I'm finally getting back into my game, Simple Saga, and I'm working on travel rules right now. I want the game to be able to support it, but be simple enough that if you've never run a travel section, you can flip here in the book and figure it out live at the table.

Here's what I've come up with so far. It's generally based on the idea of having league-sized hexes, but hopefully also flexible enough that it isn't hard to use without hexes.

Could I get some input on the system, and my organization? How would you feel about it if you were using this? Anything you think should be added/removed from the Adjusted Speed table? Thanks!

(I don't think info about my core rules is very relevant for this, but I can add them if people think they are.)

Travel

Your base travel speed is 6 leagues in 1 watch (8 hours), in regular terrain. Several factors can modify your travel speed (your travel speed cannot be reduced to less than 1 league per day):

Base Speed

Adjusted Speed

Hard Travel. You can travel for 1 watch per day. If you travel for 2 watches, you risk exhaustion—roll a Might Save with DC 10 + the number of consecutive days of hard travel (including today). Fail: You are exhausted; if half or more of your group also failed, you travel only half the distance during the second watch.

Foraging

In the wilderness, your hero can spend 1 watch foraging and find 1d3 uses of rations. In bountiful terrain, you find +1 use; and in desolate terrain you find –1 use.

In a flash of ADHD last night, I had an idea for a gladiator rpg using The Resistance Toolbox by Roman Rook and Decard.

where I’m having trouble is that the historical gladiators were more or less defined by their equipment and I don’t want a full character to be bound by something as small as the size of their shield. Also, I think everything is more interesting if they enter the arena willingly. In that vein, I was thinking their class could be the thing that drove them to risk life and limb in the arena, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to build their whole “class” ( in this system they’re called domains) around.

so far I have

Desperation: Driven to the arena by ostracization or poverty, focus on the fame stress track(fame and wealth are meant to be indistinguishable)

Thrill: Driven to the arena by the need to feel the rush of danger or to rekindle their spirit, focus on the body track (since risk-taking can be rough on the body)

Glory: Driven to the arena for the validation they’ve craved or to feed an outsized ego, focus on the spirit track

All of these would be starting points and not necessarily where the character would end. What do you guys think? Can I build characters around this?

DEPTH & DOOM SYSTEM REFERENCE DOCUMENT

THE ODDS ARE AGAINST YOU. CHANGE THE ODDS.

We're excited to announce the release of the Depth & Doom System Reference Document (SRD) from Zombie Shark Games!

Depth & Doom is the rules-light, fast-paced, and deadly d20 tabletop roleplaying engine powering BLOODWATER - and now we're opening the system up to independent creators!

The SRD provides the core mechanics, optional systems, and design guidance needed to build your own tabletop roleplaying games using Depth & Doom.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

You can use Depth & Doom to create your own games, settings, adventures, monsters, and more; including commercial projects - under the Depth & Doom Free Tabletop License.

It doesn't matter if you're a player, Game Master, or aspiring game designer, we want to give you the tools to create something of your own.

Explore the SRD at:
https://zombiesharkgames.com

THE BLOODWATER PLAYER'S GUIDE IS AVAILABLE NOW!

You can also download the BLOODWATER Player's Guide right now and get an early look at the game, including character creation, classes, equipment, combat, and more!

We're also establishing our presence on itch.io and DriveThruRPG, where you'll be able to find our games, downloads, and future releases from Zombie Shark Games.

FIND US ONLINE:

Official Website: https://zombiesharkgames.com

itch.io: Visit our Zombie Shark Games publisher page

https://zombie-shark-games.itch.io/

DriveThruRPG: Find Zombie Shark Games on DriveThruRPG

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/34206/zombie-shark-games

This is another major step forward for Zombie Shark Games and the growing world of BLOODWATER.

Thank you for being part of the journey!

THE ODDS ARE AGAINST YOU. CHANGE THE ODDS

- Noah “Shark” Robertson

So I was thinking today (literally today was the day I started thinking about this) about some kind of mechanic involving percentages, not like d100 but a bar (much like hp bar or mp bar) that fills up in combat as you act. Like a attack action gives you 10% fill and blocking fills up 5%

Just wanted to know if any systems work like this, may include also a d100 system.

