Project SARPS entering next production phase!

Project SARPS is entering the next production phase, that of presentation and 'beautification'. We've gotten a new round of changes added, mostly to do with balancing and correcting of errors. Focus now is on getting the 'Preview' ready for release, and adding the final pages to the Campaign Setting being released with the full product.

As you can see from the logo above, we've gone back to the original name for SARPS: Ample.

We feel the name reflects the aspect of the system we like the most - that it's enough rules to run a full game; it's Ample. The main rule book is labelled Basic Rules Book, and is the core manual required to play the game, although future products may incorporate the Basic Rules Book into setting, are fans can. We're pretty happy with the logo, in fact I'm pretty chuffed, myself.

Anyway, enough patting myself on the back. Whats new? Read on, peeps:

Change Log

This version has some key changes, after some careful consideration and play testing. The most significant changes are in the Wealth System and Combat.

Wealth

• A more detailed description of the system
• A way to track purchases and have it affect the Wealth Advantage temporarily as players spend cash/gold
• A fleshed out processes for raising and lowering the Advantage, giving GMs more insight into when players should have the Advantage improve or when it should decrease
• Introducing Availability; players may also need to be able to locate an item, using the Region Advantage, in order to be able to purchase it
• Availability is added to the number of successes required to Craft an item
• Zero Cost items; how a player can purchase an item with a Cost of 0
• Players can now make a Wealth Advantage check using a d4 if they have do not have any points in the Wealth Advantage

Combat

• Active Defence has been changed to make it a little bit more balanced in the Attacker’s favour. Previously a Defender of mediocre skill and light armour could hold off several attackers at once with little or no threat of damage
• Block and Dodge now add to the amount of Slides an Attacker receives, aside from Armour and Cover. They no longer provide Chokes like other opposed Skill checks
• Taking into account the changes to defence, when an Attacker selects a target, the Defender first makes all Defence checks before the Attacker makes their attack roll. This is so the number of Slides the Attacker suffers is calculated beforehand.
• Dual Wielding has been rewritten. An off-hand weapon makes separate attacks, as a Secondary Attack, using full Weapon Skill but suffering a Choke. Using the Block Defence while dual wielding also grants the Fast Trait. If only fighting a single foe, a dual wielding attacker can make a single attack roll and simply add +1 to damage
• Executing an Exploit – this was added in the last version, but it’s been tweaked a little more. Using Skills, a character can outwit, out manoeuvre, or just play dirty and gain Bumps for their attacks. This can be done as part of an Attack (and hence Primary Action), or passed along to an ally as a Secondary Action. Exploits are very circumstantial actions that need to be narrated or at the very least explained to the GMs approval. Some actions, such as Burst Fire and Aiming (see below), expose a character long enough for other attackers to be able to attempt to Execute an Exploit against them
• Added Aiming. By exposing yourself from cover for longer, you can negate the effects of cover on your target. This is a Tertiary Action that, as written above, allows others to take advantage of if they can and make Execute an Exploit Actions
• Shields add 1 Slide to Armour, for all Attributes. This is a passive bonus.

General

• Crafting difficulties increase by the Availability of an item
• More ideas for modifying a game setting, such as Origins and Advantages, Equipment tweaks and simplification.
• Advice on when to award Bumps to players
• New Character Sheet, based on the mock up made for the Atlas City Almanac Game Setting for Ample. UPDATED – Character sheet reverted to previous version for now, software is playing silly buggers.

And that’s it for this version! There may be a few more minor tweaks I missed, but that’s

about the gist of it. New versions will be sent out shortly to all play test groups. Once again, if anyone is looking to play test a great new gaming system then send us an email or private message with your contact details and we’ll send you a copy!

SARPS Preview

Production has started on a free preview version of the Setting Agnostic Role Playing System. Using a stripped back version of the rules (if that were possible!) and simplified combat, we've nutted out an adventure idea with pre-generated characters to whet the preverbial whistle of interested parties. 

The setting takes place in a fairly standard fantasy world, with the players taking the role of a Warrior, an Assassin, a Priest and a Wizard who all have a personal vendetta in taking down several bad guys holed up in the fortress city of Cahr Mordain. With each character comes an objective, defeat their nemesis and the help the others defeat theirs. For each personal nemesis slain, a boost the Advantages of the characters enhances their abilities.

There is no advancement rules, but certain milestones in the adventure offer ways to increase the powers of the characters in order to simulate advancement, but true statistical advancement through the use of experience points is being saved for the full SARPS rules.

Offering well over a dozen monsters and NPCs, each with unique Advantages to showcase the flexibility of the Advantage system, there is plenty of stock material to pique the interest of the players and GM alike. Full colour maps of the dungeons, sewers and various hold outs of the nemeses for the characters fill out the content nicely.

The product is expected to be released as a free download, possibly with a built in code offering a discount on the full SARPS Basic Rules when it is released. Now, to finish the artwork....

