So, I have a game I'm working on called Polarpunk. It's a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk game that's set in a worldwide "second Ice Age". It's supposed to be fun, fast, exciting and full of "dude, that's awesome. Insane, but awesome" moments.

I'm going to give you a setting/premise pitch, try to state my design goals concisely, share the relevant mechanics, and ask a question about mechanics balance and general impressions.

First, the setting pitch:

Apocalypse hit. Nuclear war decimated our cities, global anarchy broke out, global warming hit its breaking point, and a second ice age washed over the earth. The shattered remains of humankind went underground, setting up fragmented, isolated bunker colonies.

Now, finally, we have re-emerged. Earth is an icy, radiation-clouded wasteland. Polar bears have assumed empire over the earth. Our cities lie in ruins, waiting to be reclaimed. As a forward scout for humanity's re-expansion, it's your job to seek out other bunker colonies, scavenge our past from abandoned cities, and fight off the growing polar bear hordes. You're our first and last hope of ever reclaiming the earth.

1. The game is supposed to be fast, fun, and easy to pick up. Savage Worlds claims to do this, and for the most part it does.

2. This game is supposed to provide a wealth of tactical options, without getting bogged down or complicated. Dice pools are an attempt to achieve this: You can have a "feat" affect high die, give bonuses to the roll, allow low die re-rolls, or allow you to roll bonus dice. There's a wealth of options without having a hugely complicated system.

3. Allow cyber technology, and such, to be cool. Heavy-crunch games can't, by nature, get away from creating laundry lists of technical data, which defeats the whole point of having wonderous, fantastic stuff. IMO.

4. I'm not sure how best to put this: modular options | bonus content | unlockable content. I want a system where it makes sense to unlock a whole bunch of new options whenever a city is uncovered and explored.

5. Task-based resolution, GM-guided story... but at the same time allowing players to provide a lot to the creative front. Flexible authority, but still within a definite hierarchy.

So, a basic summary of the character components:

Vantage Threshold. Used to determine whether you get a bonus from your Vantage Roll (initiative roll).
Statistics: Power, Aim, Endurance and Craft. All powered 1-5.
Feats: starting characters have 1-4. These give different bonuses and alterations.
Equipment: Starting characters have "default equipment", which gives no bonuses. Later scavenged equipment will give different bonuses and alterations, like Feats.
Wounds Every character is going to have something like 6 or 8.

When creating a character, you first pick an Archetype.
These include: Explorer, Assassin, Warrior, Sentient Dog and Coward, amongst others.

When you pick your Archetype, this determines your Vantage Threshold, how many points you have to distribute amongst Statistics, how many Feats you get, and some Archetypes have exclusive Feats (Sentient Dogs, for example, can be Scent Trackers).

So then you distribute your Stat points amongst your stats, pick your feats.
Then you sketch and doodle while the others finish up their characters.

Here's how combat works:

VANTAGE

First of all, everyone rolls 3d10 for their Vantage. Highest die for each player determines initiative.

If the high die for any player is above their Vantage Threshold, they gain +X to their Action this round, equal to the difference.

Some feats and Archetypes will alter the amount of dice rolled for Vantage, or will allow you to re-roll the low one. Archetype also determines the Vantage Threshold (which will be between 5 and 8 depending on Archetype).

So, you now have an order for actors.

ACTION

So, going by Vantage order, everyone will get one Action in a round.
The options are basically:
-Attack (melee)
-Fire (ranged)
-Seize Ground (strategic positioning)
-Utilize (item usage, support, diplomacy)

(Utilize uses an item or effect. This will likely either heal your friends or assist their efforts. Utilize is the broad category that isn't killing or running around. Diplomacy attempts is currently stuffed in here too.)

When you Attack, you roll Xd10, with X being equal to your Power stat.
Each die that doubles the enemy's Endurance Stat scores 1 Wound.

You can spend your Vantage Bonus to increase die faces. If I have a Vantage Bonus of +3, I can either increase a die of 5 to 8, or I can increase a die of 5 to a die of 6 and a die of 4 to a die of 6. Make sense?

The enemy can also spend Vantage Bonus to lower die faces in the same way, in Melee.

My first question is: Does this ability to break Vantage up over several dice confuse things? Does it get in the way of my fast-moving, low-handling-time objective?

Fire uses Aim. Roll xd10, with X being equal to your Aim stat.
Each die that doubles the enemy's Endurance stat scores 1 Wound.

Vantage Bonus cannot be spent to lower die faces on a Fire.
When it comes your turn to act, you can put off your action. This puts you at the bottom of the Vantage order but allows you to spend your Vantage Bonus on your shot.

Now, any character can sacrifice their Vantage Bonus (assuming they have one), to charge a character who is Far Off. This brings the enemy into Close Range, meaning that the attacker can now do an Attack (melee).