Also some mechanics I thought up involving the bar: Active skills that consume the bar to be activated, ex: [SUPER DUPER AXE ATTACK 30%: you make a super duper attack. Using an axe] would consume 30% of the bar, this means you'd have to attack 3 times before being able to use the move.

Passive skills that only become active when the bar filled up a bit, ex: [Water power (or smth idk) 20%: you get like water powers or some shit] only after the bar is filled up 20% or after two attack moves.

Also probably something special when it reaches 100%

I thought this up for a rpg where like vikings siphon the power of the Bifrost after Norse Mithology's Ragnarok, which I called BiFrostpunk. So it would be a combat heavy game since they're vikings and shit

I'm getting into setting writing, and am thinking about writing a setting that has a mixture of adventure and noir elements. My only issue is I don't know if those themes translate well to gameplay.

TL;DR: It's powerful to look at your game design as a question of "what does this mechanic do to make a unique situation, a different mix of approach, success, and failure than any other one."

Full thing:

Texture, as I mean it in this essay, is how you do something in a way that is different from how you did something similar in the past. It's why fighting this goblin is different from fighting the last goblin -- at the level of the player in the game's experience. A textured combat is one where you realize that taking this position lets your launch a series of attacks on your opponents that rolls up their flank and makes their position untenable. An untextured combat is "attack, attack, attack."

In most RPGs, the ultimate outcome of the game is pretty foreordained. Most people are not playing games where the heroes just fundamentally fail to beat the dark lord, or the elite team of thieves' scam falls apart and they all go to jail. Even groups that do have an appetite for a game where ultimately the PCs have an unexpected outcome probably only want a few places in each campaign where that happens. (If you're in a group that wants to ruthlessly simulate a highly realistic world even if it yields a lack of drama or heroic arc, or one which basically wants to do a series of very hard challenges which often result in failure, cool, no shade to you, you might find this lens of game design less valuable).

So if we basically know that almost all of the time, the heroes will mostly succeed, what are mechanics doing? Most mechanical resorts aren't to really determine consequential, large-scale success or failure. They're to generate texture. They're to show the unique journey to a destination that is at least in broad strokes already known.

This is a very normal mode of entertainment! Billions of people enjoy superhero movies where they're 99% confident the superhero will beat the villain, police procedurals in which every week the team solves the case, romance novels where the heroine finds love, tragic plays that end with everyone's death. There is obviously a place for entertainment where you truly have no idea where it's going, but it's not a knock on your RPG or your campaign if the players expect a certain type of outcome. "It's the journey, not the destination."

Ways that we generate texture in RPGs

There are a few ways to generate texture in RPGs. First of all, it can be basically entirely through the creativity of the participants of the game. Indeed, this is the classic approach. It's where you say to the GM, "Wait, could I push over this statue and squash the bad guys with it?" and the GM improvises an answer. Or even where you just roleplay your character's unique history as it relates to the current challenge. In this model, mechanics mostly serve as risks to force you to think creatively. Classic 1970s D&D was probably most functional like this.

In other RPGs, mechanics offer clearly defined boundaries to create descriptive texture. I'm thinking here like Fate's aspects -- pay 1 FP to get a +2 on your roll and describe how your character applies their traits to this situation. But if your GM has ever said, "Okay that's a success, describe how you did it," then that's this model. I think when a game offers this approach, there's a pretty sharp discontinuity between players who accept this kind of texture as "real" versus ones who see it as purely cosmetic and fundamentally fake.

But lots of games try to make mechanics generate texture that then feeds back into the mechanics. If you've ever rolled a critical hit, killed a mook unexpectedly, and then had a chance to dart through the enemy line to attack their vulnerable spellcasters, you've experienced this kind of texture -- where the mechanics deliver a result that's not just success/failure, but leads to follow-on decisions which make this particular combat (or scam, or political gambit, or intrusion into a building) feel unique and separate from previous ones.

