royal ball or more civilised cities.

Steal
The Steal action is a basic stealth action that lets you try and TAKE items without being noticed.

It has the keywords Conceal Deceptive Disarm Stealth
-5 vs All if the item is carried by a character.
It gets +2 vs All if the target item is Small
It gets -4 vs All if the item is Big
Some items specifically have a Conceal bonus that applies to this action. (yes taking an item that is easy to conceal is EASIER TO CONCEAL even from it's current owner)

Main clothing and armour items (when equipped on a character), and other items with multiple turn removal times suffer apply a penalty to this action equal to -1 per turn of removal time AND take that many turns to remove, but Stealth Persistence DOES apply to this action so while it MIGHT take 4 turns to remove someone's elaborate suit without them (or any “best observer”) noticing, but it MIGHT take only 1 successful roll to do so.
Social Attack
The social attack is a means of attacking and influencing characters mentally rather than physically. And any character can do it!

When Do Social Attacks Happen?
Pretty much whenever, including during combat. Though without skills the Alert bonus (see the Hide and Sneak section) makes use of social skills in combat against alerted targets kinda hard.

Most (normal) social attacks occur in a contest to change the actions of a character. Normally characters actions are based on the motivations of that character as defined and decided purely by the player or GM in control of that character. If the player thinks that Sally the Barbarian doesn't like Bob the Wizard and wants to punch him... her character does that.

Social attacks kick in when the player running Bob the Wizard thinks that Sally the Barbarian should instead decide to be Bob the Wizards friend and they cannot convince Sally the Barbarian's player to agree using simple role played conversation or “reasoning”.

As such social attacks become a contest to inflict on a character a new set of broad motivations that a player OTHER than the usual controlling player for that character can use to influence that character's actions in a manner of THEIR choice instead.

Social Attacks and Violence
A... number of critics are “deeply concerned” that having effective social attacks in a system results in characters “reasonably” responding to social attacks with violent force. This is, unfortunately, a rather fake kind of concern, and fairly poorly justified.

Social attacks, and the effects of social defeat are accepted by society having a Friend, trying to make someone into your Friend, is something widely accepted by society. This is despite the fact that making someone your friend gives you a VAST amount of potential leverage over them. Even the most casual friend could EASILY be killed by a traitorous “friend” with a penchant for poisoning or daggers in the back.

Even in the real world attempts to make and have friends are considered socially acceptable despite the very real fact that perfectly real friendships open you up to perfectly real potential to be horribly robbed or killed.

This is not to say characters in game SHOULDN'T sometimes respond to social attacks with actual physical violence. Not all societies and their responses are created equal. In some regions or contexts trying to lie to someone until you have confused them to defeat IS and SHOULD be some form of assault, possibly a minor crime, possibly one punishable by attempted summary execution on the spot. Even with more traditional RPG social mechanics a simple haggle attempt COULD very well “reasonably” be responded to with actual violence in more lawless scenarios.

This is actually considered “OK” by this system, which manages to easily cover scenarios where society would frown on drawing swords but doesn't mind a few lies and some mild flirting AND scenarios where swords and lies face off in a deadly contest to the death (or confusion) of someone's enemies.

Attacking with Social Attacks by Surprise
You CAN use stealth and other methods to make social attacks on Unready targets. There is some benefit, if you jump out of the bushes and throw a Scary attack at a guard or something and they won't be Alert that turn or able to respond immediately, and you might even knock them clean out.

But standard social attacks do NOT have an equivalent of the normal attack's “Assassinate” special attack upgrade, so presumable surprise social attacks are slightly unusual.

Social attacks and Alertness/Surprise
The interaction between social attacks and when you surprise a target however is more interesting the other way around.

Social attacks alone are NOT sufficient excuse to declare yourself Alert unless you actually choose to respond with actual violence (in which case it is actually you OWN response that causes you to enter the Alert state).

However social attacks DO prevent you from taking someone by surprise. If you are talking and socialising and suddenly draw swords and attack your targets are NOT considered Unready (and you will immediately alert them as well by attempted swording).

There ARE ways to use social attacks to create a situation where you surprise unready targets. See the social special attacks section coming up shortly.

Characters suffering from social defeat that has not yet been cured ALWAYS are treated by the victors as Unready for 1 turn if the victors attack them again. Though the majority of on going social defeats will typically be cancelled by any such actions if observed by a surviving victim.

The 'Alert' State
You can see this in the Hide and Sneak section. But again. A reminder. Once characters commit to, or observe any form of normal attack action, they become Alert, this adds Alert 5 to their social defence.

This makes throwing around social attacks while the swords are swinging harder... for non-social attack specialists, dedicated social attackers will have ways around this.

Social Targetting
One major difference of social attacks are the manner in which they target their victims.

First of all social attacks target their victims Social Defence scores instead of Normal Defence.

Secondly when making a standard social attack you may (before attack) CHOOSE between the following target options.
Single-Target
Multi-Target(Up to All in 1 Zone)
Multi-Target(All in Range, bar Self)

However social attacks suffer a “Multi-Target Penalty” and if you target more than 1 target you suffer a -1 penalty to the attack per additional target beyond the first.

Social specialists have ways of reducing or ignoring multi-target penalties.

Finally social attacks ONLY work on characters observing you. Even a failed social attack requires the opponent to observe you. They CAN be made on unready targets by surprising someone, but because the attack IS observed the target is unlikely to REMAIN unready.

Social attacks and the furniture
Technically the normal attack system also works against objects as well as characters, and you can run around hitting chairs with hammers using the same mechanics you use to hit characters with hammers.

Technically there is nothing in the rules to prevent you from attempting to use Friendly attacks on the furniture too. And for (admittedly unlikely) flexibility I'm leaving that open. There is even the rather odd edge case of Decadent characters being prevented from making attacks OTHER than Seductive ones against pretty objects, so some characters are somewhat OBLIGATED to run around trying to seduce pretty looking french windows.

It's just that, assuming you DO defeat an inanimate object with lies, it doesn't DO anything, because it cannot control or change or even consider it's own actions.

But in addition we need a special rule saying that social and normal injuries DON'T stack when attacking things like walls. Otherwise people are going to go around lying to a wall for five minutes and then pushing it over with a toothpick. So consider it a rule that while you CAN seduce a wall (for some reason) mindless objects do NOT stack social and normal injuries towards their max injury limits.

Social Damage and Social Defeat
Standard social injuries are different to normal injuries. They DO count towards the same Max Injuries limit for removed from combat effects, so stabbing people and yelling at them DOES stack for defeating them.

But the TYPE of defeat varies depending on the final blow that removes the target. If a target's final standard injury is a normal injury they are simply removed from combat in the normal way.

But if they are removed by a SOCIAL injury then they instead immediately HEAL all their standard social injuries and instead receive a “Special Social Injury” corresponding to the specific social attack type.

Special social injuries can have a number of effects, they can however at a minimum remove a target from combat. Commonly they will additionally have some further effect or allow some form of control or influence over the target and their actions.

The Imperfect Nature Of Social Defeats
Social defeats, as noted in the basic social attack types are merely “influence” over a character. Of course the nature of “influence” is so broad as to be functionally not to different from complete control. Even if the flavour is dramatically different, for instance only granting you control as long as the action is consistent with “This character would do X because this character is now my Friend”.

Because such a broad influence COULD with only mild imagination bring provide pretty much any actual RESULT in control of the target character's fate as outright control could bring. You can use friendship, or fear or whatever as leverage to achieve robberies, derive information, or cause injury easily as significant in nature as outright control could achieve. The main difference is the flavour of the methodology used.

So social defeat has some minor flavour hoops you will need to jump through in order to achieve your end goals of control over a character, and may have some minor unintended consequences. But it is important note that defeating someone socially should definitely be beneficial to the attacker. At similar cost in actions and character investments they COULD have just defeated the target normally and gained a major benefit of afflicting the target with “removed from combat” status, and possibly even a case of instantaneous long term incurably fatal deadly death. So social defeat should be AT LEAST as good as that.

Indeed it is intended to be in some ways better than a standard defeat, and as intended should at a minimum be a means of eliminating an opponent, and should probably grant something additional up to potentially converting targets into allies.

Duration and Recovery from Social Defeats
Social defeats have an indefinite duration. Once a target has been socially defeated they remain effected by the social special injury that deals and continue to act accordingly for a potentially very long time. If not forever.

Characters can recover from social special injuries due to special effects, extended (probably Strategic scale) periods of time away from the character that defeated them, and by other characters using social defeats to trump and counter prior social defeats.

However the PRIMARY way that social defeat states end are due to actions that defy the flavour of that social defeat. Being friends with someone ends the moment they catch you backstabbing them, deceptions end the moment proof appears that they were lies, and so on. The following are some examples for the four main default forms of social defeat and the sorts of conditions that end them.

Friendly Defeats – End when you betray the character, or are caught behaving in a manner inappropriate for a supposed friend or a person respected and valued as a friend. Outright attacking a friend, being caught actively stealing from them, working against them, openly lying or various other abuses against their good intentions can end a Friendly Defeat state.

Scary Defeats – End when you in turn are defeated (probably by another character), when your power to threaten the scared character is broken or destroyed, if you show fear or weakness to them, or if they gain (and use) an opportunity to physically escape from your grasp putting sufficient distance (and ideally buildings or international borders) between you and them to prevent you from potentially harming them. Scary defeats also tend to heal when you ATTACK the victim, because delivering on your threats breaks the hold of the potential restraint of those threats over the victim.

Seductive Defeats – End when you betray the targets affections for you, make it clear that you will never return (or at least accept) their feelings (and possibly also their romantic demands). You can put off a marriage or a make out session or whatever it is your target feels you promised or instilled a desire for within them, but if you break any actual firm promise, or simply delay for too long eventually they will lose interest.

Deceptive Defeats – End when the target is confronted with observable proof that the web of deception you have spun around them is clearly contradicted by reality. OLD facts and knowledge from prior to your deceptive defeat of the target do NOT count, it doesn't matter if they should know from evidence they confronted in the past that you were lying to them, the whole point of the deception defeat was explaining that away, but if they encounter evidence AFTER the deceptive defeat then they will realise the truth and the web of lies is broken. Interestingly this makes deceptive defeats where the web of lies you spin is actually TRUE or something you then MAKE into the Truth remarkably hard to end.

The Basic Social Attack
Is a basic attack with the keywords Social Weak Long-Range Social-Targetting

It is a “basic attack” and the same “Basic Attack”/”Special Attack” formal differentiation applies to social attacks as already described for Normal attacks.

The basic social attack deals 1 Social Injury to targets on success. It targets Social Defence instead of Normal Defence.

All social attacks however must also use a social attack TYPE, there are four to choose from by default.

Friendly Attack
Adds the Friendly keyword to the social attack.
+2 vs All if you appear not to be equipped for combat
-2 vs All if you appear to have actual weapons in your hands.

Targets defeated by this attack suffer a Friendly special injury towards their attacker. And now consider their attacker a good friend, or for a slight variation in flavour a good and worthy or honourable person. Their new friend can now influence them in any way that any friend might influence that character, and indeed the befriended target will even act towards their attacker as if they were a good friend even without prompting.

Friendly characters are not perfectly co-operative, they may sometimes perform actions they regard as in the best interests of their friend which their new friend may not entirely agree with.

Scary Attack
Adds the Scary keyword to the social attack.
-2 vs All if you appear not to be equipped for combat, or appear to be severely weakened

Targets defeated by this attack suffer a Scary special injury towards their attacker. They are now terrified of the attacker and will either surrender, flee, or cower in fear as prompted. They may perform other actions, like surrendering items or information with appropriate prompting, or even voluntarily.

The victim's primary motivation is now to flee or otherwise free themselves from the scary character, this means that co-operation rendered is sometimes imperfect, while a scared character may surrender their sword for fear of angering their attacker they are unlikely to for instance willingly admit they are guilty of any action that they feel will anger the scary character towards them.

Seductive Attack
Adds the Seductive keyword to the social attack.
Up to -6 “Inappropriate Target” penalty, consisting of penalties for targeting the “wrong” gender (-2), age group (-2) or species (-2).

Targets defeated by this attack suffer a Seductive special injury towards their attacker. They are now romantically or sexual obsessed with their attacker. This gives a great deal of influence to the attacker who may demand various favours in return for various other favours, or promises of future favours.

The victim's primary motivation is now primarily Romantic toward the Seductive character, this means that co-operation rendered is sometimes imperfect, while a seduced character may surrender to you, give you items, protect you, or even fight for you, they might balk at admissions or actions that they feel would repulse you or somehow make it less likely for their romantic ambitions towards you to be successful.

It is worth noting that Seductive Attack does not have to be purely “Sexy” in nature. It covers a broad range of effects including “Romance” and just being abnormally pretty. Depending on minor variations in the intended flavour by the attacker, and in the personality of the target some victims of seduction may be obsessed with a variety of romantic ambitions ranging from sex and marriage to kisses or mild flirting.

Deceptive Attack
Adds the Deceptive keyword to the social attack.

