So hey, splatting out a vague post to submit to your guys collective experience before I head to bed:
If I wanted to do a Titanfall PbP with:
1) Simultaneous orders (makes running PbP easier)
2) The set up for things being a mission space/map where the characters (as pilots/titans) run around in areas feeling god like but constrained on time.
What sort of simple mechanics/ideas would work to help home bake that? Currently I'm thinking dice pools and stuff.
I'd like to play a game where violence isn't a feature at all. I was musing at work about the premise for a campaign.
The PCs are consultants for some massive international thing, maybe an ark to leave Earth or whatever. There are a few problems going on: the head of engineering is out of it due to his wife being in intensive care, which is kind of hampering the whole division; an earthquake has damaged key roads around the construction area; several major investors are making noises about pulling out, though it's possible they're angling for more influence in the whole endeavor.
Serious issues, and punching people isn't going to address any of them.
I'd like to play a game where violence isn't a feature at all. I was musing at work about the premise for a campaign.
The PCs are consultants for some massive international thing, maybe an ark to leave Earth or whatever. There are a few problems going on: the head of engineering is out of it due to his wife being in intensive care, which is kind of hampering the whole division; an earthquake has damaged key roads around the construction area; several major investors are making noises about pulling out, though it's possible they're angling for more influence in the whole endeavor.
Serious issues, and punching people isn't going to address any of them.
I mean, you have to find a fine line here, because this quickly becomes like actual work and not the escapism that a lot of roleplaying can be about!
I'm trying to think of a game that doesn't have the potential for violent conflict and I'm coming up dry. I'm sure there's an indy game or two out there. Otherwise, Leverage tends to try to avoid violence outside of the scenes featuring the Hitter. I think you could probably play something like Legacy (the PbtA game) without featuring violence in any real way. There are a couple of the Worlds on Fire/Shadow Fate Core settings that don't really focus on violence at all and instead feature other forms of conflict. I guess you could play something in Gumshoe without violence ever coming up (or with players deeply incentivized to avoid it at all costs).
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
I'm trying to think of a game that doesn't have the potential for violent conflict and I'm coming up dry. I'm sure there's an indy game or two out there. Otherwise, Leverage tends to try to avoid violence outside of the scenes featuring the Hitter. I think you could probably play something like Legacy (the PbtA game) without featuring violence in any real way. There are a couple of the Worlds on Fire/Shadow Fate Core settings that don't really focus on violence at all and instead feature other forms of conflict. I guess you could play something in Gumshoe without violence ever coming up (or with players deeply incentivized to avoid it at all costs).
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
So you want to make a West Wing/House of Cards style RPG?
Jokes aside, it is definitely not just my experience that all problems can, ultimately, be resolved by violence. Clausewitz observed it. Jomini observed it. Machiavelli observed it. Sun Tzu observed it. Violence is like WD-40; lubricates everything and is highly flammable.
I'd like to play a game where violence isn't a feature at all. I was musing at work about the premise for a campaign.
The PCs are consultants for some massive international thing, maybe an ark to leave Earth or whatever. There are a few problems going on: the head of engineering is out of it due to his wife being in intensive care, which is kind of hampering the whole division; an earthquake has damaged key roads around the construction area; several major investors are making noises about pulling out, though it's possible they're angling for more influence in the whole endeavor.
Serious issues, and punching people isn't going to address any of them.
For a game where you can have stakes and ridiculousness and tension without violence, you can always take a few hints from Phoenix Wright. Courtroom drama and contests of wit make for very acceptable substitutes to punching people in the face.
Leave violence as an option, but make sure that the players know that there are major consequences for going that way. From arrests, getting fired, public shame, ect. And that trying to cover it up isn't going to be easy, blackmailed by someone who knows, having to hide the body, having to try to lie to police during investigations, ect. Most of us don't fight with our fist much anymore because of the consequences, while in grade school, fighting meant you got grounded, a spanking, and/or detention.
The problem is that most popular systems have extensive and entertaining systems for resolving conflict through violence. Solving problems through any other means, much less running an entirely non-violent campaign, then tends to be droll by comparison.
And most attempts to create alternative RPGs that do minimize the violence tend to simultaneously move away from a gamist focus, becoming more narrative in the process (which still typically means fairly shallow mechanical systems, only done intentionally to keep it out of the way of the storytelling). There's nothing wrong with that if narrative play is what you want, but there should be some good options available for gamist solutions, too.
