Inspired by Piecewise's Mainspring I bring you Mainpiston.
The hunt? Is it ready? Soon. Soon, not yet. Patience. HAhahahhaha. Well while the hunt readies itself let us have some entertainment.
You are all relaxing in the flying fortress that is your home away from home. Suddenly, you hear a loud boom and the sound of a spitfire landing craft slamming into the side of your plane deafens you. Boarders! Before you can deal with them though you hear an ominous droning sound, fearfully looking through your cokpit window you can see the hazy indistinct shape of a Short Sunderland. The ShortSunderland is a true flying boat and this particular model is bristling with aftermarket machine guns, and what appears to be quite a few of the razor bat beasts flying around it, seems the Sunderland has a beast master in it's crew. And the day was going so well.
Hello and welcome to my first test game ever on these forums I currently need about 6 players to help me test the mechanics for a game I will be running soonish*.
*assuming all goes well
So I'm doing something odd for these rules, but I'm hoping it's going to work well and make sense in universe. Right, so for all of the dangerous magics like Daemonism and Beastmastery you get a direct bonus to your roll and you will in all likelihood horribly overshoot this if make your level get too high, However making your level higher also increase the effectiveness of these skills and lets you do more powerful and complicated things with the magic. For the other skills and the stats, I'm going to be using a roll table that Egan BW has kindly loaned to me. Please see the next spoiler for the table.
Roll two dice and take the lowest, then look at the table for the skill level you rolled at, accounting for any bonuses and/or maluses. Find the number on the left that corresponds to the number you rolled, and look at the number just right of it. That’s the effective roll.
In the case of comparing two rolls, such as opposed rolls, this:
1<2<3<4<6<5
If you need to roll two or more skills at once, figure out which one is most important, and then roll the other one (or ones) first. That roll will give a bonus or malus to the final roll.
Overshoots in this aren’t quite as bad as most GMs interpret, being as good as a 5 in terms of competing the goal, but with some consequence.
Examples of outcomes:
1: You shoot yourself in the foot like an idiot.
2: You completely miss the beast charging you down, like a clumsy person.
3: You don’t fire because you know you would miss, which isn’t going to help very much with this slavering beast trying to eat your face, you overly cautious person
4: You shoot the beast in the chest, deferring it not in the slightest as it gnaws on your foot, you unlucky person.
5: You put a bullet right through the beast’s head, killing it instantly, You lucky bastard.
6: You put a whole mag though the beast’s skull, and it’s body flies into you with it’s momentum, trapping you under it’s corpse, with no ammo, while it’s friends are baying for blood, you overzealous person.
Funfact: none of these people survive, not even 5.
Skill <-2
6→5
5→2
4→1
3→3
2→2
1→1
Skill -2
6→5
5→6
4→4
3→3
2→2
1→1
Skill -1
6→5
5→6
4→4
3→1
2→2
1→3
Skill 0
6→5
5→4
4→1
3→6
2→2
1→3
Skill +1
6→2
5→1
4→5
3→6
2→4
1→3
Skill +2
6→1
5→2
4→6
3→5
2→3
1→4
Skill +3
6→1
5→2
4→3
3→6
2→5
1→4
Skill +4
6→1
5→2
4→3
3→4
2→6
1→5
Skill >+4
6→1
5→6
4→5
3→4
2→6
1→5
Now what would a battle be without guns?
Because this is a test and I just want to test some of the mechanics you all get 5 coins to spend as you see fit. Don't expect such… generosity in the future.
Ship: Your ship is a based off a B-17 Flying Fortress just scaled up and can hold more weight than a normal one.
It has a fighter that can launched from it’s bombay. It also comes with a three man boarding craft. It has a number of beast cages on it and these can be weaponized. Has a small medical bay, self-staffed by the crew.
Your top ball turret has been changed from .50 to a 20 mm cannon manually reloaded because really if this thing was automatic, then well your plane would break.
Types of small arms
All weapons are bought loaded. However, every magazine of ammo after that initial free load requires the magazine cost. The assault rifle comes loaded with an additional free magazine added on top of the initial free one.
(1) Pistol: a standard M1911 style pistol, good in close combat but not much else. 7+1 shots (1 box of 36 rounds for 1 gold piece)
(1)Door Ram: Want to break down a door? Here you go (Requires +2 strength to lift)
(2) Bombs: No not the ones you drop out of your plane, you get provided with those but this stuff is C3 equivalent so don’t let it get cold and it’ll do everything you want it to do.
(2) Rifle: This is your rifle there are many like it, but this one can be yours for the low low price of (2) gold pieces, semi automatic, 8 rounds per magazine 2 en-bloc magazines per gold piece.
(2) Shotgun: your standard WWI era trench gun five round tube magazine+1in chamber, good at discharging a load, but you're not reloading in a hurry. Can buy a case of 20 shells for (1) gold piece
(3) Sniper rifle: Longer more accurate gun stronger charge than the rifle but a lot more bulky and only bolt action.
(3)Daemon knife: Once fused with a daemon it can block bullets and give you an edge in a knife fight however it drains your energy from you.
(3) Diamond toothed chainsaw: This thing can cut through steel and is generally pretty good for opening new holes in places that didn’t initially have them.
(5)Daemon tooth: This thing gives you a boost to charisma at the cost of permanently decreasing your energy.
