Sunday 22 February 2015

New Setting, New Rules, New Ideas

Work is under way turning our local game of Ample RPG into something we can sell! We've been playing a Sci Fi themed RPG every other week at the local gaming store (Hall of Heroes) that's had so much campaign info added to it and enough tweaks and adages done that it would be foolish of us not to submit it as a viable campaign setting, much like the Atlas City Almanac. All that's needed is some nifty, and legal, artwork and some proof reading, editing and typesetting done and we're good to go.
So, if you're like me and get excited about Science Fiction Roleplaying genres, stay tuned for this little gem. We're playing in the universe that Exile's End explores but situated prior to the Collapse, during the epoch of mankind's technology and civilisation. The Destroyers were fought back, and haven't been seen for centuries, and the GEA is now a galaxy spanning civilisation called The Protectorate. The game so far focuses on a Network called the Votus-Eridani Network, which has plenty to do, tons of strife and potential trouble, ancient aliens, dirty politicians, mysterious factions and giant spaceships. There's enough far reaching issues that it has both a mixture of Space Opera and Hard Sci Fi.

Keep an eye out for more news regarding 'Galaxy's End'.

New Rule changes:
At the request of a few of our players we've gone back to have a look at the rules that govern automatic fire. The Burst Fire weapon Trait, which designates that a weapon can be used to make multiple attacks in a round, carries some guidelines in it's use. The current way to do it, is by allowing a character to make a number of extra attacks in a round equal to their Combat Skill, and all attacks suffer a Choke, while each subsequent attack suffers a cumulative Slide as with Secondary Actions. The complaint was that Burst Fire attacks were fairly ineffectual when used against someone who is using Active Defence. Their only purpose seemed to be to overwhelm someone who IS using Active Defence and get them to use up their allotted number of Defences each round (equal to their Combat Skill). Only through picking up the Auto Fire Advantage was Burst Fire achieving anything like what real short controlled bursts of gunfire were achieving.

So we revisited it and trialled a house rule where instead of a Choke, Burst Fire gave a Slide to the first attack, and then added more Slides as the attacks progressed. This seems to work better, and we'll look into updating the Basic Rules Book soon.