Some errata (already? this game's a failure!):

1. Mindwalkers:
Mindwalkers start with a set number of extrasensory psychic powers, like all characters. This number is fixed and they cannot learn more, however with access to a Church of the New Mind (the greater Mindwalker cult governed by the enigmatic Psynod), found in some towns, they can swap out powers for others. These Churches contain the totality of psyker consciousness and thus allow the Mindwalker access to the ur-knowledge of their powers.
Psychics fuel their powers by spending their Mind stat (no other character can do this and the player must record the character's starting, and thus maximum, score). Each point allows the character to use any of his powers for 1 hour. They regain these points, over time providing no Mind roll is made or used in the meantime; it takes x hours to regain 1 point, where x = the current, remaining, Mind score.

2: Gun damage:
(Gun, as a game term, refers to all ranged weapons that require Ammo expenditure to fire).
Pay 1 Ammo to fire a Gun (ie a Gun-type weapon) and deal damage according to base damage +margin of success. If the weapon has the Auto ability then the player can spend, at the time of rolling up to the listed Auto score, extra Ammo. Each additional point grants an extra die to roll, but adds 1 to the Difficulty.

3. Mind:
Science is now known as Mind. This should probably be explained prior to the Mindwalker entry above.

Norm characters have access to Talents which are, essentially, more effective versions of basic stats and stat-functions, such as combat, or specifically shooting guns, for instance. To power these Talents (which are chosen during character creation), the player must spend Experience points. In order to gain Experience, the character must fulfil certain conditions. These conditions are actions/behaviours that represent things that he is good at - for instance a Talent that helps healing might use an Experience of helping others. Experiences need not be succesful results and they are defined by the player in consent with the GM, not from a preset list (as opposed to the Talents themselves). Characters start with a couple of Experiences and can actually spend Experience points to add more, or to change existing Experiences (both with GM consent) when in town.

A few questions...
Only Norm (origin) characters have access to Talents? Why?

Why is "Mindwalker" a seperate "Origin" from "Mutant"?
In the initial post "Norms" have no psi. and in a later post (#15) you state that all characters start with psychic powers.Can you clarify?

The other "Origins" seem to encompass a spacific type of being whereas Mindwalker seems more like something another "Origin" could have.
For example:
Norm Outlaw (Mindwalker)
Mutant Barbarian (Mindwalker)
Robot Warden (Mindwalker)
More like being a member of a cult or what have you...though I see you state that "Mindwalkers" do have some phsysical abnormalities that distinguish them...isn't that a "Mutant"?

Mulling over the other info...seems good on paper. Any live play or chargen yet?
If you provide a succinct chargen approach I am happy to go through to give some basic feedback.
 cheers!

Interesting stuff GW!

Quote from: skofflox;396399A few questions...
Only Norm (origin) characters have access to Talents? Why?

Why is "Mindwalker" a seperate "Origin" from "Mutant"?
In the initial post "Norms" have no psi. and in a later post (#15) you state that all characters start with psychic powers.Can you clarify?

The other "Origins" seem to encompass a spacific type of being whereas Mindwalker seems more like something another "Origin" could have.
For example:
Norm Outlaw (Mindwalker)
Mutant Barbarian (Mindwalker)
Robot Warden (Mindwalker)
More like being a member of a cult or what have you...though I see you state that "Mindwalkers" do have some phsysical abnormalities that distinguish them...isn't that a "Mutant"?

Mulling over the other info...seems good on paper. Any live play or chargen yet?
If you provide a succinct chargen approach I am happy to go through to give some basic feedback.
 cheers!

Interesting stuff GW!

Norms have Talents, Mutants and Mindwalkers have Powers (though each has completely different power sets), and Robots have Programs. They are basically the special abilties that the characters have access to. That's just the way it works. Each origin has its own resource fuelling abilities unique to themselves.

Mindwalker is different in that psychic power evolved naturally and around the time of the War, whereas Mutants are an evolutionary offshoot caused by radiation. Ultimately it's a design choice. Pyschics are still human, even though they all look like the Observers from Fringe. Mutants...are mutants. That's not to say that Mindwalkers are well trusted either, but they are more enigmatic than deliberately malign (though that's as entirely possible as it is for a Mutant to be benign and friendly to Norms).

There will always be some degree of overlap and perhaps confusion; that's just how these things work. Role is not Origin though and both are quite different. Mindwalker can't be a Role since it's intrinsically an Origin, psychic powers are unique to Mindwalkers that's why the origin exists. YOu can't be a Mutant psychic even though you might have Mutant powers that are as bizarre and strange to any individual as anythign a Mindwalker can do. The difference is that Mutant powers always have an inbuilt setback because of the way Rads work, they are powerful but cost the player something to use because they are a pressure valve (literally!).

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;395928Combatants receive 1 bonus action if they roll a doubles on their Initiative roll, 2 bonus actions if they roll a triple, and so on up to a limit set by their Reflexes stat.

This is a neat approach. Can these be combined for "special effect" such as spacific target area,add to damage or carry over to another opp.? (riffing from MRQ2 here)

Quote from: skofflox;396598This is a neat approach. Can these be combined for "special effect" such as spacific target area,add to damage or carry over to another opp.? (riffing from MRQ2 here)

I haven't really thought about it, actually. It's not a bad idea! Though it does mean that people wanting to do called shots and such are going to rely purely on getting matches on the Initiative roll. I'm not sure that rings true.

I have gone back and forth regarding initiative for the simple reason that rolling Awareness as a dice pool can produce a potentially too-wide range of results.

