Machinations: 12 days to go

I’m going to be fairly busy this coming week prepping for and attending IndieCon where I hope to run a demo game of MotSP in at least one of the slots.

That means I won’t be able to post updates and push the campaign as much as I’d like to as we move into our last fortnight of effort.

I would very much like to make Satine’s wish of being able to paint a great-big GM screen come true (3k) and we have had a few fairly awesome thoughts for a possible 4k and 5k level too.

So fund us!

To help push this last bit forward I have created a new – and likely final – perk level ‘Tea, Earl Grey, Hot’ which is a cheaper version of Matter Transportation. It means you get a print copy of the book – albeit not signed – as well as PDFs etc found in the other levels.

So come on, FUND US

Machinations: Spaceship Battles

So, I’m thinking about space battles – and perhaps more broadly vehicle battles – in Machinations of the Space Princess and there’s a tension between wanting to keep rules simple an wanting to make them fit and be fun.

The most obvious route is to treat a spaceship like a monster. Give it hit points and statistics and so forth, but that doesn’t reflect the participation of the crew, the ace pilot and so on – much as it works well for enemy ships.

I want a system that remains simple but also allows crew – and passengers – to make a difference, so that everyone on the ship can feel that they’re doing something to help out in a battle.

One idea is to modify a concept from the game Full Thrust. In Full Thrust (which is an excellent space-battle wargame) ships have rows of damage and when a row of damage is taken there’s a chance of losing systems from being able to operate.

So, what I’m thinking, perhaps, is that ships will have hit point ratings – along with defence etc – and also have system ratings.

1. Systems
2. Life Support
3. Weapons
4. Engines
5. Cargo
6. Hull

So, say you have a snub fighter with 5hp (Starship scale) and it takes 10 damage from a vesta beam, it’s going to take two lots of system damage.

It has systems rated at:

1. Systems O
2. Life Support O
3. Weapons OO
4. Engines O
5. Cargo O
6. Hull O

It takes two damage at locations two and six. Life support is out (crew take damage) and the hull is destroyed, the ship goes boom! Damage would flow down, so if you hit systems and it was already clobbered, it would flow down to life support and so on.

The people on the ship can lend their skills and abilities to piloting it and avoiding harm, firing the weapons (using their ranged attack skills) and doing other actions to boost shields, restore broken systems, patch up the hull and even offer encouragement.

So I’d make a laundry list of options for things people can do to help out, as examples. EG: ‘Never tell me he odds’, rotate shield frequencies, manually adjust the warp field, etc, etc, etc. All of which means everyone can be valuable on board ship and much like adventurers versus monsters, player ships will have more options and punch above their weight.

Ship design?

Hit dice, systems picks and, perhaps, templates. Somewhat similar to the racial design.

A 1HD attack fighter might have one set of stats while a 2HD light hauler might be very different!

What are your thoughts and ideas?