(4)Daemon eye: Pluck out your own eye or a friends and install this metal ball into the now vacant eye socket infuse it with a Daemon and you are good to go. Gives you some limited seeing through walls ability but it will drain your energy FAST.
(4)Daemon Key: Want to open up a door without breaking it? Use this: It will drain your energy pretty fast though.
(4) Beast kit: This kit will let you interact the wild beasts of the ground and the air without being torn to shreds.... maybe. Comes with a wide variety of syringes for inserting various haphazardly made volatile chemicals into the slathering thing that’s trying to kill you. Also comes with traps and ropes for capturing the smaller beasties. Beastie Alchemy kit.(1 strength)
(2) light engineering kit: This kit will let you make some repairs to ship components and other mechanical devices as well as weapons. How does it work? IT’S ENGINEERING MAGIC! DON’T QUESTION ENGINEERING MAGIC.
(2)light medical kit: This thing is essentially just a bunch of bandages, some hemostats tourniquet, and some ether, gasoline, and pure oxygen in various bottles. Have fun mixing the three.
(2) Ameutuer Daemon kit: this little kit is filled with some tuning forks and various little odd’s and ends for summoning weaker Daemons suitable for filling most of the premade stuff.
(4)Heavy Engineering kit: this kit will let you repair the ship and make stuff on the fly, How does it work? IT’S ENGINEERING MAGIC! DON’T QUESTION ENGINEERING MAGIC.(requires 2 strength to carry as backpack))
(5) Professional Daemon kit: This bulky kit has a full suite of tuners and various pitch producing objects suitable for calling the stronger Daemons into the world. (requires +2 Daemonism to even think about buying it)
(5)Medical kit: This thing looks a lot like a light engineering kit that got stuffed into a beast kit and then a bunch of bandages got shoved in there too. Well I can’t reveal trade secrets but you might be onto something. Why the high price? Well we tossed in the alchemy kit to, just for good measure and to let you make highly dangerous and unethical concoctions in the field. Requires one strength to carry
(5) Assault rifle: Psst, friend, have I got something to sell to you. This is a classified military secret that I borrowed and am now interested in selling to such a fine customer as yourself. What is it you ask? Why it’s a fully automatic selective fire rifle, it comes with a 30 round magazine fires at 550 rounds per minute and has one extra fully loaded mag thrown in free, however these bullets aren't cheap each extra loaded magazines costs (2) coins each.
(10) Golem: This is the most difficult, dangerous, and literally insane thing a Daemonist can ever expect to do. He gives a Daemon a body. Made of metal.
(10) Full on exoskeleton body: Wait did I say exoskeleton? Yeah I really meant an exo-endoskeleton so that shit is not coming off, on the other hand goddamn you are going to be durable. I mean sure you're a hideous abomination of flesh and machine but hey at least your not going to die as fast.
(10) Beast fusion kit: This is absolutely insane and unethical, with this you may take the powers of your favorite beastie and make them a bit more personal, that's right you aren’t reliant on the insane but well trained mind of that beast of yours, your slaughtering it for that sweet sweet genetic material and integrating it into yourself, have fun!*
*Note tampering with your genetic material may kill you.
And what would guns be without a person to use them? Again this is a test, so you all get a standard plus one minus one deal for the character creation, in addition to this you get five free stats and skills points. It requires five points to move +0 to a +1 .
Skills:
Piloting: Considering you're on a plane this seems fairly handy.
Marksmanship. For those who like the tiny little baby guns up to and including the machine guns and the 20mm cannon mounted on your plane.
Daemonism: handy if a beast grabs you or your fighting in some really close quarters in the ship. Lets you harness the power of Daemons and fuse them into your weapons or go insane. It also makes you good at archaic weaponry weird huh?
Doctor: You are a doctor, in medicine and chemistry. Or you are an unskilled quack and accidental bomb maker it depends. You make the thing that go boom and the things that keep people from going into the great airship in the sky
Beast mastery. You guide and direct the beasts, if you have time. You have received some training in chemistry and can manufacture various mutagenic compounds for the monsters of the ground. NOTE do to the insane and nonsensical nature of the beasts of the ground your skills are useless for synthesizing the alchemical compounds used by the Doctors and vice versa.
Engineering: you control the mechanical parts of the ship. As well as being able to fix guns, bombs, the hull of the ship (not very well) and you're also good for assembling things in the field
Stats:
Strength: Can you pick up heavy things? Also can you hit stuff hard?
Intelligence: your mental prowess also might just help you outthink any mindfuck.
Dexterity: helps you not drop things and dodge things.
Resilience: Can you take it? Helps you not break a bone from slipping on a step and not passing out from pain.
Perception: Lets you notice things and gives you decent instincts.
Charisma: Convincing the port authorities that you have absolutely no idea how all those bodies lying around your plane got there.
No bonuses higher than +4 and no minuses lower than -3
Name: Your name
Description: What you look like plus any backstory you want.
Stats
Strength:
Intelligence:
Dexterity:
Resilience:
Perception:
Charisma:
Skills
Piloting:
Marksmanship:
Daemonism:
Doctor:
Beast mastery.
Engineering:
Inventory what you have on you.
knife
aviators clothing
whatever you bought from the armory.
Updates will be about every two days for now, if things go well with this system I might be able to increase it to every day.
Character sheet holder
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vif_63IjNjQSFMM6FIRqB-MlZ1DRNMTHR-c9-ERUZtw/edit?usp=sharing