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[Virex]

Some ages ago, there was some discussion in this thread about a rather original concept for a PnP system. However, due to reasons I can't recall the project died. Well, actually it was put into the fridge, because I have decided to revisit it with a fresh view.

In the following post I'll outline my concepts for what I hope is a novel and interesting concept for a PnP game
Blockade Runner: A near-future Biopunk PnP that'll blow your cerebral nodes.

Spoiler: Background of the setting: (click to show/hide)

We're writing the year 2077. In the past decades much has happened. We have seen the rise of biomechanics, the fall of earth and rifting of the human race. Many will know what I am talking about, but for those that have lived under an asteroid the past century, I will give a short description.

The time since the beginning of the new millennium has been a time of polarization. Polarization between continents, between countries and even between the people within those countries. It was however also a time of great scientific and engineering achievements. Space flight became common place, cybernetics enabled us to escape our mortal shell and the advent of bioengineering was to solve both world hunger and the energy problem. Humanity spread it's wings and started the colonization of the solar system. At first haphazardly, using bulky equipment and enclosed colonies. But as we let go of our objections to cybernetic, genetic and biomechanic modifications things sped up.


Faced with this combination of engineering successes and polarization, the formation of the Swarm must have seemed entirely natural to the governments of the Old World. The Swarm came closely after the birth of the first bioships and it was a marvel of engineering. A self-sustaining space organism was placed in orbit above Earth, with but one explicit purpose: To end all wars. Over the time of a decade it fed on space debris and sunlight and, with the help of combat drills, developed an impressive arsenal of systems to take out ballistic missiles, aircraft, fleets and even land-borne armies. It was clear that no war could ever come to be again.


Unfortunately, hubris is a silent killer. On a now lost date roughly around 2060, a currently unknown air-borne virus known as Vector C escaped from a NAFTA-sponsored lab in the Atlantic, closely followed by Vector E and Organism D. They drifted towards the west, first arriving in Japan and hitting the mainland shortly after. The results were devastating. Within less then two month they anihilated the local ecosystems as well as the local food supplies, in addition to claiming millions of lives. The Federation of Indo-Chinese states reacted furiously and demanded the NAFTA to compensate all damage, but the NAFTA denied the allegations. Tensions flared until less then two weeks later, Chines submarines fired ballistic missiles upon the American west coast. These missiles and the Submarines were quickly and decisively dealt with by the Swarm, as well as the retaliation force sent by the United States. Realizing open warfare was out of the question, both sides began a campaign of terror, which quickly spread across the entire planet and which consisted among others of the dumping of toxic and radioactive waste into each other's air space, the usage of bioweapons upon population centers and the destruction of entire ecosystems.


Upon intercepting several freighters carrying bioweapons to American colonies on Titan, the Swarm reacted rapidly and decisively. In a matter of hours, the major military centers, weapon labs and command centers of the warring parties were glassed by orbital bombardment and a planet-wide cordon was set up, which strictly screened any ships entering or leaving the Earth. Although this quelled the original conflict, much hatred between the colonies still exists and skirmishes are commonplace. The Swarm does it's best to prevent conflicts from escalating, but with humanity spread across 7 planets and moons and countless space-borne habitats and industry centers, there's only so much it can do against smugglers, rouges and privateers.

Spoiler: The colonies (click to show/hide)

Mercury

Mercury is still a largely unexplored world. The few that do live here are miners that move with the dusk line to avoid the scorching heat of the day side and the freezing cold of the night side. They live of the rich metal deposits found on this hellish world. There's little biotech to be found on Mercury, most prefer good old machinery and cybernetics. As a result it has the highest concentration of purebloods of all human colonies.

Venus
The surface of Venus is completely uninhabitable, even to highly modified organisms. Those that do live on Venus inhabit it's floating cities, giant structures that take advantage of the extreme density of Venus' atmosphere to stay buoyant. Most of the organisms found on Venus are likewise floating or flying, living of the giant sky algae beds that cover most of the upper atmosphere. Besides acroagriculture and solar energy capture, most of Venus is dedicated to chemical and biochemical industries, taking advantage of the planet's unique atmospheric properties. Besides these official industries, Venus' special environment has given rise to some of the most sought-after narcotics and drug smuggling is estimated to account for at least a quarter of Venus' wealth.