Targets defeated by this attack suffer a Deceptive special injury towards their attacker. They are now deeply confused and believe whatever complex web of lies their attacker wants them to.

Deceptive attack is potentially rather versatile in flavour depending on precisely WHAT ridiculous web of lies the attacker chooses to define. Importantly as with all other social attacks influence is slightly imperfect, the victim will act as if the web of lies is in fact the truth, whatever that may entail even if the attacker has perhaps not perfectly anticipated the nature of that reaction.

Special Social Attacks
Just as there are a number of specific default special normal combat manoeuvres there are also a small number of special social combat manoeuvres.

Prevent Alarm
Applies to Friendly, Seductive or Deceptive attacks.
Makes a basic attack into a special attack.
Adds Undamaging
Applies a -3 penalty if you or ANY “potential enemies” of the target just failed a stealth action (possibly the trigger for the alert in the first place)
Automatically fails (and does so in retrospect as if parried in a timely manner) if ANYONE attempts any non-social attacks on your targets.
This attack ignores the targets Alert bonus.

This attack must be made the same turn, or the turn immediately after targets become Alarmed and Alert, usually in response to sighting a potential threat, probably the character attempting this action.

This attack suffers a -1 stacking penalty per “enemy” the target or targets observe that appears to be equipped for combat. This penalty DOES stack with the penalty for similar equipment traits of the standard Friendly attack.

On a success this calms the targets and temporarily convinces them that they should not be alarmed OR Alert. This ability persists in a manner similar to Stealth Persistence, and only needs to be rerolled if the penalty or the opponents defence WORSENS.

Note that while preventing targets from going Alert may well go so far as to prevent them from attacking you. It does NOT make them unready and DOES NOT give any further control of their actions. Just because you temporarily convince them not to kill you on sight and spread the alarm when they see you hanging around in a restricted area doesn't mean they won't resort to OTHER actions (including potential social attacks) to try and get you to leave.
Prevent alarm is kinda messy
It's a lot of text for a little effect. Basically you mainly use this if you are running a “look harmless” strategy of some form and want to circumvent an alert penalty easily. Otherwise you just say “screw it” and use a regular social attack on your targets.

It probably needs rewriting. Maybe it should be made better and turned into a trained specialist skill option instead.
Distract
Applies to Scary, Seductive or Deceptive attacks.
Makes a basic attack into a special attack.
Adds Undamaging
Ignores Alert bonus on targets.

This effect causes targets to pay attention to you and removes them entirely from “best observer” selection (potentially removing up to ALL observers) for any Stealth action attempted by anyone OTHER than the successful distracting character.

Parry
Applies to Scary, Seductive or Deceptive attacks.
Makes a basic attack into a special attack.
Adds Undamaging and Parry
Ignores Alert bonus on targets.

Basically you can just use a social attack to perform a parry if you want to. Works pretty much exactly like the standard normal attack version of parry otherwise.

Social Surprise
Applies to Friendly, Seductive or Deceptive attacks.
Makes a basic attack into a special attack.
Adds Undamaging
Applies the “appears equipped for combat” and weapon in hand bonuses and penalties the same as Friendly attack does (does not stack with same penalties from Friendly attack if this attack is friendly).

On a success this attack makes the target Unready against you in the next turn. Useful for setting up assassinations.

Disguise
Applies to Deceptive attacks.
Makes a basic attack into a special attack.
Adds Undamaging and Disguise
Applies an up to +4 bonus vs Non-Blind for (appearing to be) wearing the right clothes and carrying the right equipment (like stolen uniforms and stuff)
Suffers up to a -4 penalty depending on how well the targets know who-ever you are pretending to be.

On a success this attack makes the target think you are who you are pretending to be. Which can have a number of interesting and complex implications.
The default Social Special attacks are new
The least experimented with aspect of the system currently. Probably needs a few more entries and maybe some other extra work. Currently the special attacks are limited by social attack type purely by flavor... but this makes Deceptive the most versatile of social attack types to specialise in. Which may be problematic.

Still the basic principle of being the social equivalent of the normal default special attack options seems sound, and they have important interactions in the whole cross over points of the main mini-game stealth/social/combat/alarm stuff.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Archmage »

So I really like a lot of this and parts of it are similar to a project I'm working on.

I'm curious what the deal is with the damage cap. Is that mechanic in place to discourage focused-fire? Or something else?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Archmage wrote:I'm curious what the deal is with the damage cap. Is that mechanic in place to discourage focused-fire? Or something else?
It exists primarily to discourage focus fire. Also it may have some good interactions with minor timing issues.

In all honesty the damage cap was actually instituted in an earlier generation of home brew rules where focus fire was a potentially much larger issue. But it was so effective it's never really been taken out, and without it there would be focus fire problems even in this rules set that rewards focus fire slightly less than the original set damage cap appeared in.

Basically if you don't want something to happen in a rules system the best thing to do is to just write a rule that says you can't do that. That is what the damage cap is and it works really nicely.

Being able to live without fear of especially vast focus fire issues lets me give out really small HP totals, have relatively functional block mechanics and in general opens up a lot of options in designing the system. Players can still DO certain forms of focus fire, to some limited degree, and there are still motivations to do so, but it's less of a no brainer and a more complex and interesting result.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

How do the Fast and Slow traits interact with weapons or abilities that already have another speed-modifying tag? For example, if Rocket Launchers are normally Slow, do Fast characters still get to fire them in the Fast phase?

If damage cannot interrupt an action (because it is applied at the end of the turn), how are actions interrupted? Can a a Fast character declare that they intend to Parry a normal or Slow attack? Can actions be held until a later phase at all?

As the Non- notation is currently defined, Very Fast abilities appear to be Non-Fast. Should there be a general statement that Very Keyword is not in the set Non-Keyword?

Overall, it sounds like a pretty neat system. The damage cap is an interesting concept, and the traits system seems like it will be pretty solid once the kinks are worked out of the traits themselves. I'd love to hear some usage/playtest stories.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

rampaging-poet wrote:How do the Fast and Slow traits interact with weapons or abilities that already have another speed-modifying tag?
I had considered covering this stuff, but was hoping to just get away with ignoring it until later.

But the plan for these various interactions goes...

Opposing Keywords
Some keywords are considered "opposing" and cannot coexist on a final action.

For instance, Fast opposes Slow and Strong opposes Weak .

If an action or defense has one of each opposing keyword they cancel out and are removed. So if an action is both Fast AND Slow the two keywords cancel out and are BOTH removed.

If an ability somehow has multiple of the same opposing keywords from multiple places and somehow ends up with say 3x Fast keywords and 2x Slow keywords, they cancel out on a 1 for 1 basis so in the example two of each cancel out and one Fast is left.

Cancellation of keywords is a final step after any and all ability upgrades regardless of timing. If you have Strong AND Weak on an action, but use an upgrade to remove Weak at any time, then the keywords no longer cancel out and the ability becomes Strong.

As a special note the material based Hard and Soft keywords are NOT opposing and through various shenanigans can end up coexisting on the same ability or defense.

Very Keywords
The keyword prefix "Very-" is considered a special prefix and, yes, if you have "Very-Fast" you ARE treated as if you had Fast on it's own on your keyword profile as well for the purpose of keyword match ups including the "Non-Keyword" type match up.

Just to save confusion note that for order of actions in a turn Very Fast IS it's own separate phase and you do NOT get to act in both just because you have the Very-Fast keyword even if your Very Fast actions DO act as if they are both Very-Fast AND Fast for regular match up purposes.

Stacking Keywords
Keywords (if specifically defined as opposing) can cancel out but they do NOT stack.

The only way to get, for example, Very-Fast is to have an ability that SPECIFICALLY grants it. You do NOT become "Very-Fast" just because you somehow manage to stack multiple copies of the Fast keyword.

Indeed you don't stack keywords at all having three (or whatever) copies of the same keyword, like Fast, does nothing at all and is treated as exactly the same as having only one. With the already described exception of canceling out opposing keywords.

Damage keyword stacking/cancellation
Note that the the stacking and cancellation of damage related keywords works a bit differently, see the damage section when I get around to describing attacks.
Can actions be held until a later phase at all?
I thought I covered that one already? The answer was basically "Yes but no backsies, but you would rarely want to unless intending to Parry anyway".
I'd love to hear some usage/playtest stories.
That can wait until at least after I finish converting and posting all the actual rules I have already written. Which is to say, ages from now.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Oct 17, 2011 2:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

PhoneLobster wrote: *Keyword clarification*
That looks pretty good.
I thought I covered that one already? The answer was basically "Yes but no backsies, but you would rarely want to unless intending to Parry anyway".
I guess I just missed it. I read the core rules section the day you posted it, and didn't re-read it before posting.
That can wait until at least after I finish converting and posting all the actual rules I have already written. Which is to say, ages from now.
Take your time then :). I guess it would be a little difficult to understand them without all the rules up anyway. In any case, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of this.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Well it's been more than a week maybe I should put up some more of this. After all my estimates based on hits suggest as many as 2.5 people are each half paying attention to this thread!

I forgot one or two things last time, so Torn Shirt in the basic actions post got a Captain Kirk spoiler box, and this post is going to end up being the rather obvious missed action type I accidentally dropped off the rest of the basic actions.
And A Small Change In Direction?
You know, I promised I was going to leave a number of known problems in, but looking at them, and the time this thread is taking, I'm thinking I'm going to attempt to fix some of them while I'm here. It's not like it will take much extra time, or leave people without other exciting problems to uncover. I might leave some notes in about what has changed from the pre-thread versions though.
Torn Shirt is like what Captain Kirk does
It is important to note that the Torn Shirt block available to named characters is NOT the same as having your pants torn off every time you use it.

I mean this is already noted in the Equip rules but it is really worth noting Expended is an abstract state of partial damage, it does not destroy or remove an item. It just makes it stop working properly.

There ARE effects, options and items out there in this system that DO let you outright destroy or remove armours and pants and armoured pants, on yourself, and on others, for fun and indeed profit. But the default Torn Shirt is supposed to be a nice standard “messed up like Captain Kirk” effect, rather than say, “having all your clothes disintegrate into atoms like an Anime school girl” type effect.

I'm not saying the second thing is bad or outside of the system, I'm just saying it's rather necessarily an opt in effect because it's kind of jarring if EVERYONE'S pants almost ALWAYS end up disintegrating in almost EVERY fight, which with the intended staple dependency of Torn Shirt would be the way things would end up.

I know, going on about this may seem odd, but a number of people have had, um, conceptual issues (I won't say problems, they were a little too enthusiastic for that) with Torn Shirt, so it actually does bare mentioning that your pants only rip clean off if...
A) Someone deliberately bucks the odds in order to rip them off with an action (or several)
B) You encounter some sort of pants ripping off expert/monster
C) You yourself design and optimise your character around abilities and items that rip your own pants off.

Torn Shirt is NOT included on that list.
The Other Action
Welcome to the bullshit extra bit of the rules system. All those... other... things that may occassionally call for doing, like researching facts in a library, noticing a footprint underneath a secret door in a hidden room that is also invisible, working for a month as a cabaret dancer in a popular tavern, and brewing your own alcohol. Etc...

The Basics
The Other action is a completely arbitrary action type. Time costs, whether or not a roll is called for, what bonuses apply to the roll if any, and what number the roll is being made against are all pretty much pulled out of thin air by the GM.

As such ideally Other Actions should be of relatively minimal import, certainly failing one shouldn't be too catastrophic, especially if the difficulty was arbitrarily high.

Also ideally Other actions should be shoe horned into using at least SOME of the bonuses and abilities already formalised.

The Other Attack Action
So for instance if you can in anyway represent an Other action as an attack, even a social attack, then you probably should. All in all the standard attack and social attack mechanics shouldn't leave MUCH in the way of gaps that Other mechanics might cover. And you should probably carefully check first because attacking a door, using a chair as a weapon, or telling a convincing lie, are generally intended to be covered already to some degree in the standard attack and social attack rules. But assuming you feel the need for an additional arbitrary action there is no reason not to use attack, social attack, normal defence and social defence values if they seem relevant, after all the alternative is entirely arbitrary numbers so it can hardly hurt.

The Other Stealth Action & The Active Observation Roll
Reversing the active party and using defence bonuses for attacks and visa versa might SEEM like fun, but generally it is frowned upon. On the whole it is better for consistency if Secret Doors and Hidden Clues roll attacks AGAINST observers, rather than the other way around, it saves a bunch of maths and confusion if they just act the same way as a sneaking or hiding character might.

So anyway the most common Other Stealth action IS an unattended object hiding from you, which is actually just a normal Hide action, with modifiers based on the object and the relevant skills of the character that hid it. Feel free to drop in circumstantial modifiers, but mostly just if the item is stupidly large or something, which should earn some fairly notable penalties. Also note that it is not unreasonable to declare SOME objects as impossible to hide, an immobile castle on a flat plain for instance, not something you can hide using some sort of standard combat action. Now with enough workers and strategic turns or some special powers...

