Friday, June 15, 2018

Starpunk Update



For those that have been following my blog, I have been working on a sci-fi setting called Starpunk. It's kind of like Daring Tales of the Space Lanes but with an actual setting (and I'm leaning more toward a comedic bent). One of the biggest hurdles has been generating starships because the Sci-Fi Companion generator never sat right with me, and I have worked on a lot of Starship generator ideas. Here's what I have discovered:

a) I shouldn't need a starship generator ruleset. The point of the game is to play, not munchkin the ruleset to see what cool combo can be built.
b) The more complicated the starship builds get, the easier it is to introduce overpowered ships and weapons.
c) The more complicated the system, the less F!F!F! it got.

Well I finally have something worked out, at least for capital scale ships. It borrows concepts from a variety of sources but also required me to change my thinking process.

In every rpg that involves large starships, they have always treated them the same way as they treated smaller vessels: listing each individual weapon and its damage. If you ended up with two capital ships fighting each other, then you were expected to roll for each gun to hit, roll damage for each hit, etc. This takes too long, but thankfully it is rarely ever used since the players don't command these type of vessels in an rpg. What GMs should be concerned about is what affect all of those guns have on our hero's stock light freighter.

Here's my solution:
Don't sweat the details. Worry about the overall effect.

Capital ships have three weapon entries: Port Batteries, Starboard Batteries, and CIDS (Close In Defense Systems).

CIDS are what capital ships would use against small craft. It's treated as a single weapon, but with a RoF. The bigger the ship, the bigger its RoF (rated 2-4). A capital ship can make a single CIDS attack against each enemy fighter or missile per round.

If I do want to run two capital ships duking it out, the the Capital ships fire their batteries at each other. Each battery is considered a single attack roll. A starship can only attack with one side Battery per target unless they draw a face Card, and Ace, or a Joker for their action card. If they do, then the ship has maneuvered in a way to bring both side Batteries to fire on a single target.

Of course, if I'm going to involve more capital ships and fighters, then I would just bring out the Mass combat rules.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Curbing the Lethality

Savage Worlds is brutal. Any character, regardless of rank, can be one-shotted by a novice or extra. Dice explode, death happens. For some people, this is a feature. The players should be thinking twice before jumping into a toe-to-toe fight.

But there is also the common complaint from people used to attrition based games like d&d that combat is too quick. They don’t like the idea that their wild cards can drop like flies. I have one such friend. He loves Savage Worlds with this one exception. His rationality is that he wants heroes and villains to have time to switch tactics when they start to get hammered. I offered up this as a setting rule:

BEAT HIM DOWN
No character (Wild Card or Extra) can deal more than 1 wound in a single attack. If the attacker’s damage roll would have caused two or more wounds (>target’s toughness +8) then the attacker receives a benny. Bennies cannot be spent on soak rolls.

This guarantees that it takes at least 4 successful attacks to down a wild card. However with only dealing one wound, soaking would only kill the Fast!. The ruling doesn’t affect the ease of dropping extras. It also keeps players from hoarding bennies for soak rolls.

So far he has liked the new rule.

All that said, I prefer the unpredictability of Savage Worlds combat as written. It’s faster and more dramatic when you know you can be dropped in a single attack. I think that D&D and later videogames have reinforced the idea of long drawn out slugfests as the norm. It takes a reshaping of expectations to enjoy SW combat. Oddly, you need to set your expectations toward realism a bit more.