Question: Does this make sense so far?

So, now... we move onto Seize Ground. You spend your turn to either:

a.) Move into Cover. So long as you stay in cover, enemies cannot use more than 3 dice in attacking you. You count as losing cover if you attack or fire out.
b.) Hide, if you are already in cover. I'm not quite sure how this works yet, but it's good.
c.) Run away. You are out of the fight until you choose to re-enter.
d.) Take Strategic Ground. What this means is that your Vantage Bonus will roll over into your next turn. You can't "stack" Strategic Ground by doing it two turns in a row.

So, Seizing Ground will allow you to either remove yourself from the fight (to varying extent), or build up Vantage Bonus.

Finally, Utilize. It's what the Craft stat is for. It can do cool stuff, but the mechanics and uses will change depending on the item. It also allows you to create cool Gear. People who specialize in Craft are going to be more like Clerics  (in dnd) than anything else, but it'll give them a much wider spectrum of options.

So, here are my questions:
1.) Do you like what you see so far? General opinion? Awesome factor?
2.) Are the rules for Vantage Bonus confusing or non-intuitive?
3.) Does Ranged or Melee outbalance the other? Are they more-or-less the same?
4.) Is Vantage Bonus too powerful? Not powerful enough? The idea is that someone of Vantage Threshold 6 will have a point or two more of stats than someone with Vantage Threshold 5. (low threshold = good).

Any feedback or suggestions would be awesome.

An addition to my rules explanation:

There isn't a linear distance thing. It's more a cinematic distance thing.
You are either Far Off, Close Range, or In Cover.
On top of that, you either have Strategic Ground or not.

So if someone charges you, you are brought into the fight. The fight has been brought to you.

My final question:
Z.) Does this work, if what I'm going for is a cinematic combat feel, in regards to distance?

1.) Do you like what you see so far? General opinion? Awesome factor?
  Yeah, looks cool. I'm not 100% sure what the characters do exactly, but its cool so far.

2.) Are the rules for Vantage Bonus confusing or non-intuitive?
  I think you should change the term die faces to single die roll. Die faces makes me thing that you can trade out a d10 for a d12 or d8...
  Other than that, seems like  a good way to simulate tactics without having to break out the minis and associated rules...

3.) Does Ranged or Melee outbalance the other? Are they more-or-less the same?
  Seems like they are pretty similar. I think ti will depend on how hard it will be for a ranged attacker to start out at "Far off" range...

4.) Is Vantage Bonus too powerful? Not powerful enough? The idea is that someone of Vantage Threshold 6 will have a point or two more of stats than someone with Vantage Threshold 5. (low threshold = good).
Well, There is not other stat that corresponds to Vantage, so there is no way to scale Vantage to other stats is there? That might be a more delicate question if you have to sacrifice say Power or endurance in order to buy more Vantage...

Z.) Does this work, if what I'm going for is a cinematic combat feel, in regards to distance?
  Well, it seems to me like combat is the focus of this game. That being the case, shouldn't there be more ways for a character to differentiate their style in combat? Like how well does PolarPunk support the classic combat archetypes: Massive Weapon, Light Weapons, Single Weapon, Dual Wield, Random Attack, Precise Attack, One Big Swing, Several Fast Attacks, etc. I mean if all the characters are fighters, how do the players distinguish one from the other?

  Anyways, its a cool idea, good luck man!

Hey Dave, good points.

I'm not 100% sure what the characters do exactly, but its cool so far.

I think you should change the term die faces to single die roll. Die faces makes me thing that you can trade out a d10 for a d12 or d8.

Well, There is not other stat that corresponds to Vantage, so there is no way to scale Vantage to other stats is there? That might be a more delicate question if you have to sacrifice say Power or endurance in order to buy more Vantage...

That being the case, shouldn't there be more ways for a character to differentiate their style in combat? Like how well does PolarPunk support the classic combat archetypes: Massive Weapon, Light Weapons, Single Weapon, Dual Wield, Random Attack, Precise Attack, One Big Swing, Several Fast Attacks, etc. I mean if all the characters are fighters, how do the players distinguish one from the other?

I think I understand what you're trying to do, but let me ask you:

Is the main focus of the game tactical combat out on the ice?

How do you see the success or failure of the characters affecting the larger struggle of their community to survive?

Do we usually run when we spot a (sentient, armor-wearing) polar bear?

Hi Joe,

Could you mock up an actual play of the successful, everybody smiling, ending to a campaign? You can mock up two if the ending could go one way or another.

In contrasted to that ending, it might help show whether the vantage bonus is too powerful.

Bill: I picture different GM's playing with that a little bit. You can focus entirely on fighting polar bears in the ice, inter-colony human warfare, more skill-based exploration of the cities, or fighting within your colony bunkers. I'd like a decent mix of fighting humans and fighting bears/others.