Objects that have only been “accidentally” hidden obviously get no character skill based bonus to hiding, and only apply circumstantial modifiers and keywords based on how large they are and how well they blend in. Additionally they do NOT receive the normal +5 Hide bonus, since they were not trying to hide.

Becoming Alert For Other Observations?
Characters ARE actually allowed to declare themselves Alert for a brief time without obvious threats present JUST in order to perform an active search for hidden stuff. This special Alert status ONLY lasts as long as the search itself, and does not apply to Social attacks, or indeed anything OTHER than trying to find hidden things (but DOES apply against actively hiding characters).

However you cannot ALWAYS declare yourself Alert just because a thing is hiding from you. You actually have to have a REASON to be actively searching for things. Indeed you pretty much need to spend an action on being alert. As such casually patrolling guards or a character at rest will NOT be able to declare themselves alert for passive stealth defence unless alarmed. Active searching is reserved for, well, active searching, without at least a reasonable suspicion that there is something worth finding you cannot use it.

Making Stuff
Building items sounds cool. And should probably be allowed. However it is mostly intended that making things be reserved for mechanics that interact with the Base Building rules. So for instance, you might be able to make a Sword if you have access to a source of Combat Weapon training and a Weapon Smithing facility of some form.

From time to time however it might become, well, interesting, to make something not obviously listed, or throw together a makeshift item like using a curtain as a cloak or robe, or a sharpened stick as a spear.

Make shift items CAN require an arbitrary roll to make (and might reasonably even be producible within combat time, even a as a single combat action) they should probably base their traits off the materials used and off equivalent LT items. It would not be unreasonable to have makeshift items be slightly inferior in their keywords or granted bonuses, and to generally lack any other more unique item abilities beyond basic keywords and bonuses.

Picking A Lock
One of the few... other actions that regularly comes up that might be of interest is the picking of locks. Or otherwise messing with mechanisms, like traps or elevators or something. Generally these should be performed as arbitrary close range actions against arbitrary defences, and should take one or more combat actions (but require only one roll, the duration working a little bit like Stealth Persistence).

Strategic Other Actions
A good place and time to perform “other actions”. A good example being “researching something at the library”.

I have no guidelines for this stuff at the moment, only the strong insistence that it exists and does things.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

The Keyword List
It seemed like a good idea to write this one up. It's a guide to the keywords used by the game. And there ARE a lot of them. It would be generally useful to know what they are and what if any mechanics they are commonly related to, and how they were intended to be structured and so on. So here is the gathered summary. It is highly likely that this might end up being one of the most edited parts of this thread.

Basic Keywords
These are the keywords that fall most commonly on the basic keyword list.

The basic keywords are intended primarily for some more exotic match up effects, and less so for raw bonuses (though Gender keywords can certainly have role for bonus match ups). More often you will be doing things like checking if a target is an Animal or Plant to determine if they can be effected by a Poison or something.

They fall into several small categories.

Classification Keywords
Animal – You are an Animal and subject to a number of related effects, like poisons and stuff.
Plant – You are an Plant and subject to a number of related effects, like poisons and stuff.
Mechanical – You are, I dunno, a Robot, or maybe an Elevator, and subject to a number of related effects
Undead – You are, I dunno, a ghost or skeleton or something and subject to a number of related effects
NOTE – Non-Opposing Classifications – While many characters will only have one Classification keyword they are NOT opposed or exclusive, and you potentially could gather together several different classifications on one single character.

Being Magical
Mystic – You are magic like a Wizard or a Fairy. This changes the way you interact with a lot of things in the world. This basic keyword is required in order to use some abilities and items for no good reason.

Having a Gender
Male – It's a gender. Important primarily for some social and seduce related match ups, and for Amazons and other (rather literally) sexist roles.
Female – It's another gender. Mostly just important for those actions and characters that care about it.
Genderless – This is an implied keyword. If you aren't Male or Female you are assumed to have this one. Which doesn't especially do anything on it's own.
NOTE – Non-Opposing Genders – the gender keywords are NOT opposing or exclusive, it is possible for a character to have both genders, or even have different genders based on specific context (like say attacking or defending with Seduce attacks).

Material Keywords
Material keywords are very common, pretty much all items, and characters are made out of... stuff, and many match ups, especially attack bonuses starting from LT level onwards will be based on target Material keywords. Material Keywords are also

Firmness Keywords
Hard – this object is... hard, as in rigid and unbending and stuff. Metal Swords and Stone Blocks are hard.
Soft – this object is... soft, flexible, yielding and generally squeezable and stuff. Cloth shirts, animal flesh and ropes are Soft.
Rubbery – This is an implied keyword, basically never directly referenced. If something isn't hard or soft it is somehow in between.
NOTE – Non-Opposing Firmness – firmness of objects is not exclusive. An object or character can have hard armoured bits and soft squishy joints and stuff. So you CAN be Hard and Soft at the same time (though clearly, Rubbery, as a vaguely implied state sort of cannot co-exist with either or both of the others).

Material Type Keywords
Metal – For things like swords and chains and metal plates
Ceramic – For things like stone and clay, glass, crystal and well, actual ceramics.
Plastic – For leathers and plastics and stretchy smooth well, plasticy things.
Flesh – For animal and plant flesh, why not just be more plastic? I have no idea.
Cloth – For robes and ropes and shirts and capes and stuff.
Energy – For fire and lightning and magical blasts of various sorts.
Mental – For psychic magic mind controlly stuff.
Physical – One of those dodgy implied keywords rarely if ever directly referenced. Sometimes we care if an attack is based on physical materials or not. Generally all Normal Attacks are physical and Social Attacks are not, but if an attack (or defence) has ONLY got Energy or Mental keywords, it isn't Physical, so there.

Good Trait Keywords
Good Trait keywords can come from a number of sources, but primarily come from, well, a character's selected Good Trait. Most commonly they are used to add a defence bonus (as much as 4) to the character's defence.

In the long run Good Trait keywords are intended to also be match ups for various effects, but actual bonuses AGAINST a good trait keyword are intended to be rare and not start kicking in until MT. In LT at best you should encounter bonuses or effects that apply if you LACK a certain good keyword, so expect bonuses vs Non-Strong attacks rather than bonuses vs Strong attacks for now.

Fast – Fastness is all about being quick. Associated with Fast and Energetic good traits.
Strong – Strong is all about being mighty and tough. Associated with Strong and Tough good traits.
Pretty – Is about looking cool. Associated with the Pretty Good Trait.
Tricky – Is about being smart. Associated with the Tricky Good Trait.

Bad Trait Keywords
Again, commonly come from a Characters Bad Trait selection, but could also come from a number of other sources. Bad trait keywords will sometimes be associated with various penalties or limitations.

Bad Traits keywords are intended to be very common “bad match up” keywords that attacks will gain bonuses against and so on. Even from the beginning of LT you should expect bad trait keywords to be punished regularly.

Slow – About being Slow and clumsy, oddly enough associated with Slow and Clumsy bad traits.
Weak – About being fragile, frail and lacking in strength. Associated with Weak and Fragile bad traits.
Decadent – Is about being obsessed with beauty. Yes its a bad choice of keyword. Associated with the Decadent bad trait.
Stupid – Is about not being smart. Associated with the Stupid Bad Trait.
Cowardly – Is about being cowardly, most commonly actually is associated with a small defensive bonus. Associated with the Cowardly Bad Trait.

Opposing Trait Keywords – Slow opposes Fast, and Strong Opposes Weak. Tricky Opposes Stupid. These keywords cannot co-exist and cancel out in the manner described for opposing keywords.

Timing Keywords
Slow and Fast have already been mentioned. But here they are again, and yes they are the SAME keywords, this is just about how they interact with the turn sequence. Which is already covered to some degree in the combat time rules, but worth noting again here.

Very-Fast – When attached to an action this action happens in the Very-Fast phase of the turn.
Fast – When attached to an action this action happens in the Fast phase of the turn.
Normal-Speed – This is an implied keyword, you get this whenever you don't have any other timing based keywords. When attached (or rather, sort of not attached) to an action this action happens in the Normal phase of the turn.
Slow – When attached to an action this action happens in the Slow phase of the turn.
Very-Slow – When attached to an action this action happens in the Very Slow phase of the turn.

Movement Keywords
Movement keywords are used primarily for action/hazard triggers and for handling movement limiting effects.

Move – Indicates the action involves moving.
Run – Indicates the action involves moving more recklessly.
Charge – Indicates the action involves moving recklessly as part of an attack.
Speed – A keyword associated with the as yet unported Vehicle/Fast Steed movement rules. Commonly has a number associated with it, involves moving VERY fast with some risk of crashing and other special effects.

Walk – Indicates movement along the ground in a walky sort of manner.
Climb – Indicates ability to move on vertical or inverted surfaces as freely as normal walk type movement.
Swim – Indicates ability to move freely in water.
Jump – Indicates this ability can hurl you through, or into, the air, but not actually keep you there.
Fly – Indicates ability to freely through the air.
Glide – Indicates ability to move through the air in a certain limited manner.

Defence Keywords
A number of keywords commonly associated with defence. MAY have overlaps with the SAME keywords used on attacks. That's actually fine. Some of these keywords exist primarily for match up purposes. Some exist to indicate certain specific or general mechanical effects.

Obfuscating – Most commonly used for a defence bonus, associated with Clouds of smoke and fog, swirling capes and skirts, and things that obscure the location of a target or the source of an attack.
Evasive – A basic Defence based keyword, very commonly used in match ups, indicates dodging, mobility and avoidance as a defensive strategy.
Body – A basic Defence based keyword, very commonly used in match ups, indicates the defence involves (or risks) impact directly with the body. The Body keyword also applies all Body Material keywords to the same defence.
Clothing – Another basic defence keyword for match ups. Also applies all material keywords and bonuses from the Clothing item to defence.
Armour – Another basic defence keyword for match ups. Also applies all material keywords and bonuses from the Armour item to defence.
Weapon – Another basic defence keyword for match ups. Also applies all material keywords and bonuses from the Weapon item to defence. Indicates the use of a held item like a Sword or Shield to assist in deflecting attacks.
Cover – Indicates the use of cover, terrain or similar effects to apply to defence. Also adds any keywords related to the cover item and it's material to defence (but not any bonuses, so taking cover behind something with Armour 6 gives you Armour... but not the bonus 6 to defence).
Unready – Indicates the character is unready and has been surprised, they are subject to Assassinate effects and cannot take actions while Unready.
Alert – Typically comes as “Alert 5” adding a 5 point Alert bonus to Social Defence. Occurs in situations where violence or threat of violence is detected or intended.

Block – A keyword associated with the basic Block action. Indicates this action provides one or more Blocks that can be used to cancel injuries.
Perfect-Block – Indicates this keyword has Block AND it has Perfect-Block. Perfect-Block is an effect that is associated with enhanced Block actions that block (or often transfer) ALL injuries in a single turn, however many they may be. It's pretty rare at LT.

Attack Keywords
Attack keywords are used for match ups and to indicate various special mechanics. They may be the SAME keywords from the defence or other keyword lists. That is entirely OK.

Obfuscating – Can turn up on attacks that involve obscuring their origin in some way.
Evasive – Might turn up on the occasional mobile attack. But probably shouldn't.
Body – Indicates the attack involves striking something with the character's body. The Body keyword also applies all Body Material keywords to the same action.
Clothing – Indicates the use of a clothing item in the attack. Also applies all material keywords from the Clothing item to the action.
Armour – Indicates the use of armour in the attack. Also applies all material keywords from the Armour item to the action.
Weapon – Indicates the use of a held item to hit things with. Also applies all material keywords and bonuses from the Weapon item to action.
Projectile – Indicates the attack fires some sort of physical munition at targets. Also applies all projectile material keywords and bonuses from the fired item to action.
Accurate – Indicates the attack is super accurate. Mostly just used for match ups. Kinda depreciated in this edition of rules.
Inaccurate – Indicates the attack is wildly inaccurate. Mostly just used for match ups. Kinda depreciated in this edition of rules, but less so than the Accurate keyword.
Blast – Indicates the attack is explody. Mostly just used for match ups.
Thrown – Attack removes and throws a weapon or item. Unless otherwise noted placing the item in the target zone (or missing and being thrown into a nearby zone).

Single-Target – Targets 1 thing
Multi-Target() – Targets numerous things, as described in brackets.
Multi-Attack – Makes multiple copies of attack on same or different target groups/zones as indicated after keyword.
Close-Range – Attack targets things in the same zone.
Short-Range – Attack targets things in the same or adjacent zone.
Long-Range – Attack targets things out to long range.
Half-Range-Penalties – Attack applies half normal range penalties.
Double-Range-Penalties – Attack applies double normal range penalties.
Guided – Attack can draw it's range around corners.
Smart – Attack can target zones or targets unknown to the attacker at the start of the attack.

Backfire – Attack can have unfortunate side effects in certain circumstances, commonly on misses or especially low rolls. Fumbles are bad things, but as an opt in ability available on some items or skills, perhaps less so.
Critical – Attack can have additional bonus effects on particularly large successes, usually on high natural rolls.

