Blaster & Hardpack: FKR scifi

My buddy James released his Sword & Backpack: Reforged yesterday and I decided I was happy enough with scifi hack to go ahead and release it. This is my attempt to make a rules-lite, FKR scifi game with just enough meat that you could play out whatevercomestoyourmindversion of scifi. 

Check out James' awesome game that inspired mine:
 https://jamesthook.itch.io/sword-backpack-reforged

Mine holds very close to his but adds more scifi elements to the game and some kickass amazeballs artwork. ;-) It is also free, so take a gander and let me know what you think:
https://mattjackson.itch.io/blaster-hardpack

Coming soon... (for realsies)

 

Look at that alien thing on the last page, so awesome looking, I love it!

Still in the editing phase but a scifi hack of a game written by a friend, having a great time adapting this one! Coming soon....Blaster & Hardpack!

Blade & Haversack

Long time, no speak. Been busy, living life, working, etc. Not much time left for gaming stuffs. Recently chatted with a fellow I have known for a long time named Talon and he was telling me about his latest release, an RPG based on the old Sword and Backpack system, a decade old game that espoused the idea of rules-lite and GM-on-the-flyism that we all loved about Dave Arneson style gaming. Talon (link) took the system and created a d20 based setting called Arsenic & Old Lace (link) which I really liked. I have always thought S&B was cool, but as it is d20 based I never was really on board with it, my love of the d6 was just too powerful. So an idea was born while I sat bored at work. Thus, Blade & Haversack was sparked. Talon later informed me that had written Sword and Backpack Twin Cities Edition (link) for that exact reason! I took a slightly different angle, but still utilized the elegant d6 for my version. So, here you go, Blade & Haversack! 

The below is just a sketch, barely thought out in-between goings ons at work last night, but I think there is enough to use. I have been doing tiny single-journal games when I have 15-20 mins here and there the last week (may post about that later) and I think this is just about the correct 'weight' of a system to use for this sort of adventure. 

Blade & Haversack

Roll 2d6, roll a 6 or higher to succeed for Average challenge (or tasks), 9 for Hard, and 11 neigh Impossible for uber hard challenges. If it is related to your profession (be it fighting, trying to swindle an alien, casting spells, turning undead, piloting your space cruiser, etc) you roll an extra d6 and only use the two highest die rolls. If something seriously hinders you, roll 3d6 but only take the two lowest die rolls.

In a successful challenge (including combat) the obstacle will take 1 damage/stress point. Some instances will do additional damage/stress (large weapons, creatures, spells), the GM has final say. Some equipment will absorb damage (armor or special defenses). Enemies (or obstacles) will have a number of  Stress Points, when all are exhausted by damage the enemy is dead/defeated. Treat obstacles in the same manner as ‘enemies’. A secured treasure chest may be secured with a Tough Lock [ ] [ ], thus it would take two successful checks to overcome the lock’s SP.

Example character:

Choad [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Feral scavenger
Ruger 9mm - 4rnds
Sword
Flare
Net

Example enemy:

Gath Necro [ ] [ ]
Ghastly Death Wizard
Black Blade of Doom
Special:
Death Blast: Black energy shoots out, if target hit it ignores all armor and induces a Hard challenge or target becomes paralyzed for 1 turn.

Fixing OSE To Hit Bonus progression

If you have spent more than an hour talking to me about OSE, you undoubtedly know that I hate the plateau effect

To explain, here is the typical Fighter progression in OSE. Notice how our combat based character gets exactly zero better and actually hitting things for 7,999 experience points? At this point he gets better to the magnitude of 2 points. Then, they need to score another 55,999 xp to get better. This always drove me crazy. Your character plods through the dungeons for days or weeks, never really getting better and the SUDDENLY he jumps up by TWO points. I cannot think of one thing that goes through three (or four, or five) iterations and then goes up by two points. Shouldn't there be growth by one point somewhere along the way??? Just fails to pass the common sense test for me. 

Now, about this time some well-meaning asshat grognard is going to come along and explain how hit points increasing is a measure of their ability to get better in combat, or some other halfbrained idea.  And YES, I know the historical reasons as to why it goes up by two or three points every three or four levels. I get it. Whatever. This is my blog, so hop off. 

This method is dumb. Always has been dumb. Period. Full stop (for you old people like Brandon).

My friend Steve came up with the mathy behind this better idea. I opened up Affinity Publisher and fixed the original OSE page below. Thanks Steve!

