Psavrosth Diary 1: Updates, Shotguns, and Fatigue

Howdy. It has been a minute.

Way back in December of last year, I made the Tourist RPG as my submission to the Minimalist TTRPG Jam by Binary Stars Games. It was (and still is) in a relatively unfinished, but playable state, and my intention was continue working on and updating it regularly until it was in a state I was happy with. For a number of reasons, things didn't shake out that way, and it has been languishing in my Google Drive alongside a number of other half-finished projects while my focus shifted to other things. At the end of the day, I'm doing this for the fun of it all, and just couldn't find the motivation to continue working on my "abandoned" game.

For whatever reason, the urge to dust off the Version 0.3 draft I began months ago struck again recently. Version 0.3 was intended to add resources for GMs attempting to run the game: advice for adjudicating mechanics, tables for generating locations and loot, and so on. Unfortunately, I didn't get particularly far before shelving the game, and it's been long enough that I've forgotten a decent chunk. I never really had an opportunity to playtest it before the jam deadline hit, so there wasn't a lot of opportunity for the rules to fix themselves in my brain.

I figured that would be a good place to start in my attempt to pick up where I left off. At the moment, that has taken the form of a solo game with the help of Inflatable Studio's One Page Solo Engine. This obviously is not ideal for a game intended for group play, but I think it is helpful nonetheless. The need to interpret oracles in a solo game highlights the kinds of tools that would be useful to a GM prepping and running a sandbox game. They need to be able to react to the players' unexpected actions and quickly determine what lies around the next street corner, or what gear Jana the NPC is carrying, or what piece of lost technology is held in that stasis field. Making random tables for small (but important) details such as these is probably more beneficial to the GM at the tabletop than the plot hook and location generators I initially envisioned for my 0.3 update.

Additionally, my recent playtesting has revealed a few mechanics that I'm not entirely happy with and need some adjustment. For a starting weapon, one of my two characters rolled a Hunting Shotgun, and I was surprised to discover that Shot ammo is flatly worse than every other ammunition type in the game. As it stands, blasting an alien horror point blank in its chest cavity is less likely to inflict meaningful damage than using said shotgun as a club, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why I decided that was acceptable when I wrote these rules nine months ago. 

As a result, I've been toying around with different ways I could make a shotgun firing a load of buckshot "feel" like a shotgun firing a load of buckshot should in a game. That is, it should be devastating at relatively close range, perhaps grant a bonus to hit due to its spread, but fairly ineffective against armored foes. This could be fixed by simply increasing the damage, significantly increasing the likelihood of scoring a serious or critical wound, but its lack of AP would still allow even light armor to turn such an attack. An alternative solution I've been considering (and testing in my solo game), is treating each successful hit with Shot ammo instead as1d3 hits, potentially inflicting three wounds with a single blast. I'm not sold on either fix, and neither currently addresses the to-hit bonus, but I'm leaning towards the second option. Making multiple damage rolls and inflicting multiple wounds just "feels" more like a shotgun to me than a single, stronger hit.

Finally, I am considering adding the following mechanic to the game, perhaps as an optional rule (though I'd argue all rules in a TTRPG optional):

• Fatigue: At the end of a day in which a character performed significant strenuous activity (being encumbered for an extended period, climbing, hiking or marching long distances, combat, etc.), they must take an Easy Athletics skill test. If failed, the character is Fatigued. A Fatigued character increases the difficult of any Athletics, Close Combat, or other skill tests which require physical exertion by one step, and remains Fatigued until they spend one day resting (free of strenuous physical activity). 

The wording certainly could be better, but this would represent the soreness and fatigue an unathletic character might suffer as a result of hiking through ruins and battling rogue androids all day, while not penalizing physically fit characters with an Athletics of 50 or higher which should reasonably be able to perform such feats of endurance without too much difficulty, as they would have virtually no chance of failure (Note to self: make unmodified rolls of 99 always count as a miss for skill tests). This has the added benefit of allowing characters to make an advance roll for their Athletics skill at the end of a session spent lugging loot through the ruins, even though they otherwise never had to make an Athletics test in the session. This makes fictional sense to me, since a lot of physical activity a character might perform probably won't require a test, but probably should improve their athletics. Though that could also be implemented independent of the fatigue rule.

Anyways, that's enough rambling for now. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think, and have a wonderful day!