Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
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Solomoriah
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by Solomoriah »

Back to front... read Iron Falcon to understand the Morale rules, or wait for me to import them.

Sorry that Advanced, Expert, Basic is confusing, but it tickles my fancy.
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TardisCaptain
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by TardisCaptain »

I was also going to ask about the skill system. I have ideas, but I want to see what path you want to go down before throwing my ideas against the wall to see what sticks.
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teaman
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by teaman »

A first piece of artwork for the Sci-Fi project, if you like it. Here's the b/w and a color one as well.
explorer_bw.png
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TardisCaptain
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by TardisCaptain »

Wow, very nice.
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teaman
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by teaman »

TardisCaptain wrote: Wed May 06, 2020 5:28 pm Wow, very nice.
Thanks for the kind words! Have a great evening.
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Tazer_The_Yoot
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by Tazer_The_Yoot »

That's very traveller-esque, in a good way. I like it. I'm excited about this project.
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teaman
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by teaman »

Tazer_The_Yoot wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 2:58 pm That's very traveller-esque, in a good way. I like it. I'm excited about this project.
Thanks for the good words Tazer! Hoping the project goes well also.
Teaman is the sole proprietor of Sharp Mountain Games at roll20 and DTRPG

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Solomoriah
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by Solomoriah »

One of my key goals in creating this game is to maintain "numerical compatibility" with Basic Fantasy RPG, and, to a lesser extent, other OSR games. I want GMs running Basic SciFi to be able to cherry-pick monsters from any game and recast them as alien creatures with as much ease as possible.

To allow this, the game needs to present characters more or less comparable to Basic Fantasy characters. If you've read the sketchy rules I've already published, you've seen that this game is a bit easier on the characters, allowing them to start with more hit points (for example) while trimming their higher-level advancement to compensate; the thing is, I can do that with confidence precisely because I have a good feel for how combat works in BFRPG, helping me to understand how to nerf it "just so" without removing lethality and risk entirely.

Another goal is to provide a character class creation mechanic. My actual plan is to create this mechanic first, then invite contributors to help me define "core" classes like Soldier, Pilot, Engineer, and so on. But Basic Fantasy has no such mechanic, nor do most OSR games (in fact, if there are any that have such a rule, I don't know about them). So the very first thing we need to do is to define such a mechanic.

I intend to start by "deconstructing" Basic Fantasy character classes. I'm going to ignore races for now, but in a complete game races need to "count" toward advancement costs as much as classes do, so I can't put it off forever. Still, we have to start somewhere.

Let's assume that a new class will be created by choosing a set of skills or proficiencies, each of which has a defined cost, and adding those costs up. The result is what it costs that class to advance to 2nd level; we would then use a table of multipliers to figure out the higher levels. Simple enough, eh?

In BFRPG, there are basically three tiers of Attack Bonus advancement: Fighter, Cleric/Thief, Magic-User. Let's call this skill Combat, and say that the three tiers are Basic, Expert, and Advanced.

There are also three tiers of hit dice advancement. Let's just call that "skill" Hit Dice. No, Basic SciFi won't use this rule, but it will help us to deconstruct BFRPG's advancement, so bear with me.

There are three categories of weapon proficiency: Fighters and Thieves who can use anything, Clerics who can use about half of the weapons, and Magic-Users who can only use two.

Finally, and most confusingly, is armor "proficiency." Fighters and Clerics are obviously Advanced, as they can use any armor. Thieves can only use leather, and magic-users can't use anything; these last two don't sound like Expert and Basic to me, they sound like Basic and None, that is, no skill whatsoever.

SO, a Fighter has Advanced Combat, Advanced Weapons, Advanced Armor, and Advanced Hit Dice. Let's assume these four proficiencies are more or less equal; given that the Fighter needs 2,000 XP to reach 2nd level, each must cost 500 XP.

Now we have costs to work with. If Advanced is 500, Expert is 250 and Basic is 125. That results in the other classes working out this way:

Cleric: Expert Combat (250), Advanced Armor (500), Expert Weapons (250), Expert Hit Dice (250)
Total: 1250, leaving a remainder of 250. So Divine Magic must cost 250 XP. Not sure if that's Advanced Divine Magic or Expert Divine Magic, but we can leave it at that for now.

Magic-User: Basic Combat (125), No Armor (0), Basic Weapons (125), Basic Hit Dice (125)
Total: 375, leaving a remainder of 2125. Ouch. Arcane Magic is expensive. It would make the math work out better if "no armor" were considered "Basic Armor," leaving a neat and tidy remainder of 2000 XP, but bear with me:

Thief: Expert Combat (250), Basic Armor (125), Advanced Weapons (500), Basic Hit Dice (125)
Total: 1000, leaving a remainder of 250. Thus, the full set of thieves' abilities costs just 250 XP.

Deconstructing the existing classes is obviously somewhat messy. If I were to build a system like this for use with OSR games, I'd have to revise the pricing of Arcane Magic just to make the double/quadruple advancement work. Further, I'd really like to break down the thieves' abilities, so they could be acquired separately, but that has the effect of making them pretty cheap.

However, we are (fortunately) not building such a system. Creating classes for BFRPG will remain a black art for now. What we are doing is getting a feel for how a character class creation system should work for our Basic SciFi game, and now I feel like I have some ideas.

More later, after I digest this.
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burgerbabylon
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by burgerbabylon »

cyborg.png
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alien.png
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A little more sci fi art for this project if it's useful at any point.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Basic Scifi Role-Playing Game

Post by Solomoriah »

Very nice, thanks!

BB, please email me the name by which you'd like to be credited. solomoriah@basicfantasy.org
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