Skills can also be advanced through training, which in essence gives a bonus (or penalty) to the roll you make to advance. If you are training in a master's dojo with the man himself as your sensei, and no other students, with a variety of facilities to use, you might get a +5 on the roll.

So he'll definetely get anyone from skill 0 in ju-jitsu to skill 6, and probably skill 10 for most people, but he's going to want a lot in return for that investment of his time (quests and adventuring opportuninty here, if not just sheer cash donations).

If you're trying to teach yourself French from a book, you might not get any bonuses, or maybe a +1 if its an excellent quality book.

Training is a large area, but the basics are straightforward.



In the basic setup, characters and NPCs have the same sorts of stats, but the PCs would normally be a lot more skilled, which gives them a big advantage. However a lucky knife in the back can still end them.

It depends as well on the NPCs in question, blooded and armoured knights of the round are always going to be harder to kill than peasant farmers. There are no "mook" or "minion" rules. If ten peasant farmers are having at you with scythes, I don't care if you're Antonio Banderas, you'd better step lively.

If you wanted things more pulpy, hits can be increased beyond what might be expected for a normal human. I'll be including guidelines for the adjustments which are useful for emulating various styles of play in the rules, whether high fantasy, noir, mythos, pulp, low fantasy, gritty, and so on.

This is entirely my own creation, and the result of lots of trial and error, it works like a charm.

Two ships blasting at one another, pirate fights in the Carribbean, submarines stalking one another, a galley battle, these are some of the most dramatic scenes in any story, in games even more so. Never are players more attentive than when these events take place.

Unfortunately very few game systems deal with them in a satisfactory manner. Almost none I would say, since the problems with doing so are simple yet seemingly insurmountable.

First off, you can't handle a 3D battle with a 2D map. You can sorta kinda maybe kludge it, but really its not going to happen, so biplanes ducking and soaring around a steampunk blimp are out. You can just handwave it so it becomes a simple contested skill roll, but you're missing out on all the drama and excitement then.

Then we have statistics. I look at something like GURPs or Traveller and the long long list of stats for ships and its just, no. That's too much. But within those game systems thats what you need to make it happen.

...

So I boiled it down then built it up, and what I was left with works remarkably well for any ship to ship battle, in any era, with however many combatants.

Ships have the following statistics:

Speed (spd): This is how fast the ship can go, and varies from -4 to +4, with +4 being the fastest. The actual units of speed are not particularly important, since all vessels in any given conflict move in the same units. +4 simply means the fastest a ship can go in that campaign, whatever that works out as in km/h or light years per day, and -4 is the slowest.

Maneuverability (man): How maneuverable a ship is, how quickly it can turn and change direction. Like speed, it is rated -4 to +4.

Hull (hull): The physical mass of the hull, how large a ship is. This can also be adjusted by making hulls out of exotic materials or having internal reinforcement to make them stronger, which costs more. Conversely, a shoddy old rustbucket tramp steamer might have fewer hull points than its size might suggest. Normally 1 to 8 hull would be a fighter or bomber, which could potentially be destroyed by a single hit, 9 to 15 hull might be a frigate, 16 to 25 hull a cruiser and so on.

Armour (ar): This is the armour plating and hardness of the hull, and takes away from damage done before it hits the hull. Armour that is penetrated reduces by 1 point each time damage is done, until it gets repaired.

Crew: (crw): This is three numbers that represents the quality, number, and weapons skill of the crew. Quality means how long they have been together, skill, and general morale, running from -4 to +4, number is simply the number of crew on the ship, and weapon skill is their skill at manning the weapons.

Weapons (weap): This is a number from 1 to 15, divided into three types, short, medium and long range. Each of these has a power number which indicates the amount and quality of weapons, a damage number, used when they hit, and an ammo counter (optional). The ammo counter doesn't neccessarily represent the number of missiles or bullets on board, but rather the amount of time they can be fired for. Likewise damage isn't the damage per shot, just an overall figure to show the damage capability of each weapon.

Captain / Pilot: This is probably the most important figure on the ship. If there is only one crew as in a fighter plane, the piloting skill is used, otherwise the captaining skill is used. The captain's skill is the basis for maneuvers.

...

Maneuvers:

Maneuvers are how ships position themselves relative to one another, whether near or far, grappling and boarding, ramming or trying to escape. These are rolled on the captain's skill, and are usually contested, one ship against another.

Each maneuver takes a certain amount of time. Weapons firing does not take any time on the battle wheel, but can only be done once in each action unless being done defensively.