Now, your favorite fighter can not suck at second level and actually show he has learned some fighting stuff when he killed those 100 goblins! Look at that!

I also did the cleric, original:

Better:

Thief, original:

Better:

I will continue to work on these and post more classes soon. 

ICRPG - Star Wars!

I have found a new love for ICRPG, mostly from watching Kane's Kiln videos on YouTube. If you want to understand how ICRPG runs and works, I highly recommend these videos. Certainly changed my thinking on the game. Above is the KX model droid I made last night for the game.

I am going to be running a small game, what I call a mini-series, for a friend of mine set in the Star Wars universe, ripping off of Solo a bunch for the general concept. I will be using many of the ideas Kane discusses in his videos. One I particularly really want to give a go and see how it plays out is using art instead of maps in the VTT. 

Now, hold on. I know what all my OSR peeps out there are saying. What?!?! No map, Matt?? How??? What the fu...??? If you watched this video: https://youtu.be/hSD4CgY-yDM  there is a moment where Kane uses an image of a town and has the player move through the town, consulting with merchants here and there looking for Rings of Power.

Not finding them, he pushes on to another merchant.

Not finding them still, he pushes to a third merchant

The thing I really like about this is that you can convey a theme, atmosphere, or feeling for a location through artwork far better than a map. This works for encounters too and can really set up a scene beautifully. For an example, look at this amazing artwork he found online to use for an encounter at a waterfall.

I know what my OSR grognards are already thinking; "But..but...the tactical positioning...yadda yadda". I get it, I thought the same thing at first, how do players move around the map, how do you measure distance, range, etc. What it comes down to is "Does that really matter?" or does the dynamic feeling of the image matter more? Depends on your style of game I guess. 

Me personally, I really like the use of that image, and players can still drop their tokens/minis on there and move around. I do not see how the differences in measurements across that image would make that much of a difference. IMO if you are measuring inches on the map and determining if characters can do something based on a difference of a few inches or a foot....that sounds less than exciting, but maybe that just me. 

Another example of atmosphere being conveyed in ways that a map probably never could. I am actually not sure how one would draw a map of this location!

For example:
old school style
Player: I want to blast that ghost with my Fireball of Spookblasting spell!
DM: (gets out ruler, measures distance) Sorry, the range on that is 15 feet, and that ghost is 16 feet away.
Player: ....bummer

ICRPG style:
Player: I want to blast that ghost with my Fireball of Spookblasting spell!

DM: Looks like you are in Near range, blast that sucker!
Player: (happily rolls some dice)

I have always been a little loosey-goosey with the nitpicking of rules anyway, so I am starting to think this fits my style of GMing anyway.

A couple other interesting locations you could use that would be difficult to use in a map form and still get the atmosphere and feel of the place:

....on Thieves

I have never been in the party of 'there is something wrong with the thieves class' but upon reading James West's recent blog post I began to think about it.

After an initial distaste for his idea of rolling a d100 for each Thief Ability initial score, I actually came around and really liked this idea. This would create wildly different and dynamic thieves from the outset, making each one unique. I would include Hear Noise, deviating from the d6 roll (which is weird anyway since the rest are d% rolls). 

Now how to handle progression? Lookin at BECMI and BX, the thief goes up by an average of 26 points per level gain. (Side note, weird how we have that damn to hit plateau in the rules but here thieves get better every level....what gives Gary?) Anyway...

So what if we take their Dexterity score, add to their Intelligence score, and that is how many points the character gains per level to increase their Thief Ability scores. If we use an average of 11 for each score, we are just slightly below the points gained in the original system. As we likely are starting off better initial scores, we are most likely ahead of the terrible initial scores in the original game.

What are your thoughts?

Death & dismemberment

Yeah, I know, this isn't breaking any new ground here but I felt like our game has become very, very deadly. I thought perhaps death is becoming boring and I should do something about that. So, this is my attempt to cobble something lite, flexible and easy to use in-game. This is also hobbled together based on lots of other sites such as Robert Fisher, Trollsmyth, Blood and Guts.

DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, & LASTING WOUNDS

When one of the following occur, the player will use the table below to determine the result. If the damage would drop a character lower than 0 hit points, those additional points of damage are added to this roll. Example: Bob takes 7 points of damage while only having 3hp, leaving 4 points extra. Bob's player rolls 2d6 on the table below but adds 4 to the total of the roll to determine the result.