Unadmaging – Attack does NOT deal it's normal single standard injury.
Devastaing +X – Attack deals X additional standard injuries.
Sever – Attack deals an additional special Sever injury. Sever injuries remove (or damage) a non-fatal limb or extremity (typicall an arm or leg) of the attacker's choice, they do not count towards Standard Injuries for knocking out the victim.
Decapitate – Attack deals an additional special Decapitate injury. Decapitate injuries remove or damage the targets head, typically removing them from combat and potentially killing them.
Bisect – Attack deals an additional special Bisect injury. Bisect injuries pretty much cut the target in half, typically removing them from combat and potentially killing them.
Dismember – Attack deals an additional special Dismember injury. Dismember injuries cut the target into various bits and pieces.
Disintergrate – Attack deals an additional special Disintegrate injury. This injury completely disintegrates the target into nothing. This usually removes them from combat and kills them, and possibly also their stuff.
KO – Attack deals an additional special KO injury. This injury typically removes the target from combat, knocking them unconscious.
Kill – Attack deals an additional special Kill injury. This injury typically removes the target from combat, and potentially kills them.
Fire – Attack deals an additional special Fire injury. This sets the victim 'On Fire” causing them to suffer On Fire attacks until they are put out, and potentially spreading the fire to other targets. It is a Close-Range auto success single action to put out a target that is On Fire and willing to be put out (including yourself).
Freeze – Attack deals an additional special Freeze injury. Effect in relevant ability entries.
Temporary – Injuries dealt by effect are “temporary” and can be somehow healed more easily than normal. Typically with a special Rest action.

Parry – Attack cancels an action or a portion of an action of the same timing or slower. Exact nature of targeting and the portion of action cancelled varies in ability text.
Knock – Attack knocks the target over and places them in the Knocked state.
Grab – Attack grabs the target and places them in the Grabbed state and places the user in the Grabbing state.
Stand – Action stands the character up ending the Knocked state.
Escape – Attack ends the Grabbed state and by passes the Guard state.
Wrestle – Action may be used while in the Grabbed state.
Disarm – Attack removes an and throws aside an item from the target.
Throw – Attack moves the target into a zone or hazard, typically out to Short Range.
Stun – Attack makes the target Unready on the next turn.
Assassinate – Attack gains significant bonuses or extra damage/effects against Unready targets.
Rip – Attack also damages and expends one Soft item worn or held on the target.
Crack – Attack also damages and expends one Hard item worn or held on the target.
Break – Attack also damages and expends one item worn or held on the target.
Destructive – Items expended by the attack, limbs damaged by the attack, or items expended to block this attack are outright destroyed.
Unblockable – Attack cannot be blocked unless specially noted. Very commonly attacks will only gain the unblockable effect in certain specific circumstances or against certain specific targets.

Guard – Action places the user in the Guard state allowing them to prevent movement or substitute themselves as the target of some attacks.
Rest – Action has the Rest effect.

Social Keywords
Keywords specifically related to Social Attacks and Defences.

Social – Action is Social, targets Social defence and deals social damage.
Social-Targetting – Action uses Social Targeting rules.
Scary – Action deals scary type effects on social defeat.
Seductive – Action deals seductive type effects on social defeat.
Deceptive – Action deals deceptive type effects on social defeat.
Friendly – Action deals Friendly type effects on social defeat.
More Social Keywords! – Now in prior editions I have had additional social specific keywords for more advanced match ups. With the roll in of social and normal combat it is uncertain if keywords like “Posh”, “Educated”, “Ignorant”, “Common” and “Naughty” will return and if so how or when. Right now they aren't there, but they probably SHOULD be, a good place would be to use them for social defence bonuses from professional theme skill sets (and then also for some match ups for attack bonuses from professional and social skill sets).

Maybe I'll slip some in as a “fix some stuff since I'm here anyway” addition.
Stealth Keywords
Keywords specifically related to Stealth.

Stealth – Action is a Stealth action and uses stealth targetting, stealth persistence and targets Social Defence.
Hide – Action is an immobile Hiding type stealth action.
Sneak – Action is a mobile moving type stealth action.
Conceal – Action is about hiding an item about your person.
Disguise – Action is about disguising something.
Sneaky – Action is especially sneaky, relates to bonuses and match ups.
Loud – Action is especially loud, typically suffering -5 against non-deaf targets to hear it.
Silent – Action is especially quiet, may even have bonuses to avoid detection vs non-deaf targets. Ignores Sonar defences.
Sonar – Typically a defence bonus or effect of some form. Ignored by silent attacks.
Deaf – Defence modifier, may be associated with penalties, makes Loud and Silent effects largely irrelevant.
Bright – Typically a penalty (sometimes zone rather than action based) to a stealth action, penalty only applies vs Non-Blind observers.
Shadow – Typically a bonus (sometimes zone rather than action based) to a stealth action, only applies vs Non-Blind observers.
Chameleon – Typically associated with a bonus for colour blending vs Non-Blind observers.
Transparent – Typically associated with a bonus for invisibility vs Non-Blind observers.
Blind – Defence modifier, may be associated with penalties and action limitations due to being blind. Makes various visual effects largely irrelevant.
Vision – Typically a social defence bonus.
Night-Vision – Removes Shadow Bonuses by stealth attackers against this observer.
Obfuscating – Obfuscating bonus effects are not uncommon for stealth attacks, the standard Cloud defence bonus applies as an obfuscating bonus to attack when stealth actions interact with smoke and fog like effects.
Fog-Vision – Removes Obfuscating Bonuses by stealth attackers against this observer.
XRay-Vision – Observer can see through walls and stuff. Attackers attempting Conceal actions will commonly suffer a penalty against them too.

Item Related Keywords
There are a number of additional notable item keywords. Including a potentially limitlessly large set of “Item Type” keywords for things like Swords, Spears, etc... Item type keywords are intended primarily for item/skill use match up requirements, and are not intended to be a staple of raw bonus match ups.

Skimpy – Armour and clothing keyword, related to skill limitations for no clothes or skimpy clothes characters.
Partial – Armour and clothing keyword, causes you to combine stacked armour/clothing/body keywords and effects.
Light – Indicates either light clothing/armour or light weaponry. Related to skill limitations.
Heavy – Indicates heavy armour or clothing, or weaponry. Related to skill limitations. Heavy items and characters wearing/carrying heavy items tend to Sink in water.
Unique – You can only equip and use one copy of this item. Though you can store extras in a back pack slot.
Hat – Item is a hat slot item.
Glove – Item is a “special slot” glove type item.
Boots – Item is a boots slot item.
Cloak – Item is a cloak slot item.

Type keywords -
Sword
Axe
Hammer
Spear
Whip
Shield
Bow
X-bow
Gun
Fire - (also a bonus injury keyword, see attack keywords)
Electro
Cold
TK
Plate
Tight
Chain
Robe
Skirt

Descriptive and Keywords
The keyword system is intended to be somewhat intuitive and highly descriptive. You should from a fluffy description of an item be able to guess the general sorts of keywords associated with it.

A metal chair should readily be describable as having the Hard and Metal keywords and easily fit into routines as a makeshift weapon or target.

Also in all honesty I have completely neglected a LOT of fluffy description text, almost all of it infact, for abilities. As such the descriptive keywords (and actual mechanical ability text) has to fill in for the fluff by being exciting, interesting and descriptive. I hope that this large and expansive keyword set has the capacity to evoke a certain feel for the nature of actions and traits involved.

Extendible Keywords
The keyword system is NOT intended to be perfectly cut and dry. It is intended to be fairly openly extendible “as you go” and write in more abilities.

There is a certain hint of underlying structure. Common and staple bonuses and match ups run off a relatively limited and predetermined set of core material and trait based keywords. Only specific ability requirements and some more fringe benefit type bonuses ever run off the truly undefined and arbitrarily large keyword sets like “item/action types”.

But the general result is that it should be relatively easy to come back at any point and decide that you need a new “Chainsaw” type keyword to run some set of item/skill dependencies off of without the universe crumbling, because really the main things you care about are the core keywords like Fast and Weak.
Where are we at?
This might be a good point to discuss some of the keywords, traits and bonuses.

By this point in the rules set if you were to make up a character you already have a certain (limited) amount of diversity and interesting special abilities from Good Traits and Bad Traits. The most important and interesting thing however is the potential bonuses coming out.

A named character should be coming out of basic Good Traits Bad Traits selection with...
One good keyword
One bad keyword
Between 2-5 Max Injuries
Between 2-5 Max Energy
Absolutely no bonuses or penalties to attack rolls (but potentially a damage bonus)
A Normal Defence ranging between about 12 and 15
A Social Defence ranging between about 9 and 14 (or 14 and 19 when Alert)
And about 1-2 rather notable special abilities/traits.
The ability to use Torn Shirt for 1 Block.

Punch ups between characters at this stage actually could be (almost) interesting. But notably the general layout fairly clearly favours defence over offence and almost everyone (except perhaps Fragile characters) are better at surviving than they are at killing.

This is the starting point before we throw on the skills and items later on, which as mentioned already were slightly off intended numbers as of the beginning of this thread...
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Minor writing nitpick: the special quasi-Alert state for people actively searching an area should probably be called the Searching state. The Searching state would give you whatever observation bonus you would normally get from being Alert, but only with respect to attacks and defences against characters in that zone. It would also allow you to upgrade from Searching to Alert immediately if you spot a threatening character or you're attacked from the area you searched. The Searching state should also last from the beginning of your action until either the Refund Phase or the Start of Turn Phase for the next turn; that way a Slow person can't surprise people looking at the bush he's hiding in simply by being too slow to attack during the action it them to look at it. Making Searching and Alert two separate states also makes it possible to assassinate mooks that are Searching the closet while you're clinging to the ceiling.

I'm really not sure about the "Social attacks vs. the furniture" section. Specifically, attempting to seduce lawn chairs is the only time that Normal and Social injuries don't stack. While a special-case mechanic is definitely needed to prevent people from lying to walls until they no longer believe in their own structural integrity, I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it.
The biggest problem is that an entity that has been defeated is removed from combat. If entities removed from combat cannot be targeted, then seducing the french windows makes them invincible. Presumably, words should not create invulnerable force fields unless a particular ability says otherwise.
If entities removed from combat can still be targeted but cannot take any actions, socially defeated furniture would be unable to make the special Stealth attacks it needs to to stay hidden. This means that any All in 1 Social attack can be used to expose every object in the zone, even those the character talking to the furniture can't see.

... And I just realized that by "Social injuries don't stack" you probably meant "Social injuries don't count", so it's impossible to defeat a wall with words alone anyway. That makes the preceding paragraph irrelevant, but I spent half an hour on it so I'll post it anyway. It's pretty similar to the straight-up immunity to Social injuries (but not Social attacks) I was about to suggest anyway, and probably less confusing.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

rampaging-poet wrote:the special quasi-Alert state for people actively searching an area should probably be called the Searching state.
Probably.
The Searching state would give you whatever observation bonus you would normally get from being Alert, but only with respect to attacks and defences against characters in that zone.
I think I like this, as an action nominate a zone and act as Alert to all Stealth actions in that zone, with the Stealth Persistence effect it would trigger new rolls at the higher defence, but characters just guessing don't particularly get anything unless they guessed correctly, which they won't unless they had good reason to make a guess. It's a nice neat way of doing it.
It would also allow you to upgrade from Searching to Alert immediately if you spot a threatening character or you're attacked from the area you searched.
One of those things you can in fact do already just by the nature of the whole Alert thing (become alert when you spot a threatening character who was hiding) the other you currently don't get, and I feel SHOULDN'T, if you searched and saw no one then they SHOULD get the drop on you if failed.
The Searching state should also last from the beginning of your action until either the Refund Phase or the Start of Turn Phase for the next turn;
There probably should be a duration limit to it of some form, but I certainly assumed it at least lasted a full turn. Possibly however it should have a cost (similar to Running and Holding Your Breath). Just to discourage people constantly sending their guard patrols on predetermined Search patterns for no reason, or something. But... that could require some more consideration.
that way a Slow person can't surprise people looking at the bush he's hiding in simply by being too slow to attack during the action it them to look at it.

As long as it runs off a solid turn duration minimum this should work out thanks to the standard timing rules and basic action costs.
Making Searching and Alert two separate states also makes it possible to assassinate mooks that are Searching the closet while you're clinging to the ceiling.
It is worth noting that Assassinate runs off the Unready state not the Alert state. You actually can be Alert and Unready at the same time. In addition a character can already even be Unready relative to specific characters while being ready towards others.

So already if something happens and guards are alerted to some sort of threat, but do not see YOU then you can still use Stealth actions to sneak up on them and take them by surprise. It's just harder because they are alert to general "danger" and they might also be doing... something while you do so, just not something predicated on the knowledge of your presence.
I'm really not sure about the "Social attacks vs. the furniture" section.
Neither am I. I only left in the ability to do it, sort of, because I strongly suspect at some point it might have strange but a useful application.