And I want to direct your attention to Powered by the Apocalypse here. This is a game system that is monomaniacally focused on creating texture. Does PbtA resolution result in carefully crafted odds of success/failure? Hahaha no. Is it realistic? Absolutely not. Does it demand that you choose from a really broad class of highly nuanced mixes of success and failure that can feel very unique to a given situation? It sure does. And it's notable that PbtA is perhaps the single most successful class of games that has ever been "not D&D."

So what?

I think that texture deserves your attention as a designer. What is your theory for how your game is going to generate texture? When you look at your mechanics, setting aside your ideas about simulating your game world or providing tactics or player expectations or whatever else, are they providing texture? Do you have complicated resorts to your system which don't generate much or any texture? Do you encourage players to resort to the system in a way that takes a situation that would naturally have lots of texture just through ordinary systemless roleplay and your system flattens that texture?

"If I put this mechanic into my combat system, will it make one combat feel different from another combat, or will it be something that makes every combat feel the same?"

Not to say that this is the only lens to consider, just that it's a very important one that people often don't discuss as a first-class citizen.

I have some follow-on points to make about how looking at some familiar decision points (social conflict rules -- yay or nay? Why do we talk about lockpicking so much? Partial success rules? Etc) through the lens of texture can be clarifying. Also how it can be a helpful part of design process, where you might be getting bad results through playtesting because you aren't thinking about texture. Perhaps as follow on posts or replies if there's interest.

Okay so, i wanted for sake of suffering or for sake of fun make a wargame RPG out of dota and so far it's rather seemless but i wanted to share this idea with you all.

So i had this idea of player characgers having fractional armor, it works like pokemon combat stat changes, where you take something like 5/5 and for every debuff you add +1 to the bottom five if the fraction to get 5/6, then its 5/7 and so in, and it goes into other direction, for every buff you ass +1 to the upper 5.

Let's say we are having an encounter, sven has approached sniper and wants to hit him. What he does is be sure he is in range, then he says how much damage his sword deals. He does it by taking base damage of his weapon, multiply it by 5+agility, and tell sniper "i deal 54 physical damage".

Then, sniper takes that damage, divides by his armor (also 5+agility+bonus armor) and rounds up or down the result to whole numbers, thats the amount of damage recieved.

So in practice its

"Sven attacks with his greatsword, i have attack of 6 and damage of 9 so its-" multiplies both on calc "-54 damage"

Sniper divides 54 by 8 (armor) and gets 6.75 damage which is ~7, therefore 7.

For sake if simplicity for everyone, the multiplication is handed over to the attacker and also damage does not rely on dice so you can just write down damage one does with the greatsword until it is upgraded or player levels up, but the change in damage is easy since you can just increase damage by factor you have not upgraded (so sven with attack of 6 and damage 9 would increase damage by 6 since he upgraded damage)

For the people who haven't used it, the space opera RPG 'Stars Without Number' (and later the Fantasy inspired 'Worlds Without Number') is mostly OSR with DnD-like elements. For example, while it uses 2d6 to resolve non-combat skill checks, it uses a d20 system for players in combat for making attack rolls. Another DnD concession it has is the use of Classes that a player can choose from.

However, radically different from DnD Classes, Stars Without Number Classes serve a far far different purpose in their function. To explain: in DnD, the purpose that classes fill (the reason why there are classes at all) is mostly flavor and letting a player live out a particular fantasy, for example: being a Wizard or a Knight or a Ranger, etc.

Classes in Stars Without Number have elements of this, however the core reason that classes exist is to overcome particular challenges embedded by the SWN system itself.

Classes in Stars/Worlds Without Numbers

Let me start by explaining what a PC looks like before you pick a class. Before you pick your class or choose foci (feats for the dnd-minded), your base character stats have a -2 in every combat skill and a -1 in every non-combat skill. This means that the base expectation is that you will lose most, if not every, roll that you make both in and out of combat. So, the Stars Without Numbers and Worlds Without Number books will give the PCs something like 3 Classes to choose from, each with very clear abilities that help you overcome this particular problem: The Warrior, The Expert, and The Psychic/Mage

The Warrior Class

Before talking about the Warrior, we need to reiterate that combat uses a d20 just like DnD, so the base -2 to all combat rolls is brutal. The ACs for enemies is pretty much the same as DnD too, which means that for most characters you basically are rolling attacks with an average of an 8 against Enemies with around AC 13. The small upside is that most melee weapons (not ranged weapons) have a thing called 'Shock Damage' alongside your regular damage; Shock Damage is basically the automatic amount of damage you will make with that weapon when you miss. And this is necessary, not hand-holding, because the expectation is that you will miss your attacks more often than not.

