The age of the great empires is long past.  Their flames are long burned out and only dimly flickering embers of their glory remains.  Even the stars grow weary, flaring hot to scorch once green worlds or dwindling leaving those once embraced with gentle warmth rimmed with ice.  Scientific and social progress are crumbling edifices of times lost in the endless waves of crime, barbarism, and unholy war.

Yet for all this men still cross the treacherous oceans of the void on patched and ragged ships.  Daring raiders and merchantmen reckless with greed leave the small comforts of home to grasp at greatness and the thrill of adventure.

Desolate and Barren Stars is a science fiction roleplaying game of bleak and distant future.

Now, I could do this with Galaxies in Shadow.  Yes Clash it's been moving forward ever so slowly and is closing in on done.  But I've a mind to do it with something very minimal, close to D&D, derived from my old Shadows fantasy game and Advanced Men & Magic.

Here's what I've been rolling around in my head:

Attributes
Humans have a base of 10 in the following abilities and 10 points to spend.  The active bonus for an attribute is it's score -10.

Strength
Coordination
Endurance
Reason
Perception
Willpower
Appearance
Status

Skills provide a bonus to actions they are appropriate to.  The professions give a character 5 skills at +5, all of the skills, not just those derived from the character's profession increase by +1 each time a character gains a level.

Practical Skills:
Medicine
Technical
Survey
Lore
Merchantile

Physical Skills:
Athletics
Fighting
Physique (level added to hitpoints)
Shooting
Subterfuge

Science Skills:
Arcanna
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Sociology

Social Skills
Leadership
Lying
Diplomacy
Streetwise
Romance

Success and Failure
Roll 1d20 and add the appropriate stat and skill bonuses.  If the total is greater than the target number the action succeeds.  For every ten points over the target number an additional success is gained.

Easy 15
Average 20
Difficult 25

Initiative
Roll 1d20 + the appropriate stat bonus for the action with the highest roll going first.

Attacking
Roll over the target's Coordination.  Additional successes are additional hits.  If they are hit in close combat they may make a parry roll, each success achieved cancels out a hit and any successes in excess of the number of hits become hits on the attacker.  Any attack can be dodged with a flat Coordination + Level additional dodge successes can be saved for use against other hits later in the round.

I take it that, with no bonus, an 'Easy' attempt will be failed 70-75% of the time? That sounds off.

Humans have a base of 10 in the following abilities and 10 points to spend. The active bonus for an attribute is it's score -10.

Success and Failure - Roll 1d20 and add the appropriate stat and skill bonuses.

Why not then simply have the attribute score be the attribute bonus? If only the attribute bonus is used in play, then the attribute score is a useless middleman.

The attribute is used as a target number for resistance.  For instance, when you attack someone you have to beat their Coordination score to hit them.  Also, some like Endurance serve as hit point and spell point batteries.  Lastly because this is essentially a cut down D&D.

Actually the setting is a D&D setting too.  Very much a Lankhmar or Dying Earth type set up.  This will be more apparant shortly.

Okay first some more skills:

Magic: (yes there's magic)
Attunement (magical awareness)
Rituals (spells)
Resonance (spell points)
Warding

Psionics
Focus (psi points)
Kinetics
Biometrics
Mementics
Prescience

The Damage System
The damage done by attacks is first subtracted from armour and then the target's hit points (or whatever I end up calling them).  Armour can only absorb a limited number of points per attack and is weakened as it is damaged.

For example a carbon hardsuit can absorb 4 points of damage from a single hit before the damage passes through to the wearer.  It loses one point of protection for every ten damage it takes so it can lose a total of 40 points of damage before being rendered useless.

Partial armour still reduces the damage taken from attacks aimed at unprotected areas because the wearer can move the armoured parts into the attack's path and also because the armoured parts tend to cover the vitals.

Characters have three damage thresholds.
The wounded threshold is the point at which a single attack does serious damage.  The incapacitated threshold is the point at which the character collapses from their accumulated injuries.  The death threshold is the point at which they die horribly from their accumulated injuries.

