Woah. Long time, no see.

Alright, my last post said I was ready to playtest. I'm not sure that was true, and after some thought I realized the game was sort of a mess and it didn't really have a place. I needed to figure out where it fit into the world of Rpgs. ExplorerMan! then sort of went into hiding. Will it now come out of it's hibernation? Maybe.

I've recently been finding a number of one shot, rules light, stupid fun Rpgs. Either beefy ones like He Who Laughs Last, longer games like Three Days Until Retirement, or short wonders like Havoc Brigade or Lasers & Feelings. It has struck me that ExplorerMan! would fit well into this model.

I'm hoping to compress and rejigger the rules on this a bit and come up with a way to revive the game in this style. Perhaps I can feed a bit of Fiasco into it.

Some rules goals:
-Stupid numbers of dice. Everyone loves rolling a bucket load.
-Bonus dice a la Savage Worlds.
-Above all, KISS

With luck, I will see you soon

Got it!

Okay, while lying in bed last night, I found a solution to my dice dilemma. I want to use 2d6, since d6 are easy to find, and 2 is a nice round number.

So.

Our target numbers for rolls will be a your fate+type subtracted from a Director assigned Difficulty, meet or beat. Any Awesome bonus you have is also subtracted. With a Fate of 5, Type of 3, and...5 awesome points, if the difficulty is 20, you have to roll a 7 or higher on 2d6.

In addition, once per session, a player may roll 1d6, after a failed roll. No matter what the difficulty is, if the player rolls a 6 on this, the failed roll becomes a success.

I like this will work pretty well. Unless any of our lovely commenters can come up with issues, I think it's time to wrap this game up into a nice little package, fill in the missing holes, and start playtesting.

Dice and other thoughts

We need to figure out what we should be rolling. If we assume a Fate of 5 and a Type of 3-5, that gives us...10 points. Since we want the Awesome score to be equalish to this, that means a starting character (if they are awesome enough) could be rolling against a 20 target, with no difficulty modifier. This seems high.

I really like the idea of using d6's. They are everywhere, you can steal them from any of dozens of board games, and you can buy them in packs of a million for a few bucks. Of course, to even make it a challenge, you're already rolling like 4d6.

That leaves us with bigger dice. If you want, say, a 75% chance of success on a "normal" roll with no modifier, given a target of 20, that's a top roll of 27ish . That gives us...1d30? 2d14? Not exactly common dice, even among the niche roleplaying dice. If we were releasing a shiny boxed set, maybe. If Game Science or Koplow were slipping me freebies, maybe. 3d10 could do, but I really don't like exceeding 2 dice, unless the more dice you have the better you are. 2d12? d12s are...I don't know. I have a million of them, but I have a problem when it comes to dice.

The other option is to reduce the scores. 2 for a fate. 2 for a primary type, 1 for a secondary type. That gives us a default of 10, when the Awesomeness is included. 2d8 is a nice throw, here. Difficulty modifiers are probably going to be commonly thrown in by Directors, which might slide us down to regular targets of 7 or so in the beginning, which would give us about a 50% shot with 2d8, so that's a real possibility. This also assumes we figure out how to make players actually be Awesome, without becoming Boring.

This is probably going to have to come out of playtesting, methinks.

I've been looking over how we calculate health. Fate + 2(Primary + Second). That's...math. Depending on where our final stats fall in, maybe just stick with Scene Health being Primary + Secondary, and Adventure Heath being Fate. Straight up.

Once we get a few more things ironed out, I REALLY need to get working on some of the settings and adventures. This is the important part of the game. The whole idea behind our rules is that we don't want them to be in the way of what makes the game fun, the story. Roleplaying is, after all, collaborative storytelling. I have a lot of ideas, just need to make them cohesive and get them together.

Thoughts on some potential fixes/changes, etc etc

The amount of adding in combat still bugs me. We can make it simpler, cleaner. I think that I'd like to just abstract away anything to do with the baddies. Joe Mook has a 1 modifier in combat. Bill Commander has a 5 modifier. Period. Equipment and fate are rolled in. Rules for creating "new" bad guys can go into how to figure this out, but we want a clean, single number.

For that matter, I'm thinking some sort of stat to add to the sheet that is the sum of Fate and Type, for commonly used ones. Kill skill (or whatever) - Bad Guy Mod - Difficulty + Awesomeness. Cleaner than before, but might be muddied under actual game play.

About the awesomeness.

I think we've covered something like this, before, but this is basically just a bonus you get for doing something awesome. Whether it's a mundane task described awesomely, an awesome task described mundanely, or (best yet) an awesome thing described awesomely, it all applies.

