Posts

Showing posts from September, 2020

E-War, Communications, Targeting and more.

One thing that caught my attention about the Exosquad toys when I was a kid was how each E-frame seemed to have its own role in the squad. There was the air and ground assault E-Frames but then their were other E-frames that were more exotic. Stealth E-Frames, Electronic Warfare E-Frames, and E-frames equipped with high tech communication equipment or powerful radar. These specialize E-frames really grabbed my imagination as a child.  Now that I am watching the show I cant help but notice that most of this fancy equipment is under utilized on the screen. This is a situation I hope to change in Exofleet Adventures.   I want to provide the player with lots of interesting options when they load out their E-frame and I don't want the most interesting option to always be the biggest gun. I also want their to be plenty of equipment that allows pilots to take on distinct roles within the squad. For the time being I'm still thinking there will be no "classes" so your characte

Vehicle Creation

 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

Inventory System and Scale

 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

Factions/ Setting

 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