Wounded Threshold = Endurance / 2
Incapacitated Threshold = Base Racial Hit Point Threshold + Endurance Bonus  
Death Threshold = Base Racial Death Threshold + Endurance

Humans:
Base Incapacitated 4
Base Death 8

Sample Weapons

Laser Pistol: 1 handed, +2 Accuracy, Penetration 2, Fully Automatic,1d10 Damage
Auto Pistol: 1 handed, +1 Accuracy, Penetration 1, Burst Fire, 1d12 Damage
Laser Rifle: 2 handed, +3 Accuracy, Penetration 3, Fully Automatic, 1d12 Damage
Auto Rifle: 2 handed, +2 Accuracy, Penetration 2, Burst Fire, 1d12+2 Damage

Penetration reduces the number of points of damage armour can absorb from a single hit.

Burst Fire allows 2 attacks to be made at the cost of half the weapon's ammo.

Fully Automatic Fire allows 3 attacks to be made at the cost of a full clip or half a belt.

Next up some background stuff...

This idea reminds me Andre Norton's The Last Planet and H. Beam Piper's Star vikings.

Quote from: Aos;273141This idea reminds me Andre Norton's The Last Planet and H. Beam Piper's Star vikings.

Space Vikings was the first book to pop into my head.  Fantastic sort of setting.

Flux Points - The void is a tautly stretched membrane on which the worlds spin out their elaborate dance.  At certain times and places the stress of the worlds upon the void rends it assunder laying waste to those laws which govern time and space allowing objects to travel between stars in the blink of an eye. Though the ways by which the laws binding matter and velocity can be violated are myriad, passing through the folds created by planetary conjunctions is the least difficult and thus most oft employed.

Magic - In the bright days of mankind's first stumbling steps beyond the bounds of fabled Earth it was commonly held that such things as gods, devils, angels, and demons were but artifacts of the primitive and ignorant mind.  Alas it was not so.  There are other, things, that lie in wait beyond the mortal sphere.  Incomprehensiblely alien minds living if it can be called such in the folds of higher planes.  These, can be called upon by certain secret rituals, invoked at certain prices, and served by certain individuals.

Races - Many are the kindreds born of the fabled world of Earth.  Many more of other worlds.  Yet, the people and beasts of that long dead sphere have come to dominate the universe.

The Enlightend - Genetically transformed and maintained in perfect order by a host of microscopic machines, the Enlightend cannot die.  First created in the lost age of the Dark Overlord of the Galaxy their form follows the fashion of that time, slender androgynous bodies, large glistening eyes, and unruley mops of fabulous hair.  The path to enlightened imortallity is no secret now in the universe's final age, yet few tread upon it, for it is well known that the weight of regret and sorrow drives most to cast themselves into volcanos or living stars in search of release or at least a precious moment of novelty.

The Chosen - There is work to be done and oft have those who did not wish to do it sought to pass it on to others.  Of this ancient urge were born the chosen.  Short, stocky and broad of back, stoic and driven to labour by design.  Such creations have proven time and again to be the worst sort of slave as those with the will to work inevitably surpass those who wish to sit idly by in comfort.  Many are the worlds The Chosen have left desolate and barren in their pursuit of efficiency and industry.

The Destroyers - Men only crave adventure and battle until they taste it for themselves and find it bitter and unpaletable.  Men, then are far from the ideal soldier.  Many are the attempts to create perfect soldiers in the vats and laboritories of those who surely have the wit to know better.  Relentless, unquestioning, petty, and vicious The Destroyers are heartless brutes.  What could be more human?

The Seekers - Out from the dying worlds they ride seeking hope in a desolate universe.  With frost tipped fur and sharp toothed muzzles they resemble the wolves of fabled Earth.  But what wolf ever bore a sword of fate upon which prophecies of doom are enscribed?  What noble hunter in the ancient woodlands ever burned such a bloody swath across the stars in bloody crusades and quests?

The Hunters - Some have observed that cats are, by their very nature, evil.  Selfish, vain creatures which love to torment and toy with their victims.  What then, can one say of the indolent and warlike race which bears the traits of its joint ancestors, cats and men?  The menfolk cannot abide their own kind and often attack each other on sight, yet they are often enough found serving in the legions of others as champions and captains for their women folk are drawn to glory.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;273121I take it that, with no bonus, an 'Easy' attempt will be failed 70-75% of the time? That sounds off.

If you're skilled and first level you've got a +5.  If you are much of a gamer at all you've also got at least a +3 for your stat.  That's more like 40%

No bonus is an interesting situation since it describes an unskilled individual with no particular aptitude for the activity in question.

