I really like the Partisan/Mech roll tables. The #1 industrial sabotage fan doodle is great. I was working up a system for rolling up random demons for a different game jam, and I feel like it'll be heavily inspired by this system. I have some questions from my first read:
- Is the objective system similar to the base Havoc Engine, where you can choose a bunch of different places to allocate your successes and narrate what you're doing based on those, or if you pick an action and you can roll toward it and allocate successes to that one objective only
- When you repair your mech, the way I read it is the first success goes to the roll itself and then every success after that adds 1 point of steel back? And then once you've done that, you can't do it again until the next mission?
- What is Flesh? I see that when you advance in your optional rules, you gain 1 flesh, but I'm not sure what it does.
I really like how you built the random table for objectives & complications and then added the difficulty level mechanic on top. My theoretical first raid in this system is:
- I'm approaching via the Perimeter Wall
- I need to destroy a Data Center
- I need to Sabotage a factory
- If I can steal supplies while I'm at it, it will help the resistance effort
- The Enemy is on High Alert
Other random pieces of feedback in no particular order:
- I think expanding the partisan skill system would be cool. I'm immediately picturing something where each player rolls 2-3 times (or maybe rolls 2 and picks 1). If they end up with a duplicate, maybe they can choose to reroll or add another die each time they use that skill. That will allow for some more variability and let them add their bonuses a little more often.
- In conjunction with the point above, I think adding more skills would offer a little bit more variety. I see a reference for rolling to restore a lost wound, but the best skill I see would be repair, which doesn't feel right to me.
- On the note above, I see the reference to restoring a wound, but I don't see any other discussion on it. I do see how you fix the mech though, so it feels like maybe that could be added to be more clear in the Player Stats section.
- Your coordination pot feels like a neat mechanic and helps to reinforce the theme of acts of resistance inspiring further acts of resistance.
- You seem to refer to the Partisan skills with different language in different spots. My understanding is that a player declares an action, if a specific skill applies, they get a +1d to the roll. However there are instances where you refer to specific actions or checks, where I think you mean skills. The Steal Suppplies Objective refers to rolling more than five successes on Scavenge Checks, when I think it means roll more than 5 successes while using your Scrounging skill. I think cleaning that up a little bit would help learn the system more quickly.
Great submission!