Adventure Wednesday: The d6 Outpost

On the far reaches of the kingdom sits a small fort. Its only purpose is to guard the border and warn of approaching threats from the west. The land is desolate and the soldiers stationed here rely on supplies from the nearest city, some two days hard ride away. This place is isolated and those unlucky enough to be here spend day after day looking out at nothing......

Welcome to Adventure Wednesday! Last week we started Story Seed Tuesday. I decided I should move this to Wednesdays so I could have my efforts to create weekly content more spread out across the week. This is our first Wednesday installment and I already though I would do something a little different. If you like this idea, I will see about including some roll tables with future adventure ideas. As we go forward the blog will end up with a good store house of adventure roll tables to go along with the monsters of Friday's Forgotten Fiends!

Stories about an isolated outpost or ship are common place and work equally well for sci-fi and fantasy. Players can either be stationed there when things start to go wrong, or they could be responding to word of something bad, perhaps the last supply train never returned?

Today I am going to provide a few roll tables that will allow you as the GM to generate a quick plot you can use to build an adventure around. The tables are setting agnostic and should work as well for D&D 5e as they do for The upcoming Expanse RPG by Green Ronin Games.

Step 1: Roll for the outpost type.

1d6 Roll	Result	Goods, Cost Modifier Number of goods
1 2 3 4 5 6	Guardpost Gateway Place of Study Isolated Community Trade Outpost Religious Order	-2, +20%, 3 0, +10%, 2 +2, +10%, 2 0, +20%, 1 0, +10%, 4 0, +20%, 2

Step 2: Make a number of rolls equal to the "Number of Goods" rolled in Step 1. Modify these rolls by the "Goods Modifier".

1d6 Roll + Goods Modifier	Result
1 2 3 4 5 6	Weapons Armor Food Lodging Basic Goods Lore about the Area

Step 3: Determine the environment the outpost exists in. Make sure to note if this is a fantasy or a sci-fi outpost.

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Edge of Kingdom/Deep Space Rocky Area/Asteroids Coast Line/Gas Giant Forests/Rocky Moon Deserts/Lagrange Station Mountains/Class M Planet

Step 4: Determine a basic plot

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Attacked by Enemy Faction (Military, pirates, etc) Attacked by Natural Enemy (Wild animals, alien organisms) Natural Catastrophic Event (Earthquakes, asteroid strikes) Plague (Disease outbreak, Zombies, Mutations) Betrayal (Higher up at outpost has sold it out) Outpost has been taken over in secret (Enemies unknown to the players now control the outpost)

Step 5: How are the players involved?

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Relief Effort Stationed at Outpost Sent to Investigate Escort to or From Outpost Evacuation of Outpost Rescue Mission Infiltration

Now that we have a few fun tables to roll on, let's generate a few story ideas!

Setting	Type	Goods	Location	What is happening?	How are the characters involved?
Fantasy	Trade Outpost	+20% cost Weapons, Armor, Lodging, Basic Goods	Edge of the Kingdom	Natural catastrophic event.	Sent to Investigate the cause of the event
Sci-Fi	Religious Order	+0% cost Basic Goods, Lore about the Area	Asteroid Base	Attacked by a natural enemy	Evacuation
Fantasy	Religious Order	+0% cost Weapons, Food	Mountains	Attacked by an enemy faction	Members of the order, or hire as guards
Sci-fi	Gateway	+10% cost Lodging, Lore about Area	Lagrange station	Attacked by an enemy faction	Rescue Mission

There you have it. Four super quick story idea seeds and a set of table to generate a lot more all revolving around an isolated outpost.

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The Expanse RPG: VTT Assets!

We are hoping to see a full copy of the Expanse RPG this month (January 2019) as per Update 28. Understandably I am excited to see the final products. Not surprisingly my posts are moving towards the Expanse right now as my excitement builds!

My last post brought us a new Extension for use with Fantasy Grounds and the MoreCore ruleset. Today's post will be a list of VTT assets you can grab for a few bucks to use within Fantasy Grounds to help fuel your Belter, MCRN or UN adventures!

