Update #14 - Luck, Explosions, and Criticals! Oh My!
about 6 years ago – Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 11:33:43 AM

Hello everyone!

Today we'll be taking a look at the mechanics behind Luck, Exploding Dice, and Criticals. Again, none of this is to be considered final at this stage as things are still being tweaked slightly here and there. With that said, let's dive in!

Luck Mechanics

So, as you all know by now, Luck is a Primary Attribute in the system. But, what does it all do?

We know from previous updates that it affects Perception and Reflex, as well as the Gambling Skill. That's really about all we've seen so far. That doesn't really sound like a lot, does it? And from just that you probably find it hard to believe me when I say, Luck is one of the more useful Attributes in the game, don't you? Well, let's see if your opinions change after I share what Luck is really capable of.

Your Luck Attribute affords you, during each session, a number of Luck Points equal to your Luck Rank. These luck points can be spent in a number of ways. 

First, you can spend 1 Luck Point to:
- Reroll 1 dice and take the higher result.
or
- Allow 1 additional dice explosion (you'll see more about this further down the post)

Alternatively, you can spend 3 Luck Points:
- Change 1 dice to max value, exploding automatically (if it's able to explode).

You are also free to barter your Luck Points with the GM to adjust story elements you don't like, but those points can be precious in dire straights when you really need to pass a check, so do this wisely!

Right now, that's all that Luck Points can do, but we're looking to further the range of options, so if anybody has any ideas, please let us know in the comments!

However, that's not all Luck itself can do. In addition to Luck Points, you can also spend 1 Luck Rank in order to "Cheat Death." Essentially, when your character is about to die, you can expend a single Rank of your Luck permanently (at least until you are able to get it back during character progression).

If you do this, your character is still unconscious, but your character is still alive. The GM will have to adjust the story to fit this in some way. If a bullet from a sniper took you down, then it misses your vital organs. If you would be crushed by a falling boulder, it instead just misses you. This basically means that your Luck Rank is synonymous with your character's "lives." And remember, expending these Ranks means you have less Luck Points during the next session. 

Of course, while this rule is intended to be used as a standard part of the system, it is ultimately up to the GM if he wants to use this rule or not. Excluding it puts things into a "hardcore mode" where death is death, there are no lives.

And finally, Luck has one final trick up its sleeve.

We mentioned before that Luck only influences a single Skill – Gambling. Now, while the Gambling Skill can be used in the way most think of, for games of luck, it also has a much bigger role in our system for characters who invest in it.

Those with points in the Gambling Skill unlock a universal ability to "Press Your Luck." What does this mean, though? Well, if a character has at least a single point in Gambling, but no points in any other skill they would normally be able to use (so, this basically excludes those without flight from using this ability to somehow fly...), they can make a roll using their Gambling Skill in place of that Skill (or, rather, that Skill's Base Attribute check) in order to make a check. However, there is a catch: ANY check made this way that fails IMMEDIATELY becomes a Critical Fail.

So, let's look at an example of how this mechanic works:
Let's say Gilded Sprocket, a Terrequine engineering officer in the United Equus Navy, is aboard a drop ship with her companions. However, the group's pilot, Skye Blitz, has been knocked unconscious. Nobody else has any point in the Pilot Skill. Sprocket, however, has 2 points in her Gambling Skill.  

Now, anybody in the group can choose to take a Pilot check using just the base attribute roll with no Skill bonuses in order to land the ship. Or, alternatively, Sprocket can take a leap of faith by making a roll with her Gambling Skill, using her Luck Attribute for the roll, and applying the +2 bonus her Gambling Skill gives her. If she succeeds the roll, then she safely lands the the drop ship on Luck alone. If she fails, however, the roll immediately becomes a critical fail, meaning that things go horribly wrong in a way only a GM can concoct.

So, there you have it. I think you'll agree that Luck is a lot more useful that in initially seemed. We are definitely still tweaking some minor things, but this has proven to all be fairly solid thus far.