Note that most NPCs, mooks, or low level monsters will NOT use this table.

When to roll:

• When an attack reduces a character to zero or less hit points
• When a character suffers additional damage after already being reduced to zero hit points
• When a character falls more feet than their level times ten, example: Bob is 2nd level and he falls 30 feet, he would take 2d6 damage, then roll on the table below even if he were not reduced to 0hp

Roll 2d6 (add a number equal to any additional damage after the character is reduced to 0hp):
  2-3   no additional effect
   4     stunned (no furthers actions this round)
   5     knocked down & stunned for d6 rounds
   6     bleeding badly, will bleed out in d6 rounds unless treated
   7     broken ribs, d6 weeks to heal
   8     1-5: broken limb bone, 2d6 weeks to heal naturally
          6: eye removed
   9     1-4: crushed limb bone, 3d6 weeks to heal, will not fully heal naturally
          5-6: eye removed
  10    severed limb, will die in 3d6 rounds unless treated
  11    mortal wound, will die in 2d6 rounds unless treated
  12+  instant death

Any roll of 6+ has a 50% of permanent scarring, which can reduce Charisma. Additional side effects may be caused by wounds such as a leg never fully healing and having their movement reduced; a crushed arm may not be able to wield a weapon but could hold a shield. DMs will determine any additional side effects based on the severity of the attack.

As to be expected my players frowned upon this....so, I guess I will just keep killing their PCs instead of giving them a second chance at life....  ;-) 

OSE: Movement, Encumbrance & Initiative

Before our session Thursday, I wanted to update the players on a few rules updates (inclusions really) that I had not previously been to stringent on. Here I will gab about them for no other reason than this is my blog. ;)

Movement (and therefore encumbrance). I recently listened to a play report that included a dungeon battle in 5 foot wide tunnels. During the battle, the width of tunnels and the movement of characters came into play in a big way. Marching order in a 5 foot wide tunnel, where it would be very difficult to squeeze past the leader to fight the bad guys, it very important. I realized I had been very loosey-goosey with this and allowed the players far too much leeway in moving around in combat. This brought up two distinct points we needed to discuss:

1) Encumbrance. I had not really been tracking this at all, relying on the players (and me) to keep an eye on reality or carrying an asston of stuff. I have decided we will be using the Basic Encumbrance rules from OSE. Essentially I will limit movement to the armor worn listing as the group enters a dungeon/adventure, once they start carrying stuff, we will take a closer look at things. As the change between with-treasure and without-treasure is quite different especially for those in heavy armor I expect to have a direct effect on play. So movement will be based on the Option 1 rule for encumbrance below:

2) Movement. I never really focused on this in combat, and many times this will still not really come into play. Combat tends to be close and fast with characters only having to move slightly but in listening to that actual play I realized the I have been too loosey-goosey on movement as well. Moving forward I plan on being much more strict on movement and actions. Players will have two options:     

1. Normal movement with a single action taken at any point during that move
2. Sprint, moving twice their normal but no other actions.

The reason this is important is that it could have a major impact on situations where movement is limited. In the image below Olwen is facing off against a mounted rat and two giant rats. Brad and Usse are nearby and want to help. Last session the team loaded up their friend Brad with plate mail, a shield and sword, so his movement is 20' for combat, that is four squares given the 5' squares in the map. Usse though is a much more lean warrior, carrying only a pair of daggers. 

If Brad's player moved him his full move, he would be positioned here (image below), and I would likely allow him to attack the diagonally connected square with the giant rat. However, now Brad is blocking the hall because squeezing past a character engaged in combat in a 5 foot wide tunnel is difficult. So, because Brad is weighted down and armored up and this impacts the faster, less armored party members. 

Brad might have chosen to double his move so he could get into the next square, though he would not have been able to make an attack at that time. Life's about choices. 

I am hoping this leads to some interesting situations where the players' decisions on equipment, placement of the characters in the marching order, etc end of having tactical implications on the game.

3) Initiative. Previously, and use ease of use, I had simply had each side roll once and do a group, all or nothing initiative. Last night I switched to one roll for baddies and then individual for the players. I will likely stick with this as I feel it is easy to track in combat (if I somehow get ten players maybe I will rethink this). When fighting either two distinct groups of baddies, or we have an encounter with minions and a BigBoss baddie, I will probably roll separate initiatives for the baddies. Players can add any benefits from race/class/abilities to their initiative roll.