Hey, I'm going to use this topic to walk through a build of a Nuts & Bolts game as I do it. I think it's something that people thinking about making a N&B game might find helpful. I'm starting with something pretty similar to No Nut November in a lot of ways just to show what using the basics might look like.

The first thing I'm putting together for Nuts & Bolts is going to be Boltheads, a game about robots defending Mars from meatbag (human) colonization efforts (or otherwise reckoning with humanity's return to Mars). I wanted something that fit the "bolt" part of the SRD's name, and the rest of the idea sprang from that. It's also kinda in the No Nut November universe. Humanity's return to their abandoned terraforming efforts on Mars is prompted by the catastrophe on Earth that sets the scene in NNN.

Battery

When putting together an N&B game, the first thing I think about is, "What's the resource player characters have to spend to act?" Robots spending power was one of the first things I thought of which also helped solidified who the characters are in this game. At first I called this just "power," but changed it to "battery" because it was more specific and evocative. Battery will be rechargeable through robot settlement charging stations, solar charging slowly over time, and from taking it from other power sources (including meatbag equipment and other robots).

Dice

I decided Boltheads would be d6 based instead of d8. 5s and 6s are hits. The cubic dice just felt like a better fit to convey a mechanical and utilitarian feel for the robots. It will also give slightly higher chances of success, which felt right for a game that might have slightly less emphasis on survival in a hostile world. Honestly, the dice picked isn't going to be the biggest deal to me for most of these.

I think d6s and d8s will be pretty standard for these games. d10s or d12s with the top two numbers being hits might be good for really punishing games (like horror or hardcore action games), but honestly, at some point it becomes a little less fun to just be failing all the time. I think a better adjustment would be to how many points can be distributed to stats at character creation. Let stats have just 1-3 in them, but let the dice feel like they're giving players a fighting chance for at least a success with a consequence. This also seems less swingy than rolling more, bigger dice, (though I haven't actually calculated that). Or, roll d12s because they're cool, but have 9 or 10-12 be a hit. That puts the likelihood around the same place as No Nut November or this game.

Injury

I'm calling injury damage. It goes from minor to major to critical damage. I felt like it was a better word for robots than injury. It operates pretty much the same way, write the specific damage down.

The biggest change to the injury system is how much of it you can take. It was pretty much the same for all players in core No Nut November, but I'm going to have it interact with stats a bit more. I'll talk more about that in a second.

Stats

I wanted to pick things that fit the characters. Steel for physical strength/toughness, Servos for speed and dexterity, Processors for thinking/noticing, and Interface for social stuff. That felt sufficiently robot-y.

I also wanted these stats to be reflected in characters more, so I link them to other stats. The battery stat I decided was dependent on how good/efficient the processors were, so I'm making it 6+Processors to start. Steel influences injury. Player characters can take Steel+1 minor damage and Steel+0 major damage. Processors make sense for determining initiative too, but for variety I think I'm going to go with Servos (the classic speed stat) determining initiative order. All of this will help contribute to role diversity, I think.

Until Next Time

That's mostly what I have at the moment. I have ideas for all sorts of other things, but nothing quite as developed out.

• Instead of mutations there will be different models of robots with different functions. I think different models will also change stats. A constructor bot that relies on Steel, for instance, will grant a +2 increase to Steel.
• I want to include some kind of modification system, probably similar to cybernetics in Richard Kelly's Wastelander's Toolkit for NNN. This would include stuff like battery upgrades, built-in weapons and armor, and core stat upgrades as well as weirder stuff (maybe a biohacking module or something pushing into some less hard sci-fi territory).
• There may be specific weapon qualities like "pierce" or "splash damage" or "rapid" so I don't have to write out, "Ignores 1 point of armor" or, "deals x damage to the target and y damage to any nearby on a hit," every time. The game in general will be a bit more combat geared than even NNN.
• Enemies including meatbags and their toys as well as native Martian creatures awakened by terraforming machines. For humans in particular, I'm thinking there will be a kind of standard weak unit that is a human in a suit. They have decent armor, but all damage is major damage because it means a breach of the suit. These weaker ranks would be bolstered by stuff like mechs and drones, not to mention hostile robots and Martian beasts entering the mix.

I also wanted to say, for mechanical stuff there are a couple of places where I've straight up copied, pasted, and changed stuff from No Nut November. I'm totally fine with you doing this in your games (for mechanical stuff specifically). You don't have to find a new way to write, "If a character has taken all their injuries of one level and would take another at that level, that injury increases to the next level of seriousness (e.g. a minor injury becomes a serious injury)." to avoid plagiarism. If it fits your game, it's fine. Just use it.

I don't have a particular timeline for all of this, but I'll keep this thread updated as I do more. This is also a good place to ask questions about my thought process for this game or things I've said here, but for other questions,  start a new topic. It will be easier for people to find stuff under another heading and won't get buried in my updates. Also, the link to my Discord server is posted around, and I could use some more company there. I'll also put it here.

--Daily