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 am going to have every E-frame seen in Season 1 available to select right out of the book, but I would be disappointed in an Exosquad RPG if it didn't have vehicle creation rules for E-frames. 

In a previous post I said vehicle rules would probably be pretty similar to the vehicle rules in ICRPG from Runehammer Games, But the more I think about the types of actions I want to codify into my game, the more I realize I will have to have a more scripted, less free form system for vehicles and vehicle creation. Thats not to say there will only be a few options for E-frame creation, just that the options will limited instead of completely open ended like the ICRPG rules. 

I am sticking to the modular pod system that I discussed before. Ive started thinking about the types of pods I want to allow, the types of pods that are required and how I want pods to affect the performance of the E-frame. 

For example, One type of pod that will be common on Exofighters and Aerial Assault E-frames is the "control surfaces" pod. Control Surfaces will increase the maneuverability of a vehicle while in flight. Thats all well and good but now I have to decide how I want maneuverability to be represented on the tabletop. 

In the ICRPG you could just say "1 chunks worth of control surfaces makes all roles  to perform maneuvers EASY" but there isnt really an easy/hard system built into my core mechanic. So I can either make exceptions to the rule and change the target number, or I can make maneuverability work some other way. 

Currently I am thinking that all vehicles will start off with a D6 scale dice in maneuverability and can invest one or more pods in control surfaces that will increase that number. Larger vehicles will have to invest proportionally more pods to increase their maneuverability. an E-frame may only need 1 pod to increase to a D8 maneuverability die, but a capital ship may need 3 or more to do the same. 

Like everything else this is subject to change once play testing starts. 

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