Delayed Update for 2/22

Was supposed to be a very busy weekend.
Had three games planned and had to get the system playable for Monday.


Two games cancelled and one downgraded to online resulting in having a lot more time, but also resulted in me forgetting about posting.  Should set an alarm or something...


ANYHOW


The first game with the system in use went much better than expected.  The players caught on quickly and the system went through a functional combat.  I need to come up with a pilot sheet and maybe some counters to shift around to make things easy, but I think it's looking good.


Areas that need development.  Warp, aside from needing a new name needed to be written down and jump delays evaluated.


Salvaging needs minimal functioning rules.


Cargo space needs to be developed into minimal functioning rules.


Chases need to be developed into having slightly less bias towards ship agility and more bias towards skill.  I think I've already got a handle on this.


Player morale is good, I think they're looking at exploring their options.


Damage effects NEED to be written down.


I need to take better notes during play.


Gotta figure out why Google Docs didn't have the most up to date doc on another computer (the one with a printer) <--- VERY IMPORTANT


Formations 'worked'.  Haven't tried with PCs in a formation.


Game started off with a crit fail on a warp check followed by a crit fail on a notice check.  This was amusing but had us start with a pirate ambush.

Quick Update

After an unintentional total party kill when some skeletons apparently rolled really well and had perfect timing with a troll, my party decided (with no prompting of my own besides listing space with about 8 other genres) that they wanted to start a space game.


Therefore, I offered up my space setting.  So now I have to get it at it's basest level functional by Monday.


I guess there is going to be a LOT less video game time this week.  Also because I'm in two different day long games on Saturday and Sunday.  Time is not my ally this week, so I need to manage to play through one entire combat session by Thursday night.


We'll see if I can deliver.

Progress 2/15

Got myself a bunch of yellow notepads.
I love them, I can fit them in my back pocket and take em anywhere.
Great for spontaneous notes.  Now I just have to figure out that car ride home issue.

Started reworking my concepts of technology in the setting.  This was apparently a huge sticking point from one player who had to have realism inserted into a setting made for a cinematic game.  Anyhow, while I wont be going into Newtonian physics for him, I'm putting more thought into the hows and whys.

Got a good start on the hows and whys of faster than light travel, and how the tech behind it generally is what makes up most of future tech.  I'm working on the power source technology now too.

I also decided to add a group temporarily named 'spacers' to be all the rough survivalist folks living in shitholes in space.

Ruleswise I added a lot for Formations in ships.  Basically benefits and drawbacks for flying in formation.  In general it should be more advantageous to fly in formation if you are skilled pilots, but if you aren't you are going to lose a lot of options in combat for some defensive and offensive bonuses anyhow.

Formations also extends to escorts offering defensive benefits for the escorted ship.

I broke out a lot of the stats into averages for ship sizes and added more listing for ship equipment and the limits of upgrading ships and ship parts.

I'm looking at stepping through a sample combat sequence to understand where I'm lacking.  To be honest I should have been doing that from the beginning.  It's just playtesting 101.

Progress 2/8/2014

Made more progress.
Roughed out some general ideas for interesting new character weapons.
Expanded on ship equipment and damage effects (hull breach, fire, malfunctions)
Expanded on some of the Chase vs Dogfight rules.
Started gathering resources for ship character sheet.
Started sketching out thoughts for the ship combat map.

I'm beginning to think I should actually start mocking up combat rounds.  Possibly starting with fighters (super simple and easy to draw up) then moving to mid range craft which will likely be piloted by a full party as a crew.

From there I need to start investigating the effects of subordinate extras on wildcards manning stations.

I think I should also start considering the idea of 'extra' space ships and what that means in this combat system.  As it stands I think there might just be a base guideline of size ratio difference being an automatic extra or wildcard as far as damage is concerned and a guideline for true wildcards as getting the bennies while effective wildcards don't.

The problem arises that wildcards in fighters will be VERY vulnerable to a single or even two steps difference in ship size.  This hazard drops some when going up a size or two, but is still pretty harsh.  Perhaps I will suggest only extras pilot fighters.  That said, if you need to do a trench run, I want a decent fighter as an option.

If you haven't caught on yet, the majority of the work on this system is effectively replacing the vehicle system Savage Worlds uses (which I hate) and replacing it with my own 'fast, furious, fun' system.