Battlemaps

• Docking Bay
• Mining Facility
• Docking Bay
• Open Battle Spaces
• Modular Starship Tiles
• Sci-Fi Map Tiles

Tokens

• Sci-Fi Crew

Objects and Props

• Sci-Fi Map Objects
• Sci-Fi Props & Gadgets

I found that, although there was a fair number of battlemaps available for sci-fi settings, there was a relatively small amount of tokens for sci-fi. Even less if you want more generic harder sci-fi looking tokens. For your personal games you might be better off combing the Internet for images you can use and the passing them through one of the tools below to generate a token.

• Online token creator
• RPtools Token Tool 2

These tools will allow you to take basic images and make decent looking tokens for your VTT needs.



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The Expanse RPG

Just a quick note that I have been working on an MoreCore extension for The Expanse RPG coming out from Green Ronin. If you are interested in the RPG check out their quick start rules.

I won't call it 100% yet, but I can happily call it a version 1.

It features updated graphics to hopefully match the theme of the series as well as a custom character sheet. I have left the MoreCore functionality intact as well. It also includes a module to allow you to have a Churn tracking graphic, an idea I took from the Jolly GMs Conan extension.

I am including a screenshot, and you can of course grab the extension and churn module here and MoreCore here.

If you find anything really weird or totally broken, let me know!

**NOTE: I apparently built this on an old version of the MORECORE system, so if you downloaded this BEFORE this was here, I advice RE-DOWNLOADING it, as it will fix a few issues.

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!

The Expanse RPG: Ship Combat!

Today in an Expanse Extra Kickstarter update we got our first flavors of what ship to ship combat will look like in the rpg. The RPG is a literary license and not a TV license, so although we have seen some cool ship combat realized on the screen, I don't expect it to be what drives the RPG ship combat.

The ship combat in the books is good and as with the other outer space stuff it tries to be as realistic as possible. To realize this we need ship momentum, range and 3d space, all of which can be tricky in a wargame scenario where the ships are the *WHOLE* game. Let's take a look at the sample we got today to see how well it stacks up. Is it a good mix of realism vs excitement and playability?

Upon first glance it appears a ship combat phase has a few segments. Please don't forget these are just my first impressions from the example and I could be totally out to lunch on how the rules will actually look.

• Orders.
• Maneuvers.
• Electronic Warfare.
• Weapons Fire.
• Defensive Action.
• Weapons Damage.
• Damage Control.

From the example I will try and break down what is going on in each phase.

Orders

The Captain makes a Communication(Leadership) roll to see if the orders are successful, gaining stunt points which can be used later. Failure here doesn't cripple the ship, but the crew has no stunt points from the Captain to help them out of a tough situation.

Maneuvers.

We don't get much information on maneuvers, but from the example it looks like they are a way for the ships to primarily control range against each other, meaning all the specifics of 3d space may simply be left to the GMs description. I don't hate that idea. We also see that pulling high G maneuvers will have possible negative effects on the crew represented, at least in this example, by Constitution(Stamina) checks

Electronic Warfare

This looks like a simple Intelligence(Technology) roll giving the players a bonus to their defensive maneuvers, or the opportunity to use the stunt points. We see a ship rendered unable to attack by spending 3 SPs in the example.

Weapons Fire

The example makes this out to be a simple declaration of fire.

Defensive Maneuvers

This portion is where the hits and misses are determined. Generally rolling piloting vs the attacking ships sensor suite +10. ie A sensor score of 10 means your evasion roll is against 14. This is where we can use those EW points.

Weapons Damage

If a hit is scored simply roll damage and subtract the hull rating of the ship, which appears to be a rolled number. Remaining damage is handled through losses, which read much like how we deal with player damage. Each loss, I suspect, reduces remaining damage by 1d6. It is possible a ship can only handle a certain number of losses in a turn, as we see a ship removed from play as, even after 2 losses, a single damage point remains. The largest question I have here is if ships have hull points like characters have fortune points. We see these losses cause all kinds of havoc from the reduction in Piloting to collateral damage amongst the crew, meaning they behave like a condition applied to a character. It will be interesting to see how this all comes together in the rules.