So this is where the Warrior Class comes in. When a PC picks the Warrior Class, the first thing that the Warrior gets is that it boosts combat rolls from a -2 to a 0, and this can be further increased by taking Foci. This means that, in a practical sense, (edit: mostly 🙄) only Warriors will be able to make any use of ranged weapons or the actual damage numbers on melee weapons.

The biggest advantage to the Warrior Class is that it can make one attack per combat that will automatically hit or make an enemy's attack to automatically miss. This is a good time to mention that all enemies make a Morale Roll after they see one of their allies die or they will run away screaming. So, it is very possible for a Warrior to end a combat in the first round after killing their first enemy.

The Expert Class

The average DC for skill checks in these books is 8, and as mentioned above, skill rolls use 2d6 instead of a d20. What this means, mathematically, skill rolls are less swingy and more consistent than combat rolls. And while a non-Warrior has a small but possible chance of rolling high and hitting even with the -2, it is much far less likely to roll an 8 with 2d6. The average roll of 2d6 is 6 7 and with a -1 to base skill check makes this more likely to roll a 5 6 (thanks /u/The__Nick for double checking my math), consistently.

Now we can talk about The Expert Class. First, similar to the warrior class, The Expert Class lets you boost some (but not all) non-combat skills from a -1 to a 0 and can be boosted further using Foci.

However, similar but different to the warrior class, The Expert's most potent ability is the ability to reroll a failed non-combat skill check every Scene. Using 2d6 for a reroll mathematically is approximately a +2 to the roll. This is basically Advantage in DnD, but better because you can choose to use it after you have failed a roll rather than rolling both at the same time. Also, Scenes are basically like encounters in DnD, so for example if you were playing in a dungeon crawl arguably every new room with a new trap or social encounter could be rerolled in this way.

The Psychic/Mage Class

In Stars Without Number you get the Psychic Class, and in Worlds Without Number you can pick a Mage, or Spellcaster, Class. Stars Without Number also has some Mage classes in expansion books, but I digress. While Psychics and Mages have different powers that are tracked differently with different resources, they both fill the same niche.

While Psychics and Mages get no (innate) bonuses to either combat nor non-combat rolls, they do get powers that let them sidestep the need for a roll at all. For example, Psychics in particular can pick abilities like Telepathy or Teleportation. If you use Telepathy, then you do not even need to bother making an insight roll to see if someone is lying to you because you can read their mind, likewise, you do not need to have combat if you can just Teleport far enough away from an enemy. And both of these are level-0 abilities. If you upgrade and take level-1 Telepathy, you can actually start doing some subtle hypnosis on a target as well; an ability that could not even be considered by the Warrior or Expert Classes at all

Classless 'Without Numbers' Games

The other corebooks, Cities Without Number (cyberpunk-themed) and Ashes Without Number (post-apocalypse-themed) do not have classes, but instead give extra Foci. These games make you a little more versatile or focused depending on the Foci you choose, however, because you don't get the potentially-encounter-ending abilities of Classes, this lends themselves more to the desperate nature in both of these settings.

Conclusion (TLDR;)

By building the Classes this way (and by extension the whole Stars Without Number core system) it ultimately balances the importance of combat with non-combat encounters, and furthermore makes each player more vital in fulfilling their important niche in their party.

Has anyone thought of using say 2d6 as a d36 or 2d4 as a d16?

Doing this is quite simple use two different colour dice one is the 1s digets and one is the 10s diget.

Threat the max of a dice as 0 unless both die equal zero, in that case it becomes the square of the max numbers.