Furthermore the fact that I use two Google accounts for this blog is really a pain.  Maybe I can hook this one up with Google drive and share it so I can work on the doc with either.

It doesn't sound like much work to me.  I feel like I could do more, but I console myself with the thought that I am doing any work at all.  Given I'm in 2 'live' games, 3 online games, a project on a team of cool people and trying to spend time with my significant other, I think I'm doing alright.  Though maybe after she get's through grad school I can take a LOT of time off just to work on this project...  Assuming it isn't done in 3-4 years.  Which I hope is NOT the case.

Progress Report

I've decided weekly progress reports to keep up with the work might help...

Still digging up random files, putting everything in one place synced with a cloud seems to be a VERY good idea now.  I'm using google docs which will let me work on my computer and it shall update automatically.

I rebuilt the edges, outlined some gear, moved in the ship stats, and added ship parts.  Not as much work as I honestly would like, but I only have myself to blame for that one.  My plans for the next week include more fleshing out of basic ship stats, developing the ship activities further and perhaps tackling some outlines for the actual setting portions.  It would also be nice to be done digging up numbers and have them all converted to the new document, but I have to go about dealing with converting one note files to a readable format.  I SHOULD be able to do that, but we'll see...

False Starts

I've done quite a few false starts in the interim.  Tried to cover the various exploits I've pursued, explain my distractions.

Hardly really matters if nothing gets posted.

After many false starts I've decided to work on a complete work and submit it.  Finally design something, finish it and submit it.

As such I am pursuing making my spaceship rules for Savage Worlds into a setting.  I think the biggest difficulty will be maintaining the steam, but we shall see.

I don't promise to do continuous updates on progress, but wish I could say I will.

Right now I'm at the beginning.  I'm recovering and covering old ground and putting it into one single document separated as one would an actual book.  I intend to keep all the ship rules, the general universal and social structure and the character rules.

After I get the rules into a playable state I intend to make working character/ship sheets as necessary.  Then I will be looking for viable play test scheduling.  I'm actually part of a group that is working on getting another Savage Worlds product out there and has a record of succeeding at those, so I'm hoping if they have a gap in their schedule I can mix things in.  Furthermore they probably have resources for art and advice.  This is looking pretty far into the future however as we have a lot of things to do on the old project and some fun activities as a 'just hanging out' group we like to do too.

I've also done one vital thing.  I'm using Google docs to back things up.  I have a bad history of losing hard drives at inopportune times.  Furthermore I have a vague concept of a special method of play testing that could be augmented with Google docs.


As shorthand for the rest of life...

I got fired from LucasArts over a year ago, got a new job that isn't really games anymore and am sad.
Rethinking my future path and how to go in that direction.
Played a lot of video games.
Still play pen and paper when I can, but mostly just here.
Also play on RPOL, but it's generally shit games.
Ran a superhero game on Skype and bombed it. (Rules good, GMing bad[big ego hit])
Attended Wasteland Weekend and met awesome people and did awesome things (huge ego boost)
Finally cleaned off my desk.

So yeah, life and stuff.

Space Combat System

So basically the last post didn't get it's intended result. While I did end up getting some work done, I actually ended up finally drawing out most of my combat system for a savage worlds space game. Mainly I didn't feel too great about the system they had implemented, so I drew up a different one. I feel like this one grants a lot more dynamic and interesting system for four plus players in one ship.

Roughly put, each system and facing on a ship has a different damage record. For simplicities sake I'm restricting the facings to fore, aft and starboard. If this seems too few, I'll switch things around and add a top and bottom. Also there is the core and system which can be targeted by another ship.

Attacking a ship is simply a matter of determining which side is facing you, then targeting a side or system based on that. Targeting a side facing you has no penalty, targeting a side at 90 degrees grants a -2, targeting a system is -4 and targeting the core is -8. Targeting the core is targeting the weak innards, while targeting the side is not caring if you hit the armor plating which will absorb a degree of damage based on the classification of ship and type of armor. Once the armor is gone, targeting the core is the same as targeting the side the armor was on. Damage can blow through the armor and into the core if the hit is strong enough to do more damage than the armor has health.

Systems follow a different set of health, each system is in one of five states, finely tuned, normal, damaged, disabled, destroyed. Finely tuned when damaged goes straight to damaged however, and does not grant in effect extra HP, it instead grants protection against malfunction and bonuses to managing its features, such as alternate ammo, granting extra power and whatnot.

