New Testingstan

Here's a thread to discuss game mechanics in general.


I'm going to start with a question/idea that's been on my head for a while now :


It's been pretty obvious for a while now that I'm a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, and I've been trying since I was in high-school (though not really hard) to create a relatively generic pen and paper RPG system adapted to post-apocalyptic settings.

Basically, the idea would be to use a core set of rules for generic things (combat mechanics, survival rules, crafting/repairing/other perks, etc), with additional modules the players could mix and match for different kind of scenario : radiation poisoning rules for Post-Nukes scenarios ; rules for Zombie settings ; or other, weirder things for the weirdest kind of Settings/Apocalypses.


The problem I've always had with that (past the fact I've never been able to play PnP RPGs much to get the necessary first hand experience to conceive a good system), is that I want a system complex enough to simulate all these things that make Post-Apocalyptic settings so specials (all the survival aspect, the unforgiving combat mechanics, and so on and so on ), while at the same time wanting a system that needs the least amount of dice rolls and calculations/computations : because I like my play-sessions to be relatively fast paced, and the problem I had with DnD was that 4/5 of a game was spent doing calculations, searching through tables and all that tedious unfunny shit.


So, I was hoping for some discussion about that.



The first question I have is :

How does one get around creating a relatively flexible combat system (integrating hand to hand combat, melee weapons, firearms, explosives or even the more exotic stuff like energy weapons or even weirder stuff [1]), while keeping down the math/dice-roll aspect down to a minimum.

Also, I think it'd be cool if the damage mechanic was relatively realistic : a bullet doesn't do the same kind of damage if it hit a leg or an arm than if it hit the sternum, the head or even one's genitals. But such an idea has the potential to get really too complex really quickly.


Here's what I thought would be closest to what I want :

So, the idea is that the body is roughly subdivided into two different kind of areas : “limbs”, and “vital areas”.

A basic human has four “limbs” (two arms, two legs), and two “vital areas” (the torso and the head).

Each part has the different “harm states” : unharmed => “flesh wound” => serious wound => “dead”(for vital areas)/”severed”(for limbs)

Each limb/vital area has an individual amount of “HP” which get “ablated” depending on the damages they received, and depending on the harm state of the various body parts the character's stats are affected.

The difference between a limb and a vital area lies only in the fact that once a limb gets destroyed, it's just considered “severed” (to the game-master to decide what that mean in practice), while for a vital area it means death.

The idea would be for such a system of limbs and vital areas to be generalized to every creatures (even robots). Some creatures could even have no “vital areas” and would need for each for their body parts to be destroyed to die. I think it offer interesting opportunities as far as monster creation goes...


To save dice rolls with the combat mechanic, here was my idea :

On an unprotected target, you do only one “dice-roll” per attack. Depending on the kind of weapon the calculation will not be the same (a single shot weapon isn't handled the same way an automatic weapon is, or like a club or a grenade is). The result of that dice roll tells if the attack hit the target, and where (some weapons may touch only a specific body part, or all of them, or some). Then the hit areas take a set amount of damage.

On a target protected by some kind of armor, you need another dice-roll which determine how much damages the protection absorb, and how much are transmitted to the target. Depending on the type of protection, the calculation isn't exactly the same : forcefields may be impervious to any attack under a specific amount of damage, after which they fail and the target is left unprotected ; while armors just absorb a portion of the damages until they break, then leaving the target unprotected.

To the game-master to decide what kind of protections are available in the setting – the rule to create armors and protections should be relatively flexible.


The real idea to save dice rolls is that the “to-hit” dice-roll, depending on the proficiency of the weapon user with the weapon, and depending on some factors (range for ranged weapons for example), each action under a certain “difficulty level” is assumed to be an automatic success.

Like, someone with a “master” level in “handguns”, and under normal stress conditions, will never miss his target under a certain distance. However, if he's under stressful conditions, or if he's ill or something, he may have to do a dice-roll, with the malus coming from his current condition applied to the calculation.

On the other hand, if you want to hit something that's behind cover with a weapon that's line of sight only, the action is an automatic fail. You'll either have to use a weapon that do splash damage (like a grenade), destroy the cover, or just get the target to move out of cover.


The idea being that all these calculations are always just sums and substractions of integers. No multiplications or divisions. This to save time for the people playing without a calculator.

Basically, you'd need just a flowchart where you enter the situation's parameters, and you'd need to do only some select dice-rolls depending on the situation.




I hope I was clear enough. Can people with more experience than me on pnp rpgs give me their input on these basic ideas ?