Character Concepts

A playtester asked me the other day to clarify a few things regarding the Academics skill in SARPS. Specifically, they wanted to know how a character's fields of study can be reflected by a single 'knowledge' skill. This was a good question, as it had come up during play before. The character in mind had been built as a sort of chemist, turned drug king pin (someone watches too much tv :)) and they were arguing that as they had an Academics skill that was quite high, they should know about all sorts of sciency stuff. 

To a degree, this is correct, however the player was neglecting one of the most important parts of their character; the Concept.

A character's Concept is what guides the entire character generation process, but it doesn't stop there. The Concept provides a 'flavour' to a character that distinguishes it from other characters with similar skills. As the character in question had a Concept that specifically mentions they're a chemist with legal issues, I would say they know quite a bit of sciency stuff...Chemistry in particular. Other fields, while all part of 'Science' and therefore one could say 'Academics', are not mentioned in the character's Concept and there is no indication that they would know much beyond their indicated field. As a result, Academics checks may still be made to know things in fields other than chemistry, but the difficulties of such rolls would be greater than if it was a straight chemistry question.

This same idea can be applied to all of the Skills; Boxing can be flavoured to resemble kung fu, so long as the Concept points at a background in Eastern fighting styles. A track and field athelete would be very good at running and long jump and such things, but may find rock climbing to be out of their depth, conversely a character whose Concept specifically mentions an outdoorsy type explorer would be an experienced rock climber. 

It is this idea that makes 'rules lite' or old school gaming an effective system for many people. They don't need dozens of skills and perks to detail what a character can and can't do, they simply need a backstory. All the extra details tend to do is create a rigid set of limits that don't necessarily define a character, but simply point to what it can do in a set list of parameters. 

For example, get a piece of paper and try to write down all the skills you as a person may possess... try as you might, working out all these skills is going to take some time, and there's always something that you forgot you know how to do until the situation comes up. But if you instead list your background, activities that you like to do, you begin to see that each concept that makes you you also shows how well you can do certain things.

I have a background in the military, in particular electronics, so if I was to say that I know Academics that would be appropriate. The same cannot be said of the level of biology or philosophy I know. Sure, I may be intelligent and know how to learn things (at least I think I am), I can answer questions much more confidently if they're about electronics, especially if they're military electronics, than I can answer questions regarding Plato's Dialogues.

Happy Eostre's Day!

A bit late, but screw it, I ain't christian. Whatever you believe to be the origins and reasons for celebrating Easter, at least be safe and enjoy the 3 day week that we get here in Australia due to the near overlapping of Anzac Day.

Onto business!

Playtesting for SARPS is coming along nicely, gotten several good ideas and feedback that we've incorporated into the next version. Overall, we're happy with the general rules (with some minor tweaks as playtesting progresses), enough that we can start in earnest on the up coming companion setting 'Atlas City Almanac'.

The Almanac takes the SARPS Basic Rules and adds a skin to it, a cyberpunk-esque dystopian city of rampant crime and mutating nano-technology. Players have the choice of playing private law enforcement officers called Watchdog Operatives, or getting theirs on the other side of the law as a crime Crew. There's also plenty of adventures to be had in the Wilds, searching for valuable salvage and technology from before when a nano-Virus and the nuclear measures taken to stop the mutated hordes from spreading pretty much wiped out civilisation.

Playtesters looking for examples on what the system can do (and those looking to become playtesters) can email me directly, post in the comments or otherwise get in contact as the beta version will be available in about 2 weeks (less if I get motivated). All up it should be close to 100 pages of flavour and additional rules, new Archetypes and Advantages, full equipment lists and expanded Wealth system, adversaries and nano-tech powers. Plus a whole city waiting to be explored and plundered!

Change is Progress

After a rather successful week of playtesting, we've made the first round of major changes to Public Beta versions of SARPS. Received enough great feedback to start tweaking and modifying, finding things we wouldn't have found by ourselves (kind of the same as why you can't proof read your own work).

Change log is as follows:

Archetypes

• Now all Archetypes receive 1 free Bump on their Skills, on top of +1 to each Skill at Generation. Without this, they were kind of meaningless.

Skills

• Removed alternative references to Combat Skill as Combat Style. Clarified the Combat Skill base skill in descriptions