Now, we promised you a look at the Exploding Dice and Criticals too, so let's move on to those, starting with the Exploding Dice.

Exploding Dice

Exploding Dice, as a mechanic, is fairly simple. If a dice rolls its maximum value, it rolls again, adding that second roll on to the first. To balance this, dice can normally only explode twice in a single check or damage roll. However, you can spend a Luck point if that second explosion rolls its maximum value in order to allow it to explode again.

This mechanic also makes even the lower dice that you get both at character creation from your race and in general throughout the system to still compete with the larger value dice. However, they not only have an increased explosion rate, but also an increased rate to both critically succeed and to critically fail (more below).

Just a quick example:
Lilybloom, a Unicorn technician with the UEN, is making a Technology check. She makes a roll with an Intelligence dice of D10, and has an Attribute Rank of 6 and a Skill Rank of 3. She rolls the D10 and the result is a 10. This means the dice explodes, and she rolls again. This time, she rolls a 4, so the dice does not explode again. Had she rolled another 10, it would have. So, now her total dice roll is 14. She then adds her Attribute Rank of 6, and her Skill Rank of 3, for a total check of 23. The GM was looking for a Difficulty Rating of 20, and 23 is higher than 20 so she passes the check.

Criticals

While the Exploding Dice themselves are often enough of a critical success on their own, we allow critical successes as well. What determines that a roll is a critical success is when two or more explosions occur for the same check. For all checks, this means the check automatically succeeds without the need to roll the dice a third time. For combat checks, however, this also means that all damage that results from that roll is automatically doubled, including any explosions that occur on those damage rolls, but excluding any other modifiers to the damage.

Critical fails, on the other hand, can be easier to achieve, especially on smaller dice. A critical fail occurs when a dice rolls its lowest possible value (unless you're using some weird dice, that's probably a 1) on the first roll only. This cannot occur if a 1 is rolled on an explosion roll. This also excludes damage rolls as damage rolls are not a standard check.

If a critical is rolled, the GM has full creative liberty to exaggerate what happens as the result. If you critical failed while trying to identify an unknown creature, you could misinterpret it as just another pony when in reality it's a ferocious swarm of Rippers. Or if you're trying to throw a ball and you critically succeed, you could accidentally hurl it into space. 

And that's pretty much it for the mechanics today. It's a lot of information, so if you read through it all, we applaud your dedication!

Now, this is the final few days of the campaign, so we're all really excited for that! You can expect us to take a little bit of time once it ends to finalize the backer surveys and get everything in order to send them out. We also will be sending out a tentative schedule of production in our next update at the end of the campaign so you all will have an idea of what we're looking at getting done over the next months following the campaign.

As for next week's Lore and Mechanics posts, we will be taking a look at the Twilightborne planet, Harmony, as well as a look into the basic character creation process as a whole.

Thanks for joining us this week, and we'll see you in the next update at the end of the campaign!

- Project Lead Spirit

Update #17 - Character Creation Overview
about 6 years ago – Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 06:17:11 AM

Hello everybody!

Today we'll be giving you a quick overview of the whole character creation process. As always, things may get changed between now and the release of the final product.

Onward!

Character Creation

Before we start, here's the current main character sheet again:

Starting at the top, you have your Character Name, Gender, and Age. This is where you decide your character's identity. This can be done at the beginning or end of the process, depending on your preference.

Next, you need to pick your character's Race. This is probably the most important decision you can make as it will help you define their stats and abilities. Again, with the exception of the Flight Skill, this does not put a hard limiter on anything, but as some races are still better at some things than others, it does make some differences.