Earth
Due to the cordon, the inhabitants of Earth are essentially locked away on their planet, as nearly no traffic of humans is allowed to and from the surface. Having to face the hardships of living on a nearly destroyed world, the inhabitants of Earth have become extremely proficient in the art of body augmentation and many of the highest quality cybernetics, biomechanics and recombinant DNA strands come from Earth. As many of these are considered dangerous goods by the Swarm (in part due to their possible use as weapons, but just as often due to potential damaging effects to the recipient), they often have to be smuggled off-world, directly through the Swarm's home territory. Blockade Runners can make a fortune with just a few runs but very few even make it to the surface, let alone back to their clients. Earth's ecosystem and atmosphere are incredibly hostile to anyone not adapted to it. A pureblood would die of poisoning, suffocation, or, assuming he has brought respiratory equipment, he would either be eaten by something, die of dehydration, die of radiation sickness, be leeched empty by parasites, be eaten alive by flesh-eating bacteria or go insane by psychoactive viruses or from the world around him. Possibly all of those in no apparent order.

Luna
The first human colonies were built upon the barren face of Earth's moon, but as Lunar launch became obsolete due to the advent of space tethers and similar technologies, the moon was slowly abandoned. After the great war, the Swarm took over the moon and forcibly moved it's remaining population to Earth. Now it's the Swarm's main mining and industrial center.

Mars
Mars is home the oldest Human colonies still in use and is currently the most densely populated planet. Many of the cities still align themselves with the old countries found on Earth before the great war and skirmishes are common place. Although the Swarm has so far not placed a cordon over Mars, the activities of the Martian cities are closely monitored. Mars has been partially terraformed and forests of specially designed trees are found near the equator. The air is still not dense enough, nor does it contain enough oxygen for a pureblood to breath, but in theory those with special lung enhancements can survive outside for extended periods of time, assuming they can keep themselves warm. As a result of this, Mars is the only source of wood, a luxury construction good with a price per gram exceeding that of diamonds, as well as the only source of other organic luxury goods such as berries and real fur.


Asteroid Belt
Although the asteroid belt is not a proper planet and as such one can hardly speak of colonies here, it contains copious mining and industrial centers, with the accompanying accommodations for their workers. As a result of living in the near-absence of gravity, the inhabitants of the asteroid belt hardly resemble humans any more. Instead they are often fused with their equipment, as a form of human machines or bioships. Belters, as they are called, are in part due to this often shunned by other humans who think of them as freaks of nature. The belters themselves seem largely unaffected by these sentiments, suggesting that if people want to critizise them they should first have a good word with a pureblood evangelist.


Europa
Europa is an ice world that was settled for it's abundance of naturally occurring ice. It was later revealed that there are temperate oceans underneath it's thick ice crust, heated by tidal effects and volcanism. Most of Europa's habitats are centered around bore holes reaching into it's seas, where a closely guarded ecosystem is maintained to serve as a source of food for both Europa and Ganymede. Surface farming does occur in heated greenhouses but it's rare and yields are typically low. As Jupiter is relatively far from the inner solar system, it is a favored hideout for smugglers and privateers hiding from the Swarm.

Ganymede
Another moon of Jupiter, Ganymede is a mining and industrial world. It is entirely dependent upon Europa for it's food supply, for which it pays by providing construction materials and resources in return. Ganymede has by far the largest amount of shipyards per inhabitant of all Human colonies and is only surpassed in absolute numbers by Mars. The copious amounts of water available on Ganymede in the form of ice is used, through fusion reactors, to power it's spaceship industries at bottom rates, often competing with inner-system shipyards even when the transport costs have been accounted for.

Titan

At first sight, titan seems deceptively similar to the descriptions of Earth prior to the great war. Dunes, oceans, rains and clouds dominate the landscape. But this is deceptive as Titan is freezing cold and the liquids are actually liquefied natural gas. Perhaps due to these similarities, the inhabitants of Titan have an unusually strong hatred of the Swarm and they waste no chances to do as much harm to it as possible. Besides these vengeful people, Titan is also home to the only naturally occurring extra-terrestrial life, in the form of primitive multicellar life often called methane muck. One species of methane muck has an unusual poisonous effect on the human brain, linking the truth center to the pain receptors and causing excruciating pains when the subject tells a lie. Or when the subject tells the truth, as the exact way the brain is rewired is seemingly random. The poison is also lethal, killing the subject after several hours.