This feels like a temporary problem, as we're living in the golden age of board games. Board games are creating interesting gamist solutions for pretty much everything imaginable, from being a successful socialite to climbing frozen mountain peaks. It should just be a matter of time before some of that trickles down into RPGs. Maybe once 5E is a little older and people are getting antsy to experiment (or if 6E is released to rebellion like 4E unfairly was).
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I'm trying to think of a game that doesn't have the potential for violent conflict and I'm coming up dry. I'm sure there's an indy game or two out there. Otherwise, Leverage tends to try to avoid violence outside of the scenes featuring the Hitter. I think you could probably play something like Legacy (the PbtA game) without featuring violence in any real way. There are a couple of the Worlds on Fire/Shadow Fate Core settings that don't really focus on violence at all and instead feature other forms of conflict. I guess you could play something in Gumshoe without violence ever coming up (or with players deeply incentivized to avoid it at all costs).
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
House of Bards is a Fate spinoff that does look pretty good, though I haven't bought it yet.
Unrelated: I love stealth games, but I've never been able to think of a way to translate that in a satisfying way to paper, particularly when there are multiple people playing. A post on Reddit pointed out that a game could have a stealth meter, such that players could work together to stay hidden, and have gradations of the level of secrecy beyond the extremes of "I am the night" and "whelp, someone saw me, murder time".
I'm trying to think of a game that doesn't have the potential for violent conflict and I'm coming up dry. I'm sure there's an indy game or two out there. Otherwise, Leverage tends to try to avoid violence outside of the scenes featuring the Hitter. I think you could probably play something like Legacy (the PbtA game) without featuring violence in any real way. There are a couple of the Worlds on Fire/Shadow Fate Core settings that don't really focus on violence at all and instead feature other forms of conflict. I guess you could play something in Gumshoe without violence ever coming up (or with players deeply incentivized to avoid it at all costs).
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
House of Bards is a Fate spinoff that does look pretty good, though I haven't bought it yet.
Unrelated: I love stealth games, but I've never been able to think of a way to translate that in a satisfying way to paper, particularly when there are multiple people playing. A post on Reddit pointed out that a game could have a stealth meter, such that players could work together to stay hidden, and have gradations of the level of secrecy beyond the extremes of "I am the night" and "whelp, someone saw me, murder time".
In our Shadowrun games, we have a meta-gaming tool called the "SR-o-meter", which tells the players their level of exposure to the corporation that they are going up against. If they do a lot of overt actions and mess up, the SR-o-meter goes up to the next level and the corporate response is harsher (The guards, instead of just shining a flashlight and checking things out, would pull out firearms and yell "Who's there?" instead. Or, at the highest levels, simply open fire immediately). Some of it is tongue-in-cheek, but most games that focus on stealth benefit greatly from having that sort of feedback.
I'm trying to think of a game that doesn't have the potential for violent conflict and I'm coming up dry. I'm sure there's an indy game or two out there. Otherwise, Leverage tends to try to avoid violence outside of the scenes featuring the Hitter. I think you could probably play something like Legacy (the PbtA game) without featuring violence in any real way. There are a couple of the Worlds on Fire/Shadow Fate Core settings that don't really focus on violence at all and instead feature other forms of conflict. I guess you could play something in Gumshoe without violence ever coming up (or with players deeply incentivized to avoid it at all costs).
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
House of Bards is a Fate spinoff that does look pretty good, though I haven't bought it yet.
Unrelated: I love stealth games, but I've never been able to think of a way to translate that in a satisfying way to paper, particularly when there are multiple people playing. A post on Reddit pointed out that a game could have a stealth meter, such that players could work together to stay hidden, and have gradations of the level of secrecy beyond the extremes of "I am the night" and "whelp, someone saw me, murder time".
I've never played it, but Blades in the Dark is a stealth-based game. I'd guess it has a rather robust system for alertness and sneaking.
The big issue with stealth is that stealth focused games usually feature a single hyper competent individual, not a group at the whim of dice.
Could be fun to do something card driven so that a player knows when they're going to flummox something and can wrangle the narrative to make it not catastrophic
0
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
You could definitely play Blades with mostly sneaking, but that system does not shy away from murder.
Burning Wheel can be a very non-combat oriented game if you plan for it from the beginning. If you make characters that don't know how to fight you will be very unmotivated to get into fights.