Combat

• Removed requirement to 'Declare Actions' and removed the reference to it in the Order of Combat.
• Highest Initiative simply acts first, and may delay their actions
• Categorised Actions into Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Actions; Primary were main actions, Secondary remains the same, Tertiary are free actions.
• All Primary and Secondary Actions produce Slides on subsequent actions, regardless of which type.
• Added the Execute Exploit Action; previously the Bump/Slide economy was left a little vague, Exploits are ways to use a character's Skills in conjunction with an attack to grant a Bump. Exploit Actions can be opposed, and don't add a Slide to subsequent actions like regular actions do.
• Shields allow for the Block Defence to be performed as if holding a weapon with the Fast trait.
• Weapon Skills have their effects removed, these will now be added as Traits on individual weapons. Weapon Skill now simply act much as proficiencies, and detail which attribute is used with the weapons.
• Burst Fire and Indirect Fire have had the penalty removed and changed to allowing anyone targeting them to Execute an Exploit with an Intelligence based Combat Skill check.
• Mounted Combat allows the rider to move 1 Range Category as a Tertiary Action instead of a Secondary.
• Unarmed Attacks work much like untrained attacks do.
• Untrained attacks (always a tricky mechanic in an RPG system) now simply use the Combat Skill base skill and suffer a Choke.
• First Aid is updated to match the previous change of damage per Wound. Now 3 successes on an Intelligence based Academics check is required to heal 1 Wound, and 1 per damage during combat.

Equipment

• Updated the sample equipment list to include more traits since the weapon skills had them removed.
• Added a few more entries because I could.
• Tweaked Wealth success requirements for purchasing items. We're sill not 100% sold on the Wealth system and but may end up just leaving there for those that don't care for book keeping coins.
• Added the Slow, Armour Piercing and Bump on Exploit traits; Slow provides an additional Slide on subsequent actions, Armour Piercing removes Slides on armour and Bump on Exploit provides a Bump...on...Exploits...yeah, thought we didn't have to explain that one.

Playtesters, expect the newest version in your inboxes soon, this time they're amended with a version number for reference, which is the date of the update in day/month/year format.

If you find any references in the rules that don't make sense, flag it as it's probably something we missed after we made the changes. Keep it coming in!

Play Testers Wanted!

This week we kick off the public testing phase of Project SARPS:

What is Project SARPS? SARPS stands for Setting Agnostic Role Playing System. As the acronym indicates, it's a setting free roleplaying game thats both flexible and easy to understand. Once you have a grasp of the rules, you can tweak it, bend it and twist it to fit nearly any genre of roleplaying. We started the Project as a sort of internal challenge, to create a generic system that can be used as a base for further projects. The more we wrote, the more ideas we had. 

Some key features:

4 Attributes - Strength, Cunning, Intelligence and Personality - combine with 9 Skill - Academics, Athletics, Communications, Perception, Mechanical, Stealth, Stunts, Crafting and Combat Style - to produce 36 different ways to tackle problems. All with a just a few dice.

Attributes determine the type of die, Skill detemine how many - A Strength of d8 and a Combat Style of 3 means 3d8 on an attack roll. Successes scored based on individual dice, generally a 4+ is a success.

Modifiers produce 'Bumps' and 'Slides' that upgrade or degrade a single die at a time to the next higher or lower die type; a Bump on a d6 makes it a d8, a Slide makes it a d4 etc. 

Success and Failure are not absolute - Many complex tasks require multiple successes to perform, sometimes more than a character has in a single skill roll. As long as a character gets at least 1 success, and the situation warrants it, the next round can be spend making another skill check and adding the successes to the total until the require number is  met. Failing to get a single success on the first roll is a Total Failure, the task may not be attempted again soon, while getting at least 1 success, but failing to get any further successes is a Partial Failure - the character can attempt again but loses all previous successes. This can also be narrated instead, success at a cost to character, for example.

Advantages - Nearly anything can have an Advantage, magic, reputation, wealth, a car, a weapon, a potion, a piece of tech, a spaceship, an NPC or an area. This feature allows a GM to produce almost any effect, based on a simple roll of 1d6 per point in the Advantage. For example, a Gangbanger NPC has the Advantage of Thug Life 1; once per battle the Gangbanger may make a Thug Life Advantage check by rolling 1d6. If they score a 4+ then in 3 rounds time 1 more Gangbanger arrives to help out.

Wounds reduce Attribute die types - Someone with a Strength of d8 suffers a Strength Wound, and their Strength gets reduced to d6.

Abstract Wealth system - As Wealth can be an Advantage instead of an exact figure, you can treat it as a simple die roll to purchase things or achieve results by spending cash. Items can have a Wealth requirement, meaning the number of successes needed on such a roll to be able to purchase it. Partial successes could mean the item is purchased but the Advantage suffers a loss, or a temporary penalty.

Flexibility is the theme, and we want to know just HOW flexible we've made it. 

This is where YOU come in. We'd like to send out free copies of the beta version for play testing, with the one condition that you send us an email with your thoughts and discoveries, as well as any cool settings you've come up with and how you used the system to do what you wanted. Either post a comment or PM with your email address and we'll try and get you a copy to toy with!

Enjoy!

#RPG #Playtest #openbeta

It's ALIVE!! It's alive!

Well, folks, we got it out! At long last the Hands of Fate Sci-Fi edition is here!

To celebrate, we're sending out special discount codes for customers who've purchased our products before, and for those who read this blog! Simply click on the hyperlink below to be sent to the store page with the discount applied. Hurry, though, this code expires in a month's time!

Hands of Fate - Exile's End DISCOUNT!