[1] : I had this idea of the "nano charge/grenade", which unleash a swarm of nanites on the target (be it a creature, a robot, or inanimate objects) which turn it into dust down to its molecular components - the funny thing being that depending on the target that dust may be pretty volatile and ready to explode at the slightest provocation

Nearly every single thing you opine over is available in GURPS, which also fits the bill of "core mechanics with additive modules for increased fidelity/complexity".

This isn't being dismissive or snooty, I'm seriously suggesting you get a hold of some GURPS books and take a look.

Good idea. even better considering it's the thing that influenced the original Fallout's game mechanics and I loved that shit.


How heavy is it as far as calculations / dice-rolls goes ?

For the most part, the calculations are intensive at character creation, but from what I understand - bearing in mind that I'm not really that experienced with the system's full measure of complexities - it's mostly resolved by a roll of 3d6 with an attempt to aim below the relevant ability/skill score for a given category. Much like the ability check system for AD&D.

It's just recommended that you look at what's needed for your campaign, rather than at every part of the system.

Yeah, looking at a list of available books for this and that, it seems there's shitton of the stuff.

There is an absurd number of splatbooks, but Sandman is correct re: calculations. Character gerneration--and later on, spending XP--is the mathiest part of the thing. After that, you roll 3d6 dice and attempt to get underneath your skill, plus and minus modifiers. Here's a quick and dirty example--the values may not be accurate but the premise is.

I shoot my gun. My dex is 16, and my gun skill is trained to "Dex +0". I must roll underneath 16 on 3d6
My target is at long range, so I take a -2 penalty, and must roll under a 14.
I have spend a turn aiming the gun to get the Rifle's aim bonus of +4, so now my target is 18.
He's running, which makes him harder to shoot, so I take a -2 penalty, and my target is now 16 again.
I roll a 12 on 3d6, which hits, so now I roll my rifle's damage, and the dude is fuckled.

All skills and things like that are pretty much based on attributes--as in, your ranks in a skill are described as "Attribute plus or minus modifier"-- and the average "Professional level/can do this for a living" skill training is roughly around 12 (IIRC). So if someone has Int 10, they would need to train the skill up to Int +2 in order to, as an example, make a living as a mechanic (assuming the skil is int-based), or somesuch.

That sounds pretty cool. Now to find people with whom to play a PnP RPG to test the system

every game i've come across that attempts specific injuries or locational hits (other than 'called shot to the head = more damage) were overly complex and slowed down the game too much

doing it for crits works better, cause you dont need to do it all that often

GURPS does have location specific damage, but my memory of it is sort of hazy and the GM in my GURPS games was able to just handle it on the fly. But I imagine it is versatile, unique, and sort of arcane.

I'm doing my own for Fallout but it may be adaptable. I don't do the dice rolling thing for damage, though there's some math involved to calculate damage due to poor weapon condition. Weapons do a set amount of damage modified by weapon condition. Armor subtracts certain amounts of damage. There's separate limb health, including groin and eyes, though I'm still thinking on how to do that. Maybe one quarter total health before crippling? I'm also trying to include rules for deflecting bullets with swords and other melee weapons, which absolutely wrecks their condition and can't be done without heavy penalties without a certain trait. That trait used to be called Jedi but I was convinced to rename it to Improbable Heroics. There was another trait called Last Son of Krypton, which boosts your strength, endurance, and agility to your racial maximum, gives you higher armor, and increases the damage done with melee and unarmed weapons outdoors in daytime but you lose all that and take extra damage if you end up near radiation. There are also rules for using guns as melee weapons. Damage was something like 3*ST+Weapon Weight.
In any case, I'm only up to describing character creation and tagging skills at the moment.
EDIT: First page of the character sheet. Second page is just traits, perks, and inventory.

Four things (and two may or may not be relevant):

I find that xdx games are far more interesting than single die games (I'm looking at you, d20...) Rolling a 2 is significantly harder on 2d10 than rolling a 1 on a d20, for example - even though there is technically a smaller field of results. I find that skills and abilities tend to be on on more of a bell curve in real life, and so I find bell curve dice systems make me happier than linear ones.

The damage mechanic you've described is overly complex, will result in a ton of record keeping, and will not simulate combat any more accurately than a simple HP system.

GURPS is a good choice.

(You probably already know this, but its worth saying anyway) A good GM makes die rolling almost irrelevant. Some of the best sessions I've had involved not even a single die roll, or maybe just one or two. PnP RPGs are at their best when they are running toward the "cooperative storytelling" end of the spectrum. D&D style rulesets are deliberately made complicated to sell more supplements. It shouldn't take me a page to describe the abilities of a wolf, or how a specific spell works. If you've got a good GM, stats will be ignored/fluffed in favor of having fun/telling the story anyway.

what's the deal with numbers and calculations anyway in pnp rpgs. you can just make up any shit you want that fits the setting and story without having to care how to represent it numerically, unlike us poor machine-bound game developers

if you even need rules, you can make them completely verbal

People like having rules that implement skill training and random chance to determine outcomes in various situations.