Anyhow, there are two changes I want to make to the initial rules bit.  The first being d20 rolls are open ended on 20.  The second is that you don't get a +1 to everything per level.  Too many skills are specialized knowledge.  Instead You can multiclass or switch up the skills that get the bonus when you level.  But, of course, you start at +1 not +5.

Currently I'm leaning towards a flat 1000 experience points per level with awards being based on how hard they are for the character.  This lets the guy who's being broad based level a bit faster than the guy who's chasing insanely high skill levels.

Instead of Alignments I want to use outlooks.  These are still one word catch all character assessments but somewhat more interesting than the old Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil.

Outlooks:

Optomistic - There is always hope.  Even in the face of the heat death of the universe there is hope.  The belief that if one just tries hard enough, believes enough, is cheerful enough, that nothing is impossible.

Idealistic - There is a better way, it is possible for everyone to do better.  If everyone was better they would be doing better.  That's what's wrong with people, they don't understand the right way of doing things.  If only everyone else could see it!

Cynical - Everyone sucks.  Nobody is right. There really isn't such a thing anyhow.  The great burden of negativism is that in an entropic universe the future can always be predicted accurately.  Sooner or later everything goes wrong.  You can count on it.

Despairing - Why bother trying, it's over.  All the idealists and optomists are fools.  They're deluding themselves.  It was over before they were born.  A full stomach today is the best anyone can hope for.  Forget tommorow, it's not coming and you can bet that if it does you'll wish it hadn't.

Fearful - This can't last.  Seriously, things are terrible now but they're going to get worse, soon.  The best hope anyone has is to get away and hide somewhere.  The next best hope is a warm gun and a firm finger on the trigger.  There's no room for trust, no room for compassion, no room for ideals if you want to survive.

Stoic - Quit your whining, the lot of you and get to work.  You can't change anything with all that yacking.  Just put up with whatever life throws at you and stop complaining.  Everybody else is suffering too.  Get used to it.  Things could be worse.  They will be very soon if you don't stop whinng.

Gateways and Governing Stations - Long are the years which separate the openning of flux points.  Often, the voyage is no longer than the wait, if far more difficult and expensive.  The technology needed to hold a point open once the way opens is far simpler than any other means of passing the rigid bounds of light though it is not smaller.  Great hexagonal gates, thousands of miles across have been built on major trade routes and the courses of great conquesting fleets of long lost empires.

Watching over these gateways are the governing stations.  Huge cities and ports of call where goods are exchanged and diplomats pursue their arcane craft.  The true purpose of these stations is told by the great cannons and projectors and spying beams forever watch the way.

WORLDS

Narrow is the space about a star wherein life thrives.  As the stars gutter and die, worlds once lush and verdant lie barren gripped with ice or scorched by flaring heat.

Bound Worlds -  Some advanced worlds, faced with a flaring star, have saved a portion of their living nature by halting their rotation with vast engines and lighting them with great arrays of mirrors hung in the heavens.  This, preserves a single side of the world for a time, but the place of the world is tenuous and it's orbit slowly becomes unstable or the world itself torn assunder due to the forces halting its rotation.

Hell Worlds - Worlds which have been burned by their sun are trackless deserts, too hot to sustain life in terrible light of day, strewn with the ruins of great cities and civilizations.  A few survivors hide in deep warrens or great, reflective arcologies.  Others dwell in great, tracked dwellings forever treading into night.  Far rarer are the great flying cities with their shining spires, for these too must pursue the darkness, but the ancient engines which bear them aloft must eventually fail and the weight of time hangs heavy upon the universe.

Frost Worlds- No longer warmed by their dying stars, these worlds lie in a final icy grip.  In a short while their people burn away every resource before, at last there is simply too little energy to sustain life.  Some outposts and cities remain, heated with great reactors, but with no reason to remain, those who can move on while the rest dwindle and gnaw at the past.

Colosi - The vanity of emperors is imense.  Scattered across the universe are their monuments to their own glory.  The greatest of these is the Collosus of Stalimandous the Magnificent.  Carved by a great legion of The Chosen as it was stripped of every worthwhile mineral resouce, the remains of this rocky planet still amount to eight times the mass of Earth, carved in the likeness of a heroic figure brandishing a great sword.  Time, asteroid impacts, and gravitational stresses have broken away the sword arm and pitted the carven breast plate but perhaps the gravest indignity is the inscription scrawled across the buttocks by some forgotton wag with a big mining laser "I am ozymandius, king of kings, look upon my works ye mighty and despair."

