A Free Game For You?

[Onix]

If their energy reaches zero, they're out of the game, yes. I'd have to think about making a rule about moving on, it would be entirely possible to make staying in one place too long a trigger for a challenge. I do something similar in the super hero game I'm working on using the Energy System but it triggers challenges when the PCs have to face things like questions of confidence when they fail to save someone. This would be similar but I'd have to figure out how to describe the urge to move on so a GM wasn't penalizing the players for not moving for an hour. Essentially, what's "too long"?

[Onix]

I'm debating if the challenge to keep moving be that something is hurting the character or something is attracting the character. I guess it could be different for each character.

Attracting would mean that the character wants to keep flying but maybe they met someone while on a planet they could settle down with. Maybe they found a quiet safe place. Things that conflict with their desire to keep moving.

Hurting is a little more intuitive. The authorities are getting closer because you left some evidence. Records of your past are being shipped to more places. etc.

Both modes are compelling to me for different reasons. In a way, it's almost a happy thing if the character "died" because they were attracted to settling down.

[Rob Lang]

I like your idea of attract and hurt energies. This push/pull style will give the players more choice. Also if you only used hurt (push) then the players might well feel a loss of agency. Whereas a pull (attraction) will make them feel good about the loss of agency!

[Onix]

[madunkieg]

What you're doing takes the game out of the OSR genre. Most OSR games had the singular reason to adventure be central to the rules. Yes, everyone could come up with their own reason, but the rules didn't cover those reasons. Not having seen your system, I suspect that this new version will benefit gameplay greatly by focusing where OSR games didn't. I look forwards to reading it, if you still plan to post it like you did the last version.

Oh, and good work on drawing a parallel between the engines and the characters!

[Onix]

Thanks! Although the game was pretty outside the realm of OSR in the first place, mainly because the players get near free reign to narrate the result of their rolls and because non combat stats are modeled. OSR should rely on the GM narrating and there should be no social stats, even mental stats are frowned on unless they're used for magic combat.

I like some OSR ideas but I'm not interested in recreating the wheel so I'm pretty happy with that assessment. I'll let you know how the playtest goes.

[Onix]

The playtest with the character motivations went. . . interestingly. The players referenced their motivations pretty frequently but when there was a chance to test the challenge mechanism for them, they chose to pack up and leave before it was triggered. Which. . . is kind of what I wanted, but I also wanted to test out the story end of it.

I pulled up a few holes in the system during the playtest. Most of it has to do with recovery but I think my scale for money is off too, so I'll have to fix that.

[Rob Lang]

What are you going to do differently for the next playtest? Is there anything you would have changed about the last one? How did you gather feedback? Was your group friends or acquaintances?

[Onix]

For the next playtest I've got to get my act together for one. I kept doing things wrong, partly because I'm a little rusty GMing (we had a hiatus because of babies being born, not mine, my friends having babies) and because I was filling in details that I should have let the players fill in because of old habits.

I'm apparently still at a more functional stage of playtesting. When I can run the rules and not have procedural issues then I'll worry about tweaking feel. In September I'm running Jump Temp at Queen City Conquest with strangers so that will be telling.

I have a friend down in Florida that says he'll run Jump Temp for me when he's done with his current campaign so that will really test the game without me there to guide him.

I'm testing this with a new group, they have limited RPG experience so I'm testing and getting used to the group at the same time which is interesting to say the least. So far my Artifact group has been meeting at the end of the month and I'm setting this group up for the middle of the month.

As far as information gathering, I'll definitely want something in place for the September game.