Spoiler: The system (click to show/hide)

As said, the system used is based upon the discussion in the linked thread. It is based entirely on the concept of prime-numbered dice and factoring of the resulting rolls.
Combat and encounters
Encounters, be it on foot or in space ships, are conducted in rounds, which themselves consist of subrounds. At the beginning of each round, each character rolls a number of prime-numbered dice, the amount and type of dice depend on the stats and equipment of the character. Then the value resulting from each roll is factored into two or more numbers if possible and those numbers are added to the player's factor pool for the round. The prime numbers and the number 1 cannot be factored and are added to the factor pool as is.
When all dice have been factored, each character can invest any number of factors in initiative. The player who has the highest combined initiative goes first each subround, if he or she has still factors left.
Then the cycle of subrounds starts. In turn, each player can take an action and invest the factors needed for that action. If a player does not have any factors left he or she will have to wait to the beginning of the next round. Players must make a move each subround, but are allowed one pass per round, which means they do nothing.
Besides for normal actions, factors can be used for reactions, which are actions that directly follow upon, and often interrupt, someone else's action.

Characters
Characters in Blockade Runner have the following properties:
-A race, which will be explained later, and a background, which determines their initial skills.
-Values for the 7 main stats: Strength, Agility, Finesse, Stamina, Perception, Intellect and Intuition. Most should be self-explanatory in their use. Finesse is a stat that governs the character's accuracy and steadiness of hand, while agility is the flexibility and coarse movement.

-A set of skills. The character's abilities are directly associated with these skills, though there may be multiple or no abilities associated with a single skill. Skills behave like a skill tree, many skills require the character to know other skills first.

-Health values for each limb, the head and the torso, or the corresponding main body parts for characters with a deviant physique, as well as values indicating the amount of blood left, the amount of disease or poison the character can still endure and his mental health.
-A set of mutations and body augmentations.


I would prefer not to use experience points. Instead, if feasible, skills could be learned through training outside of combat and honed inside of combat. I am not entirely sure if it would work elegantly, but I imagine them as something similar to loot rewards in terms of game play.


Races
As a result of genetic meddling, the human race has been split up in several races:
-Purebloods: Unaltered humans, who prefer to remain clean of recombinant DNA and biomechanics. They get a small bonus to all stats but cannot start the game with positive mutations or biomechanic enhancements.
-Earthlings: Living on a world that tries to mutate, poison and outright kill you at every step has made humans exceptionally hardened. They get a large bonus to their constitution and strength, but suffer from a reduced finesse and intelect. They also start the game with 3 positive mutations chosen from 5 randomly selected ones, as well as a randomly chosen negative mutation. They get a large deduction on further mutations, biomechanics and cybernetics when buying them as starting equipment.
-Vesuvians: Living on floating cities has made the Vesuvians exceptionally adept at thinking in 3d. This, in combination with a Vesuvian penchant for acrobatics gives them a bonus to finesse and agility. As a side effect of the high amount of chemical industry and Venus' atmosphere, the Vesuvians start the game with 1 positive and 1 negative mutation of choice.
-Martians: The trade and combat oriented society of Mars promotes lateral and quick thinking, giving all Martians a bonus to perception and Intelect.

-Belters: Living in zero gravity has forced the Belters to make some radical changes to their bodies. They start the game with 3 free cybernetic or biomechenical augmentations, but suffer from a greatly reduced strength and agility.

-Outlingers: People from the outer systems are typically slightly more frail as a result of living on moons with lower gravity, but their society promotes specialization. They have a reduced stamina and strength, but can chose one other stat to which they gain a bonus.
-Doppleganger: Dopplegangers are clones of people that are designed to, on the outside, look exactly as the person they pretend to be. They are however trained for a specific mission. As a result of their expendable nature, they are genetically unstable and are prone to picking up all kinds of mutations.