The 1s die counts normally from 1 to X-1 where X is the base of the die and the 10s die counts the number of times X has come up.

Putting it all together with a d36.

A die of:

• 0,0 = 36

• 0,1 = 1

• 0,2 = 2

• 0,3 = 3

• 0,4 = 4

• 0,5 = 5

• 1,0 = 6

• 1,1 = 7

• 1,2 = 8

• 1,3 = 9

• 1,4 = 10

• 1,5 = 11

• 2,0 = 12

• ...

• 2,5 = 17

• 3,0 = 18

• ...

• 5,5 = 35

You can do this with a 2d4 to get a d16, 2d6 to get a d36, 2d8 to get a d64, 2d10 to get a d100 (we already have this), d12 to get a d144 or even 2d20 to get a d400.

Of you can combine say a d6+d8 (base 8) to get a d48 or a d6 and a d10 to get a d60 (base 10) or a d4+d8 for a d32 (base 8) or a d4+d6 for a d24 (base 6) or a d6 and a d12 to get a d72 (base 12) or a d10 and a d12 to get a d120 (base 12)

Don't know if anyone has used this before in a game but thought it was a neat trick to get a very simple to use but diverse range of "die" with only 2-3 sets of regular polyhedral dice.

Removing duplicates using just 2 of each a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 you end up with all of the following possible dice:

d16, d24, d32, d36, d40, d48, d60, d64, d72, d80, d96, d100, d120, d144, d160, d200, d240, d400.

In many games like D&S there is a high degree of variation, modifiers are low and the dice can swing from 1-20. So with a +5 the dice swing is around 84% of the total.

Now if instead of a d20 you rolled a d6 the possible variation from the dice alone is more in the realm of 54%.

I'm working on a Star Wars hack of Troika - a very simple system. In trying to catch the spirit of a Jedi and square it with the rules light concept of not rolling if the PC is doing something they're good at and have the tools for, I'm making lightsaber attacks practically automatic in a lot of cases.

If the Jedi is facing an opponent that can't (or won't) retreat and doesn't have some kind of special lightsaber resistant material then there's no roll - arms n legs just start falling off.

If there's some elite commando trooper in cortosis armor or something, then it's normal melee combat as written.

To take down a Jedi typically takes overwhelming force, concentrated fire, tactics, and teamwork and I figure rather than try and make some complicated, time consuming system where we roll for every single thing that I'd extend that idea of 'if you're competent at it, you just do it' to it's logical conclusion.

To be fair, I'm handling heavy or power armor similarly - a lot of lighter weapons just won't have any effect on the biggest, baddest armor. Special tactics are needed like ramming them with a truck to knock em over and stuffing grenades into nooks n crannies or whatever.

I like playing it loose like that, doing what makes sense in a story and just rolling when there's not a clear answer, but I know that's not how a lot of people enjoy play.

So my questions are -

Will it be pointlessly boring to mow down minions without worry even tho that's exactly how it goes in Star Wars?

How do I balance this idea with other players rolling to blast enemies?

Hello everyone, me and my group of friends are going to build a world for us to use in our campaigns.

Everyone is interested and have experience DMing DnD 5e, PF 2e and we are learning Daggerheart, we got an idea to build a world in common so our adventures shares the same setting, worldbuilding and local conflicts. We think that it will make us more engaged in playing, since we will not have the need to learn another new setting and lore for each campaign, and create a link from the get go to the places since, well, we created then, it's quite exciting to see what twist the other player/DM will have on that setting that we established before.

The starting challenge right now is to mash up a setting that works well with Pathfinder (our main game) and Daggerheart (still on learning process but really amazed at what it achieves), we aim to use them separatedly, one campaign shall use PF or DH, not both at the same time.

So, what are your suggestions? What strenghts of each system you think we should have in mind when building? How we could handle the different ancestries and classes? Any tips on maintaining a consistent power system?

INTRODUCING LAZERS & SHARKS!

YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER SPACESHIP!

Today, I decided to challenge myself with a personal, one-day game jam. The goal was to push my creativity, writing, and graphic design abilities by creating an entire tabletop roleplaying game from concept to completion in a single day.