So how does the system work? I tried watching that one video someone posted of the HyperRPG people playing but it was kinda hard to tell what was going on, mechanic wise.
So how does the system work? I tried watching that one video someone posted of the HyperRPG people playing but it was kinda hard to tell what was going on, mechanic wise.
The core mechanic is roll 1d6 per point you have in a skill. Add one more die if you push yourself (take stress) or take a special malus the DM makes up on the spot. If your highest die is a 6, you succeed. If it's 4-5, you succeed but with complication. If 1-3, you fail (usually also with complication).
The other really noteworthy tactical rule is that instead of loading your inventory with items, you instead have a load value. Every time you need an item you own, you flash back to your character having planned for just such a moment, check off a load, and you happen to have packed that item for that moment, which gives you the same fantasy as the super competent ocean's eleven stuff, but without the need to buy 3 of every item in the game and argue about how much you can fit in a backpack.
There's more to it, like some really interesting downtime stuff where you run a gang and gradually take territory and increase your influence, but that's the mechanical core of the in-action stuff.
The big issue with stealth is that stealth focused games usually feature a single hyper competent individual, not a group at the whim of dice.
Could be fun to do something card driven so that a player knows when they're going to flummox something and can wrangle the narrative to make it not catastrophic
Funny you should mention that
I'm working on a card-driven RPG, and it does group stealth. Probably not with as complete a narrative as a game that focuses more purely on it, but it feels like it works pretty well. The narrative does sometimes have to be wrangled, but it's a rather abstract game mechanically, so it works.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
+4
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
So how does the system work? I tried watching that one video someone posted of the HyperRPG people playing but it was kinda hard to tell what was going on, mechanic wise.
Lemme see if I can summarize the core mechanics without fucking everything up...
Skills
When you try to do something you roll the appropriate skill. There are 16 of them and they're the standard things like Prowl, Skirmish, Sway, Survey, etc. Each character will have 0-4 points in a skill which indicates the base number of D6s you roll (0 is 2D6 take the lowest). There are a few ways to get bonus dice.
You roll the dice and take the highest result (or lowest if you were rolling 0) and there are three possible results: 1-3 = failure, 4-5 = success with a cost, 6 = success.
Stress
Blades characters are very durable. They're much more likely to retire due to repeated traumatic experiences than they are likely to die. This is represented with Stress, which starts at zero and can increase via pushing yourself to increase the dice you roll on a skill, assisting an ally, or (the most common) resisting a consequence. Every time you suffer a consequence, whether because of a 1-5 roll or just something stupid you did, you can say "that doesn't happen" -- and it doesn't. However, you have to make a roll and will end up gaining 0-6 stress as a result.
If you hit nine stress you suffer trauma, which removes you from the current action and gives you a trauma condition (like "Cold", "Reckless", or "Soft"). A character that gets four trauma conditions is forced to retire.
Jobs and Flashbacks
Blades missions are intended to start in media res and avoid the long planning phase that heist/mission-based games can suffer from. A pair of mechanics enables this:
1. The Plan and Engagement system. Rather than establish an elaborate plan you figure out a basic approach and detail -- "We're going to infiltrate the party with the invitation acquired from Lady Byron", "We're going to sneak into the warehouse through the back door they never remember to lock", "We're going to teleport into the middle of the base with the help of Ebron's demon" -- the MC determines how vulnerable the target is to the plan and then you make a roll, the result indicates whether the plan was perfectly setup, had a mixed result, or backfired into an ambush (same 1-3/4-5/6+ scale) AND THEN
2. The Flashback system. Any character can declare a flashback at any point. They cost 0-2 stress based on the unlikelihood of the scene, and can be used to do... basically anything. Are you about to be accosted by an unexpected patrol of Bluecoats? Flashback to you bribing that exact patrol in the bar the night before and watch them turn the corner, give you a nod and a wink, and turn around.
Gear
Having the right gear on hand is key to executing the perfect heist, which is way Blades characters always have the right gear on hand. Rather than carrying an inventory, each playbook has a list of items they have access to and when you begin a mission you choose a load, which tells you how many items you're carrying. Then when you need an item you declare you have it, mark off a point of load, and pick that damn lock.
House of Bards was . . . moderately helpful. FATE allows for non-violent games, if the group agrees that's the campaign they want, so I guess unless I find a few other people also in the mood for that, I'm out of luck.