Although the Swarm generally operates as a hive mind, there are situations where this is inconvenient. Therefor, there are several Swarmers that do not fall under direct controll of the Hive Mind. These are:
-Swarm Commander: The swarm commander is generally in command of a military of industrial scale company of swarmers and acts as the stand-in for the hive mind.
-Swarm Commando: The commando is a lone operative that is send on special missions either on it's own or as part of a team. They operate where a swarm commander and his crew could not easily go, or do missions that require discretion.
-Swarm Envoy: The envoy is a trade representative and diplomat for the swarm, maintaining ties with colonies and corporations. They are the most social of all Swarmers but even they cannot escape the normal disdain swarmers have for humans.

This is pretty much what I have right now. I'm especially looking for input on how to improve the combat and character system, as well as any suggestions regarding equipment, settings, more races, mutations and augmentations. Ideas for stating and special rules for the Swarmers are also welcome

[Darvi]

Unfortunately, there already is a game with that name in development right now.

[Virex]

Any suggestions for a better one?

[Sensei]

Blockade Prime?

[penguinofhonor]

This setting is awesome, just gonna say that much. I'm not sure about the prime dice system. A little weird, and if it's going to actually be pen and paper instead of computer aided, hard to find dice for. I mean I don't know where you can get any prime dice above a d2. Except this set that includes a d3, d5, and d7. Though I guess that might be all you need.

[Virex]

The practical side of rolling prime dice is indeed something that remains problematic. Since smartphones are ubiquitous nowadays it should not be hard to make an app that does it, but that doesn't have the feeling of real dice. Some other options have been suggested in the original thread discussing it.


The reason for using the system is the factoring aspect, which results in a wider spread of tactical options because you can get a single powerful action or copious weaker ones. Reactions also follow almost naturally from the system, as opposed to the rather clunky way they're handled in D&D 4e. On a prime die, the highest value result is of course a prime number, which automatically makes that the most powerful result, a critical hit so you will.


Hmm, one option would be to use the D8, D12 and D20 and count 8 as 7, 12 as 11 and 20 as 19. It would limit the amount of available dice to the D8, D12 and D20 (as the d5 and d3 are too low to be used for factoring) but it makes things a lot easier on people.

[Virex]

Did some more work on the combat side of the system:


Attack and Defense
Each character has a single Defense value, indicating the combined protection of armor, shielding and evasion. Any attack action against that character first reduces her defense by an amount depending on the attack, and then if the damage that attack could deal is more then the remaining defense, the attack deals damage to a random body part equal to the damage minus the remaining Defense (Body parts can be chosen for called attacks).
At the beginning of each round, each character regenerates an amount of defense up to his maximum defense value.


This system should make it so that a flury of weak attacks can and often should be used to soften up a character for a heavy attack. It may however make prime numbers useless early, especially on the lower levels when characters probably won't have many utility skills to use a high factor on. Thoughts on this?

[rutsber]

Couldn't the 8, 12, and 20 signify a reroll? Or possibly some other action depending on the situation?

[Virex]

Hmm, I like the idea of reroling more. That way a D20 behaves like a D19 for example.


In other news, I have decided on a different name for the game, and made a mock-up of a character sheet (which I apparently saved with transparency on XD):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

About the type and amount of dice one gets to roll, I was thinking of tying it to the level of a single skill everyone gets at the beginning of the game. Level 1 would be a D7, level 2 a D11, level 3 a D11 and a D7, level 4 2 D11, level 5 a D19 and a D7 et cetera, but the idea feels a bit hacked. I guess I'd need to playtest it to get a feeling for it.

[KharBevNor]

I see a few problems.

First, why have such a complex health system if you have such an abstract combat system? Unless you plan to use health as a raw material (using blood to power genetic implants or weapons and armour). The real problem I have with this system though is how much everything is invested in the factoring pool, and how the number of dice you get to roll can be controlled. If it's controlled by a skill that has no relation to the characters agility or any of their other stats then that seems really odd. You could tie it in to the stats, (more stats, more dice) but then the system would be heavily weighted towards all-rounder characters, as it would matter more how many stat points you had rather than how high any individual stat was. Perhaps a more complex system where each point of a stat from 1-3 is a D7, 4-7 a D11 and 8-10 a D19 (assuming the stats are out of 10, adjust if they're not, obviously).