But also, I don't think I stated at any point that being 'Removed From Combat" is a state that makes you immune to attacks. So You shouldn't be able to make your walls invulnerable by lying to them. Also removed from combat is a somewhat fuzzy relative state when considering social defeats, sure at a minimum you have made your opponent unable to continue attacking YOU and probably also people you don't want them to attack. But you MIGHT also have just convinced them to attack someone else, so effectively you are removing them from combat... then dropping them right back in again with a changed set of target priorities.

But I probably should have more details about "removed from combat" and attacking helpless people for situations where you want to run around grabbing unconscious people or mutilating your victims or something ridiculous like that.
It's pretty similar to the straight-up immunity to Social injuries (but not Social attacks) I was about to suggest anyway, and probably less confusing.
Actually it IS probably more confusing than just making walls immune to lies. But... I just have this sneaking suspicion that at some point I'm going to want to let people lie to walls...
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rampaging-poet
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Post by rampaging-poet »

It is worth noting that Assassinate runs off the Unready state not the Alert state. You actually can be Alert and Unready at the same time. In addition a character can already even be Unready relative to specific characters while being ready towards others.
Thanks. I forgot/missed that. Still, there's bound to be situations where being Non-Alert will hurt, and making Searching a separate keyword mostly stops people from declaring themselves Alert all the time without needing a hard limit. Also, including abilities that get a bonus against Searching characters, or possibly just people searching in the wrong place, could serve as an incentive not to actively search unless you think something's there.
-stuff about removal from combat; the furniture-
I definitely assumed too strict a definition of Removed from Combat in my analysis. I now see that it's not a hard keyword, but instead a catch-all description for conditions such as Disabled, Unconscious, Cowering, and Dead. Nobody is removed from the board, they just enter a state in which they are no longer able to directly affect the current conflict.

I really only have two questions about your intent for social attacks on the furniture: is lying to furniture to activate abilities that trigger when you successfully lie to somebody an intended consequence, and should defeating a wall with social attacks be possible at all? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then inanimate objects cannot be flat-out immune to social attacks (though they may be immune to the effects of social attacks). Either way, the rules you've posted so far don't particularly encourage talking to empty rooms, so it's probably not a big deal.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

rampaging-poet wrote:I now see that it's not a hard keyword, but instead a catch-all description for conditions such as Disabled, Unconscious, Cowering, and Dead.
Basically yeah, and I don't really want to make those states have specific hard keywords, the different "Special Injury" types are mostly enough to deal with for specific special state healing effects and formalizing those defeat states too much would undermine the "Kills only kill your character if you decide they do" thing, which is an important backstop for long term character survival.
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then inanimate objects cannot be flat-out immune to social attacks (though they may be immune to the effects of social attacks). Either way, the rules you've posted so far don't particularly encourage talking to empty rooms, so it's probably not a big deal.
Actually the answer to both those questions should probably be "no" and in fact I could (and probably should) just make furniture immune to social attacks (in fact I should probably throw in a Furniture basic keyword anyway since it's actually part of some of the furniture and smashing of furniture mechanics... ). And then if I REALLY wanted to I could throw in a special ability that bypassed that if I wanted to later.

And in the meantime come to think of it there IS one slightly dangerous provocation to encourage you to lie to the floor. Or more specifically attempt to Seduce especially pretty looking chairs... Decadent characters can regain Energy by successfully Seductive attacking ANYTHING that has the Pretty keyword, which pretty furniture could well have. I mean, it's not much better than just resting, and frankly if there WERE enemies around who were Pretty you would generally target them instead for the added benefit of defeating things that matter... but it's a small hole.

For now I'm calling it an unaddressed flaw and I'll keep an eye on it in future. There is too much other material to mess with to worry about it right now.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

OK so here is a section that... probably should have gone into the basic Zone rules section, but here it is on it's own, in preparation for more stuff later!

Furniture!
Many things you find on maps will be considered official Furniture tagged items. Most inanimate objects including walls and floors and even “the ground” are things considered to be “furniture” and will have the furniture keyword. Many pieces of furniture are dangerous in some way and are also considered Hazards.

While these various items will have much more specific write ups as purchasable and buildable items related to the room and site rules those write ups will largely be based on the guidelines here...

Whats A Zone Hazard?
Before we hit Furniture rules proper, we need to define the Zone Hazard.

Zone Hazards are passive... things... out there in the world that are represented by making active attacks on characters.

A zone hazard can be something like... a pit full of spikes you might fall into, a poisonous lingering cloud of gas, or an automated whirling blade trap.

Some zone hazards will activate and attack all targets in the zone once each turn, for instance, a poisonous cloud.

Some zone hazards, like a precarious crumbling cliff edge can be safely avoided by just being careful, but MIGHT be a risk if you are too hasty in your movements, these attack each target in the zone UP TO once each turn, but are only triggered by targets attempting movement actions, they typically come in two types, hazards triggered by ANY Move or Close-Range action, and hazards triggered by “fast” move actions that have Run, Charge or Speed keywords.

Some zone hazards, like a pit full of horrible grinding gears behind a safety railing, or a cliff edge way over there with plenty of room to avoid it, are so safe that you won't even risk falling in no matter what you do... unless you actively move into the hazard, or are actively THROWN into the hazard with a Throw effect.

The actual attributes of a zone hazard can vary wildly, and you are, somewhat, encouraged to arbitrarily define them with appropriate bonuses and descriptive keywords.

Remember Clumsy!
Remember the basic Bad Trait “Clumsy”. It causes zone hazards to trigger MORE OFTEN against Clumsy characters!

It is important not to forget about it if there are Clumsy people around...
Needs samples
What a LOT of the furniture and Hazards section needs is... sample hazards, sample furniture items and so on. It would be... rather helpful if “Stone Wall” and “Spiked Pit Trap” had some EXISTING write ups to refer to. But I'm lazy at this stage, the first time around I decided to delay such materials until the MT building rules, and, well, I'm doing that again now I'm writing it up in a thread too! Maybe I'll edit it later for some sampls.

Flooring Furnitures
The thing you are standing on is “the floor”. Floors tend to be fairly tough, but CAN be broken through (or damaged or cratered). They are usually pretty stable but can also be tilted, slanted, slippery, rough or dangerous.

Falling Onto The Floor
We've mentioned it before but lets mention it again, falling can cause damage. If you fall one or more zones you are attacked by gravity itself with a...

Falling Attack Applies material keywords of the surface fallen onto Falling Knock Single-Target Close-Range +X vs All
+2 if you fall onto a Hard material, -2 if you fall onto a Soft material.
Where X is the number of zones you fell
Knock means that if this attack hits it will also knock you over, placing you in the Knocked state.
Falling deals 1 normal injury. But if you fall long distances the falling attack also gains Devastating +Z where Z is the equal to the Range Penalty of the distance you fell.

Falling onto a floor CAN also damage a floor item. Falling attacks effect the floor AS WELL as the falling character. However floors are typically fairly resistant to damage, see the rules for breaking through floors for the details.

Floors and Driver Attacks
Some attacks are Driver attacks where a character drives someone into the floor with force generated by a fall. Driver attacks add your falling damage or attack or both to the damage of traits of the driver attack itself. And commonly negate the fall effects on the attacker (usually only if the attacker hits).

Regardless of hit or miss Driver attacks usually ALSO attack the Floor beneath their target (or the next floor they hit if there is no floor beneath the target). They can then potentially trigger another fall on the next turn if they break through the floor.

The Ground
The most basic floor is “the ground”. The ground is usually Ceramic but may be Hard or Soft or neither. Tiling, wooden boards, straw and other fun things can modify or add to keywords.

The Ground is really hard to break. Typically the ground is considered a big “Subterranean” zone underneath the zone it's boundary serves as the floor of and is often a similar size to the surface zone, and will have a Max Injuries rating of an arbitrary but large size related to it's Size rating (usually between 1 to 3 times its size).

However theoretically the ground COULD be entirely broken, converting the underground zone into a new open crater zone and causing everyone on it to end up flying and then Fall into it in their next turn.

In addition a character damaging (usually by landing in) a ground zone can also create a smaller crater without entirely destroying The Ground itself. Dealing injuries to the ground may create a new small pit zone a size proportional to the size/injury ratio of the damaged ground zone. The crater may also be a trip or edge hazard, count as rough ground and may function as a Ramp.

When damaging The Ground additional effects MAY occur. Some ground may hold hidden high pressure water or lava or other crazy stuff released on damage, but most commonly it might arbitrarily just kick up a Cloud effect of debris or dust into the zone or zones around it.

The Floor
The floor is much like the ground. Unlike the ground the floor will tend to have a lot less injuries, often only having between 2 to 10, and in the case of an especially fragile floor may even have less. Floors also typically have something else underneath them, usually a whole extra zone to fall into. So breaking them is a big deal.

If a single attack deals damage to a floor equal or more than half the floor's injuries it punches a hole big enough for the attacker (or the target or both for driver attacks) to fall through on their next turn (which they will baring a move action or special effect). This may leave behind a pit or edge type hazard as well as creating a new small zone over the pit.

Otherwise if a floor is completely damaged it is destroyed entirely breaking the whole zone boundary and causing all things on the floor to fall in their next turn.

Floors potentially come in pretty much all material types.

Fragile Floors
Some floors are Hazards and are especially fragile and will automatically become additional targets of any attack made in the zone on top of them, or roll a hazard attack against itself for a chance to break if any move or close range action is made on top of them.

Jagged Floors
Some fragile floors are also dangerous when broken, and once broken and passed through will make a slashing spikes type hazard attack on characters passing through them.

Transparent Floors
Some floors do not block LoS but may block falling or movement.

Permeable Floors
Some floors do not block objects of a certain size from falling or moving through them. This could be a particular character size rating (like Small) or even smaller objects, like Projectile Attacks.

Being Thrown Onto The Floor
Throw Effects can be used to throw a target onto or into a floor in an attempt to break through it. This is usually is only going to succeed if your throw attack deals a great deal of damage or if the floor has very little health. The default throw attack deals status effects and does not damage secondary targets, so it is only going to work like this if you throw people onto Fragile type floors.

Ramps! (Sloping Floors)
Sloped floors, and stairs and inclines and things, are basically a Ramp effect.

If you are Knocked while in such a zone, or thrown into a ramp zone you are then moved down the ramp to its end.

Some ramps may make hazard attack on you triggered by ramp movement in order to also add damage (usually a modified form of falling attack, from falling down the stairs for instance).

Steeper, slipper or crumbly ramps are also a minor zone Hazard triggered by missteps or movement (possibly only fast movement like Close Range Attacks, Run, Charge, and Speed actions).

Slippery Floors
Even level floors can be trip hazards.

They function as havingUndamaging Knock type Hazards possibly with the Oil keyword and an arbitrary slipperiness bonus. Trigger conditions vary but are usually Close Range attacks and Move Actions, in less serious slippery floors it will be limited to Speed/Run/Charge type actions.

Rough Floors
Are basically the same as Slippery Floors only they are lumpy instead of slippery. Rough floors are more likely to be damaging (a little bit) like Spiky Floors are.

Spiky Floors
Add Spike (a furniture type mentioned later) type effects to falling damage onto them, and in some cases may be a damaging Knock hazard similar to slippery or rough floors, only with actual damage.

Contagious Floor Damage
If you deal MORE damage to a floor than it has health (unlikely but possible) damage can and will spread to adjacent zone floors at random if they are the same “piece” of floor.

The Roof
The Roof is just like the floor only above you. It can have basically all the same traits as a floor, it may even BE a floor to a zone somewhere above you. Roofs not intended to be walked on are more likely to be fragile, have less max injuries, be sloped or other wise hazardous, or even transparent (everyone loves an atrium or sky light).

Damage to a roof can in some cases cause portions of it to fall onto zones beneath the roof (on the next turn). Typically each attack on a roof may cause debris to fall on one zone targeting a number of randomised targets in that zone equal to the damage to the roof. This falling debris basically makes a falling damage attack on the targets, but with keywords from the roof material.

Some falling roof debris is sharper or nastier and will get bonus damage, some is soft or light and will have a damage penalty, some falling roof debris will cause Cloud effects where it lands.

If a Roof is entirely damaged or has supporting structures removed or destroyed the whole thing may fall causing roof falling damage on All Targets in All Zones beneath the roof. This attack is then likely to add a Pin effect (similar to Grab) using the former roof's defensive keywords and bonuses to hold down any characters crushed beneath it.

A falling Roof can also damage a floor beneath it, which in turn might then fall on the next turn and damage a floor beneath that and so on and so on...

Walls
Walls work pretty much exactly like floors and roofs (especially if you are a Climb character). They are likely to have similar health to floors of similar materials. Walls are commonly permeable or transparent, even fragile to varying degrees.

Walls can be punched through in the same way that floors can, and this can be done using the free attack for attempting to move through an obstacle.