Example maneuvers:

Close and fire: This is where a ship closes on a target and fires weapons. If the captain attempting this maneuver rolls 1-3 over his enemy, he can get within long range. If he rolls 4-6 over his enemy, he can get within medium range, and 7 or more he can get to close range. Note a captain can choose to stay at long range even if he is able to get to short range, which is useful if that captain has long range weapons but his target has none, sniping them from a distance.

Once the captain has attacked, his target can immediately return fire with any weapons that can reach, at a -4, cumulatively for each concurrent attack before it moves again, so returning fire on a simultaneous attack by three ships is at a -4, -8 and -12 respectively. This is called defensive fire.

Each attempt to dodge an attack after the first incurs a -2 cumulatively on the captain's roll, so if three ships attack at the same time, the first dodge is at the captains skill, the second is at -2, and the third is at -4.


After each attack the range is reset to "out of range", so its not important to track relative positions. You CAN do so on a table, but in my experience it just adds accounting headaches. Playability first, ultra realism second.


Close and fire on a blind spot: This is exactly the same as close and fire, except it attempts to come at the target where it can't return fire, like the back of a fighter jet. The roll is at -5, but if successful the target can't use defensive fire. In cases where the target has 360 degree fields of fire (like a battleship), this maneuver can still be used to minimise the effect of the defending fire, giving a -6 rather than the usual -4 to hit for defensive fire.

One minor issue with the rules as described here is the possiblity of dogpiling, wherein every ship on one side dogpiles a single ship on the other, repeatedly. This is dealt with in the full rules.

Want to stat up and duke out a battle between three Arleigh Burke class destroyers and a fleet of alien invaders? Takes about five minutes to put together. Twenty rolls aren't needed for twenty guns, just the one.

If anyone spots any glaring mathematical or logical errors, or just doesn't like an idea, please do tell me what or why. Unless its dealt with in the core rules, and I'm not going to load them up in their entirety, criticism is an important point here.

As mentioned early there are no levels in this game. By default there are no classes either, you get your pool of skills and pick the one you want.

In certain game worlds however optional classes will be included, that means certain skills are only available to those who have the right class. Outside that there is a smaller pool of general skills anyone can take. This can be combined with a lifepath system to help with character creation.

Gear, equipment and money

Generally speaking, encumbrance or character weight systems are not really that much fun in RPGs. They add a lot of accounting overhead and not much else. As such, in the core system, they aren't used, you carry what you carry and if the GM feels you are carrying too much, you are penalised. Penalties for weight are applied in a similar fashion to armour, making you slower in combat and when taking various actions.

As a good rule of thumb, three pictures of increasingly heavily loaded characters will be supplied, and the group can look at those and decide which one they most closely represent.

However, if you prefer to use encumbrance, the following system is recommended: items are divided into five weight categories:

    very light: coins, notebooks, lockpicks
    light: daggers, boots, bottles of vodka
    medium: laptops, submachine guns, broadswords
    heavy: double handed swords, a full backpack of camping gear
    very heavy: office printers, jerrycans of fuel

This is then represented on the character sheet as boxes, once one space in a box is filled, the weight penalty applies. Heavier items have fewer items in each box.

If I have an item in any of these boxes, a 1 point penalty is applied to actions. More items are added as I pick them up, until the box is full. Then I start filling in the next box if I pick up another item in the same weight category, getting a further 1 point penalty to all actions in the process. A box of very light or light items can be filled with no penalty.

This system cuts down considerably on the accounting involved in encumbrance.

Of course there is a lot of leeway in what defines a light item, a down filled quilt might be light but is extremely awkward to carry, unpacked, so might be listed as a heavier item than its actual kilo weight bracket. For the most part however an item's heaviness can be figured out just by looking at its real life weight. These will be listed once the full game system is released.


Although equipment lists will include clothing and other sundries, generally speaking it's assumed that these are part of the normal equipment of a character, and as such are never listed on the sheet.

Armour

Armour is a special case in terms of equipment in that it adds a substantial benefit for the characters, moreso as it grows heavier. For game balance there need to be penalties associated with heavier armour, to prevent everyone swaggering around in triple plate strapped in with boiled leather all the time. This penalty usually scales up with the protective power of the armour, and is offset by the strength of the character.

Wealth

Whether or not a group wants to calculate wealth directly, as in add up coins or dollars and subtract them when buying things, or use an abstract mechanism to figure out wealth depends on the group's preferences and the type of game being played. For a post apocalyptic game or a standard middle ages fantasy campaign, resource management becomes important as it is strongly implied in the theme setting.

Conversely, for more modern era games specific wealth might be less important, as it not only comes in many varied forms like property and investment portfolios, but characters might well be part of a larger organisation so their individual wealth might not be of great value to gameplay..


Resource management is self explanatory, just pay the list price and subtract it from your total wealth. Character sheets can have an extra page to list assets and equipment of value they might not have on or near them. Abstract wealth however is a little less intuitive.