One aspect I do like is the gambling element of deciding how much of your factor pool you spend to get initiative. How is this controlled though? It would seem necessary that players and perhaps even the GM (if they are controlling combatant NPCs) must each decide on the number of factor points they allocate for iniative secretly, perhaps writing them down or indicating them on some sort of counter before showing them? (you could have tiles or cards, perhaps) Otherwise, it would simply be a matter of spending one more factor point than the person who declares before you or, if your pool is larger than the opponents, simply allocating one more point than he possibly can; of course, that would always be a safe tactic, except it seems to me that if the actions are fairly expensive there should be a high incentive to take a risk to try and maximise the actions you are taking. This system seems to make initiative very important, so I'm imagining short, bloody combat?

[Virex]

The complex health system indeed strongly ties into the implants, with most needing a certain amount of blood to function (this is also the main difference between cybernetic and biomechanical implants. The first requires less blood but is also less powerful). Blood loss would force you to shut down some of your implants to reserve enough blood for the others and your vital functions. To this end there are skills and weapons that focus on "bleeding out" your opponents, forcing them to forfeit many of their implants. Blood is typically lost over time unless you take your time to address the wounds. (In case you're wondering, I'm also planning an implant that allows you to suck the blood out of your enemies, but it'll be quite expensive and dangerous as it requires some adjustments to the immune system)
Resistance is more of a one-shot resource. As soon as it drops below 25% of it's maximum value you'll have to roll each turn to avoid passing out and if it drops below 0 you're dead. Many implants and some weapons instantaneously lower your resistance. For example, a hyperadrenal gland would take a hit out of your resistance but give you a bonus to melee combat and it stops bleeding to some extent.
Sanity is used by hacking and telepathic implants. Breaking someone's sanity enables characters with the appropriate implants to take over control over that character to some extent, though outright controlling him will be difficult. Sending someone a strong urge to drop his gun or jump off a cliff is however very much possible to a good mindhacker.
Likewise, the health per body part means that if enough damage is done to a certain part, the implants in that body part will stop functioning and you can't use it to attack/walk/hack/do whatever else you want with it.


About initiative, the value of initiative actually depends highly on your roll and the state of your opponents. Early on, everyone still has high defense and the most important thing is breaking through, so investing much in initiative isn't all that productive (usually). Later on, you'll probably want to get the effects of a powerful attack as early as possible, especially if they have a lasting effect on the round, so the value of initiative goes up. Of course, if you've rolled a few 6'es, all you have is 2's and 3's, so in that case it might be better to take off more of your opponent's defense, reload your weapons, break for cover and patch some wounds. This is also the point behind the factoring system, to cause a wide spread of tactical choices: Do you take the initiative to get that high factor in first or do you hold back a bit and whittle their defenses first? Or do you hold the high roll back for a counterattack? This also means that combat damage doesn't go that fast early on, but later when the defenses drop you can dish out some serious hurt in a single round.


You're also right that having a separate skill for the dice would feel a bit off. I'm wary of tying it to the player's stats as well, both due to possible oddities and because that would make stat-increasing implants really powerful. One other option that would address both problems is to tie the dice to the total amount of skill levels someone has collected. It would then represent a general kind of experience and awareness, though this still feels akward when it comes to non-combat skills.

[KharBevNor]

I think I've been misunderstanding something. I thought this didn't quite make sense.

When you do the factoring, what are you adding to your factoring pool? Is it tokens representing certain values, or is it dice, or a lump sum?

[Virex]

Tokens representing individual values would be the best description. Factoring for example a 9 would add two 3's to your factor pool, which can be used for individual actions.

[Armok]

This actually sounds pretty awesome. There are a bunch of huge glaring inaccuracies, and general science fails, and I could pick a bazillion nits... but to be honest the real future doesn't look like it'll make a good RPG anyway so it'd be sort of pointless.

[Virex]

Yeah, I'm going for a combination of the rule of cool, "That's just silly enough to work" and whatever seems like it could really happen at some point. The Swarm for example is just a planetary scale plot element, but the use of artificial glands to enhance combat capacities is something of the "might just work" type.


Feel free to pitch any ideas for improvement my way though, this is very much still in pre-alpha.