If all the walls holding something (like a roof) up are destroyed then the thing they are holding up will collapse potentially attacking things with Roof Collapse type effects.

If a wall obscures a portion of a zone you can attempt to take Cover behind it as part of a Short or Long Ranged action, doing so grants you a Cover bonus of between 1-3 to normal defence against ranged attacks originating from other zones.

Walls may also have Doors and Windows or be Curtains or Columns.

Curtains
Are a big soft wall made of cloth or something. They basically only block LoS. A heavy curtain may inhibit but not block movement and can be overcome with an Escape attack as if it were a Guarding character (and that attack can be your free attack on the curtain for attempting to move through an obstacle).

Columns
Are basically walls that don't really stop you moving around. But you can take cover behind them (treating them a bit like Tables).

Columns basically just exist to hold stuff up. If you break to many of them, then whatever they are holding up is likely to fall onto you, or ideally onto someone else.

Some columns could be especially Fragile and trigger attacks on themselves if you move too violently around them, much as Fragile Floors, Walls or Roofs do.

Doors And Windows
Windows
A window is a section of wall or other barrier that is different to the rest, usually either entirely open, transparent or more fragile or some combination of that. Windows are mostly good for looking through, shooting through and throwing people through. They otherwise work a lot like a wall, only they are really just a very small (often weaker) portion of a larger wall.

You can take cover through a window much as you do when hiding behind a table, wall, or column.

Doors
A doorway is just like a window though often just a little easier to pass through less fragile if closed and are frequently lockable. An object can be a door AND a window, or even be a door or a window with a door or a window in it! You can use doors as improvised weapons with Grab to try and jam your enemies heads in them. You can also lock, brace or pin them as barriers forcing their destruction or an escape action against you/the pin effect in order to open them.

Spikes
Are basically things you fall onto. They add their keywords and some additional injury effects to falling damage. Most typically they are hard metal weapons and add 1-2 injuries, but they come in many variant forms.

Caltrops
Are a basic move/mistep hazard that deals damage and possible crippling movement effects. They are pretty common and can even be acquired in deployable little baggies so you can spontaneously throw them on the ground. Some caltrop effects are only triggered by Speed actions or characters over a certain size threshold.

Edges and Ledges
One of the most basic mistep hazards is something you can just fall off or into. Normal edges aren't especially dangerous and will only trigger by deliberate movement or a throw. But as space gets narrower or otherwise slippery or something some falling hazards may trigger on speed actions, or even move and close range actions. In crumbling tiny ledge circumstances they may even get an attack every turn regardless of triggers.

When you are hit by an edge hazard you typically remain in the aerial zone “over the edge” and fall in your next turn. Often there is no means for a character to prevent that falling, but some character can and will do so as their action or part of their action.

Railings
Sometimes safety minded individuals put up a railing to prevent falling off edge hazards. However some railings are poorly maintained, and will cause a Deceptive modified attack with an arbitrary bonus (and an additional arbitrary bonus vs Clumsy and Idiot characters) and on a success will break and throw the character (or characters) off the edge.

In addition attacks, or thrown characters, can break railings just like walls, floors and other zone boundary furniture items.

If a Railing is broken the edge hazard MAY upgrade it's trigger conditions and bonuses. And if it does it immediately gets a free attack on all targets that triggered its conditions at the same time that it broke.

Some gothic architects favour Spiked railings. These function as Railings AND as Spikes for characters that fall onto them. Worse, if a character falls off an edge along with a piece of spiked railing, they are likely to fall on it and it functions as Spikes at the end of their fall as well!

Chairs
Are something you sit on. But are also an abstract furniture term for this rules set representing an object you can pick up and hit people with.

Makeshift chair weaponry is basically bonus free basic weaponry with material keywords. It can come in Big, Small and normal sizes. Sometimes it can be thrown, but usually has double range penalties or is limited to short range if you can throw it. Some particularly unsuitable chairs will have actual attack penalties.

Very rarely a chair may have SOME sort of small bonus or effect, but usually never, or only if the chair is similar to a related item the user applies that bonus through by virtue of a SKILL (so for instance a character that can throw a cloak like a net might be able to throw a stolen curtain like a net, probably with a small penalty).

Tables
Are another sort of furniture that represents something you can stand on or hide behind.

Hiding behind a table is something you can do as your action, or as part of a Short Range or Long Range action. Doing so may provide you with a Cover Bonus (arbitrary and usually between 1-3) to your normal defence. This cover bonus is ignored by Close Range attacks against you.

Jumping on a table is something you can do as one zone worth of moving (which can be part of a charge action if you like). This MIGHT trigger a hazard (usually a small knock hazard for being a fool trying to jump on table) but will also give you a +1 Bonus to all attacks (including social attacks) vs characters NOT standing on a table. While this does work for social attacks SOMETIMES standing on a table is considered rude and incurs a penalty equal or greater than the bonus. Other times it is just considered awesome.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Nov 02, 2011 6:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Originally vehicle rules hadn't made it into this project from the prior materials, but it's probably useful to include them, so before we hit skills, lets do the base Vehicle rules.

Vehicles and Steeds
Sometimes you want to ride on something that moves fast, like a horse or a motorbike or a blimp.

These come in two forms, things that have the Vehicle keyword and things that have the Steed keyword.

They share a number of mechanics.

Steeds
Now any character can grab onto another character anyway. But a Steed is a character particularly suited to being ridden on which is a bit different.

So if you have the Steed keyword on a character then the character is basically a horse or something, and they can be mounted and ridden around on. In addition they also probably then have some steed movement traits such as Max Speed, Accelerate, and Brake.

Vehicles
Sometimes you want to ride on something that is basically a mobile piece of Furniture. Like a cart, or chariot, or boat or blimp. (they may or may not be powered by having steed or other character pulling them).

Vehicles are official furniture type objects, but they also have the Vehicle keyword and a number of vehicle movement traits such as Max Speed, Accelerate, and Brake.

Even Bigger Vehicles
Potentially some vehicles will be the size of buildings and count as Capital class objects. Interacting with them works a lot like interacting with a building scale structure with floor, roof, wall and other internal furniture type components. But then the whole mess of furniture components and internal zones moves and does so using vehicle type movement traits such as Max Speed, Accelerate and Brake.

Mounting And Dismounting
You can mount or dismount a vehicle in your zone with one Zone worth of movement, and can do so as part of a Run or Charge action.

If you are mounted on a steed or vehicle and it is knocked then it falls over, but if you are mounted on a steed or vehicle and YOU are knocked then the knocking character may opt to throw you off the steed/vehicle dismounting you instead of just knocking you.

Vehicles as Mobile Zones
Very large vehicles act as mobile zones, but even a relatively small cart or chariot is best represented with one or more zones (internal zone, maybe a roof, maybe even an undercarriage). Especially if it's carrying a bunch of passengers.

It isn't especially hard to represent mobile zones, the zone is inside another zone, then it moves, and it's somewhere else along with all it's contents. But it's worth mentioning that it DOES happen and you SHOULD represent some vehicles as mobile zones.

Vehicles as Cover
Many vehicles provide potential protection to characters using them. Chariots and Carraiges and Boats and such have low walls, walls with windows and doors in and other means by which characters may use them to gain Cover benefits just as if they were tables. You can also potentially take cover behind a stationary vehicle much as if it were a table.

Vehicles as Tables
Horses, chariots and the roofs of carriages count as tables for mounted characters granting them the +1 “I'm standing on a table” attack bonus.

Vehicle/Steed Movement
Vehicles and steeds have special movement modes and rules.

New Movement Type Keywords
We already have “Walk”, “Swim”, and other movement modes. Vehicles introduce some variants like, Wheeled and Boat and Submarine.

Wheeled vehicles have walk type movement limitations, but might trigger certain movement hazards (especially rough surfaces) more easily or suffer hazard attacks gaining bonuses against them.

Boats work like swim, but only on the water surface.

Submarines work pretty much freely like Swim.

Speed
Steeds can move normally, vehicles cannot. Both however can instead use “vehicle movement”. While using vehicle movement a vehicle/steed will have a Speed keyword with an attached number. That number is the number of zones the vehicle/steed will move that turn using vehicle type movement.

This speed movement occurs during the turn of the character piloting the steed/vehicle.

Vehicle Facing
Generally characters and objects in this system do not have specific facing, they aren't pointing anywhere in particular. An object moving under Speed however DOES have a facing.

The Forward Facing of an object is determined (at any specific point during it's movement) based on a line drawn from the center of the zone it just moved out of (with Speed) to the center of the zone it is currently in. The "Front Arc" is then the 90 degree arc centered on that line. Any zone at least partially in that arc is "in your Front Arc".

“Back Arc” facing is basically the 90 degree arc centred on the same line projected backwards.

The two “Side Arc” facings are the two gaps in between front and back arc facings.

Edit : Had to noticeably meddle with the Front Arc definition because some actual consideration of geometry meant that it was always at least 180 degrees wide... So now it's different and more workable, if still kludgey.

Moving Forwards
When Speed movement occurs you MUST move FORWARDS. You can only move into new zones in your FRONT ARC. An attempt to do otherwise causes a Swerve attack against the vehicle/steed.

Swerve Attack Undamaging Hazard Single-Target Close-Range +X vs Speed(X)
+5 if moving into Back Arc
Swerve Attacks ignore Armour bonuses to defence.
On a hit the swerve attack causes the vehicle to end normal movement and Crash.

Pilots, Crew, Gunners, Captains, Passengers
Passengers are characters carried by a vehicle.

Pilots are passengers that actually STEER the vehicle. There is probably only one pilot. They may also control some vehicle weapons.

Crew are passengers that are required to enable steering and proper control of a vehicle, but don't actually do anything themselves other than perform “Crew” actions each turn in order to enable the pilot and gunners to function.

Gunners are passengers who get to opperate a vehicle weapon of some form.

A Captain is a special position of a character who gets to boss the pilots, crew and gunners and around. The captain doesn't really DO anything much on his own, other than getting to ride a vehicle that goes where he commands without any direct action costs on his behalf. But with appropriate leadership skills MIGHT be able to achieve something further eventually.

Steering Your Vehicle
Regardless of your own actions if a vehicle/steed has a speed rating it WILL move. As long as a conscious character is piloting it then they can determine its movement (within the limits of moving forwards) at NO ACTION COST.

However if a character wants to change the Speed of the vehicle then there is a new basic action they need to use, called Steer. Before we get to it though we need to cover...

Max Speed
This is the fastest Speed this Vehicle/Steed can reach by normal means.

Accelerate
This is the largest amount by which the vehicle can increase it's current Speed during a Steer action.

Brake
This is the largest amount by which the vehicle can DECREASE it's current Speed during a Steer action.

Min Speed
Min speed ratings are mostly used by some forms of flying vehicles that require a minimum speed in order to Fly. They generally will have another movement mode (usually Wheeled or Boat) that they default to at lower speeds. This handily emulates some minimal runway type take off requirements.

New Basic Action – Steer
As an action a character in the Pilot position on a vehicle or steed can opt to Steer it. This allows them to change the vehicles Speed rating at the beginning of their turn, before executing Speed movement for the turn.

Also if a vehicle/steed happens to Crash during a turn while a pilot was Steering it the pilot can (within certain limitations) determine what targets the vehicle crashes into.

That is all. But it is fairly important.

Attacking From a Moving Vehicle
Close-Range attacks from a moving vehicle against targets not on that vehicle always add Charge and suffer a -2 penalty (and add Drive-By) UNLESS made at the END of Speed movement for that turn.

Any longer range attacks add Drive-By and suffer a -2 penalty UNLESS made at the END of Speed movement for that turn, AND suffer a further -X penalty equal to the Speed of the vehicle unless made against targets in the Front Arc of the vehicle.

Vehicles with Front Mounted weapons operate the same as above, but cannot fire/attack into other arcs AT ALL.

Side mounted weapons operate the same as above but can only fire into their respective arcs.

Rear mounted weapons operate the same as above but can only fire into the rear arc.

Turret mounted weapons operate the same as above but can fire into any arc.

Crashing your Vehicle
A vehicle moving under speed that is Knocked, or hits a solid obstacle (that it doesn't break through), gets hit by a Swerve attack, or is otherwise hit by a hazard that specifically crashes vehicles is thrown up to its current Speed in zones in the general direction of it's forward arc, then suffers a Crash attack, and all occupants of the vehicle also suffer the same Crash attack. In addition a crash attack also applies against whatever obstacle ends it's initial crash movement, or any other obstacles it smashes through while doing so.

Crash Attack Applies material keywords of the surface hit Crash Throw Knock Single-Target Close-Range +X vs All
+2 if you crash onto a Hard material, -2 if you crash onto a Soft material.
Where X is the Speed of the vehicle when it crashed
Knock means that if this attack hits it will also knock you over, placing you in the Knocked state.
Throw scatters the vehicle and occupants around a bit on impact.
Crashing into jagged surfaces and Spikes works just like falling onto Spikes.
Crashing deals 1 normal injury. But also deals additional injuries equal to Current Speed -1. If a target is dealt more standard injuries than they have remaining then further injuries from this attack upgrade to special Sever injuries.