Skipping Speed for now, we'll come back to it. The next thing to do is your Primary Attributes. Your dice type for each attribute is determined by your race. Your attribute ranks, then, all start at 3. You receive 3 free Attribute points to distribute into these ranks at creation, and can also drop any attribute's rank (to a minimum of 1) to gain back the same number of points as the reduction to add back in elsewhere. Attribute ranks also cap at 6 during character creation. After character creation, your ranks soft cap at the maximum value for the associated dice (so, a D8 soft caps its associated rank at 8). Beyond these soft caps, ranks hard cap at 10, unless the associated dice goes above 10. A rank will always cost the same amount in xp to increase until it hits its soft cap. Beyond that, it can still be increased, up until it hits its hard cap, by spending additional XP for each rank level gained. For more info, see the Primary Attributes update.

Now for Speed. This is simply determined by adding your Grit Rank and your Agility Rank together, and multiplying the result by 5 (the system follows a base 5 foot grid rule similar to many other systems, simply for the ease of math and stuff). Speed will mostly affect things like combat where your character is moving through an environment, and will determine the rate of movement within that environment.

Up next is your Secondary Attributes. These are probably the simplest bit as the formulas are all expressed on the Character Sheet, so we won't really go into them. For more info, see the Secondary Attributes update.

The next thing you would look at is your Skills. You get 10 points to spread across your Skill ranks at creation. Skills do cap at the same rank value as their respective attribute, but if that attribute increases, so does the skill cap. The exception to this rule are Racial Bonuses, which can push a skill past this cap.

Your next step is to select your Talents. Everybody can currently take up to 3 free Talents at character creation (out of anything they meet the requirements for). Talents are essentially special abilities, similar to Perks or Feats in other systems. Some Racial Abilities will be essentially free Talents (that don't count toward your 3 free ones).

From there, every character must take at least 1 Flaw at creation. Flaws are often story-based elements that make your character just a little bit different and help define them. They are anything from an addiction to cinnamon to a broken horn. These flaws will award additional XP at creation to put towards advancement, as well as providing an option during the campaign to earn bonus XP for playing into the flaw. For example, if you've got a broken leg as a flaw and try to portray a pirate with a missing leg, your GM could give you bonus XP for finding a way to use it to your advantage.

After that, you pick an Elemental Affinity. This has to do with the Magic system, though, so we'll take a deeper look into with the update regarding that. For now, know that you pick from one of the 6 basic elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, and Darkness.

The final thing for the basic character creation process is to buy Equipment. Every character starts off with an initial 2000 in game credits (we are using "Bits" right now as a working term, but we don't believe this will cause any issues and may roll with it as they are fully termed "Universal Bits"). You are then free to purchase your equipment using these Bits from a list of starter items (or the full list, with GM approval).

Of course, there are other things like Magic, and racial specific things like Weather Manipulation abilities for Pegasi, that will be handled at this point too, but those are more advanced, in-depth things that are outside the scope of this post.

For now, thank you all for joining us on the look at the Character Creation process. On Tuesday, we'll take a look at our next race, the Twilightborne. And on Thursday, we'll actually take a quick look at the combat system. That post will not be super in-depth as it is still being tweaked more than some other things, but the basics are solid enough to delve into a bit.

See you then!

- Project Lead Spirit

Update #16 - Harmony
about 6 years ago – Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 03:25:26 AM

Hello everybody!

Today, we'll be taking a look at the Twilightborne race's home planet of Harmony.

Reminder that things may change from this post to the final product.

Now, let's dive in!

The Planet of Harmony

Harmony is a planet that is in a tidally locked orbit with it's star. This has created a unique environment on the planet's surface. One side is eternally in scorching daylight, while the other side is forever cast in freezing darkness. This has made much of the planet's surface unlivable. These areas are traversable for short periods of time with the right equipment, but very few are ever brave enough or stupid enough to venture into these extreme zones.

The planet is also not devoid of water. Harmony sits at the inner edge of its system's Goldilocks zone, allowing minimal water to flow on its surface. 75% of the planet's water is frozen in gigantic glaciers on the dark side of the planet, while only 5% is scattered across the barren desert of the bright side in shifting oases. The remaining 20% exists in lakes and rivers around the band of everlasting twilight that is the planet's vertical equator.

