Resources, Bases and Character ideasI'm going to take a break from the "Angel logs" for a moment to discuss what i've been thinking about how the mechanics of the game will work. For the most aprt it will be narrative, with the occasional dice roll against your skills and modified by circumstance, for example, sneaking past a horde during the day will be a simple agility test modified by your sneak skill, but doing the same at night while wounded will be much harder.
the Stats each player begins with will be 2d10 +20, with one result can be rerolled. They are:
BS (Ballistic Skill, the ability to use ranged weapons)
WS (Weapon Skill, your skill with close combat weapons)
S (Strength, your physical prowess, also affects carry weight)
T (Toughness, how resistant you are to injury, sickness and exhaustion)
Ag (Agility, your reflexes and speed)
Int (Intelligence, how smart you are)
Per (Perception, how keen your senses are)
WP (Willpower, how well you withstand the bleakness of your future and the horrors you see everyday)
Fel (Fellowship, how well your character interacts with NPCs)
Skills will be paired with a Stat, Like Stealth has Agility and Tech Use is intelligence. if you don't have a skill, you can still attempt the test, but the Stat you roll against will be halved. For Example, anyone can try and fix a broken generator, but a mechanic is going to have a better chance at it
As for how character creation will work, i though for a while on how to represent different classes or similar with the FFG system, then realized i was over thinking it. Instead, everyone will start with the same gear, skills, resources and traits, and allow you to select another from a short list. but in order to encourage people to be inventive and original with their characters, I'll be adding in a unique talent or item inspired by your background.
ResourcesNow, there are going to bee five resources you'll require to stay alive,
Food, Medicine, Ammo, materials and
Fuel, these will be recorded as units, with 1 being assumed enough to last 1 day, or in the case of ammo enough to fill 1 magazine of your weapons, and 1 unit of materials is enough to weakly barricade a door.
Food is obvious, you need to eat eatch day or being to starve. going a day without food is alright, but after that you'll start to suffer penalties to skill checks that you can try to counter with a toughness test, if this test is failed, the penalties still apply and you suffer d3 wounds. These wounds cannot be healed with medicine This toughness test will get Harder every day you go without food and so will the penalties to skills.
Example:
Sally hasn't eaten in 2 days, she has a toughness of 30 and a Strength of 26. She tires to climb a garden fence but her hunger imposes a -10 to the test making it drop from Ordinary (+10) to Challenging (+0) Sally then rolls a toughness test at +0 to ignore the hunger pains and gets 46, her hunger is too much to ignore and eats away at her, reducing her wounds by 2 and to make matters worse, the fence is still hard to climb.
Medicine is mainly used to treat injury's, bites and sickness. injury and sickness impose penalties to actions like hunger and can be life threatening in more ways than one. a Broken leg could get infected and the pain of trying to sneak with one could cause involuntary noise. Far better to rest up and wait for it to heal.
Ammo is used in ranged weapons, like guns and bows, but can also be used in traps or making grenades, players will have to keep track of how many bullets they have left in their guns and can "spend" an Ammo unit to restock or bolster their available ammo by one magazine per weapon or craft a makeshift bomb on a successful tech use test.
Materials are things you can build or barricade with, as well as spare parts for machinery. if you want to fortify a location this is what you spend, with the amount needed dependent on what you want to do. Nailing some boards across a window is relatively cheap in materials, building a wall the opposite. players can also "spend" 1 material unit to build a melee weapon or repair one they already have.
Fuel is useful for making cars run, Generators work, or can be used to craft firebombs and similar traps. 1 unit is enough to make 5 petrol bombs or run a generator or car for half a day this time does not have to be used up all at once, but cars can randomly die on you, they're not in the best of condition these days.
BasesAnywhere you can make secure can qualify as a base, some locations are better than others and you can really state your claim anywhere you want and we can discuss the material costs of fortifying it against the wandering walkers. The key aspect of a base is that it is somewhere you can sleep, store your scavenged loot and relax as much as you can in this undead infested wasteland.
ComradesSomething that i've been pondering since my above post after reading through the OW rule book, and taht is the inclusion of an NPC minion for players to order about. They would work in a similar way to in Only War, helping you with certain skill tests and bringing another gun/baseball bat to a fight. As NPcs they will however be much easier to have killed off, but may serve as a way for players to continue if their main PC gets killed. Any Survivors you find and convince to join you can become additional comrades you can order about and help guard your base.
Anyway I'm open to feedback here, so please chime in with any suggestions.