Very exciting news about the solo supplement!
soypunk (he/him)
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Wow, wow wow! Excited to see these resources. For whatever reasons, West End Games, Wizards, & Fantasy Flight/Edge choose not to include a lot of random tables in their materials. There are a handful of them scattered through maybe a dozen books and two books in particular - the WEG Planets Book and the Galactic Campaign Guide from WoTC. So for folks looking to run a sandbox or play gm-less (coop/solo) it is a bit of challenge to find the right random tables to get the ideas flowing. (Starforged's tables are good, but not a perfect fit. Stars Without Numbers' tables don't work at all for me. A handful of things in Traveller are helpful for Edge of The Empire or Age of Rebellion games but not much.)
My apologies, it was definitely meant with the best of intentions. I'll restate: The atmosphere the work implies looks incredibly compelling, even to someone not well versed in the subject matter or genre. I love the idea of presenting the setting as in-world newspaper and it rekindles memories of playing some of my favorite childhood video games where the setting assumptions were revealed through in-world communication mediums (such as newspapers.) It is making rethink how I present setting information in my own games.
Well it is a late reply but I thought it worth sharing: having playtested a bit I think the following is workable as a general purpose outline of how one can extend mole.mole without adding too much complexity.
Vehicles have an Agility rating (1-3) that grant the piloting character the equivalent number of rerolls for a check. In my games Agility was the most important factor in whether I felt a PC should get some kind of bonus to their actions based on the quality of the vehicle. Just setting position alone was not quite capturing the nuance of vehicle engagements.
Vehicles have a Role such as "fighter", "transport", etc. Mostly used for the fiction (setting position, thinking about obstacles, determining complications, etc.)
Vehicles have 4-6 Strain (4-Small, 5-Medium, 6-Large) which is used to track damage but can also be spent like Drive to access a Vehicle's Stunts via their Talent. (I think calling an attribute Drive for a Vehicle is confusing hence the rename.)
Vehicle Talents are:
- Mobile (fast, agile, all-terrain, etc.)
- Armored (heavy armor, shielded, etc.)
- Weaponized (bristling with multiple weapon systems)
- Versatile (can be reconfigured or perform more than one type of job)
- Carrier (transports people, cargo, or other types of vehicles)
- Smart (magically enhanced, advanced sensors, AI companion, etc.)
Vehicles don't need to posses the Armored or Weaponized Talent to have these things but it just means they have the basic type of thing they would have for their Role. Having one of those Talents means they have a particularly amazing variant of them. Some basic Vehicles may not have a Talent, use your judgment.
Vehicles in play may be grouped together for bookkeeping and story reasons. If you are being attacked by a group of similarly built light starfighters just treat them like one entity that attacks and operates together and assign them a Strain equal to their numbers. A flight of 4 starfighters has 4 Strain.
Players should question whether particularly large Vehicles should even be created using this system. The galaxy's largest moon-sized battle station is not going to use this system. This is for games where ship-to-ship combat or frequent chases are occurring and you want to provide a little bit of structure for your play.
All of this is intended to keep the focus on the PC(s) controlling the vehicle rather than spotlight vehicles but some settings I think need the additional flavor.
There's obviously a lot of ways to tweak this to work to your preferences or genre assumptions... for example you could also do "Racing Clocks" if you want to stick to Forged in The Dark mechanics. Probably the "cleanest" way to do this would be to make the Extended Challenge check and add 4 to the result (anydice odds: https://anydice.com/program/27385) That gives you a spread of 5 to 10 which seems pretty reasonable for a "progress bar." Then you just track your progress vs. your opposition progress:
- PC Progress: [X] [X] [ ] [ ] [ ] - Opposition Progress: [X] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
It occurs me to I've overlooked that mole.mole's Extended Challenges can be "nested" - that is:
- Make an Extended Challenge check that represents how many "acts" you need to complete a Mission. Follow the steps on "playing" to get the Mission's Danger & theme (Oracles 3 & 4.)