Damage Control

This looks to be a simple Intelligence (Engineering Test) allowing a player to fix the ship, ie remove penalties. We also see these describes as advanced tests, so the players might be working hard to fix a problem and end up with another before they are finished.

Stunts
I suspect we will see a list of stunts for spaceship combat, possible for most of the areas, with the command stunts able to help out the remaining crew members as needed.

Overall it looks like it has potential to be a cool system, and the use of those stunt points and EW points is going to make every member of the crew important in the game universe. If however you were hoping for some kind of wargames system to allow Expanse style miniature combat, this is not that.

What are your thoughts on this combat system? Drop me a comment below and lets get some discussion going!

Modern Age: Making a Character.

Now that we've had a quick look at the print edition of Modern Age, I thought I would go a little more in depth into various parts of the rulebook. Starting off this series: Characters.

Without characters the players would have no real ability to interact with the world and without that our story is going to suffer. It makes sense to start our look at these rules with character generation.

As most RPGs characters are defined by a list of attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, Constitution and Charisma....No wait that's D&D, a game I haven't really played in close to 25 years. Although I admit to a few pathfinder sessions. It's funny to me that I can still recall the attributes from that game. These are of course NOT the attributes used in Modern Age. Modern Age uses the following attributes to define a character

• Accuracy - Aim, precision, ability to use ranged weapons.
• Communication - Social skills, personal interactions.
• Constitution - Health and fortitude.
• Dexterity - Hand-eye coordination, reaction time.
• Fighting - Close combat/melee weapons.
• Intelligence - Reasoning, memory, problem solving.
• Perception - Ability to use the characters senses, how observant they are.
• Strength - How strong the character is.
• Willpower - Self control, discipline.

BUT before we get around to generating your alter-egos physical and mental abilities lets do one thing first, which is actually listed as step 1 of character creation in the rule book. The first thing we need is a basic concept. Having an idea of the campaign you are going to play in will be an important thing to know. If your adventures are set in the south American jungle, choosing a street wise private eye is probably not your best choice.

Knowing the group is going to play a group trying to rid the city of crime in a gritty 70s/80s type cop show, we will choose that street wise private investigator as our basic idea for our character.

Now that we have our basic idea we can determine our stats. The base method of determining this is to roll 3d6 in order and consult a table. This will generate a stat from -2 to 4. It also include the ability to swap any two rolls to more closely meet the character as he or she develops. They include two other methods, one is random and one is a point build system. I am in favor of point build systems in a lot of cases. I like the idea of allowing a player to build the character they like and want to play.

Using the standard method of rolling 3d6 in order we come up with the following for stats. Accuracy - 2 Communication - 0 Constitution - 2 Dexterity - 3 Fighting - 0 Intelligence - 1 Perception - 2 Strength - 2 Willpower - 2

Once we have the attributes figured out we figure out our characters social class, background. These are a few simple rolls or choices and will give the character a random bonus as well as an increase to an attribute, a focus and a talent.

My rolls for my class and background roll out as follows.... Social class: Outsider Background: Bohemian Background Bonus: Acrobatics Bohemian grants +1 Communication, One of two different focuses, keeping our character in mind we will choose Communication (Performance) and one of two talents. We will again choose Performance. Our roll of Acrobatics grants us that as a focus. Communication - 1, Performance Dexterity - 3, Acrobatics Talents: Performance.

The next step we are going to complete is the characters profession. Again it is a simple roll or a choice. The profession will give you another focus and another talent as well as the characters base health and resource score.

For a profession we roll Survivalist. This grants us another focus. We will choose Accuracy (Pistols) And another Talent. We choose Tactical Awareness. Our base health, as this is a physical profession is 20+Con, or 22. Accuracy - 2, Pistols Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness.

Once we have our abilities, background, social class and profession we need to determine what drives the character. As the rest of the steps this is a pretty simple set of rolls and will give you a description of the things that drive your character as well as a quality and a downfall. You will also gain a new Talent and the ability to improve something, from a list of 3 things.