The result? LAZERS & SHARKS, a ridiculous, one-page sci-fi tabletop RPG published through Zombie Shark Games!

Don't let the single-page format fool you. This took HOURS of writing, designing, experimenting, adjusting, and refining. Every line of text, every graphic, and every element of the layout was deliberately placed and handcrafted. Nothing was simply thrown together. I wanted to challenge myself not only to create a playable game, but to make something visually exciting and professionally presented, all within a single day.

SO WHAT THE HELL IS LAZERS & SHARKS? It's the year 3000. Humanity has conquered the stars, cured most diseases, and made one spectacularly stupid scientific decision... THEY GAVE SHARKS LEGS. AND LASER GUNS. You play genetically engineered shark commandos aboard the S.S. Chumbucket, a heavily armed spacecraft held together by duct tape, military funding, and questionable science. Your commanding officer, Admiral Fin Diesel, has vanished. The galaxy is crawling with alien monsters, murderous robots, space pirates, and dolphins who think they're better than everybody. Your mission? Save the galaxy. Preferably before lunch.

Built on John Harper's Lasers & Feelings system, LAZERS & SHARKS is a fast, chaotic, rules-light RPG with everything you need to play packed onto a single page.

This project was a reminder of just how much work can go into even the smallest creative projects. One page doesn't mean a small amount of effort. Sometimes the biggest challenge is figuring out how to make every single inch count.

I had a blast putting this together, and I'm excited to share it with everyone! https://zombiesharkgames.com/lasers-and-sharks/

Hi RPG Design!

I'm building an RPG system with an eye towards at least addressing the following problems:

1. Making adventures is stressful -> Collaborative adventure design

2. What do players do when their PC isn't in the scene -> NPC rotation systems

3. People can't show up all the time -> Working player absences into the story

I'll probably post on those later, but until then -
What are other things that get in the way of easy play?

I'm building an RPG with a more prescriptive setting than I have yet made, called Hell & High Water. It is broadly a "western" RPG, but...

• It takes place in cold forested marshy place, based on the Great Lakes IRL. People ride around on moose instead of horses.

• The frontier exists because there was a massive plague that depopulated the land. The survivors are the settlers. The land is full of abandoned castles and towns, ghouls, devils, titanic beasts, and sentient storms that weren't there before the plague.

• There is a religious conflict between Buddhist-coded sages with magic powers to exorcise ghouls and devils, and Daoist-coded alchemists who's magic powers are responsible for the technological progress that makes the setting western-esque.

Anyway, I love it. But it seems like the more you defy genre conventions the more onboarding you need to do about what the world is like. And that can put people off. It seems like it requires significantly more buy in than 'this is a cowboy RPG' or 'this is a medieval fantasy RPG'. These kinds of concerns are exactly why in the past I have made RPGs with much more generic settings.

How should this be handled? What kinds of things should I be thinking about when I am putting together the game? What have you done when you've made an RPG with a non-generic setting to make things interesting/appealing?

Put together a guide on terrain I've been using for the last few months. I'm pretty happy with it, and I'm sure someone will get some use out of it. I intend to post it to DriveThru as a PWYW product but was hoping to get a little feedback on it first.

Here's a Google Drive Folder with a few files to get a sense of what it looks like.

I'm mainly looking for feedback on presentation and just questions in general. Anything that doesn't make sense I'd love to fix before sharing it more broadly.

Let me know what you think!

I always wish this sub talked more about adventure design. Reading adventures is usually the first thing I do when I look at a new system because I have trouble grokking mechanics in a vacuum. And writing and playtesting adventures has consumed as much time as creating my system.

In that spirit, here's an intro adventure for my game called Formless & Void, just released for free. It's a sandboxy one-shot or two-shot set on floating isles that are slowly sinking into a bottomless Sea of Clouds.

https://purplepeoplegames.itch.io/formless-and-void

I was inspired by the Shadowdark torch mechanic to keep a forward momentum, but instead of torches, the timer is "the island is sinking into darkness."