So hey, splatting out a vague post to submit to your guys collective experience before I head to bed:
If I wanted to do a Titanfall PbP with:
1) Simultaneous orders (makes running PbP easier)
2) The set up for things being a mission space/map where the characters (as pilots/titans) run around in areas feeling god like but constrained on time.
What sort of simple mechanics/ideas would work to help home bake that? Currently I'm thinking dice pools and stuff.
What parts of the Titanfall experience do you want to bring to the tabletop? Obviously the giants robots and the pew pew... but what do you envision as a typical flow of play for a session?
So hey, splatting out a vague post to submit to your guys collective experience before I head to bed:
If I wanted to do a Titanfall PbP with:
1) Simultaneous orders (makes running PbP easier)
2) The set up for things being a mission space/map where the characters (as pilots/titans) run around in areas feeling god like but constrained on time.
What sort of simple mechanics/ideas would work to help home bake that? Currently I'm thinking dice pools and stuff.
What parts of the Titanfall experience do you want to bring to the tabletop? Obviously the giants robots and the pew pew... but what do you envision as a typical flow of play for a session?
Probably to capture the general concept of warfare that they show (IE, Pilots/Titans are the shit and everything is small/medium scale ground operations to support fleets).
So the average session would be:
1) Mission briefing
2) Do the mission. Probably on some sort of timer. The challenge being to get stuff done effeciently, not to be challenged by IMC/Militia grunts.
3) Downtime/fluff/character stuff post mission in thread while I set up the next mission for players to do. Maybe some light management of the player's mercenary group.
So obviously 90% of the game is spent in phase 2 and that's where mechanics need to be.
Are you assuming "basic pilot competency" for all of the players? I think that would frankly work out best; your combat skills are all base 0 so everyone's just rolling flat dice at the outset. With a merc company, though, esoteric skills are important. Those I think would need to start at base 0 as well, but with a small pool of points to represent proficiency.
What sort of core mechanics are you looking at? 2d6 > 8? Dice pools? Variable or static defenses?
Esoteric skills being things a typical pilot wouldn't necessarily know (that a merc might): Titan repair, non-Titan repair, accounting, strategy, medicine, negotiation, demolitions, galactic knowledge, communications, cooking, etc.
Basic pilot competency is assumed for everyone. Mechanics wise I'm honestly not sure. Big dice pools seem kinda in theme with the camp science fantasy stuff but something like fighting formations sliding dice scale (2dx where X is 8 defaultly and goes up or down in size based on modifiers) could work.
Weird skills would definitely be good. Also need something for the players Titans both as the giant stomp bots and as characters separate but still tied too their pilots.
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Well, you could always do a sheet for pilots and a sheet for Titans, with different damage scales between the two.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
How about a warmachine style thing where each given time unit, a player has a certain amount of dice to allocate between their pilot and their titan? Allocated pilot dice are use-it-or-lose-it, but allocated Titan dice stick around until they're used.
You can put those dice into whatever pool you want in order to increase your odds or effectiveness on a given roll. Calling down your titan requires you to have allocated a certain number of dice to it, then WHAM there it is, screaming down from the heavens onto the heads of some poor soldiers.
Maybe make it so titans only roll half the dice as a pilot does on a given check, so when you call them down they end up spending their dice as a matter of course, even though the effect of a successful titan roll is usually MUCH greater than the effect of a successful pilot roll.
If your pilot is in the titan then it's gravy, you get all the dice!
It could have some interesting strategy to it if you're going for quick and efficient missions, because speed and efficiency are naturally interesting when presented with long term vs. short term resource management.
Titanfall wise by the way I'd probably play it more as how the campaign presents it (Titans are valuable and limited) than the multiplayers Titans for all style. Though splitting dice between the two sounds good as a mechanic. The main reasons to get out of your Titan would be to split up, perform technical tasks or go places the Titan can't fit.
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Make it so you have to assign dice to the Titan for it to take actions while not directly piloting it, but it has to spend a die for each die it wants to roll? Then give the Titan a couple of "AI" settings/actions that it will take if it gets no input from the pilot?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Long ago there was a Mech Warrior rpg, based on Battletech, you might want to investigate for ideas.
You can skip it.