Our characters drive is Builder. You are someone who wants to create something lasting. A foundation, community etc. How you get it? That is less important. We again get another Talent and we will choose "Maker". We also get an improvement. Right now our Resource score is 0, so we will move that to 2 At this time now that we have a better understanding of our character we can swap out two abilities, but I think ours are looking ok, so we will leave them as is. Resources - 2 Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness, Maker.

Equipment in the game is a basic set of starting equipment your character might actually have. Is she a PI? She might have a low budget office, cell and computer. Maybe a pistol. The game lists starting equipment as clothing, equipment and weapons in line with the character. It is in general a pretty open thing that will need to be discussed with the GM. Money in this game is handled in a very abstract way, so you won't be buying 50 feet of rope and deducting 10gp from your character sheet.

A basic set of equipment that fits our character and current abilities. Equipment: Basic simple clothing and tie. Pistol. Cell phone. Older cool car.

We have a few more stats to figure out which are just simple derived stats based on a base + ability. ie Health is determined by your profession and now we learn your health is that base + your characters Con. We determine health, defense, toughness and speed this way.

Our final derived stats look like this: Health - 22 Defense - 13 Toughness - 2 Speed - 13

The penultimate step in character creation is a little more abstract. Determining a few goals as well as relationships and strengths of those relationships. Did someone save your life? Would you take a bullet for someone? Does someone have to die? The number of these is determined by your characters communication skill.

Goals: He's seen too much crime in his life. All he wants to do is to take down as many bad guys as possible. Goals: Form a group of men and women that can act outside the law to take down criminals and others. Relationships: Close relationship with a detective on the police force. Ties: This will be some ideas about how this character knows the other PCs in his group.

Finally name and describe your character. Figure out who he or she is exactly. Once that is complete you have your first character for Modern Age.

Name: Jim Height: 5'11" Weight: 189lbs Age: 31

And finally the completed character. Overall I found the system easy to learn and follow along with. I hope you have a better understanding of how a build might look.

Name: Jim Height: 5'11" Weight: 189lbs Age: 31	Early middle age, shabby clothing, dark slightly curly hair.
Health - 22 Defense - 13	Toughness - 2 Speed - 13
Accuracy - 2, Pistols Communication - 1, Performance Constitution - 2 Dexterity - 3, Acrobatics Fighting - 0 Intelligence - 1 Perception - 2 Strength - 2 Willpower - 2	Resources: 2 Equipment: Clothing, tie Pistol. Cell phone. Older cool car.
Talents: Performance, Tactical Awareness, Maker.
Goals: He's seen too much crime in his life. All he wants to do is to take down as many bad guys as possible. Goals: Form a group of men and women that can act outside the law to take down criminals and others. Relationships: Close relationship with a detective on the police force. Ties: This will be some ideas about how this character knows the other PCs in his group.
Weapon Attack Bonus Damage ROF/RNG/CAP/RELOAD SA Handgun +4 2d6 -B-W- SA/55yrd/5 cap/minor

The Expanse Rpg. Miniatures?

The quick start presents the rules from a "Theatre of the Mind" perspective. They do mention miniatures and how to convert speed onto a grid scale, but this isn't Savage Worlds. However if you are like me you like miniatures and an excuse to buy more is a good thing!

At present there are no official Expanse miniatures. There are of course various sci-fi and near sci-fi collections out there. I made an attempt to go out and find a few of those and categorize them into areas they might fit into the universe of The Expanse.

This is far from a definitive list and most links will take you to whole collections of similar figures. I also realize these might not be the most ideal miniatures for your vision.

If you have some others you think would make awesome Expanse figures drop me a comment!

---

The Executives and Politicians These make up the higher end of government and business. Characters like Chrisjen Avasarala, Sadavir Errinwright and Jules-Pierre Mao. Men in Black Copplestone Castings Francis Hasslefree Miniatures

Star Helix and Other Security Firms The private security of the belt and inner planets. Guys and gals with guns, also investigators like Miller Cops and Paramilitary Em4/Moonraker Suits em4/Moonraker Gov't Types Heresy Miniatures

MCRN/UN The Military. Naval officers, Marines, etc. Bobbie Draper of the MCRN Marines is an example. Nova Corp Reaper Bones Troopers Em4/Moonraker Inspectors Heresy Miniatures Admiral Edwards Hasslefree Miniatures