Ramming Attacks
A character steering a vehicle can opt voluntarily crash it into things during Speed movement. Doing so is generally a bad thing because the Crash applies to them as well. But there is a special Ram keyword, which effectively acts like the Driver keyword from Falling damage only for crashes, that lets you effectively crash into things without crashing yourself in some way.

In addition if a vehicle is crashing anyway and the pilot happened to be performing an actual Steer action that turn, they can, within the limits of the final crash movement, SELECT the target obstacle or obstacles that they crash into.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Character Backgrounds
When making a character in addition to determining their named status and their good and bad traits you also get to pick a Background for your character.

This brief section here is a preparation for the materials coming up in the Cultures and Peoples rules, which will be the first bit of the skills/items section to hit this thread.

Defining Your People
There will be different “Peoples” or “Races” in the setting. They will tend to have different physical appearance trends. And, since this is fantasy they may have some rather significant physical differences like hooves and wings and junk. You should refer to the Cultures and Peoples document and select or define the typical appearance and physical traits of your “People”.

Defining Your Body
Your character's personal appearance and basic anatomical traits are probably going to be the same as your “people”.

But, there is room for variation. Maybe your character personally lost a hand in a tragic industrial weaving accident as a small child, maybe your character, personally, has an abnormally gigantic bust line for her people, maybe you are among a small but hardly rare minority of blondes in a primarily chestnut haired nation, maybe you are a rare mutant freak and you were born with extra legs. Whatever.

The point is that you get to go BACK to the Cultures and peoples document and either pick the SAME traits as your general People traits, OR some additional or slightly different ones.

Defining Your Culture
Now you go to the Cultures and Peoples document, and this time you look at the cultures section. Your character grew up in some sort of culture somewhere. So you need to define a Culture, and possible even one or more Regions in which it (and you) originate.

Cultures are important as they define a set of typical Skills and Items associated with a people, and with your character's background. This will then in turn be used later by rules about item availability and training new skill sets for unlocking.

Note that your culture and your people might not be the same. You CAN belong to a DIFFERENT culture to your people. You totally can put in “Elf” as your People then be raised by the “Dwarf” culture.

Who Defines the Peoples and Cultures of the Setting?
Hey the notes here seem to indicate that players in control of individual characters get to build their own custom peoples and cultures for their backgrounds.

Is that intended? Well. Yeah actually. The default assumption is that you WILL do that. Now you COULD instead (or as well) have the GM build some Peoples and Cultures and then offer them to the players to select from.

It's just assumed that having players all invest their own player created custom background content is better than doing that, and that the mechanics required to support that... are the same ones best usable to also let the GM do it on his own if he insists on obsessive freak level control of the campaign setting.

But hey, if you WANTED to you could offer a limited list of totally pre-built characters for the players to select from. The system is relatively agnostic in this regard. It is designed to support a sensible level of player involvement and customisation, deciding to offer less than that isn't exactly hard to figure out how to do if you decide you absolutely must do it.

Skill Advancement
Once you have determined your good traits, background, etc... you now need to determine some starting skills. But to do that we need to know a bit about how the basic skill advancement system is going to work.

Skill Points
This game runs off a points based advancement system. Through a variety of methods you will gain Skill Points to spend. Skills will have a listed points value, you spend the points, you record the skill as learned and you can use it!

But it isn't THAT simple.

Zero point Skills
Some skills have a listed Skill Points cost of “0 Points”. These are zero point skills. They are not however ENTIRELY free.

Zero point skills are the “Buy one get one free” special offer of this skill point system. Specifically whenever you buy some OTHER skill... you can also take ONE Zero Point skill at the same time at no additional cost.
Why Zero Point Skills? Why?
Initially zero point skills were a way of giving out skills that were important but not especially fun. Combining the zero points cost with fairly strict prerequisites seemed like a good way of making sure that people went and bought fun skill manoeuvres but STILL got the basic “+X to attack” skills that they needed to invest in as a sort of boring Skill Point Tax without being motivated to JUST buy the boring skill point tax abilities...

Of course in time it became clear that the Zero Points mechanic worked better WITHOUT the strict prerequisites. It still is handy for “skill tax” skills, but also it is handy because actually the skill point system has really coarse granularity and having a skill point cost of less than 1 also turned out to be really useful.

In retrospect I am now uncertain that zero point skills were a good idea. But they are so entrenched at this point that they probably aren't going anywhere.
Unlocking Skill Sets
However you CANNOT buy a Skill, even if you have the points, unless you have “Unlocked” the Skill Set it belongs to. You can unlock skill sets as follows...

Unlocked Background Skill Sets
A starting character may nominate One or Two Skill Sets as “already unlocked” in their character's background training and experience.

If they only nominate one the second “Background Unlock” slot remains open and a Skill Set can be selected and declared unlocked with it at any time.

These background Skill Sets CAN match the skill sets preferred by your background culture, OR NOT. It does not matter.

Training A Skill Set for In Game Unlock
After your 2 background skill sets you then need to TRAIN new skill sets. You have one special “training” slot for a single Skill Set you are attempting to Unlock.

You may fill this slot with a Skill Set by “Training” for 1 Strategic Turn.

However you must have access to a “source” of training to do so. There are several basic sources of training.

1) You may count the preferred skills of YOUR background Culture as available for training at any time.
2) You may train with a character who already has unlocked the skill set (and who has at least one skill from that skill set). That character must spend THEIR Strategic Turn training you. They may be an ally, a local, or a traveller. Character's who aren't friends of yours may demand payment or something, and prices MAY be steep.
3) You may train from a “Skill Manual” written for the intended skill set. Such manuals are rare and pricey, and are most commonly available in regions with matching preferred Cultural skill sets.

In Game Unlock
Once you have trained a skill it is STILL NOT UNLOCKED.

When you have a skill in your Training slot you may attempt to unlock it. Skill sets list an “Unlock Requirement” that will typically be something you can achieve in combat, like “Defeating Enemies using Melee Weapons”. Which basically means you unlock the ability to use Swords better... by using Swords to defeat some-one first.

This may seem harsh, but in addition the skill sets have listed “Unlock Bonuses” these are small or short term bonuses, usually in the form of temporary access to skill benefits, that give you a bonus that will help you out while attempting to meet the unlock condition for the trained skill set.

So the full routine goes.
1) Gain access to source of training for Sword fighting stuff
2) Train for 1 Strategic Turn to put the Sword fighting stuff in your Training slot.
3) Attempt to use Swords to unlock full access to Sword Fighting stuff in future
4) Gain a bonus to using Swords while attempting this.

It is worth noting you do not HAVE to use your unlock bonus in order to qualify to meet your Unlock requirement.

It is also worth noting that if you DO meet your unlock requirement you INVOLUNTARILY unlock the skill set, moving it from your training slot to status as a permanently unlocked skill set for your character.

If you fail in an attempt to unlock a skill set you do not remove it from your training slot, and may try again later, however you may only benefit from your unlock bonus ONCE PER STRATEGIC TURN.

It is worth noting (again) there is only ONE Training Slot on your character, you may only attempt to unlock ONE Skill Set at once.

Once you fully unlock a skill set you may immediately spend any available unspent Skill Points on skills from that skill set.

Experience Points
Your character gains Experience Points for going places and doing things. (see “Personal Quests” for the dodgy details).

You NEVER gain experience points for just staying at home. Even if challenges and enemies come to you and you defeat them there. “Defence” of your home base is considered experience neutral for balance reasons.

You CAN arrange to gain experience points at home by specifically expending strategic turns attempting to achieve some goal that happens to be “at home” but then you are presumable actively doing something, and potentially risking things and being active rather than passively waiting for XP to drop from the sky into your home compound on the backs of ninja assassins (not to say ninja assassins themselves won't be dropping from the sky into your home compound, they just don't bring free XP with them).

Personal Quests
OK. Even without a spoiler. I'm fairly certain this bit is a bad idea but I'm currently running with it as “experimental”.

Each character nominates a “Personal Quest” a general goal they want to achieve like “Free The Working Classes” or “Fight Oppression” or “Defend The Kingdom” or “Rescue Beautiful Girls” etc...

Your character gains XP (usually between 1-3 points at a time, determined by the GMs preference) for achieving goals that work towards their Personal Quest.
This is So wrong...
Personal Quests are... kinda bad. The original intention is simple. You do it just like it you would giving out arbitrary XP rewards for doing “things in general” only the player has a little chat about how they “fought the law” or something and in the end it's functionally identical AND you get a little bit of fluff and character development thrown in.

Right?

Well... sort of. There is a bit of a worry that a personal quest like “Become Stronger” or “Defend the Oppressed” is better than say “Fight Against Specific Faction” or “Defend A Specific Subset Of The Oppressed”. But what is actually worse is when personal quests are in conflict or even just mildly exclusive.

Because really, we want to try and avoid too much taking turns at gaining experience. The personal quests thing wasn't intended as an obstacle, or worse, a means of encouraging inter party conflicts, and it CAN become those things, and can become those things... sort of easily.

Kludgey Fix?
Perhaps the simple fix is that the party of PCs can declare themselves allies, and while they get 1-3 XP for completing goals on their own Personal Quest they ALSO get a minimum 1 XP every time they HELP one of their close friends in the party complete a goal in THEIR personal quests as well.

Needs a list of personal quests
Yeah. I should really write up a list of actual personal quests to choose from...
Gaining Skill Points
So how DO you gain Skill Points?

Well. You gain them by spending XP.

You spend 1 XP... and gain 1 Skill Point.

Simple right?

Only, of course, there are some complex additional limitations!

Low Tier Skill Point Limits
You can only buy 5 Skill Points in total as a low tier character before you reach a special Skill Point cap limitation.

In order to buy between 6-10 Skill points you then need to have a place to live. There are specific structures you can buy, rent or borrow that grant this benefit. You only need to use and live in these residences WHILE you buy the skill points, losing access to the residence does NOT cause you to lose the skill points.

But again, at 10 points you hit a new cap.

From 11-15 skill points you now need to have access to a a place to live AND place to train. Again there are specific training structures you can buy, rent or borrow for this purpose, and again you only need access while gaining new skill points and you don't lose those points if you lose access to training.

Then, again, you hit a cap at 15 points.

To buy between 16-20 skill points you now need to have access to a place to live, a place to train and a source of Luxury. There are specific structures you can buy, rent or borrow to gain access to some Luxury. And as usual you only need access while buying new skill points and you don't lose them later.

At 20 Skill Points you are considered to have reached the end of your Low Tier or “LT” character career. And you then need to meet MT requirements to gain new skill points (and can start spending those points on superior MT skill sets).

Mid Tier Skill Point Limits
Starting from the beginning of Mid Tier in order to spend XP to gain Skill Points you must have a Luxury Point total in excess of your total MT Skill Points (you don't count the first 20 Skill Points from LT).

As with the LT skill point cap requirements your Luxury Points only need to be available while you are gaining new Skill Points, if you lose your Luxury Points the purchased skill points do not go away. But you WILL need to gain access to Luxury Points in excess of your purchased skill points again in future if you are going to buy any MORE Skill Points.

Luxury Points are commonly available from a large range of MT structures and services.

Since Mid Tier is currently barely even started the MT Luxury Point mechanics are largely irrelevant for now.

Starting Skills
There isn't ACTUALLY a hard “starting skills” mechanic.

You could offer players a selection of preselected character packages, or you can just give them a number of Skill Points for them to spend freely.

If you want to you COULD actually start from 0 Skill Points, but it might be better for even “ground floor” characters to walk in with about 2 to 3 Skill Points.

If you give out more than 5 Skill Points to a starting character it is almost certain that you should give them additional Background Skill Set unlocks, probably about +1 to +2 per additional 5 Skill Points.

Alternatively it would be fine to hand out preselected “kits” of starting skills, backgrounds and possibly items based on some campaign idea or multiple choice questionnaire or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

Items and Currency
Another basic means of gaining bonuses and new abilities for your character is through Items.

Items are fairly closely tied to the various skill sets and will be defined in detail along side them.

Further we already know a bit about how you wear them, hold them, equip them and generally use and mess about with Items.

What we don't yet know about items is where you get them from.

Coins
The basic Low Tier currency is the “Coin”.

Coins are “small change”, and 1 Coin is just an abstract unit of small change used for buying... stuff. Primarily stuff related to LT skill sets and of a general LT power level.

You can carry up to 3 Coins in a single Hand, Pocket or Backpack slot. There ARE some simple common items that let you exceed that rather ridiculously harsh limit. You can in fact buy or find a coin purse, and it's not a bad idea to do so.

Holes in your pockets
A general assumption of much of the wealth system in this game is that the world is just PACKED with absent minded owners, thieves, and other vermin.

Basically if you aren't carrying something there is a good chance it will be gone by the time you get back to where-ever you left it, and there is a hard limit to how much stuff you can carry (see the equip rules) that is in part justified by the idea that attempts to carry items in excess of that will lead to you losing them, spending them, or having them stolen.