This equator, where the local star neither rises nor sets, is where the Twilightborne call home. This race of equinoids with leathery wings and fluffy ears has a very interesting culture. They are a dynastic civilization, with an Imperial Family that sits upon a ruling throne. But the Emperor is really just a puppet of a shadow government controlled by the 4 houses of Dawn, Dusk, Noon, and Midnight. Before you ask, what other races would refer to for these names instead follow the path of the planet's moon, Dissonance, in place of the solar cycle, and only get translated to these terms in the Galactic Common tongue.

These 4 houses are constantly fighting over control of the government, which has become known to many as The Great Game. Due to this constant game of intrigue and diplomacy, things like stealth, subversion, deception, and assassination, have become commonplace among Twilightborne society and comprise the vast majority of their "politics."

This lack of unity has made them one of the few races in the game without a space-faring fleet of their own, and their planet falls inside of United Equus borders. Despite this, their civilization is pretty well developed. Due to the lack of habitable land on the planet, the ring of twilight has become one continuous city with large skyscraper buildings being the norm.

For now, this concludes our look at the planet of Harmony. Next week's lore update will look at the Twilightborne themselves, including an overview of the 4 houses. Our next mechanics update on Saturday this week will be some insight in to the basic character creation process.

See you there!

-Project Lead Spirit

Update #12 - Skills List (Part 2 of 2)
about 6 years ago – Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 03:10:59 PM

Hello everybody!

Today we'll be taking a look at the second half of the Skills List. As usual, none of this is 100% finalized yet doesn't necessarily reflect the final product.

The Skills List (Part 2)

Here's the Skills List again for a refresher:

 Today, we'll be looking at the right side of the list. First however, I must address that I somehow missed the First Aid skill on the left side in the previous update. Here is the quick description for that skill:

First Aid (Intelligence) - First Aid is your ability to heal yourself and another character. This is used when making checks to treat wounds, poison, radiation, etc. Not only is it used in the checks, it also will be involved in determining how much health is recovered.

Now, with that addressed, we can look at the other side of the list:

Ranged Weapons (Agility) - Your ability to fire ranged weapons, be it an Arcano Bow, a Revolver, or an Anti-Material Rifle.

Repair (Intelligence) - The ability to repair non-magical objects such as vehicles, cybernetics, tools, weapons, and equipment. Basically, if it doesn't have an Arcano (or equivalent) magic circuit, this is probably the skill to repair it.

Sense Motive (Intelligence) - A character's ability to detect the intentions of another via body language or verbal ques. Very handy in political and infiltration scenarios. Also good for just knowing when somebody's ticked off.

Slight of Hoof (Agility) - The ability to pick pockets and locks. Also handy for magic tricks. Basically, if you're quick with your hooves and know how to make use of it.

Spellcasting (Intelligence) - This is the big one for most magic users. This is the Skill used to make all regular spellcasting checks. The reason Intelligence is used here instead of Magic is because Magic represents the power of a spell, while Intelligence helps define a character's control over the art due to increased mental capability.

Spellcraft  (Magic) - Spellcraft on the other hoof is the check used when crafting potions, gems, and other magical items. It is essentially injecting a raw spell into a spell conduction material in order to infuse it with that magic. If your ship or weapon is out of power, or you want to craft a new magical item and you don't already have an infused gem, you can use Spellcraft and a raw gem to create an infused one. You can also create all manner of potions if you have the right ingredients and a related spell to what you want the potion to do.

Stealth (Agility) - Stealth is your ability to adhere to the shadows, to sneak without being spotted, and to step without being heard. It can provide bonuses to concealed characters and can be disadvantaged by wearing too heavy of armour.

Survival (Courage) - Your ability to survive without outside help. This includes being able to start a campfire, being able to forage, and being able to build a worthy shelter. Very useful when exploring an unknown planet, too, should you get lost or stranded.

Tracking (Intelligence) - The ability to track another being or creature. whether you're hunting and tracking down prey, or trying to find clues to a criminal's whereabouts.

