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Skill Rolls
There are eight groups of skills. Each skill is governed by one of eight stats.
When you make a skill roll you roll one die for the stat that governs the skill being checked plus one additional die of a different color for each rank or level you possess in the skill.
Example: Hank shoots the evil Khibor Zhang with his .38 pistol. Pistols are governed by the Agility stat. Hank has a score of three in Agility. Hank has a rank of two in the pistols skill. Hank picks a red die to represent his stats and white to represent his skill ranks. See example A in the illustration above.
Because Hank has an Agility score of three he must roll a 4,5 or 6 to score a success with that die. Hank is shooting at a human target and so his base chance to hit a human is a 5 or 6 with his pistol skill dice. If Hank was shooting at Khibor Zhang's associate, the Martian Viz'nakor his base chance of success with his pistol skill would improve to a 4,5 or 6.
The Stat Die
Characters with a high stat are going to tend to succeed with at least one rank of success during skill rolls associated with that stat. Characters who tend to be mediocre are going to tend to have a mediocre chance of success while characters with a low stat are going to tend to fail. The stat die has a chance of success completely independent of the difficulty of the task at hand. It represents the player's persona they are roleplaying as a character or actor in a pulp film. In the context of the pulp film which is Rocketship Empires 1936, Hank is intended to be an actor with a somewhat larger than life Agility. Because of the mechanic he will tend to have at least some minor level of success (not always but often) when shooting at things with his pistol or doing other agility related skills. Even if the task at hand is very difficult requiring a skill roll of a six to succeed, Hank will still experience an agility die success at least fifty percent of the time...in the context of the pulp adventure Hank will still clip the center of the bullseye of that target set waaaayyyy out at nearly impossible range..about half of the time. Because this is pulp action adventure. Because this is Rocketship Empires 1936.
The Stat die is a means to weight the success or failure of skill rolls to fit the dramatic persona of the character as it has been designed by the player. Remember there is no random rolling for character stats or class in RSE. As the player you get decide what sort of actor / actress sounds the most fun for you to play and go with that choice. The stat die helps to drive the results of the action in the game so that the pulp action adventure hero you have created, more often than not, functions the way you'd expect them to function in the context of the game.
Skill Difficulty
Skill difficulty has a sliding scale decided by the referee. The exception to this is attempting to attack someone or something. Alien races, humans, various types of vehicles have a set / static base target value based on that type not on the individual. This mechanic allows me to push the game mechanic so that humans tend to be on the difficult to hit and damage end of the scale during combat. Martians and other intelligent aliens are just a little easier to hit than humans in RSE and therefore are also a little easier to damage. I am thinking that in the starship combat section that different models of starfighter will have different base difficulties to hit, a 109 starfighter is more difficult to hit in a dogfight than a Hurricane, that sort of thing although from this base difficulty the pilot flying the thing will make their bird harder to hit, etc...
Initiative or Who Goes First
Rocketship Empires combat should be a little tense. One way to achieve this is to abandon the order and safety zone of having an initiative roll. The exception to all this is surprise. A group that ambushes or surprises another will be able to go first. When both sides are aware of one another...say in a spacer bar...there is no initiative. Everything is happening at exactly the same time. Everyone declares their move and target and we just go around the table rolling results of actions. If two people hit one another, and kill one another simultaneously then so be it...
At least that is how things start. Anyone can decide to "Edge" one of their skill dice. Each skill dice that is edged pushes the character higher in the order of who gets to do what first. In this model a character who is very skilled who edges all of their skill dice versus a character who is not as skilled is always going to go first, but that isn't the end of the story.
When you edge a skill you substitute a different color die (say a yellow die) for each skill rank that you edge. The difficulty of that one die changes. Instead of having a 5 or 6 as a success while trying to shoot a human when you edge you skill rank in pistol your chance of success drops to only a six. Why? Because edging a skill represents the fact that your character...seeing the other guy drawing his luger across the bar..is going to try and tug his .38 out of his coat pocket as fast as he possibly can and in his hurry to get the first shot off may just miss his target. The guy with the luger might well see you put on the speed and decide...by thunder I'm going to beat him and soon you are both trying to edge enough skill dice to insure that you get off the first shot.
See example B in the illustration at the top of this blog post.
Character Psyche
One of the things I want to explore in RSE is the concept of human aggression. The balancing act between cold logic and raw emotion. I'm thinking that a character has a Psyche Pool. This pool is divided into a dice pool of aggression dice and a dice pool of logic dice. Aggression and logic dice can only be used once per game night. The pool refreshes at the start of the next game session. No more than two aggression or logic dice can be added to any skill pool roll. Logic dice can only be added to a certain list of appropriate skills. Aggression dice can only be added to a certain list of appropriate (largely combat related) skills.
Any time you take a die out of the Aggression or Logic pool you have to likewise remove a die out of the other pool and set it aside. A character with 6 aggression dice and 4 logic dice you decides to expend one of his logic dice to help reason out a problem likewise has their available aggression dice reduced by one.
This represents the character having to make a choice between giving into their aggressive human instincts or trying to temper them and act more like one of the civilized races of the galaxy. Over the course of the game the character burns through their available pool. They become emotionally exhausted.
Likewise there is a table I am considering where the amount of aggression or logic spent by the character over the course of a game night is tracked. At the end of game night the player of the character makes a roll. Failure introduces some sort of additional character complication or twist which gets added to their character for the next game session. A character who is constantly pushing themselves into the dark regions of violence and aggression will suffer the ill effects of that choice. A character who constantly pushes themselves to the limits of human logic and reason may accumulate some effects as well.
Example V (should be C) on the illustration above shows a character with a skill rank of one adding two bonus dice to their pool by spending two (purple) aggression dice. Each aggression die has the same chance of success as a normal skill die for the task at hand.
Well there you have it for now. I will try to plunk down some additional ideas soon.
-Ed
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