Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Book 2 Preview!

Alright. I'm sorry this took so long to get out, but I have compiled the ship building and ship combat rules that I've been toying around with into a PDF for people to try out. It's still somewhat incomplete, but it should be enough to get people started and get some feedback.

Book 2 Preview: Spelljammers

I can't wait to hear feedback! Try building a ship or two and seeing how it all works. If anything looks broken, needs to be added, or is clearly a mistake (besides spelling - god knows I spell like an Int 1 Barbarian), let me know in the comments, in the rizon chat (#dtdchat) or on the forums.

23 comments:

  1. Dickwolves need to be playable, also ponies

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  2. Sweet rules!

    Seems good to me, except Warp Travel Encounters are a bit too frequent IMO, maybe make it safer when travelling with Portal Relays and/or on shorter journeys?

    Also, there seems to be no rules for a smaller type ship, like the Millenium Falcon or similar, but maybe that's not supposed to be within the scope of these rules?

    Keep up the good work!

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  3. I know these are a preview, and I'm sure you've got more stuff planned. But I feel like the ships just aren't... Big enough, ya know? I want a ship that needs like a 100 man crew. Or some sort of mobile space station. Heh.

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  4. @Moosetoaster

    It says in the rules (page 3) that every point of crew is between 10 and 50 actual people depending on ship class, so the biggest battleships would have 1200 people or so.

    Would be rather annoying to roll 1200 D10, don't you think ;)

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  5. I'm sure a 0 Point Spelljammer clunker is possible if rules were added to make it possible. One-man Warp runners perfect for raiding and escape

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  6. just wondering: If every part of a ship has a cost in multiple of 5 points, why not divide everything by 5, or did i miss something?

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  7. Torpedoes cost less than 5 BP, generally.

    Are we suppose to critique technical stuff? Only that throughout the preview it says Calls instead of Checks, and there's a reference to Fate Points under the description for the Destiny Knot console.

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  8. >Only that throughout the preview it says Calls instead of Checks, and there's a reference to Fate Points under the description for the Destiny Knot console.

    I need to stop writing things when I'm half asleep. *embarrassed*

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  9. also the power surge result mentions the grim darkness of the far future, rather than the grim darkness of the great wheel.

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  10. some more crunchy issues:
    hull strength and hull integrity seem to be used interchangeably.

    driver weapons are listed as dealing half damage. it's unclear if that's half of the rolled damage, or if we're supposed to divide 2k1 by two, somehow.

    The Boarding party action describes using "melee" as the test, and reduces "crew ready" rather than just crew.

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  11. I'm going to say the Warp Phenomenon table is a bit harsh, too.

    There needs to be a few more ways of lowering it, such as the aforementioned idea of a Portal Relay lowering the roll-provides more reason to use it then just speedy travel.

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  12. Also, Weapon Capacitors (p. 13) refer to "Energy Weapons", is that supposed to mean only beam arrays and heavy beams or everything but mass drivers and torpedoes?

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  13. This is fucking awesome (as always). Do you happen to have an estimate as to the release date? Weeks? Months? Epochs?

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  14. on page 8 under ARC as in firing arc

    the rearward direction of a vessel is generally referred to as "aft"

    I like the consoles, but it is my opinion that all hulls need more slots for them...

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  15. This is pretty awesome. Wish I had better input, but this is still pretty awesome. =D

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  16. The difference in power between MKII shields and MKIII shields is too great compared to the MKI/MKII difference, as you gain regen and max strength. Increasing the cost of MKIII and MKIV would work, as would making it a smoother progression.

    Perhaps it should be clearer that surplus damage is lost with multiphasic shields when taking a shield down.

    Otherwise, good stuff.

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  17. For some perverse reason, I feel that there should be an mechanical effect making one want to not use EPS Conduits... since they're the archetypal example of consoles exploding and killing people. Maybe something like 'any time the ship takes critical damage, the ship automatically suffers the Power Surge crit result, in addition to any other critical effect they might suffer'. Of course, that would weaken the console, so it'd be fair to half the price in exchange.

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  18. please tell me whatever rules you have for P-scale vehicles will be able to mesh with this and let players pilot fighters amidst the lumbering space hulk shoot-out. and if not, get on that shit.

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  19. I don't like how there are so many classes of ships. I'd kind of prefer there were say, 4 classes, and then some modifiers and levels.

    Like flitter, cruiser, giantess, moonstar are the only four levels of ship sizes. When, as GM, you bring a ship into the game, you just have to decide the basic class.

    Then you'd apply modifiers, like "military" gives it better armor and hull but makes it expensive to operate, while "commercial" is the opposite. Given 4 or 5 options, including special ones like "Ork-built" or "Elf-built", you arrive at all the basic stats. You have something like class squared basic weapons on the ship, but the weapons come from different parts of the rules. Flitter weapons are different from moonstar weapons: A flitter weapon is like "Front mounted laser"... a flitter one is "point defense turboplasma batteries" or "Planetary destruction laser".

    Rather than spend a day making ships, in actual play, it's better if you can just derive the ship. It's really annoying to prepare a bunch of ships ahead of time. So the players are on a huge ship and one of them says "Let's beam down to the planet!" now as a ref, you have to know... does this ship have teleportals on it? It helps to just say "Yes", fill out another slot on the sheet, and then continue the game, or say "No", because there's not enough points on the ship sheet.

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  20. ^^ Umm... what?

    You complain that you don't like how many classes of ship sizes there are, and propose instead to simplify by having only four.

    As presented, there are four classes of ship sizes; Escort, Destroyer, Cruiser, and Battleship. I don't see what your problem is.

    That said... though there is something to be said for having simple rules that let you easily make stuff up on the fly, that does give you a lack of granularity. If you want to have mechanical space combat, you do need actual mechanics somewhere... and that means some paperwork on your side, as GM.

    To make things easier, it's likely enough that the finished version will include a number of pregen ships that you can easily use as opponents... but even if it doesn't, it's not a very complicated system. Odds are, it'd take you at least thrice as long to generate up a hostile NPC intended to fight with the PCs then it would to generate a ship here.

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  21. Is it me, or have we not heard from LawfulNice in a long time? :(

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  22. It seems to me you have several classes, but there is no method for making your own classes.

    I'd really like to see the design process behind making a class and its cost. What if I want to sacrifice speed for more armor? or sacrifice armor for more crew? Or swap one console slot for another? Can additional console slots or weapon mounts be purchased

    Lastly, I am assuming that there is not really a vertical element in space/void/astral sea combat, otherwise ventral and dorsal arcs would have been included

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  23. I agree that having P-scale fighters and them being compatible would be great
    I also like the 0 point spell jammer idea i think they should just have 1 weapon mount no consoles and all around crappy stats and no more than level one shields.
    I also agree we need some insight into designing new ship classes that are balanced. Some prebuilt ships would be nice.
    Also I think there aren't enough console slots on ships that is the same thing i hated about Saga edition star-wars ships. One thing you could do in the console department is add a (probably universal)console for each basic stat a ship has that all it dose is provide a boost to that stat as well as a console that adds another weapon mount. This coupled with adding more consoles increases customization while not necessarily meaning all ships have huge arrays of special powers though some can.

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