Vehicle Design (yeah you knew I was gonna go there)

Okay, vehicles are designed by setting their size, allocating their twenty hit locations and working out a couple niggling details.

If you want to map it out, the volume of a vehicle in cubic yards is its Size rating cubed and each hit location is a twentieth of the volume.

The mass of the vehicle in tons is its size squared times its armour rating.  

The cost of a vehicle is equal to its mass in millions of gold pieces.

The armour can take a number of damage points equal to the vehicle's Size for each point of protection lost.  Individual hit locations can take damage points equal to the vehicle's size before ceasing to function.

The crew of the vehicle is generally included (and killed) in the various systems.  The engineers are found in the drive hit locations and so on.  Naturally if the vehicle is very small, like a motor cycle, the crew takes up hit locations.

The systems filling hit location slots are described as "units" because I don't feel like writing out "hit location slots".

SYSTEMS:

Reactor - a ship's power plant is very efficient, able to run for ten years without refueling.  It can power weapons or drives.

Rockets - convert fuel to thrust without external power.  One rocket unit can provide one gravity of acceleration for one hour on one unit of fuel.

Fuel - ships using rockets need fuel.  Fuel has a tendancy to explode when hit by weapons fire.

Thrusters - provide one gravity of acceleration for one unit of power plant power.  Ordinary thrusters require one unit of fuel for two hours of constant acceleration.  Reactionless thrusters that don't consume fuel exist but are rare and hard to maintain.  Rockets move at 500 miles per hour per unit in atmosphere and double their range by openning up air intakes.

Weapons - there are three types of weapon.  Beams, Cannons, and Torpedoes.  Their basic damage is the vehicle's size divided by the die type and the number of weapons.  Turreted weapons have half the normal damage.  Beams units require a power unit from a reactor.  Cannons require a cargo unit for ammunition.  Torpedoes are expendible, once fired they are used up.

Cargo - The volume of a cargo hold unit is the vehicle's size cubed divided by twenty.

Passengers - each passenger needs one cubic yard for a bus or airplane seat or four cubic yards for a bunk.  Rooms are generally ten cubic yards.

Suspension - wheels, tracks, legs, whatever.  A suspension lets a vehicle get around on the ground.  Each suspension unit gives a +1 to driving rolls.  Each power unit dedicated to moving a vehicle with a suspension gives it 50 miles an hour of top speed.  You don't need to match the suspension units with power units.

Wings - you need thrust to get off the ground.  Each unit of wings reduces the thrust needed by 1/10 of a gravity of acceleration.  

Antigravity - an exotic way of getting off the ground.  Antigravity systems are rare and hard to maintain but they allow the vehicle to move at 1000 miles per hour per unit.  They require power from one reactor unit per unit to opperate.

whoops...the drive speeds should be multiplied by ten and divided by armour.  Yes armour thickness goes up at the square of armour value, why?  Also, armour provides damage resistance of 1/10 it's value.  This doesn't have much influence on personal armour but stops you from killing tanks with pistol fire.

Anyhow some discussion of weapon design is in order.

Tiny base damage 1d4
Small base damage 1d6
Medium base damage 1d8
Large base damage 1d10
Huge base damage 1d12
Gigantic base damage 1d10 + 4 (d14)
Gargantuan Base damage 1d10 +5 (d16)
Even bigger base damage 1d12 +5 (d18)
Even more bigger base damage 1d20
Note that a +1 is valued at two die places and no more than one die is ever rolled.

Under normal circumstances, the maximum bonus that can be stacked on any weapon is it's die type.

I'm advancing the damages on the weapons by a bonus of half their die type too.  This will balance them out better with strength based weapons which are currently at quite an advantage.

So the assault rifle's doing 1d12 + 6 now.

That'll let me clean up the damage thresholds a bit while maintaining my goal of whole figure casualty removal on a single die roll.

I like everything so far... except for the Vargr and Aslan.

C'mon... at least add some Hivers.

Just kidding. But they're too recognizably Traveller IMO.

Quote from: David Johansen;273195Vehicle Design (yeah you knew I was gonna go there)

Indeed.

The thing is, you should calculate all of your math off of the baseline - Otherwise, you don't actually have one. And it's kinda useful for knowing how powerful characters are.

I could say it better than that, but I just woke up.