It was good for lore behind what a typical Mechwarrior or Aerospace pilot in that universe would go through, in terms of training and such. But the mechanics were balls, and didn't carry over into the larger scale Battletech game very well, either (or in some cases, hilariously broke it... which is fine, if you are playing an RPG with lighter Battletech elements).
Posts
I've just got Bradford history, medieval music and punk rock in my search right now
If I wanted to do a Titanfall PbP with:
1) Simultaneous orders (makes running PbP easier)
2) The set up for things being a mission space/map where the characters (as pilots/titans) run around in areas feeling god like but constrained on time.
What sort of simple mechanics/ideas would work to help home bake that? Currently I'm thinking dice pools and stuff.
The odds of anyone important being eaten by communist space vampires in Ars Magica is far too low for my taste.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I really wonder if the big data searches have a flag for "RPG fan" that lessens the severity of hits on that profile.
Depressing Post November 8th thought:
Unless you add some pro Putin search terms.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The PCs are consultants for some massive international thing, maybe an ark to leave Earth or whatever. There are a few problems going on: the head of engineering is out of it due to his wife being in intensive care, which is kind of hampering the whole division; an earthquake has damaged key roads around the construction area; several major investors are making noises about pulling out, though it's possible they're angling for more influence in the whole endeavor.
Serious issues, and punching people isn't going to address any of them.
I can think of a way to solve all of those problems through violence.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I mean, you have to find a fine line here, because this quickly becomes like actual work and not the escapism that a lot of roleplaying can be about!
If I was going to do it, I'd probably do it in Cortex and treat various problem solving and interpersonal skills as MHRPG power sets. That's probably the best bang for your buck you're going to get as far as rolls generating excitement in a game with no fights.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So you want to make a West Wing/House of Cards style RPG?
Comics, Games, Booze
For a game where you can have stakes and ridiculousness and tension without violence, you can always take a few hints from Phoenix Wright. Courtroom drama and contests of wit make for very acceptable substitutes to punching people in the face.
And most attempts to create alternative RPGs that do minimize the violence tend to simultaneously move away from a gamist focus, becoming more narrative in the process (which still typically means fairly shallow mechanical systems, only done intentionally to keep it out of the way of the storytelling). There's nothing wrong with that if narrative play is what you want, but there should be some good options available for gamist solutions, too.
This feels like a temporary problem, as we're living in the golden age of board games. Board games are creating interesting gamist solutions for pretty much everything imaginable, from being a successful socialite to climbing frozen mountain peaks. It should just be a matter of time before some of that trickles down into RPGs. Maybe once 5E is a little older and people are getting antsy to experiment (or if 6E is released to rebellion like 4E unfairly was).
House of Bards is a Fate spinoff that does look pretty good, though I haven't bought it yet.
Unrelated: I love stealth games, but I've never been able to think of a way to translate that in a satisfying way to paper, particularly when there are multiple people playing. A post on Reddit pointed out that a game could have a stealth meter, such that players could work together to stay hidden, and have gradations of the level of secrecy beyond the extremes of "I am the night" and "whelp, someone saw me, murder time".
I've never played it, but Blades in the Dark is a stealth-based game. I'd guess it has a rather robust system for alertness and sneaking.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Could be fun to do something card driven so that a player knows when they're going to flummox something and can wrangle the narrative to make it not catastrophic
Burning Wheel can be a very non-combat oriented game if you plan for it from the beginning. If you make characters that don't know how to fight you will be very unmotivated to get into fights.
The seventh session of my game of Blades was this past Sunday and it is... very good.
The core mechanic is roll 1d6 per point you have in a skill. Add one more die if you push yourself (take stress) or take a special malus the DM makes up on the spot. If your highest die is a 6, you succeed. If it's 4-5, you succeed but with complication. If 1-3, you fail (usually also with complication).
The other really noteworthy tactical rule is that instead of loading your inventory with items, you instead have a load value. Every time you need an item you own, you flash back to your character having planned for just such a moment, check off a load, and you happen to have packed that item for that moment, which gives you the same fantasy as the super competent ocean's eleven stuff, but without the need to buy 3 of every item in the game and argue about how much you can fit in a backpack.
There's more to it, like some really interesting downtime stuff where you run a gang and gradually take territory and increase your influence, but that's the mechanical core of the in-action stuff.
Lemme see if I can summarize the core mechanics without fucking everything up...
