Creating a retro science fiction adventure game - Part 4 - Rules

Design Diary - Naming the game, basic rules.

Planet art by Evlyn Moreau

This is the fourth installment in the design diary series, where I design a roleplaying game inspired by the science fiction works of Jack Vance.

In the previous installment of this design diary we look into what type of characters our retro sf adventure game will have, and what they will do.

In this article we look at:

• a name for the game

• enough rules to start playtesting

But first some news

Hira: The Eternal City got a French translation: Hiria: La Cité Eternelle

Some places where you can buy it: Philibert | Black Book Éditions | Oeuf Cube | Le Passe Temps | Playin

Have a shop and want some copies? Find more information at Neoludis

The Name of the Game

Naming things is the bane of my existence. There is a reason I'm using scripts to generate all these names for characters & planets. But, well, a game needs a name.

For me the idea and themes of my game are pretty clear. I can also explain them if you give me a few paragraphs. There might be a slight mismatch, depending on how familiar you are with the source material, but you'll get the gist of what I want the game to be. But the name, well, the name needs to evoke the theme in a single word or sentence.

With help from people in the Lost Bay Discord and on BlueSky I have been workshopping some titles. The runners up were: Look to Starward, and Perilous Planets.

While I love the alliteration of Perilous Planets, it feels just a bit too pulpy and too focussed on the planetary romance. I might keep it for an adventure or supplement taking place on a single planet, like Vance's Big Planet or the Planet of Adventure novels. So: meet Look to Starward.

A very preliminary logo WIP

Basic Rules

In my mind the game will work best either as a solo game, as a duet game or as a coop game with a small group of players. First I want to know if the current tables (or at least the concepts of the tables, I haven't filled all of them yet) will support play in a solo/coop style.

My first plan was just to use the same core of rules I've used before in Pine Shallows: 3 or 4 stats with just a few points assigned between them, and the familiar Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) 2d6 roll with success/success with complication/failure.

When you attempt something, roll 2d6 and add a Stat. A result of 7+ is a success.

6– You fail and the situation gets worse.
7–9 You succeed, but there is a complication.
10+ A complete success.

Recently I found Hardcase, a solo cyberpunk game set in a space station, in which characters are just scraping by. It uses very similar rules, which confirmed this can certainly work for an sf solo game. It also shows how you can scale the heroics up and down: In Pine Shallows you divide 3 points between 3 stats, in Hardcase you just have 1 point to add to a stat. Hardcase is a way grittier game. For Look to Starward I'll be using 3 points, and we'll see during playtesting if that's not too much.

A nice thing about Hardcase is the modularity: most things are handled by the 2d6 base mechanic with some clocks to track progress, but for some specific cases (combat, cash & debt, retirement) there are slight variations, mainly of what success and failure entails.

This feels like a very nice way to build up game: just start playing, and create or update small modular subsystems when needed.

Character Death

One open question I have is: does a game need the risk of character death?

Ok, the answer is no, but it depends on the genre of course. Pine Shallows does not have character death, but it doesn't even have combat rules: It's about kids solving mysteries. For Look to Starward I'm still going back and forth. I think it makes more sense to escalate the complications whenever you lose combat, instead of risking character death:

• waking up somewhere trapped.,

• losing a companion

• crashing your spaceship in an place away from civilization

Big consequences, but not death: it emulates a genre where heaps of complications are stacked upon the main lead, but they always persevere.

The question is: is it fun to know the story will always be ending in a good way (for the character), or should it have a change of defeat or other setback that is too big to overcome?

Combat

In the books of Jack Vance, combat is mostly short, with a quick outcome. Mooks get dealt with (mostly by incapacitated them, not necessarily killing them) easily, unless they outnumbering the protagonist. More capable adversaries might deal out story consequences: leaving the main character stranded or trapped, while beating them often is with subterfuge or a longer combat. Defeating the main antagonist is almost never done with direct combat, but requires a lot of plotting of their demise.

There's also no big numbers of enemies to wade through: even mooks are often named characters with very colorful personalities.

This means that whatever rules we'll use for combat, it should usually be over in just a few rolls, but might have big (preferably plot-based) consequences for the characters. Failure should usually lead to interesting setbacks, not death.

Hardcase uses Conditions, where they work like this: you gain a Condition when you get injured, or get a specific emotional state. Examples include: 'Broken Arm', 'Fatigued', 'Hungover', 'Possessed' On 3 Conditions, your character dies. Conditions can be cleared, with some optional rules about how severe Conditions are, which has an effect on how hard it is to clear them. Depending on the importance of the NPC they need 1, 2 or 3 conditions to be dealt with. This ties nicely into very simple and short combat rules: one or two rolls usually determines the outcome. If you fail you get hurt, if you succeed your opponent gets hurt.

Conditions also have nice in play effects, giving you lingering Disadvantage on certain actions, which feels like it stimulates roleplay more than a dwindling number of hitpoints.

Playtesting will have to give answers. What are your thoughts?

Clocks

I like clocks (or tracks, whatever terminology floats your boat). They're a nice way to track any type of time or progress combined with an easy way to select the complexity or duration (simple? Use a clock with 3 or 4 parts. A faction building a new headquarters in difficult terrain? Use a clock with up to 12 parts).

Story progress

One good use case for clocks, especially when playing solo, is for tracking story progress. In the Pine Shallows Solo Procedures I introduced a variant on the Progress Move from Ironsworn and the Theorize Move from Brindlewood Bay.

Mechanically Look to Starward (and its cousin Pine Shallows) are closer to Brindlewood Bay using the same 2d6 roll. The Theorize move is basically rolling the 2d6 plus the number of clues used for your theory minus the complexity of the story. While I like the openness of it: players can decide when they roll, I don't like the fact you need to both add to and subtract from your roll. Complexity is a predetermined number that basically is a way to predetermine the length of play when solving a mystery.

Story progress is of course a bit different compared to solving a mystery, but it can be fitted to this by filling a clock or track segment whenever your character makes progress on their goals (see Part 3 of this series for more about goals in Look to Starward), and using that instead of clues for your roll.

In the Pine Shallows Solo procedures I used a variant on this, which still is not very intuitive. Getting this right will be another one of the focus points of playtesting. Yup, lots of playtesting to do.

What's next?

Well, collecting all the bits and pieces I wrote about in this whole series, and make a very bare bones playtest version out of it.

And then playtesting, with all the questions raised in the series so far.

Would anyone be interested in this playtest version? Let me know in the comments!

Also, let me plug Hardcase on more time. Check it out, it’s a great game.

See you next one!
Peter