I am also thinking of adding a rule that says, after calculating Initiative, players can sacrifice x actions to change x of the Awareness dice results to be equal to his Reflexes score.

So a person that rolls Awareness 3 and gets 3 1's can spend any of their 3 (lets say 1) actions to improve their Initiative result. Let's say they have Reflexes of 4, so they now have 2 actions and an initiative result of 6, not 3 (which may or may not be worth the effort).

Some fluff:

the word 'junk' is the wasteland version of the pg-friendly BSG expletive 'frak'

So up yours, motherjunker, if you don't like it!

I'm thinking the chief language of the Wasteland (the remnant of the former Northern Union continent, including eastern territory annexed by the Red Republic), is 'Grish': a mix of Union and Sinonese - the language of one of the pre-war economic giants in the world. Then you have Swamp Creole: a mixture of Orleanese and Union with a dash of dialects south of the border where the influence of Hindustani meets the San Santina latin to produce Dhal Latin. The chief language of the mutant capital of Morgoth City is Promethean which is said to have more than 26 letters and is at best incomprehensible to even many mutants. Robots of course can communicate in Binary. Mindwalkers...think.

If I might offer a suggestion that might enable you to get more feedback on your game. There are various bits of the system being presented here, pieces of background, and various other stuff. That makes for a somewhat cluttered thread and makes it difficult to give feedback that concentrates on particular areas. Perhaps you could have different threads for different things, like one for character creation, one for the main system elements, one for background, and so on.

But, this is just an observation on my part.

Cheers
Malcolm

Well if people think that's easier then that's fine. I figured it would be more efficient for the forum to have less threads in general. It's really down to whether people are itnerested and what works for them.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;396657I haven't really thought about it, actually. It's not a bad idea! Though it does mean that people wanting to do called shots and such are going to rely purely on getting matches on the Initiative roll. I'm not sure that rings true.

I have gone back and forth regarding initiative for the simple reason that rolling Awareness as a dice pool can produce a potentially too-wide range of results.

I am also thinking of adding a rule that says, after calculating Initiative, players can sacrifice x actions to change x of the Awareness dice results to be equal to his Reflexes score.

So a person that rolls Awareness 3 and gets 3 1's can spend any of their 3 (lets say 1) actions to improve their Initiative result. Let's say they have Reflexes of 4, so they now have 2 actions and an initiative result of 6, not 3 (which may or may not be worth the effort).

Bold mine...

Called shots do not have to depend fully on matches though matches could Mod. said called shot.

As far as changing Intiative by trading actions, this could be a cool mechanic...like the characters are going to the limit,pushing the envelope to get an edge.
Adding details like this give lots of nice options but have a potential to slow the search and handling times so these could all be suggested additions to tweak the game and not part of the "main" rules.

Nice detail on the languages!
As Malcom suggested perhaps splitting the thread would intice more people to reply...lonely here...
How about some Chargen details!

Perhaps something like:

Initiative:
Characters act once per round in order of Initiative, from highest to lowest. Initiative is calculated by rolling Awareness d6 and totalling the result. If the result produces matching numbers the player may use a special effect that turn:
Any instance of a double allows the character to add 1d6 to any one attack roll this round.
Any instance of a triple allows the character to add 1d6 to any one attack, or to the difficulty of any single attack against him this round.
Any instance of a quadruple allows the character to do both the above.
Characters with equal Initiative compare matches to break ties, failing that they compare Reflexes stats. Failing that, let the gods of chance decide.

This eliminates any imbalance through giving certain characters potentially too many actions per round as everyone acts once (withpossible modifications for certain types of action, such as moving AND shooting). But it also gives people who have lots of Awareness the chance to get a benefit for doing so and thus the player a tactical choice from a few simple options.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;396785Perhaps something like:

Initiative:
Characters act once per round in order of Initiative, from highest to lowest. Initiative is calculated by rolling Awareness d6 and totalling the result. If the result produces matching numbers the player may use a special effect that turn:
Any instance of a double allows the character to add 1d6 to any one attack roll this round.
Any instance of a triple allows the character to add 1d6 to any one attack, or to the difficulty of any single attack against him this round.
Any instance of a quadruple allows the character to do both the above.
Characters with equal Initiative compare matches to break ties, failing that they compare Reflexes stats. Failing that, let the gods of chance decide.

This eliminates any imbalance through giving certain characters potentially too many actions per round as everyone acts once (withpossible modifications for certain types of action, such as moving AND shooting). But it also gives people who have lots of Awareness the chance to get a benefit for doing so and thus the player a tactical choice from a few simple options.

Very nice idea here...a few potentialy powerful options.
Elegant approach GW..

How about some chargen details so's I can run through...?

Thanks.

The details of that initiative system will have to be ironed out.

Character generation will have to wait until i've designed the 'kewl powerz'. That's the next part, aside from a couple of bits and pieces (tightening up the driving rules).

Edited out bad ideas that don't work. Thanks for reading.

While I work on the combat system (refining damage and coming up with a shorthand methodology for GM's in respect of multiple NPC's), I want to invite comment on a simple change of jargon.

Currently Mutants fuel their mutant powers by expenditure (burning off is a more accurate description) with Rads - radiation, basically.

I am thinking of changing that word to Atoms and using the term Rads in place of difficulty (ie the difficulty of a task would be its rads - the more rads a task has, the higher the difficulty).

I am unsure as to whether this is just confusing. Atoms isn't the best word and I can't think of anything better, but Rads in place of Difficulty is kinda cool, I think it could work.