- Within an Act, make an Extended Challenge check that represents how many Scenes you need to complete that Act. Remember to use the guidance for determining the where, what, why, who, and how of a scene.
- Of course if within a Scene you determine you need another Extended Challenge you make another a check.
I found I needed a little more structure than just a single level of "Scenes" though to really resolve a Mission - Missions have "investigative phases", "conflict phases" as the sides start to come into opposition, and then "action phases" as the various threads start to resolve themselves. (Sometimes one might even flashback to the investigative stage to pick up more clues or information...)
Anyway, this was helpful for me to put a little more story structure over my sessions, hope it sparks some ideas with others as well.
If you had a game where vehicles were important (equally as important as characters) thoughts on how'd you work them into the mechanics? Feels off to just shoe-horn them into Backpack/Equipment. It is tempting to elevate them up as a full "character" but then co-mingling their attributes feels wonky (e.g. piloting check - factoring in both the pilot occupation and a fast (talent) vehicle in a chase sequence.)
any chance we can get a variant of this sheet with two levels of wounded (two dots next to wounded rather than one would what’s in my head visually but you’re the design guru ;) )
while I don’t play the crunchier 2nd edition(s) I do play the introductory adventure game edition which was based off 1st edition but pulled in a few useful bits from 2nd edition, including “wounded twice.”
I think the thing that threw me off a little bit is that Oracle 2 seems patterned in someway off the Fortune Roll but the wording is a little different. The Fortune Roll assumes that a high result (6, critical) is in the player's favor and each tier lower is less favorable. Depending on how you "ask" Oracle 2 your question a high result might be really bad for your character - so - it just takes a moment to think about how to frame the question.
Early review thoughts: This is based on an initial read-through and some very light playtesting.
This is a thoughtful take on Forged in the Dark genre-less style gaming for the solo player. I've played Scum and Villany (and read Blades in the Dark) solo and while it works remarkable well "out of the box" there are some challenges that can be difficult to hack around with the assumptions built into those two games. The Crew (Blades) or Ship (Scum) "playbooks" are mechanically intertwined in the game - they add flavor for sure but they also will really hamper your efforts as a solo player if you don't leverage and honor the mechanics that are embedded into the systems in on those playbooks. If you want to hack them (alter the setting, try new genres, etc) it can take some work to untangle the effects of the Crew/Ship sheets on the game. What Cezar has done is give you a clean base to start from for your solo game. If you are playing a game where you still have a fictional crew, party, or team working together then you can slowly add back on the pieces you need for your game - if you are not using these component Cezar has saved you a world of time spent hacking/editing that you can instead spend playing! I always believe that starting light and through play, building up your game/table specific modifications is a much smarter way to go that to start with something else and have to strip away what is not needed.
I'm not normally a fantasy RPG person as I prefer pew-pew and whooshing engine sounds in my games but I stumbled across this awesome game via a tweet (yes, the hell site did something useful for once!)
First, I've been searching for a d100 rules lite chassis for a while and this system really hits the mark for me. BareBones Fantasy is close but there's no SRD. OpenQuest, BRP, RQ, and Mythras are a bit too much for my liking (I'd have to tear out too many pieces.) As I don't really like playing "grimdark" games, I don't think that I would have ever cracked open Sledgehammer to look at this system (something, something books / covers / judgement.) I love systems that overload dice results to get a little more "data" out of them - e.g. reading the first number of the d10 pair for damage is right up my alley.
Second, I love the tone of this game. I much prefer settings that have the shades of hope and optimism (even if that's not the main thrust.) The art feels really great and it is interesting how the typeface and layout choices juxtapose the potentially "grim" art in some cases. The setting veneer has pretty light touch but I think there's just enough nudging in the art and content to set the ideal tone the game was setup for.
Third, after reading the comments on this page I became quite endeared to this product because as a parent of three kids just trying to make it through a pandemic year I can relate to a lot of the challenges the author must have faced in getting this product over the finish line. I'm looking forward to the proposed bestiary and "creature creation" supplements.
(And now to run off and hack this up for a space-themed romp.)