This game is about light rules and cinematics. It behooves us to pump up the cinematics. I'd like to weigh the Awesomeness mod heavily against the Fate + Type part. Since we still don't actually know what dice we're rolling, it shouldn't be too hard to wedge this in. Say you have a Fate + Type of...eh, 8. The thing you are trying to do pulls 4 off of that, so you have a target of 4 to roll. If we're on a d10, that means that you only have a 40% chance. I want a lot of Awesomeness bonus points handed out. We'll have to have a chapter (or section..or something) dedicated to this. Examples of things that are awesome, how to decide how many points to hand out, etc. I'd love it if the target was 4 on a d10, roll under, and the person knocked the target up to an 8 because of something. Some games out there will give minor bonuses for this, I want big bonuses.

Bonuses could be given for coming up with a solution that the Director did NOT see coming at all, bonuses for describing it in a particularly cinematic way, bonuses for the act itself being awesome. Bonuses should not be given for doing the same cool thing over and over until it becomes mundane. Creativity should be rewarded.

There were questions in previous posts about including a setting in the core book. I'm now leaning towards no. Better to put out a lean book of rules, and let the players cherry pick the setting(s) they want.

I keep coming back to this game...it's just fun. Hopefully I'll get it put together and out there so that other people can have fun, too.

Combat

I may have said this before, can't remember.

Combat rolls are as follows:

For minions and lieutenant types, it's:
Fate + Type + Equipment - Baddie Fate - Difficulty

For Captains and Boss types, it's:
Fate + Type + Equipment - Baddie Fate - Baddie Equipment - Difficulty.

Baddie Fate varies based on the rank/evilness/strength of the baddie, obviously.

I'm a little concerned about the number of numbers, here. However, players will be adding their Fate plus the relevant types all of the time, so those shouldn't be hard. I'm thinking of presenting the Baddie roll as a single Difficulty modifier. The Director will determine the Difficulty, where Difficulty == Baddie Fate + How hard the task is + any equipment. Thus, for combat rolls, you'll just see:
Fate + Type + Equipment - Difficulty.

Simple enough. No one will have HUGE numbers in Fate/Type/Equipment, so hopefully people can add 5 + 2 + 3 and get something sane (17, right?)

As always, seeking simpler numbers.

Say...

Maybe we should get this rolling, again.

ExplorerMan! shall not be stopped!

Change Becomes Us

Well, we haven't even started gaming yet and things are changing. As I was writing up the information needed to play, I noticed that combat involved way too many numbers.

We're trying to keep it so that the Director need never roll, but rather leave all that up to the players.

So, the change we are looking into is to reduce baddies to a simple difficulty. BBEG's and the like will have an equipment "score," but all the others are a simple, flat number. We are dropping their fate/type/equipment scores. That difficulty score will be used on the to hit rolls in combat, as well as the avoid-being-hit rolls.

The underlying goal of this game is to be simple. A critical eye will be cast upon all of our rules, trying to cut out any bloat or other items that slow or complicate the game. There's a couple other things I think could be reduced, but I can't really see how to do it cleanly. We'll figure it out in playtest.

Let the games begin!

We've had a lot of discussion, both here on this blog, on our internal forum, and actual just plain chatting.

In addition to starting the actual writing on this, I've started to create a skeleton game that can be used for testing the rules and mechanics. We'll hopefully start taking runs at the game shortly. Let's see what breaks!

Meanwhile, on the Internet...

I had some downtime yesterday, and took a look through a few of the postings here.

We're getting pretty close to having the rules (rule?) defined, and probably in the next week or three I'll start some basic outlining and writing.

The question is, do we include a basic (or starter) setting in the main rulebook? I think it'd help, with regards to generating examples and basic fluff in the book.

If we create a setting, what should we go for? I don't believe that a Fantasy type setting should be the first, there are a ton of those out there. Modern settings have also been done quite a bit. A nice, pulpy setting taking place in the 30's or 40's could be fun - it'd fit the title of our game, but I'm not so up on my pulp lore.

Once we've determined if and what we'll have with regards to a setting, we also have to decide how in depth we'll be going. Part of me says "Go Crazy!" but, that's what Dystopia and the Bluestone Isle's are for. A basic shell of a setting would also probably fit the whole anything-goes rules-light game, as well.

As an ideal grab and go setting to include in the main rulebook, a modern day setting that we don't go too deep in describing would be best. No need to define the setting, we live it. I'm not sure if that's the best way to go, however.

Thoughts?

Your call is important to us, please stay on the line

I've been a little busy recently, and this coming month is going to consume a huge amount of my time, and so...I probably won't get a chance to post much about ExplorerMan!