Abstract wealth

In the abstract system, wealth is an attribute factored from one to twenty, with twenty being the highest wealth. Items and services are factored from one to thirty and up, depending on how expensive they are.This translates very easily from the resource based system since item value numbers are based on actual cost, for example:

1 - 1 to 20 dollars
2 -21 to 50 dollars
3- 51 to 100 dollars
and so on.

Up to four points below your wealth rating, items can be acquired automatically, so someone at wealth 7 could purchase items of value 3 without any effect, although buying two items of value 3 might require an effect (ie two $80 items would be value 4 combined). The storyteller would have to make a reasonable judgement, if the character is buying small ticket items with unusual frequency, whether or not they count as cumulative items.

For buying items up to three points below the character's wealth level, it can be done automatically, but their wealth is reduced as follows:

3 points below: -1 wealth
2 points below: -2 wealth
1 point below: -3 wealth
0 points below: -4 wealth

For purchasing items of a higher value than the character has wealth, roll 1d10 and add it to the wealth score, versus the item value. If successful, the character's wealth is reduced by 4 plus the difference between the wealth and value. If the roll is not successful, the item cannot be bought.

Wealth can then be increased by the usual methods, looting tombs and selling corporate secrets. The storyteller assigns a wealth level to the treasure itself, and for every two shares that are taken out of it, reduce it by one value level. If this amount is less than what the character already has, it has no effect on their wealth. If it is equal to their wealth, they gain one wealth. If it is higher than their wealth, it replaces their old wealth.

It should be noted that this system is deliberately inflationary (gaining wealth is much harder than spending it) to give characters an incentive to go out and seek more wealth, as a better reflection of reality.

I dunno about the weight categories; just difficult to determine what category things fall into.
 
On the wealth, some good points regarding how different games look at wealth. I find there's a distinction between games where wealth is meant to be earnt as a result of the adventure (in the chest you find 50 gps) and where its meant to be glossed over/earnt 'off camera' (superhero games where a character has a day job).
 
The system as presented looks OK; I've seen systems (DC Heroes 3E) which used abstract wealth but with rules limiting how often characters could make 'wealth checks' (1/week, with 1 roll having to be saved for 'upkeep' each month, and with critical failure on this giving bankruptcy). Characters could also 'bank' unspent checks to get a bonus on a later roll, and so save up for expensive items beyond their normal wealth rating.

The equipment lists I have now have specific numbered weights for everything, so it wouldn't be too hard to split them up into a few broad categories (even keeping the listed weights for say large cargo calculations).

What did you think of the ship to ship system, its slow going getting feedback... maybe its not explained enough?

I quite like the ship to ship system. Nice compromise between complete abstraction and a minis type system that should work fairly well.
 
Resetting the range after each turn looks like it should cut down on the book keeping quite a bit - makes sense and looks like it'd work quite well with fast-moving vehicles, not so much for tanks or slow-moving things but eh. The categories of numbers look good to me i.e. they seem like a reasonable abstraction of vehicle/crew capabilities.

Thanks, yeah it would be easy to track positions if there were only two ships, if they are in close range add a +4 to the next maneuver to stay in close range, or just +2 on the contested roll if someone wants to move two ranges away, +4 if they want to move one range away, and +6 if they want to stay in the same range, but of course when three or more ships are involved it just becomes an accounting headache. Maybe there's an easy way to do it, I haven't come up with one.

Anyway the idea isn't to have a blow-by-blow conflict with each gun rolled for, its an emulation of how battles actually work out, with a  variety of maneuvers contained within one roll. Tracking relative positions would be defeating the purpose of the system. The range reset is compensated for by the way that defenders can fire defensively at a penalty.

So a fighter strafing a battleship would be able to move from out of range to firing range, shooting without penalty, and the battleship can use its far superior weapons at a penalty to try and defend itself. The battleship can't then easily move into range of the fighter and unleash its full arsenal, meaning it is reliant on its defences alone, which is accurate to real life. Its easier for the fighter to hit the battleship than it is for the reverse, since the fighter is faster and more maneuverable.

This even works for tanks of approximately equal speed, skill, and mobility; they will usually stay within mid to long range of one another and exchange fire that way.

The system while being on the surface very simple, can also be extended to be as fine grained as suits a game; the specifics of how many weapons of whatever type produce bonuses in combat, targeting systems for increased accuracy and so on can all be specified when outfitting vessels, maneuverability bonuses from better engines, right down to the quality of weapons and ammunition used.

If you want to run it quick and dirty though, you can just make an estimation of "this is more dangerous than that, this is faster than that", and come up with approximate numbers immediately.