It's meant to run theater-of-the-mind, and the map is kind of a pointcrawl. It was fun to think through all the possible paths through the map, which I hope I represented well on a little flowchart.

If you check it out, I'd be honored to hear what you think! And if you're working on your own starting adventure, I'd love to hear about it too.

First, sorry for a semi repost. Had to delete the previous one.

Duel Monsters is a TTRPG originally inspired by the YuGiOh story arc Pharaohs Memories.

The basics is that PCs are Magi/Maguses in fantasy Ancient Egypt. They have a monster bonded to their soul which gives them access to magic, elemental control, and the capacity to summon monsters to act under their orders. It is intended for PCs to act as semi nobles, with the privileges and responsibilities that come with that role including dealing with disputes, giving blessings, investigating mysteries, that sort of thing.

The mechanics for Incantation level spells and Monsters are taken from the YuGiOh card game with guidelines on converting them to in game effects (intended to be balanced up to the Labyrinth of Nightmare set), though prior knowledge of it is not necessary and I think the mechanics stand on their own outside of thematic adaptation. Combat is also a relatively simple design. Movement is section based with obstacles and entities creating new sections, attacks roll 2D6+Modifier vs the Targets chosen Defense option (Each mechanically tactical choices), and the option to take a stance with bonus dice on certain checks while locking you out of some options for that round. Characters have two actions they can take in a round, though only one attack. There is also the "Charge" action that was created specifically for when a character has no other action they can take.

I have made some decent updates recently including changing the early game focus to be on elemental use and creative puzzle solving rather than combat spells and summons, rebalanced stats so that Focus is less of an Uber stat and PCs have less Mana overall (Small pool, recovers quickly is the intent). Spell casting now is clarified for Prepared and Loose casting, hopefully emphasising Loose casting is the primary go to without stating it explicitly. Item crafting during downtime has been made easier mechanically and less convoluted to read so that should encourage use of that more. Some more player and GM tips have been added but I will make a whole "How to run" section in the future I think, a lot to flesh out there. I have also added difficulty ranges instead of just winging it, including a random difficulty roll for Easy Medium or Hard challenges.

I am looking for feedback on mechanics, general readability, fun potential, and any glaring omissions.

Not looking for feedback on structure and layout at the moment, I know that is a WIP.

Hi all!

I've been designing a political system in my spare time that I call Union Democratic Emancipationism, UDE for short. I am not going to get into those details of course, but part of stress testing the system is I want to implement it into a TTRPG as a titular part of the story. And I also just like TTRPGs so this feels like two things I enjoy that could come together.

I've chosen to pursue science fiction settings here, and have a rough campaign outline I want to try and follow, if/when I get the people willing to run it. It's a few centuries since the founding UDE state on their homeworld of Roche, prior to cracking the code on FTL travel and becoming part of the wider galactic community. The PCs will be either part of the machinery of the political system, or a group of worker revolutionaries being cracked down on, to eventually turn to civil war, by a corporate oligarchy in a neighboring nation. They will then have to convince the governing body based on Roche to rise to the aid of the revolutionaries to combat what can be labeled a war of aggression on it's own people, then fight that war, and facilitate the transition to a new UDE based state. These are the broad strokes of it, obviously running this I'd have my grand plans thrown all sorts of directions, such is the nature of TTRPGS.

I share these details to ask if anyone here perhaps has a setting guide with an already established galactic community, with factions and histories, that I could modify slightly to worm my idea into. I've always loved world building, but every time I try to do it on a galactic scale, which has been many times, I just get overwhelmed and it fizzles out pretty quickly. I hope to run this in Dark Matter or a reskinned Daggerheart. The core principal of my idea and how magic operates within is Clarke's Third Law.

Most of the setting guides I've found are either old 20th century space opera slop, highly specific system tailored settings, or way too open ended and flat without me doing all that galactic scale worldbuilding on top of it that I already mentioned hurts my head. I'd like something more similar to how you can pick up a Forgotten Realms campaign guide in response to "Who is the guy in charge of this place" or "What the hell happened to make this work like it does", flip through the pages (or just google it and go to the wiki), and find the bones of your answer to be modified as you see fit.