That said...we are still here, we still are working, and we will prevail!

Stay tuned, the cinematic, light weight roleplaying system will be back, soon!

Quick thought...

We have our Primary/Secondary (possibly to be called Major/Minor) types. The score of the minor/secondary types must be less than the score of your primary/major type. The question is - through XP expenditure, should we allow a secondary type to become a primary type, relegating the current primary type to secondary status?

In movies, you sometimes have the geeky kid become an ass kicker. While they are still geeky, they have the ability to thoroughly lay down the law, physically. Alternatively, a person could suffer a crippling injury, and move from a physical type to a smart type.

This can be abused, but if we possibly limit the number of secondary types, and maybe limit the number of times you can do this to one, the effects would be mitigated. Making the XP cost something significant could also help.

Thoughts?

Whoops!

We'll be back soon, I promise!

Naming Things, Part I

So, we've been referring to stuff by temporary names. We should get around to actually naming them. Let's take a first pass at a handful of items:

Fate
Primary Type
Secondary Type
Scene Health
Adventure Health
GM (this can stay unless we come up with something good, Director?)
Resources
Cinematic Events

Okay, so that is the first bunch. This is a cinematic/fun/lighthearted/rules-light game, so keep that in mind when suggesting.

Health, Part II

Okay, so after some discussion it looks like your health stat will be equal to:
Fate + 2(Prime+Second). That is, your health is equal to your fate score plus two points for each point in your primary and secondary type.

If you have multiple secondary types, only the highest number counts. Also, if you lose points from your secondary score, and suddenly another secondary is higher, you still have to use the damaged one ;)

As every 2 points of health you lose, you still lose a point off of your rolls - starting with secondary, then through primary, and then it becomes one for one.

This will make the characters tougher, but still makes Cinematic Events DAMN scary.

Level Up!

Your character has completed a task, so now what? Well - he gets experience points. Duh.

Our experience system is a hybrid point buy/milestone system. Experience points are spent to allow a character to increase his Primary and Secondary Type scores (maybe other stats?). As he hits certain amounts of XP spent, his Fate score increases. So, a starting character with 5 Fate has spent 10 XP increasing his Type scores, and has spent enough to earn a 6th point in Fate. Tada!

The Characters Primary Type must ALWAYS be greater than his Secondary Type - if the Prime is 5, the Second may go no higher than 4.

I'm also throwing around the idea of allowing the character to purchase additional Secondary Types. Perhaps a Smart, Sly character has taken up body building, he can add Strong to his template. For the purpose of calculating health, only the highest ranked Secondary Type is used, and only one Secondary Type may be used at a time for the purposes of rolls.

As just a first pass idea, additional Secondary Type points would cost 2, Primary Type points 3 or 4, and if we go with the idea, new Secondary Types would cost 5, and would start at 0 points.

Experience is earned in smaller amounts - completing the mission would get each character a couple, maybe certain harrowing encounters could get a point, surviving a Cinematic Event could add a point or two.

In case you couldn't tell, we like small numbers.

Types, Types, Everywhere

Now, to take a crack at a few of the types that will be available to players. These may be chosen as a Primary Type, or Secondary Type

-Strong: These characters are good at lifting heavy things, or hitting really hard, or looking muscular. Levels up by becoming more muscular. Think body builder, or early days Arnold.

-Fast: A fast person can run like the wind! After time, they learn to run even faster. Gump didn't start running that fast, but when he started running, he became awesome at it!

-Nimble: Good at doing dexterous tasks, like running through those tire things, or freerunning. Not as fast as a fast character, but less likely to faceplant. Experience gained allows them to become even more nimble, eventually rivalling that Faith chick from Mirror's Edge.

-Tough: Good at taking a beating. We might want to add rules about shrugging off blows. The more experience, the tougher they are, until they are like the guys in the Demolition Men reality show, smashing through walls with their face.

-Hot: A hot character is...well...hot. This goes both ways, male and female. It might be strange to think that you can level up your hotness, but hotness goes beyond the physical, it is a state of mind, a state of dress. Think of the sexy librarian, who gets contacts and lets down her hair, or Anne Hathaway in a bunch of her movies, or Olivia Newton John in Grease.

-Social: Good at mingling in crowds, or talking to new people. Levelling up makes the character even more of a social butterfly. Um...think of...yeah, I'm drawing a blank. A social person. Any jock in one of those teeny movies.

-Sly: This character excels at trickery, or plays on words to get what they want. As they gain experience, they learn more about how to play people. This would be your stereotypical fantasy thief, good at talking himself into, and then back out of, trouble.