Technology (Intelligence) - The ability to interact with magical circuit based objects. If it's got a magic circuit and needs to be hacked, fixed, or disabled, it's probably this skill

Unarmed (Grit) - Your ability to fight without what would traditionally be called a weapon. This includes fighting with bare hooves. If you find yourself in bar brawls quite often of just want to fight with your hooves, this is the skill.

And that's all the skills currently in the game. There are one or two others we've been toying with putting in – including a Throwing (Grit) skill, that is actually slated to be put in during the next testing iteration – but we'd love to hear if you guys have any other ideas! We can't guarantee any suggestions will get used, but we will certainly consider them, so just let us know in the comments!

Now, there was one more thing we wanted to share with you all. A sort of sub-mechanic for Skills known as Specializations. This will not be an extensive look at them, but more of quick overview.

Specializations Overview

Specializations could be considered sub-skills of the main skills. They are even more focused areas of study that can really boost your character's abilities in those specific areas. Here's how they work:

As a slightly cheaper advancement option than the main skills, you are able to specialize a skill you already have a rank in. Specializations are so numerous in potential that we've left their creation up to the player and gm (though, we will certainly provide a basic list as a starting point). For example, some possible specializations of Ranged Weapons would be Rifles, Pistols, Shotguns, etc. Or, for Knowledge, some might be Biology, Physics, or History.

Each of these specializations, instead of a regular numerical rank, has a level that progresses each time you spend the points to take it again. Each of these levels adds a bonus +2 to your rolls on any roll made using that skill that justifiably falls under that specialization (up the gm's discretion). These bonuses can also allow a skill to go above it's cap (more on this later).

The levels of specialization are as follows:

Novice (+2) < Intermediate (+4) < Adept (+6) < Expert (+8)

So, this essentially allows for further developing who your character is and what they're good at.

I think this is a good time to address a question I've seen once or twice: "Cutie Marks," in reference to some of our inspiration, are NOT in the game as an integral part. This is done to avoid any possible copyright issues with such things arising due to conflict with the source inspiration. 

However, we DO very much encourage you to play with them as a story element surrounding your specializations as a home ruled option. We recommend them to essentially be a free optional Specialization taken at character creation that provides a +3 bonus per level instead of the regular +2, however, a character may never have another specialization at the same level or above as this skill (this is to help balance with characters who do not take this optional specialization at creation).

And that concludes today's look into the Skills List and Specializations. Stay tuned this coming week for the Pegasi Lore update, as well as our look into the special Luck mechanics the system uses. And remember, if you all are very good, we'll also take a look at both the Exploding Dice and Critical mechanics in that post too.

See you there! This the exciting final week of the campaign's active period, so let's make it a good one!

- Project Lead Spirit

Update #11 - Skills List (Part 1 of 2)
about 6 years ago – Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 03:10:53 PM

Hello everybody!

Today we'll be taking a look at the first half of the Skills List! As always, here's your disclaimer that this doesn't necessarily represent the final product and may still be subject to change.

The Skills List (Part 1)

Here's the full Skills List to start:

Today, we'll be taking a quick look through all the skills on the left side of the list, from Arts to Pilot.

Before we delve into the individual skills though, let's take a look at how they work:

Every skill has an associated Primary Attribute. This Attribute establishes the type of dice used when making a check with the skill. These checks are then made using the same method as the basic attribute checks, plus the skill rank, and then any modifiers on top of that. This essentially formulates out as: 

 [dice roll] + [attribute rank] + [skill rank] + [modifiers] = [final skill check]

Modifiers can come in numerous forms, including both positive and negative values.

Now on to the actual skills! This will just be a quick overview, with the more in depth descriptions and details being in the core rule book.

Arts (Allure) - This includes everything from drawing, to singing, to dancing, and just about anything else that could be considered an art. This includes more artsy crafts as well (such as sculpting, scrap booking, etc.).