"Making up any shit you want that fits the setting and story" is just writing a group novel. That's not playing a game.

^ Basically.


As far as I'm concerned I use "rules" more as a general guideline and as a way to resolve some situation where just "narration" isn't enough


When I was in high-school, I played an attempt at a post-apoalyptic campaign with one of my friend. Hed did the game-mastering, and I was the only player. The only times dices were rolled was for the combats (ah, the joy on jumping on someone from above by surprise while wielding a chainsaw...) and for some things like "what happen if I use the blood coming from that person I killed to draw esoteric symbols on the ground ?". Hijinks demonic incursion ensues.

I would suggest picking up Apocalypse World. It's not what you're looking for, but it has a shitload of advice on how to run games, how to run post-apocalyptic games, and how to be evocative of a setting. One of the basic rules for GMing is "barf forth apocalyptica". That said, it uses a vague but definite setting- the world ended about fifty years ago. There is a "Psychic Maelstrom" out there, and people call interact with it, but such contact is dangerous. The way that it's set up, though, is that you have "moves". Player moves allow them to interact with the world. After every player move, the GM (called the MC) makes a move. Their list of moves includes all the standard GM tricks of the trade and a bunch based on the established in-game threats (which can be very abstract). Eg here's an example of play.

Gran'ma is a Hardholder, the class that rules over a little community of survivors. She is being played by Jane. She's currently negotiating with Trench, the self-proclaimed Overlord of the Wastes. (A warlord threat type, subcategory dictator- he instinctively seeks to bring areas under his control. This is important for understanding how the GM will move Trench). The GM is Ron.

Jane: Gran'ma looks over this Trench feller and susses him out. She's going to read a person. (Jane rolls Gran'ma's appropriate stat, and gets a result of 8 - not a failure, but not an unqualified success. She can ask Ron one question about Trench from a list and get a straight answer at any point from here on out.)

They talk for a bit, and Jane asks her question: How can I get Trench to back off?.

Ron thinks for a moment, and says, "Trench respects strength alone. He'll retreat if you kick his ass, or look like you could kick his ass."

Ron then makes his move. He doesn't say it, because the GM never names their move. Ron uses one of the warlord's threat moves: Make a show of force. He says, "Gran'ma, as the small talk starts to fade off, Trench smiles cheerfully and says, 'How about a little show for you, Miz Grandmother?' He raises one arm, and the junk in one of the trucks he brought to the meeting swivels. There's a whining noise, and an instant later, part of the mesa a mile away is pulverized with a loud roar. Fucker's got some real hi-tech supergun shit. What do you do?" (<- This question always comes after every GM move.)

I could go on about it, but it's really a great book for anybody planning on running or designing an RPG, because it breaks things down so well. And it may inspire you- most of the writing and design is pretty nifty (one of the two combat-focused classes can get the ability NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH, which makes them, in a serious fight, on part with a gang of 15 or so guys. The other one can get the ability to, before or during battle, mark someone for death or for life, and those things happen to the best of the GM's ability)

That sounds really awesome, and I'm gonna check that shit out.

As an aside, my friends have attempted a couple of 'apoc survivor' games in the past. Something to note about 'survival' is that if they're doing it right, survival is... really boring. That's sort of the entire point of survival: If you are good at it, it's not very interesting. So a party of people who have thought really hard about things and come extra prepared and can adapt their plans for assorted contingencies are basically just having an unexciting journey down the checklist of things they've made sure can't possibly hurt them.

This isn't necessarily *bad*, but it's the GM's job to help keep things lively. While I'm not advocating 'complications' for complications sake, as that gets really close to shading towards "contrivance," which is really bad and you never want to do that, it'll be important to try and pay attention to, or establish, what limitations your rugged survivalists are working in, and exploiting weaknesses. Hopefully ones they ain't thought of.

But maybe that's getting a little off topic.

re : survival. In the admittedly few (only one) post-apoc game I played, the setting was more an excuse to do or see weird shit in the ashes of a ruined world than to survive proper.

I mean, the only time we tried a serious quest (scavenging an old hi-tech factory for a mob boss), the place ended up going in flame because of... unintended consequences.

But to be fair, who the hell thought it was a good idea to stockpile military-grade explosives AND sentient warmachines in a factory handling lots of unstable chemicals ?!