I'm currently unsure about how the success/failure of the characters affects the larger struggle.

Callan: I will get to work on a mock up, and try to post it by this weekend. Do you mean campaign, or single session? or single "encounter"? I think that a mock-up of a single session, containing 2-3 encounters, would be most awesome.

joepub wrote:
Bill: I picture different GM's playing with that a little bit. You can focus entirely on fighting polar bears in the ice, inter-colony human warfare, more skill-based exploration of the cities, or fighting within your colony bunkers. I'd like a decent mix of fighting humans and fighting bears/others.

I'm currently unsure about how the success/failure of the characters affects the larger struggle.

Hey Bill,

I have Burning Wheel and have played a demo and flipped through Burning Empires, and, frankly, it's not what I'm going for.

I want a game with easy character creation. Maybe Polarpunk isn't there yet, but the idea is:
-Pick an Archetype
-Divvy up your stats
-Choose 1-4 appropriate feats
-Choose 1-2 pieces of starting equipment.

Feng Shui tries to do this, but looses points because:
-There's a skills system, and that means that you need to read up on skills in order to pick which ones you have.
-There are primary stats and secondary stats. Confusions in this means a stumbling block to new players
-The need for stats AND skills is totally not there in Feng Shui.
-different archetypes have different stat limits for various stats.
-Plus, there are a huge amount of options for things like Gambler or Animal Warrior (I think), and so character generation takes much longer than it attempts to.

I want combat to play out fast, and loose, and fun. I like that Savage Worlds manages to cut down handling time considerably on a by-turn basis. The problem I have with SW in combat is that combat can often become entrenched. I also have a problem with its complex character generation.

Burning [Stuff] is way too crunchy, scripted combat is way too complex for what I'm going for, and while I like the product I don't see much in terms of mechanics that I can mine.

However, I'll take a closer look at the long-term Burning Empires stuff (ie, the invasion stuff), because I haven't given that a fair eye yet.

Thanks.

joepub wrote: Callan: I will get to work on a mock up, and try to post it by this weekend. Do you mean campaign, or single session? or single "encounter"? I think that a mock-up of a single session, containing 2-3 encounters, would be most awesome.

joepub wrote:
Hey Bill,

I have Burning Wheel and have played a demo and flipped through Burning Empires, and, frankly, it's not what I'm going for.

I want a game with easy character creation. Maybe Polarpunk isn't there yet, but the idea is:
-Pick an Archetype
-Divvy up your stats
-Choose 1-4 appropriate feats
-Choose 1-2 pieces of starting equipment.

I want combat to play out fast, and loose, and fun. I like that Savage Worlds manages to cut down handling time considerably on a by-turn basis. The problem I have with SW in combat is that combat can often become entrenched. I also have a problem with its complex character generation.

However, I'll take a closer look at the long-term Burning Empires stuff (ie, the invasion stuff), because I haven't given that a fair eye yet.

What do archetypes do, and why would I want to pick the "Coward" archetype?  Bigger:  Do you really need archetypes at all?

When you pick your Archetype, this determines your Vantage Threshold, how many points you have to distribute amongst Statistics, how many Feats you get, and some Archetypes have exclusive Feats (Sentient Dogs, for example, can be Scent Trackers).

ME: I totally want to play an orphan kid, turned badass mofo.
Daniel: Hm... You could do Average Joe?
ME: No, I want to have a bit more pizzaz than that... Hm, let's see.... Oh, Gambler! I'm totally a gambler. My name's orphan jack! And I lost my life savings trying to win enough to save the orphanage.
Daniel: Wicked. Orphanage is under threat?
ME: Yeah. The bad guys are trying to knock it down to build... a casino! How ironic, for a Gambler! So since I lost my money, my Plan B is slaughtering them wholesale.
Daniel: Okay. Pick your guns shtick.

And feats and equipment are really the same thing, right, because they give die mods in combat?

Feats and gear may be easier to parse, too.  They affect the success of fighting or aiming, or the number of dice you roll for an attack, or they modify your or others specific Vantage dice.  "This is a force buckler; it gives me +1 on my defense vantage," or something like that.

Okay.  Here's something I'll suggest.  Those 3d10 you're rolling for Vantage?  Use one of them for "position" just like you're doing, but use the others for other things.  So one is "position," giving you an advantage in your attack.  Another could be "cover," giving you an advantage in defense.  And the third could be "mission," giving you an advantage in taking some mission-related action like "getting around to his flanks" or busting up the other guy's mission.  Now players have a choice about how badly they want to achieve a particular objective, and a motivation not to always go for the other guy's throat.

The end of the campaign. Were you planning for each campaign to have some sort of ending?