Version 0.5 - Attributes

I mentioned in the previous devlog that the two areas I wanted to look at next were Social Strength and Starting Items, so a lot of focus on this update came about because of those.

Social Strength

As much as I wanted to simplify social encounters into either mental or physical checks, the abstraction meant it was a bit more finnicky for me to assign abilities in relation to them. Yes, persuading someone to do something could be an Intellect or Cool check, but it felt harder to think about checks in that particular domain.

I've always enjoyed White Wolf's split of domains into physical, social and mental stats, but I don't like the spread of 3x3 to create 9 different attributes. I might end up going back to something like that eventually, but I want to test something a bit different for Voidhunters.

Abilities and Attributes

The new system I've come up with still relies on an ability as a target score for your d20 rolls. In the same way as Cthulu has scores from 0 to 100, and you must roll beneath them to succeed, this can have scores from 0 to 20. (Really I've just divided them by 5 so I can use d20s instead of d100s.)

Rolling checks in Voidhunters now follows an extra step (which I hope isn't one step too far):

1. The player announces their attempted action. "I want to jump to the next roof."
2. The GM announces the attribute (physical, mental, social) and target ability (power, finesse, defence). "That's a physical power check."
3. The GM announces the danger level. "You'll make it at unsafe danger, because if you miss it'll be really bad."
4. The player can ask for a bonus dice if they have training in a relevant skill. "I have athletics. Can I get a bonus dice?"
   1. Attributes contribute base dice to the check. Skills now only grant one bonus dice. So dice come mostly from attributes rather than skills now.
5. The player rolls attribute dice plus skill bonus, and attempts to get equal or under their ability. "I have one dice in physical, and a bonus for athletics. I'll roll two dice and I have to get 9 or under for my power ability."

Signature Items

To avoid the issue of players being unable to access things inherent to their character power fantasy, I've added to character creation the idea of a signature item. This is something the character does not need to maintain, and it begins in play with them. It's also a little bit more powerful than items they could usually obtain in an episode, but the character has a sense of ownership over the item.

These items range from simple mechs (to give a mech pilot a My First Mech) to weapons and armour, social connections, or even something like a friendly A.I. assistant or digital avatar, or a pet such as a hunting hawk or ship-bound cat. The items are also protected from the GM removing them, and can be upgraded as the character improves, so that they always remain a part of the character.

Some Other Thoughts

Sample Episode

I went through the whole Kraken sample episode again and adjusted target numbers. I also added a few points GMs could introduce the action/reaction flow mechanics (of being outnumbered in a fight).

Threat Dice Complexity

As I mentioned above, I hope the change to ability+attribute isn't one step too far, especially when threat dice are introduced. I might try changing the word 'attribute' to 'domain' or something, to make it more distinct.

Perhaps threat will work better as tokens instead of dice, to avoid that extra roll and thus complexity. We'll see. Threat dice are meant to add a point of randomness to a check, so players can't just map out the encounter. Their accumulation is also meant to represent a rising threat in the scene too.

One ideas I have for threat as tokens is 'static threat': harder to accumulate, but threat applies to everyone in the scene for a passive -1 to attributes. Players may choose to have their actions reduce threat, rather than work to achieving an objective. Perhaps it can still also be spent to increase danger levels, if it seems to be flooding players with difficulty, or perhaps whenever a player fails an Unsafe check it reduces threat? Perhaps I'll look at that next.