-Smart: Reads a lot, knows a lot, these characters have obtained a lot of book knowledge, and know how to piece it together to get new ideas. Through their travels, they learn more and gain additional information for their ideas. Tolkien's Wormtongue knew exactly what to say to get himself into a position of power.

-Wise: While they may not have a lot of book knowledge, these characters are aware of the world, and generally apply good judgement when acting. As they gain levels, their experience in the world increases, and they can make even better choices. Think of Gandalf, or Allanon.

So...those are the core types I can think of, right now. There might be more in the starter set, and we'll add additional ones that are specific to the different Genre books, later.

Cash, Moola, Money, the Green Stuff

How will we be handling money in ExplorerMan!?

Well, I'll tell you.

Every character has a number of points in "resources" (we should change that name). He may spend those points on stuff he wants to buy. For instance, if the character has 10 resource points, he might buy a pistol at 1 point, a kevlar vest at 2 points, a car at 6 points, and still have 1 point left over to spend later. It's assumed (unless the GM specifies otherwise, per adventure) that the character has some cash on him, and can buy little things like food and drink, or other relatively inexpensive items (within reason).

This has a number of advantages. For one, no one cares, rules-wise or cost-wise, whether that pistol he bought was a 9mm or a .45 - they both cost the same, and they both deal the same amount of damage. The cost of a pistol in a setting that has such things (pretty much anything from the Wild West up to near-mid future) is the same throughout, and they'll cost the same as a laser pistol in a Future setting. It also keeps the numbers small, and small is simple. It gives the GM a wide fudge factor when determining the price of something, especially since players are known to come up with all sorts of weird things to buy (Hey, how many points to buy a Dyson?).

Characters can earn resource points by completing missions, robbing banks, earning a paycheck, selling stuff, or anything else that might give money.

I think that 10 points is a good start, maybe a little less. That'll let them buy the basics they'll need for a mission. That'll get firmed up when we get the cost of items ironed out.

Another Look at Health, and Your Core Numbers

So, we had a brief discussion about the health stat and an idea to change it slightly. Rather than have 2 separate things, you'll have 1. The amount of health you have is equal to your Fate score + Prime Type score + Second Type score.

As you take damage, your scores lower. Let's assume that you have 5 Fate, 2 Prime, 1 Second. You have 8 total health. In combat, you take 1 point of damage. This damage is applied to your Second Type score. Until healed, you are now have 7 health remaining, and a Second Type Score of 0! Damage will be applied to Secondary Type, then Primary Type, then Fate.

Damage to the types will heal at the end of each scene. Deep damage to your fate score will require normal healing methods, I'm thinking 1 point per 3 days if active, 1 point per 2 days if resting or with medical care, 1 point per day with medical care and rest.

I'm still unsure how to correlate this new idea with the Cinematic Events - possibly have damage during those events just bypass the Type scores, so they'll never take damage in that scene.

As for the core numbers themselves - I like 5 as a start point for Fate, then 2 for Prime, and 1 for Second. Die roll would be a d20, roll under your total score. Figure 3 or so points due to equipment, a starting character would have a 50% chance of hitting, assuming it falls under his/her Prime Type and the equips allow. It'd also give the character room to grow.

What say you?

Character Creation

So, you want to make a character in ExplorerMan!? (Side note: The 'official' exclamation point, when combined with a query, makes the statement appear incredulous.)

Well, it's pretty darn complicated, so hold on to your hat.

First, pick a Primary Type from the list. Next, pick a Secondary Type from that list. Third, name your character and come up with a concept. Fourth, equip your character. Last, fill in the character sheet. You don't even have to do it in that order, though I'd recommend filling in the character sheet last or, at least, concurrently.

Got that?

The Character Sheets aren't incredibly complicated. The characters aren't incredibly complicated. The most complicated part is probably equipping your character. I'm not sure how that'll work, it might involve rolling for starting cash, it might involve a set amount of cash, or it might involve saying "Don't go nuts."

That's it!

Equipment Spotlight: The Red Shirt

Look! A glimpse at an item that is going to show up in the Space Genre book!

The Red Shirt is a peculiar item. The Red Shirt actually reduces the Fate score (and, maybe, the number of Health Levels) of the wearer. They become less effective in combat, and easier for the bad guys to dispatch.

Why would anyone want to wear this? Well, if the wearer is killed in combat, the party leader is suddenly driven with a burning resolve, and his Fate Score increases.

Effects from this item might stack, but if so, they amount of the increase will decrease dramatically each time - our Hero will eventually become steeled to all of his friends kicking the bucket, and it won't effect him as much. The effects also will only be temporary, probably for a scene or two at most.

I just had a fun idea for an adventure using this item...

Anyway, look for more fun tidbits like this in the future!