Crafting (Intelligence) - The ability to craft items from raw materials. Using this skill, you can craft armour, weapons, tools, and other useful items. The thing that differentiates this from the crafting done in the Arts skill is functionality.

Deception (Allure) - Being able to deceive another, be it visually with a disguise or vocally by lying. An essential skill for infiltration. Where Stealth means being able to hide in the shadows, Deception means being able to hide in plain sight. It also means having a silver tongue to lie your way out of (or into) any situation.

Explosives (Intelligence) - Arming explosives. Disarming explosives. Also, the roll made following a Throwing roll when tossing grenades (or a Ranged Weapons roll if using a launcher) to determine what hits and what doesn't.

Flying (Agility) - Limited to characters with wings only. This includes magical and mechanical wings. Your ability to control your own body in the air. Personal flight equipment such as jet packs will also enable this roll for use with them, but larger equipment (such as aerospace craft) will use the Pilot skill.

Gambling (Luck) - A character's ability to press their luck. This often takes the form of gambling games or leaps of faith. However, ranks in the gambling skill will also enable a special ability that we'll take a look at in our update regarding the Luck mechanics.

Gunnery (Agility) - Using heavy weaponry such as ship weapons, vehicle-mounted guns, artillery platforms, etc. If it's too big to be carried by a single soldier, it usually will use Gunnery.

Handle Creature (Courage) - The ability to tame and control wild and domesticated, non-sentient creatures. From maintaining a pet to calming a wild Sliteral. A very useful skill to have when interacting with local wildlife or if you're a xeno-zookeeper.

Intimidation (Grit) - A character's intimidation factor. Grit is used here, even if trying to intimidate with words rather than just physical presence, cause let's face it, a a big muscle-bound character is usually scarier than a smaller weak one. However, there will probably be a Talent available that changes this over to Allure or Intelligence for those characters who know just the right words to make even a rabid Starhound turn tail.

Knowledge (Intelligence) - Probably the broadest skill, this encompasses knowing something about something. Now, knowing something and doing something are completely different. For example, knowing what that encroaching creature is and how to stop it would be Knowledge. Actually being able to stop it, though, would likely be Handle Creature.

Leadership (Allure) - The ability to lead others. Leadership comes into play with characters who have followers to lead, and represents the ability to effectively command them. It also applies to authority characters who attempt to keep law and order, such as police. 

Linguistics (Intelligence) - Linguistics is the ability to read and understand language. This includes translating a new language or simply speaking in a known one.

Melee Weapons (Grit) - Swing a Sword? Melee Weapons. Stab somebody with an Arcano Knife? Melee Weapons. Hit somebody over the head with a Frying Pan? Melee Weapons.

Navigation (Intelligence) - Being able to effectively navigate. This encompasses everything from reading a compass while on hoof to interpreting the data from a star ship's navigation sensors in order to chart a route and communicate that route to the ship's helmsman.

Persuasion (Allure) - Convincing somebody to do something. Can be used relatively interchangeably with Deception, depending on the circumstances and methods used. If you're lying about having an affair while running for a political office, that's probably Deception. If you're trying to win a political debate while trying to gain votes, that might be Persuasion. If you're trying to "jedi-mind-trick" your opponent into backing out and supporting you, that's definitely Persuasion.

Pilot (Agility) - The ability to pilot/drive/helm a vehicle and operate its controls without crashing it. A star ship's helmsman may be able to get away with just this skill if the crew has a separate navigator, but a fighter pilot may also want to invest some skill points into Navigation as well for those instances when their more automated guidance systems die.

That's it for today. This weekend we'll take a look at the second half of the list, as well as a quick look at one of the sub-mechanics of skills, namely Specializations. That post will take the place of our weekly summary update this week.

Following that, we will be taking a look at the Pegasi on Tuesday. On Thursday, we will be taking a look at the Luck mechanics, and if you're all really good, we'll also take a look at both the Exploding Dice and Critical mechanics.

See you all soon!

- Project Lead Spirit