OPA Militia types representing the loose knit organization of freedom fighters and terrorists Citizen Militia 1 Copplestone Castings Scavengers Copplestone Castings Scavenger Heros Copplestone Castings

Civilians General people living and working on Mars or Earth Newsteam Copplestone Castings Modern Civilians Old Glory Miniatures

Player Characters The Holdens, Nagatas, Burtons and Kamals of the universe Anti-heros Heresy Miniatures Laran Jax Hasslefree Miniatures Danica Hasslefree Miniatures

Company list

A list of the companies used in picking a few miniatures I felt might fir into the Expanse. I am sure there are others with these manufacturers as well as others. Let me know what you think!

• Reaper Miniatures
• Copplestone Castings
• Hasslefree Miniatures
• Heresy Miniatures
• Old Glory Miniatures
• Em4/Moonraker

The Expanse RPG. The Churn.

Kenzo: It must be nice, having everything figured out like that.
Amos: Ain’t nothing to do with me: we’re just caught in the Churn, that’s all.
Kenzo: I have no idea what you just said.
Amos: This boss I used to work for in Baltimore, he called it the Churn. When the rules of the game change.
Kenzo: What game?
Amos: The only game. Survival. When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new. Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either.

We got another Expanse Extra yesterday. That is a new mechanic from the RPG that isn't in the quick start. This time the Churn is detailed. This is a mechanic to simulate things going from bad to worse. It will add tension and consequence to the adventure. For me it is similar but different to the role Doom plays in Conan 2d20.

In 2d20, doom stands as a pile that gets added to when various things occur. The GM can then spend that to make bad guys more powerful, introduce more bad guys or just in general make things hard on the players. It is a mechanic designed to simulate the flow of Robert E Howard's epic tales of Conan.

The Churn, although implemented differently, is essentially a mechanic with the same goal in terms of the flow of the story. Things are going well for the players, they have this in the bag. Suddenly the rules change on them and what was easy now becomes difficult.

In it's essence "The Churn" is a running total, when characters do certain things a point is added to that total. When it reaches 10 there is a chance a Minor Stage 1 Churn event happens. If it doesn't happen, the total will increase. When it reaches 20 a Major Stage 2 Churn event may occur. If no event is triggered it continues to increase until it reaches 30, here we have a chance of an Epic Stage 3 Churn event. As you can see each time we get to 10, we check for an event, the level of event increases as the multiple of 10 increases. If you get to 10 points in stage 3, an Epic Stage 3 event occurs. No matter when the pool is triggered it resets to 0.

My first impression is that the Stage 1 events are a little weak IMHO, more choice here would be great. However since I haven't played I don't actually know how fast these things will get generated and it might happen several times in an encounter, and if that is the case it is probably fine.

Either way I am a fan of this style of mechanic. The fact that accumulating The Churn means something bad is going to happen may add enough tension all on it's own to make players a little squirrely.

Be sure to check out my other articles on the Expanse RPG!

The Expanse RPG. Let's Get Advanced!

Continuing my look at the quickstart rules for the Expanse RPG, I wanted to circle back and look at skill tests. Like many games the skill test is the core of the game, anything a character wants to do, of consequence, is generally resolved with a skill test roll by the player.

In many games that boils down to non-combat characters doing their shining moment in a roll or two, leaving combat characters rolling a lot and being more engaged in that way within the game engine. Although conflict is a very important part of RPGs and narratives it can leave some characters out in the cold so to speak.

When RuneHammer Games released ICRPG he included an effort system. You could assign 10 effort points to a task, say translating runes, your party member with the ability to translate could now be a more active part. Now it wasn't a roll with a pass/fail, now it was a matter of time before the runes could be deciphered. Adding in combat with this added even more tension. It is a cool mechanic and it was the first time I had personally encountered it's use.

Wait? Why are we talking about RuneHammer? I thought this was about "The Expanse RPG"? The Expanse has a similar system called "Advanced Tests". These are generally described as more advanced test. In this case the GM is going to assign a TN as well a success threshold. When a player rolls for their character and succeeds the drama die is added to a running total, and once that total meets or exceeds that success threshold the test is successful. Of course each attempt at the test consumes time and perhaps resources depending on the test.

ok. Lets take a look at this in action!

