Exofleet Adventures

 This will be a pretty short update:  If you are going to make a game based on a property like Exosquad which was centered around a new novel technology like E-frames, you better have the part of the game that represents that technology nailed down tight. Most of the time your players are going to be role playing what characters do with that technology. In this case the characters are going to be role playing the act of piloting and fighting inside of E-frames.  In order to encourage this style of play my idea is the keep the actual character creation very simple. Characters are going to be five bonuses and maybe one or two traits to make them feel distinct from one another. The real meat of the "character creation" and will be in either in the creation of a unique E-frame or the selection of an E-frame seen in the show, as well as the equipment loadout selected by your character.  This week I spent time working on Vehicle Creation rules. If you plan on sticking to Canon, I a

 So one ting I have been noticing as I watch through Exosquad is that the weaponry of the individual E-Frames and other vehicles is pretty inconsistent. The BD-100 Ground Assault E-Frame piloted by Wolf Bronski in the show usually has a wide array of missile weapons mounted in its arm pods, but sometimes it seems to carry laser weaponry. Similarly the standard Neosapien E-frame sometimes fires a beam out of the spiked ball on its right arm, and other times launches the ball itself as a projectile.  I am not sure why the inconsistency exists in the show. I am do not know if it was an intentional choice or if these were animation errors.  For the purposes of this game I am going to treat this inconsistency as an intentional choice and I will be assuming that Eframes are modular and can change their weaponry and equipment to suit the mission at hand.  As I mentioned in another post, My current idea for "inventory" is a pod based system where a vehicle consists of a number of pod

 When I started this project I chose Exosquad at the recommendation of a friend. When I was a kid I remember really liking Exosquad and in fact I had a handful of the toys, but I am not a lifelong fan. When I decided to make Exofleet Adventures one thing I knew I would have to do is watch the entire series as research for the game. Luckily one of my buddies had the complete series on DVD so I was able to borrow the discs from him.  One of the things that stood out about Exosquad is the relatively complex plot and setting for a kids show of this era. In the 90's most kids shows were basically commercials for toys. The plots were simple good guys vs bad guys stuff. Exosquad, while definitely tied to a toy line was a little "deeper" than your average show from that time.  I remembered from my childhood that the primary forces involved in the show were the humans as the good guys and the neosapiens as the villains. Even as a kid I remember there was some ambiguity with the mo

 As mentioned in my previous post one of the main challenges of translating Exosquad into an tabletop game is the idea of scale. Over the course of the series combat in Exosquad takes place at a number of different "scales." for the purposes of the tabletop RPG I have identified 4 differnt scales. Infantry level combat with humans fighting neosapiens on foot is common. E-frame and space fighter scale combat is probably the most common combat scale that we see in the show. Large vehicles like larger mecha and tanks appear occasionally, and finally very large scale vehicles like capital ships have a major role in the show as well.  I believe in a game like Exosquad the idea of scale needs to be baked into the core mechanic of the game. Lawful Nice (of white wizards workshop) had a discussion on their blog several years ago about using a D10 dice to represent mecha combat in a game that usually used D6's for combat. The idea of larger dice representing physically larger

 Hello, Welcome to the development diary of my most recent tabletop RPG project, Exofleet Adventures.  Purpose:  To develop a full featured fan made (free, not for profit etc.) tabletop RPG set in the Exosquad universe created by Jeff Segal and developed by Mark and Michael Edens.  Why:  A few days ago I decided that I wanted to work on a large RPG project. After asking some of my comrades and gaming buddies about properties they wish had an RPG one of them mentioned Exosquad. I was immediately attracted to the idea of working on an Exosquad RPG due to the challenges that the setting presents. Exosquad lasted more than 50 episodes and offers a large amount of content to work with. To me one of the most interesting challenges presented by the Exosquad property is the challenge of presenting scale. Exosquad routinely showed human scale combat, e-frame scale combat, fighter combat, larger mecha combat, and naval scale combat. Making a tabletop game that can accurately represent combat at