Skills
When you try to do something you roll the appropriate skill. There are 16 of them and they're the standard things like Prowl, Skirmish, Sway, Survey, etc. Each character will have 0-4 points in a skill which indicates the base number of D6s you roll (0 is 2D6 take the lowest). There are a few ways to get bonus dice.
You roll the dice and take the highest result (or lowest if you were rolling 0) and there are three possible results: 1-3 = failure, 4-5 = success with a cost, 6 = success.
Stress
Blades characters are very durable. They're much more likely to retire due to repeated traumatic experiences than they are likely to die. This is represented with Stress, which starts at zero and can increase via pushing yourself to increase the dice you roll on a skill, assisting an ally, or (the most common) resisting a consequence. Every time you suffer a consequence, whether because of a 1-5 roll or just something stupid you did, you can say "that doesn't happen" -- and it doesn't. However, you have to make a roll and will end up gaining 0-6 stress as a result.
If you hit nine stress you suffer trauma, which removes you from the current action and gives you a trauma condition (like "Cold", "Reckless", or "Soft"). A character that gets four trauma conditions is forced to retire.
Jobs and Flashbacks
Blades missions are intended to start in media res and avoid the long planning phase that heist/mission-based games can suffer from. A pair of mechanics enables this:
1. The Plan and Engagement system. Rather than establish an elaborate plan you figure out a basic approach and detail -- "We're going to infiltrate the party with the invitation acquired from Lady Byron", "We're going to sneak into the warehouse through the back door they never remember to lock", "We're going to teleport into the middle of the base with the help of Ebron's demon" -- the MC determines how vulnerable the target is to the plan and then you make a roll, the result indicates whether the plan was perfectly setup, had a mixed result, or backfired into an ambush (same 1-3/4-5/6+ scale) AND THEN
2. The Flashback system. Any character can declare a flashback at any point. They cost 0-2 stress based on the unlikelihood of the scene, and can be used to do... basically anything. Are you about to be accosted by an unexpected patrol of Bluecoats? Flashback to you bribing that exact patrol in the bar the night before and watch them turn the corner, give you a nod and a wink, and turn around.
Gear
Having the right gear on hand is key to executing the perfect heist, which is way Blades characters always have the right gear on hand. Rather than carrying an inventory, each playbook has a list of items they have access to and when you begin a mission you choose a load, which tells you how many items you're carrying. Then when you need an item you declare you have it, mark off a point of load, and pick that damn lock.
What parts of the Titanfall experience do you want to bring to the tabletop? Obviously the giants robots and the pew pew... but what do you envision as a typical flow of play for a session?
Probably to capture the general concept of warfare that they show (IE, Pilots/Titans are the shit and everything is small/medium scale ground operations to support fleets).
So the average session would be:
1) Mission briefing
2) Do the mission. Probably on some sort of timer. The challenge being to get stuff done effeciently, not to be challenged by IMC/Militia grunts.
3) Downtime/fluff/character stuff post mission in thread while I set up the next mission for players to do. Maybe some light management of the player's mercenary group.
So obviously 90% of the game is spent in phase 2 and that's where mechanics need to be.
What sort of core mechanics are you looking at? 2d6 > 8? Dice pools? Variable or static defenses?
Esoteric skills being things a typical pilot wouldn't necessarily know (that a merc might): Titan repair, non-Titan repair, accounting, strategy, medicine, negotiation, demolitions, galactic knowledge, communications, cooking, etc.
Weird skills would definitely be good. Also need something for the players Titans both as the giant stomp bots and as characters separate but still tied too their pilots.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
You can put those dice into whatever pool you want in order to increase your odds or effectiveness on a given roll. Calling down your titan requires you to have allocated a certain number of dice to it, then WHAM there it is, screaming down from the heavens onto the heads of some poor soldiers.
Maybe make it so titans only roll half the dice as a pilot does on a given check, so when you call them down they end up spending their dice as a matter of course, even though the effect of a successful titan roll is usually MUCH greater than the effect of a successful pilot roll.
If your pilot is in the titan then it's gravy, you get all the dice!
It could have some interesting strategy to it if you're going for quick and efficient missions, because speed and efficiency are naturally interesting when presented with long term vs. short term resource management.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
And while the game itself was flawed, the mech creation rules for Big Eyes, Small Mouth were solid.
I was running a Shadowrun 3E game at the time.
Take that for what you will.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.