Noelle Intelligence: 2 Focus: Technology

Deep in Ceres station Noelle and her crew are attempting to hack into a computer system. The right information can make you wealthy. Things haven't gone well for our heroes though and they are pinned down at the access node by Star Helix operatives. Reinforcements are most certainly on the way. As it turns out Noelle is a bit of a whiz with computers and they decide to attempt the hack despite the presence of the security officers and their guns.

The GM has set this encounter to allow the Players to escape if they desire. For every round they stay an additional D4 guards take up position firing on the players, to a max of 5 operatives. We will assume Star Helix has enough man power to essentially keep throwing low level operatives at them.

The GM sets the computer system hack as an Advanced test with a Threshold of 10, and a TN of 13.

Round 1: Noelle gets to work attempting to bypass the security system while her crew and Star Helix exchange fire. Her players rolls 1,4,(4) = 9 + 2 Int + 2 focus = 13 = SUCCESS! 4 is added to the running total. The remainder of the round is her crew and Star Helix rolling and attempting to kill each other. Some of her crew take damage, and one or two SH operatives are dropped.

Round 2: The crew calls back as the desperately hold off SH, "HOW MUCH LONGER!!??" Noelle, while working as fast as she can yells back, "I'm in! Almost there!!". Her players makes another roll to work on the system. This time her roll is 3,6,(1) = 10 + 2 Int + 2 focus = 14 = SUCCESS! 1 is added to the running total. Noelle curses under her breath as ICE work to stop her attempts at access in the main database. Star Helix continues their onslaught as more guards turn up to help capture the renegades.

Round 3: A Star Helix officer gets a bead on Noelle and fires at her, the bullet glances off the bulk head just to the right of her head, her fortune holds as she continues to work against the computer. This time her roll is 2,1,(6) = 9 + 2 Int + 2 Focus = 13 = SUCCESS! 6 is added to the running total, brining it to 10. Noelle lets out a whoop as she successfully breaks into the system. The gun battle continues, Star Helix continues shooting, their bullets finally finding their marks as the luck of Noelle's crew begins to run out.

Hopefully, if you haven't used a system like this, you can see how it can engage a non-combat character more thoroughly into the game beyond the simple roll to pass/fail their key skill. I think the concept can make the game a lot more fun for everyone and allow a cooler and more interesting skill test interaction.

Be sure to check out my other articles on the Expanse RPG!

The Expanse RPG. Fortune favors the bold!

In my last installment I had the beginning of a small combat. It involved Noelle firing her pistol at Frank, she was successful and in fact bought a vicious blow and did an extra 1d6 damage. Still at the end, our narration concluded with her only grazing his shoulder.

Lets talk about why. All systems I have played have some method of mitigating damage, or recording how much punishment a character can take. The most basic idea of this is hit points. Conan 2d20 uses Stress and Harm in tandem to track the same thing. The Expanse is no different.

In the Expanse RPG each character has "Fortune". This is a measure of how fortunate they are, how much luck they have etc. Fortune can be spent to reduce damage taken or it can be spent to modify the dice. Pressing the luck and fortune of the character to succeed now for a possibly nefarious outcome later.

The pre-gens in the quick start have fortune scores of 15 or 20. In between adventures characters will be able to re-generate some fortune after an encounter (1d6 + Con + Level).

Ok, but how does fortune equate to damage received or punishment taken?
Once a hit is scored a player subtracts their toughness and armor from the total, the quick start rules have pre-gens with toughness from 0 - 2. Once we have the total damage done the remaining damage can mitigated through the spending of fortune on a 1-1 basis. If there is remaining damage then the players can take a wounded or injured condition. This removes another 1d6 damage per condition. If after this reduction, damage remains then the character is removed from the encounter and another condition is applied in line with the type of attack, generally dying or unconscious.