In order to retain wealth, coins, and items beyond what you are personally able to carry you will need appropriate facilities at your home base in order to do so. Mind you at the LT level, especially through the earlier portion, keeping things you can't carry is generally a relatively minor priority.

Spending Coins
You can interact with other characters and give them Coins in return for items and services. However if you want to get a relatively sane price you should generally go to specialist sales people to buy your... things.

It may seem like a redundant thing to point out but shops exist and you can go to shops and markets in towns and cities and just buy stuff with your Coins.

Markets in towns and cities will have a range of available items based on local facilities, and most importantly the local Cultural preferred skill sets, and Ethnic Speciality items of the Region.

In addition markets trade with other regions. They will sell items from neighbouring regions at standard prices, but will not always have them in stock. Items from further regions may or may not be in stock, and will generally have increasingly large mark ups in price based on distance to their origin regions.

Finding LT Loot
Of course the OTHER way to get LT gear is to just “find” it lying around, commonly on the twitching bodies of your enemies. And it is worth noting that NPCs do in fact carry loot like clothing, armour, swords and bits and bobs, and maybe even a few Coins.

Wealth Guidelines for Coins
So how many Coins or Coins worth of LT gear SHOULD a character have?

The short answer is “I Dunno”.

The long answer is that the LT Coin based wealth rules are NOT intended to be especially limiting on character power. The hard limits on what you can personally equip and the basic action costs involved are intended to act as the hard upper limit for LT power from items.

In addition to that various requirements need to be met to use a lot of items, and the benefit of, say, filling your pockets with a golf bag worth of weapons, or some other set of items that don't require skill investments in order use them are marginal at best.

Still. You CAN use the Coin system as a hard limit on character wealth and power by items for a brief period and within specific contexts. A GM can be a hard bastard and try and create a sort of artificial “Penniless Street Urchins” phase of the game.

So if you assume that a 0 Skill Point character walks into the game with say, maybe 1-2 coins worth of gear to their name (about enough for maybe a shirt on their back and a small knife in their pocket), and a more sane “Ground Floor” starting character with say 2-3 Skill points is walking around with enough wealth for a shirt on their back and a magic battery in their pocket, or alternatively some armour on their back and a couple of swords in their pocket (about say 6 Coins). Then you only give out actual Cash at a rate of just a few coins at a time...

Then characters WILL have a hard time filling out all their equipment. Briefly. Regardless over time they are EXPECTED to be able to fill a lot of desirable slots with looting alone, cash will certainly be helpful filling the gaps, and sooner or later they WILL find a means of making a bunch of cash by carting wheel barrow loads full of “Used Swords” from the bandit lair back to the city markets.

But again, LT Coin based Cash and wealth is NOT intended to be a hard upper limit to character power, and the “we just sold 100 Swords or something and bought everything we could ever (for now) want!” moment is actually, well, pretty much INTENDED to happen.

NPCs Carry Things They Cannot Use
It is worth noting that we WANT NPCs to be walking around in the world wearing Shirts and Holy Symbols and junk even though you need to be a Named Character in order to use Torn Shirt and actually CARE about wearing Shirts and need to have actual Skills in order to care about carrying a Holy Symbol item, and so on.

We want them to wear and carry these things because...
A) We don't want NPCs to uniformly go naked when they can't get real armour just because they can't use Torn Shirt.
B) We actually want NPCs to be a somewhat ubiquitous source of emergency LT lootables that named characters can use.

So for now we assume the following.
A) NPCs carry and wear these sorts of things for cultural reasons. People wear pants because society tells them to, even when they can't use them for Torn Shirt abilities.
B) Hopefully the somewhat incomplete guidelines for appropriate NPC encounters and equipping NPCs from base facilities should suggest or enforce appropriate “unusable” items onto NPCs.

Other Things to Buy with LT Wealth
Coins are the currency of the masses in Mousetrap. That means that when peasants pay each other for, stuff, they generally pay in Coins. So you can also run around buying Chickens, Meals, renting crappy rooms at crappy Inns, buying second rate alcoholic drinks, and renting the services of second rate peasant prostitutes and stuff, using coins. Often using just 1 Coin at a time.

So Coins are also the intended currency used to tip the service staff with and generally pay for things you also DON'T care about. And yes this means that there will potentially be a small portion of game play where characters ARE forced to choose between fluffy actions like tipping the barmaid and affording a better sword. But not for very long because it shouldn't be much of your career before you have more coins than you can really be expected to spend on LT swords and there will still be plenty of barmaids to tip.

In addition you can even EARN the odd coin or two working at various mundane LT professions, like singing and dancing at a Tavern, begging on a street corner, or farming turnips. Or for that matter selling off LT items you don't want but, er, happen to come into possession of. Whatever.

Mid Tier Items
While Low Tier wealth ISN'T intended to be a hard cap on character power... Mid Tier wealth is intended to be a bit more of a formalised big deal. The Equip caps still exist but Mid Tier items are intended to be kinda cool.

Treasures!
The Mid Tier currency unit is “The Treasure”. You buy things with say, 1 or 3 Treasures or something.

Treasures are used to buy big expensive mid tier things like add ons to your luxury adventure palaces and MT level weapons and items to store inside them.

The physical nature of a Treasure can vary quite dramatically it can be a pile of gold coins (not “Coins” coins, those are small change, actual gold), it can be a valuable gem, a work of art, a golden statue, etc... Treasures can be small enough to carry in 1 pocket, or may require multiple back pack slots or even a heavy haulage wagon.

Treasures Vs Coins
Treasures are NOT interchangeable with Coins.

No amount of coins becomes a Treasure, even treasures described as a “heap of coins” or something are considered to be a different kind of coin like gold ones or something.

Nor can you exchange a Treasure for Coins, it's just too valuable to try and cash in for mere small change.

However since it is, somewhat, unreasonable that the superior Treasure resource shouldn't translate into SOME form of lesser wealth there is SOME capability to gain coins from Treasures, but it's through facilities you can build in your bases.

Bigger Holes In Your Pockets
Regardless of whatever size it is Treasures are... hard to keep. They tend to get misplaced, stolen or spent on frivolous things, just like Coins and stuff do. Unlike Coins what you are really going to need for long term Treasure storage is actual dedicated buildings such as Treasure Vaults that will safely store your Treasure stashes and potentially provide some bonuses on the side at the same time.

Mid Tier Items and Burn Out
Mid tier weapons and items as a general rule cost Treasures. But also as a general rule the larger part of their cost (in Treasures and otherwise) should fall instead to dedicated maintenance buildings that MT items spend most of their time inside of.

For instance Mid Tier Weapons MUST reside in a MT Weapon Vault of some form. And if they do NOT they stop functioning properly. Indeed they can only be used for ONE Combat Time event before “Burning Out” and requiring recharge in a properly maintained Vault.

When Burned Out many Mid Tier items are still, somewhat, functional, but will tend for most practical uses to default back to the most similar LT version of the same item.

Mid Tier Looting
MT looting is potentially complex and costly. MT opponents will likely have SOME cash Treasure reserves in their Vaults. They may carry some MT items on their adventures, (and store them in their Vaults) but those items are relatively low value in Treasures just on their own.

The bulk of an opponents MT Treasure resources are tied up in buildings. Barracks, Vaults, private bath houses and pleasure gardens. A certain portion of those treasure resources, simply aren't refundable.

But you CAN loot MT palaces, various rooms will have information about what you can loot and how you can loot it. Some rooms can simply be quickly robbed of some valuable components. Some can be looted with extended hard physical labour, some can be looted of less liquid assets that will primarily just give you a discount in attempting to set up your own version of the same room.

In general, especially in the case of defending against attack, or performing any kind of time limited raid, one should generally expect that MT encounters will not yield large amounts of Treasure in comparison to the amount of Treasure opponents have invested in their bases and careers in the past.

Low to Mid Tier Transition
LT characters CAN, probably will, and pretty much SHOULD acquire Treasures. There are SOME things they might like to buy with them, primarily related to the LT Skill Point caps. But in the longer run they will most want Treasures in order to begin (or refurbish) their first beginning MT base.

So LT characters should pick up a few Treasures, and by the end of their LT career should be sitting on a small number suitable to launch their MT career, maybe even holding one or two burnt out MT items for them to cash in or restore when they hit MT.
MT Items limited instead?
One option I had considered was to make MT items themselves significantly more expensive, possibly even pretty much unique and hard to acquire or create.

In that scenario robbing an MT sword would be a big deal, and the Treasure investment in it's Weapon Vault storage and maintenance would be a mere MT Treasure tax in comparison.

But I don't like a lot of the implications for the wealth system.

Possibly something like that might be reserved for Hight Tier items, should MT ever get near to completion.
Starting Items
Again, there isn't a hard “starting wealth” mechanic. LT Wealth limits are soft and relatively unimportant. You can give away a lot, or relatively little.

A 0 Point starting character should PROBABLY get at least 2 coins of stuff.

A “standard” ground floor 2-3 Skill Point starting character should probably get at least 6 Coins of stuff.

But, really, whatever, you could drop characters in with nothing, or with extensive piles of LT wealth. It doesn't really matter all that much.

It would be perfectly reasonable just to hand out starting items or kits of starting items freely and without too much concern for either equality or hitting any particular target wealth guideline.

Hell give a 0 Skill Point starting character a burnt out MT “magic sword” handed down by his family, it isn't actually going to hurt one little bit if you do so.
Does this work?
It seems fairly safe. You can't really break the LT wealth system because of personal equipment limits. You can't really break the MT system because of personal equipment limits and because purchasable Luxury alone doesn't advance you, you still ALSO need XP.

The Skill Advancement itself is more of an issue. Zero Point skills look like they work. Training, Unlocking and Unlocking bonuses... are possibly more hassle than they are worth, but otherwise don't have hard functional issues. Personal Quests are certainly questionable though, as already mentioned.

But the other big weakness is that this IS still a points based system, and there is no hard mechanic to actually enforce people to select sensible and appropriate skills or combinations of skills. So one big weakness, not especially evident yet, is that you CAN put all your skill points in the wrong places, and especially early in LT where you only have a few points to spend, that could be a big deal if they all went into something... not so great.
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Neo Phonelobster Prime
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Post by Neo Phonelobster Prime »

This could be somewhat delayed while I try to unexplode my computer...
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Good luck!

There's definitely some interesting ideas here, but I don't think I have any particularly valuable comments to make right now.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Do Zero-Point Skills scale, or are they binary things like D&D's weapon proficiencies?
Does the Zero-Point Skill that comes free with your regular skill purchase have to be related to the skill you actually bought, or can they be completely different?
This seems like another place changing the terminology would probably be more clear and provide a cleaner separation between the two concepts, but without knowing more about typical Skills I don't have any suggestions to offer.

I hope your computer recovery (and account recovery by the look of things) goes well.
Also, once the regular PhoneLobster name returns, you'll have to use this account as a super-powered alter-ego. It would be a shame to see such an awesome username go to waste. :tongue:
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Post by Neo Phonelobster Prime »

rampaging-poet wrote:Also, once the regular PhoneLobster name returns, you'll have to use this account as a super-powered alter-ego. It would be a shame to see such an awesome username go to waste. :tongue:
I'm lazy about old email accounts and passwords... so this actually might BE my new main account...

Especially since I just (partially) unexploded my computer and the mozilla profile is being VERY stubborn about being recovered. :bash:

Anyway.

Your question suggests a simple, but at this point entirely reasonable, misunderstanding.

Skills do not scale PERIOD. Skills have different prices, ranging from 0 to I think it might have been a 5 (I'll let you know when I recover my documents I guess) though most run in at 0, 1 or 2 points in cost. The price is somewhat indicative of either the value, or the intended encouragement to buy it. But the skill you then buy with that is just a flat (you used the term "binary") effect of some form, a bonus, a new ability, a change in keywords, something.

Sure sometimes (very very rarely actually) you go and buy "bigger version of skill you bought earlier" but this is not specifically related to or scaled off of the skill point cost at any time.

And no. Zero Point skills can be ANY you qualify for. In the earliest write ups they had stringent requirements, had to come from same set, would have specific text like "You must always select THIS 0 Point skill as your bonus 0 Point skill when selecting your FIRST actual skill from this skill set" etc... But at this point those sorts of requirements have been heavily cut back to the point of near extermination as the more free selection of Zero Point skills had more benefits than costs.
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Post by rampaging-poet »

Oops, I misinterpreted the cost restrictions as rank restrictions. Thanks for the clarification.
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Post by fbmf »

Neo Phonelobster Prime wrote:
rampaging-poet wrote:Also, once the regular PhoneLobster name returns, you'll have to use this account as a super-powered alter-ego. It would be a shame to see such an awesome username go to waste. :tongue:
I'm lazy about old email accounts and passwords... so this actually might BE my new main account...
I could just reset your Phonelobster password and then PM you with what it is.
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Post by Vebyast »

Phonelobster: now is the time to switch to a password safe. I recommend keepass.
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