metapunk

In my last post, I referred to problems I’m having adding martial arts into the roleplaying game I’m designing, without providing any detail about the game itself. Not very effective writing, really, so I shall rectify this mistake presently.  For the moment, we’ll call the game The Martian Cycle…

The Setting:

The game revolves around two conflicting ways of life meeting on a terraformed Mars in the distant future.  This conflict runs much deeper than simple politics or religion, and (in keeping with the metapunk theme) gets at the root assumptions of civilization itself.  One group of people, the Ironfolk, is what we would call civilized.  The term Ironfolk (so named due to the Earth forces’ use of cyborg soldiers) encompasses several distinct cultures and political/economic/religious doctrines.  They represent a dark Earth, circa thirty years from now—a set of societies predicated on control and dominance; striving through technology and centralized authority to ensure their own prosperity, but only at the price of all-too-frequent crime, poverty, and open warfare.

The other group is the Iduni, the native Martians—a collection of societies based on acceptance of life and nature, rather than a preoccupation with controlling them.  Some Martians live in modest cities, practising a form of science which is indistinguishable from art or religion.  Some live in the countryside, practising ancient ways of life that are more or less extinct on Earth—hunting and gathering, pastoral herding, and simplified agriculture.  Their lives were peaceful, if boring, until the arrival of the Ironfolk; who of course think the Martians have regressed or de-evolved socially.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of life; which one will prevail? The players are caught in the middle of this struggle—they may be members of the invading Earth military forces, rebel insurgents / terrorists, political and corporate power-players working from the shadows, religious missionaries, or down-and-outers just trying to get by.  Either way, it’s never clear who the good guys are, and the future is far from certain.

The System:

The system is straightforward.  Abilities are rated according to the type of die rolled (a step-die system), and rolls are compared to a threshold (difficulty value) to determine success.  There are no attributes, exactly; just aptitudes that determine how easily skills of different categories are learned. A previous incarnation of the rules used an attribute combined with a skill to determine the outcome of an action.  The change was made to improve the quickness of play, since in the previous system a decision would always have to be made about which combination of attribute and skill to use before any rolling could be done.  The aptitude system is thus faster, but comes at the price of a larger skill list and some graininess / arbitrariness as to which aptitude a particular skill falls under.  There are trade-offs in any system, I suppose, but it seems worth it if you automatically know which die to roll when it comes time to use a skill.  All the cumbersome decision work is done in the downtime, when you’re creating or upgrading your character.

Character creation is a bit involved, but should be relatively easy once you’ve read the rules thoroughly.  You begin with a concept, including a personality archetype, a background, and a career—but these are mainly optional guidelines.  After choosing these, you divide up some points among your aptitudes, and your aptitude scores determine the points you get to spend on skills in each category.  Beyond that, there are benefits and burdens (advantages and disadvantages).  Benefits, of course, cost skill points; while burdens give points back and provide for lots of interesting roleplaying later on.  There may also be a system of learnable “feats,” which expand on basic skills and provide special abilities.  Feats may be rolled into benefits, or I may keep them separate.  I may not add them at all… it really depends on how my experiments with martial arts develop.

Combat is designed to be fast and flexible; with simple rules at the core.  It works in the standard way, with opposed rolls for close combat attack & defense; while ranged attacks roll against a base threshold (for distance), modified by a defender’s actions.   I’m using a dynamic initiative system, which allows players to perform multiple actions, special moves, and last minute defenses without greatly imbalancing play.  It seems to work pretty well, so far—but as usual, martial arts are complicating things by adding a lot of extra special moves and skills.

I would like to have systems for vehiclular combat, including car chases, robotic mecha, and air-to-air battles; but as of yet there isn’t much to speak of in this regard.

There will also be rules for cybernetics, computer hacking, and vehicle construction—standard tropes in cyberpunk science fiction roleplaying games.   Magick/Psychic rules will also be provided, but will be somewhat different to magick systems in most other games.  I’ll be posting an old rant I wrote about that in the near future—but suffice it to say that in general, I’d like my magick system to be relatively subtle and, dare-I-say-it, realistic.  That’s not to say that there won’t be any fireball throwing or turning to stone going on… just that such things will be rarities, not the norm.