As we mentioned a player can spend fortune to modify a die roll. On the regular die a player can spend the value they want to make the die that number. ie you roll a 1, if you want the number 4, you spend 4 fortune points. If you are spending them on the drama die that value is doubled. So that same 4 now costs 8, but gives you more stunt points, so it is a trade off. Of course spending points here reduces how lucky you might be when staring down the barrel of a large caliber pistol.

Humans in this are actually pretty susceptible to damage. They can be lucky, sure, but in the end when that luck runs out it's not going to go well for them.

Lets take another look at Noelle and Frank.

Noelle Accuracy: 1 Focus: Pistols Defense: 10+Dex Toughness: 1 Fortune: 20 Weapon: Pistol, 2d6+1

Frank Dexterity: 1 Focus: Knife Fighting Defense: 10+Dex Toughness: 2 Fortune: 15 Weapon: Dagger, 1d6+3

Noelle draws her pistol and fires it down the dark corridor at her enemy!

Noelle has a TN of 11, Frank's dexterity + 10. She rolls 3d6 and scores 5,5,(2) for a total of 12 on the dice. +1 for her accuracy attribute and +2 for her focus in pistols bring her total score to 15!

Noelle ALSO rolled doubles. This indicates a STUNT! Noelle can now spent 2 stunt points, the number rolled on the drama die. These have to be used right away. Noelle opts to make this a vicious blow causing an additional 1d6 damage. She rolls (2d6+1) 8+1,(+1d6) 3 for a total of 12 damage.
Frank is not wearing any armor, but is pretty tough, so that damage is reduced by 2, becoming 10. Frank spends 10 fortune points, reducing his total fortune to 5.

Noelle's pistol echoes with a sharp retort! The round easily catches Frank and only by sheer fortune does he manage to avoid most of the damage, the bullet barely grazing past, leaving a bloody trail along his shoulder.......

Be sure to check out my other articles on the Expanse RPG!

The Expanse RPG

Remember The Cant.

Sometimes things sneak along under my radar.  I am on a lot of forums and groups relating to RPGs and STILL, despite that, I miss things I am interested in.

Yesterday on Facebook a Kickstarter came across my feed that I vaguely knew would happen.  I didn't know much about it in terms of who, what, when, where, why and how.  Either way I was happy to see it. 

I was fairly late to the Expanse as a "thing". I hadn't picked up the first book until well after the TV show had started. Which I did not initially watch. Still I was aware of the series, and as a sci-fi fan, how could I not have been.

I downloaded the audio book and planned on listening to it on a flight to visit the Czech Republic a few years back. I didn't get much into it at the time, there was just too much going on.  That was the late summer.  I started again that winter and consumed the audio at a break neck speed.

I started watching the TV show.  I loved it. I still do.  I've watched most of the first and second seasons twice and just finished the third season.  Audio book wise I am caught up and anxiously await Tiamat's Wrath.

I am a fan.

Seeing an RPG being released?  I was in.  $70USD got me all the print stuff on Kickstarter.  Once I had backed it I grabbed a copy of the free quickstart rules to see what it was all about.

The game is being written by Green Ronin, whom I am not hugely familiar with.  They have an RPG system called AGE (Adventure Game Engine) and produce a few games based on it such as Fantasy AGE and Modern AGE.

My quick look at the rules showed me it's a roll over TN system much like d20, only we are using 3d6 to determine our roll, more on that in a moment.  Your roll is those 3d6+relevant attribute+2 if you have a focus.  Ie if your character has an intelligence of 2, and a focus on Computers, you might roll 3d6+3+2 when trying to work with computers.  Pretty basic system in regards to that. 

It also employs a "drama die" in that basic roll.  One of your 3d6 is a different color and can be used by the GM to determine the "drama" level around your success and failure.  Succeed with a 1 on the drama die?  Maybe you aren't as successful as you thought?  It's an interesting mechanic that will allow some interesting story telling opportunities for the clever GM.

The Kickstarter is going well, making it's goal in an hour and breaking all of it's planned stretch goals in a day. 

As I was writing this an update showed up in my mailbox saying we will see new stretch goals today. Stay tuned.

Don't forget to check out my TeePublic shop! I just had a look through and added some cool Expanse designs to the shop!

Be sure to check out my other articles on the Expanse RPG!