The core is the squishy bit. Once you start taking damage there, you better hope you are wearing an environment suit. Each time the core takes damage it causes one of three effects, fire, vacuum and system damage.

Fire results in a chance of more damage, crew damage and general inability to repair in that area till fire is out. Putting out fire requires a repair roll, there are also automated systems which if powered will put out fire automatically.

Vacuum sucks people out into space. If you aren't in a vacuum suit, then you're dead, or a robot, but most likely dead. Repairs here require getting out of the ship and patching the hole. Nothing can be repaired in that section till the vacuum is sealed. On the bright side however, there is no ongoing damage. There are automated systems just like for fire, which if powered will automatically seal such breached parts of the ship.

System Damage means stuff starts breaking. If you're lucky it's only things like engines, guns or special computers. If you're unlucky that includes life support, power grid and generators. If life support or generators go out, you may as well have had a full ship breach into the vacuum, cause it's going to be a long suffocating death.

I've also established baselines for average ship capabilities. This means that if I want to have five destroyers come in and do something, I can either slightly modify the destroyer's capabilities or just leave them stock as I wish, and still be within a consistent ballpark.

Finally, I feel like I've come up with the ability to make all the necessary skills per role narrow down to two skills. This I feel is important because I don't want to force the players to invest extremely heavily into large amounts of skills, then find themselves screwed for the ability to do things on the ground, or during events inside the ship. Even better, most of the skills could be used on the ground as well.

Pilots have pilot and knowledge (Navigation). Pilot is used for chasing, and performing attack and evasive maneuvers. It helps the pilot set course and facing in combat. Knowledge navigation is used for managing extra power granted by the engineer and setting long courses, such as plotting jumps, getting used to new navigation systems, analyzing problems with navigation systems or knowing destinations.

Engineers use repair and knowledge (Engineering). Repair is used for repairing, enhancing systems and bolstering systems. Knowledge engineering is for diagnosing problems, identifying parts, systems or ships and for managing power.

Gunners use shooting and knowledge (weapon systems). Shooting lets you shoot accurately. Knowledge weapon systems lets you use special targeting, manage power and manage ammo types.

Science uses Notice and Knowledge (Astrophysics). Notice is used for scanning and identifying basic information using scanners, they are the eyes for this ship as space is big and ships are small. Knowledge astrophysics is just a name, it mainly applies to performing electronic warfare, allocating sensor power and marking targets.

There is no captain role. This means that any one of the four roles can act as captain. Really it might as well be just taking some social skills to be captain. When there are four people in a ship, you can't really waste hands on sitting there looking pretty.

Since there are four different roles, this means a few things. Firstly, odds are only gunners will be attacking, I tried to offset this disadvantage by allowing the science, engineering and pilot abilites that can either boost or penalize the shooting ability and defenses of the ship, and perhaps even boost or penalize the enemy ship. I'm very interested in how this plays out, and whether or not this will keep the players interested. One positive benefit I see is that if each player does only one thing, rounds may go faster as each player does not need to worry about positioning, attack and other abilities and modifiers, just one particular role.

Second Introductions

So I've been silent for a while. I have been debating what to post on. At one point I considered doing another musing on the definition of fetishize, but decided that A: It might not even be a real word and B: it wasn't too relevant. Then came the debate whether or not to introduce the other project I have been working on.

While I am frustrated at not finding a system that can do everything I want, I do enjoy playing other systems. They all have their purposes, each person created their system in frustration over what was not available. I currently have a short term project using the Savage Worlds system. Short term as in, when we finish our current campaign I am going to suggest I host one. Of coarse, I cannot leave the system unmolested. It's really not in my blood. I want to run a space campaign, with a focus on the entire party in one space ship, cooperating in combat and their epic travels through space to various exotic locales.

I am not satisfied with the vehicle combat system as I have been exposed, especially if all the party members are going to be in the same vehicle. Therefore, I am going to rewrite vehicle combat for space. I also have had a little bit of fun so far setting up a stage for the whole thing to take place in. Mostly human dominated, leaving room for one or two random races for a particular player who doesn't like playing humans (I'm giving like that, but he's going to have some serious disadvantages.) And a bunch of politics already planned out.

This has been consuming what inbred second cousin of attention and focus I have lately, and I think I'm going to post on it further until I have some greater advancement in my full system progress.