Examples from Draft Rules

Rocketship Empires 1936

Rules for Pulp Action and Space Adventures

in a World War II Era Space Opera

by Edward M Kann

Character Creation

Step One: Character Race. Under these rules all player characters are humans. Future expansions on these rules or supplements by other authors writing for the Rocketship Empires setting may include rules for the play of alien races but that is not covered in these basic rules. In the original Rocketship Empires campaign as Directed by the author all of the player characters were human.

Step Two: Look over your character sheet. Place a value of one in each of the following stats. Body and Soul and the eight sub-stats of Strength, Agility, Toughness, Grace, Intelligence, Will, Perception and Guile.

Step Three: Body or Soul. Determine whether your character is stronger in the body or physical elements or in the soul or internal elements.

Step Four: Whichever stat you choose as your primary focus place plus one point in it (either Body or Soul) and plus one point in each of the four sub-stats associated with that primary stat. In the case of Body the four sub-stats are Strength, Agility, Toughness and Grace. In the case of Soul the four sub-stats are Intelligence, Will, Perception and Guile.

Example: Hurricane Joe Walker places one point in all of the stats on his character sheet.

Body 1

Strength 1, Agility 1, Toughness 1, Grace 1

Soul 1

Intelligence 1, Will 1, Perception 1, Guile 1

Next Hurricane Joe Walker's player decides that his good old Hurricane is going to focus on physical stats. He adds a +1 to Body and all four of its associated sub-stats. Now his character looks like this.

Body 2

Strength 2, Agility 2, Toughness 2, Grace 2

Soul 1

Intelligence 1, Will 1, Perception 1, Guile 1

Step Five: Choose a character class. Read over the class descriptions and choose the type of character class you want to play. Follow the instructions for the character class you have chosen and complete the remainder of your character sheet.

Step Six: Pick out some starting items from the equipment lists.

Step Seven: Write down a paragraph of notes about your character, who they are, where they are from and a general idea of where they want to be, what they hope to attain.

Character Class Descriptions

Soldier

You are either a veteran of past conflicts or you are a soldier in the present. Perhaps you are a mercenary for hire or a combat veteran who has hired himself out as a security contractor for a private corporation. Perhaps you are a soldier in the service of a Terran government.

Primary Stat: Strength

Life Points: Starting = 5 x Body Score with +2 Life Points at each level of advancement past the first.

Character Creation

1. Add +1 Point to Strength. At level four you gain an additional +1 to Strength. At level eight you gain an additional +1 you can add to any stat except for Strength. If you add this final bonus to Body or Soul, only that stat improves by one.
2. Look over the skills list on the character sheet. Add +1 skill rank to either brawl or boxing, swimming, motor mechanic, climbing, melee, grenades, small arms – automatic weapons and thrown weapons.
3. Add +2 points to any of the eight sub-stats (Strength, Agility, Toughness, Grace, Intelligence, Will, Perception and Guile you have two points you can spend you can only add one point to any stat so the final result should be that you have two different sub-stats increase in value by one point.)
4. You have sixteen free skill points to spend during character creation. These points can be added to any skill BUT no more than +2 points can be spent on the same skill during character creation. The highest skill rank value this will give you is a starting skill rank of 3 in a Strength based skill. The highest rank your non-strength based skills can be during character creation is a rank of two. At each level of advancement the soldier gains 4 new skill ranks which they can add to any skill. You may only apply one new skill rank to a single skill. Four skills at each level of the player's choice will improve by one skill rank at each level of advancement.
5. You begin with 4 Aggression dice and 2 Logic dice in your Psyche Pool. At each level of advancement you gain one additional dice to your Psyche Pool and you can decide whether it is a logic or an aggression die but your total aggression dice must always exceed your total logic dice by at least one.

Level Shticks

At each level of advancement the Soldier gains a shtick or special power for that level. Only a member of the soldier class gains these shticks.

Level 1: True Child of Cane. Any weapon you wield including your fists and feet inflict +1 base point of damage over the listed damage for that weapon type. A 1 point blade in your hands inflicts a base damage of 2, for example. Where three successes to hit with the blade would inflict three life points of damage in the hands of someone else, in your hands it inflicts six life points. You can never apply this to non-lethal damage. If you strike with a weapon for non-lethal damage you strike for the standard base damage of the weapon in hand.

Level 2: Atlantean Born. You gain an additional bonus of +3 points to your total life pool above and beyond your usual life point bonus for advancing to this level.

Level 3: Combat Leader. Once per game session you may share one aggression die out of your pool onto the roll of any character in your party within line of sight and with whom you have communication. You may only apply this bonus to fellow humans.

Level 4: Fast Healer. You heal two life points for each Terran day of rest (24 hours) rather than the usual rate of one. You enjoy a +1 life point bonus to the effect of any healing sprays, high-tech or xeno healing technologies you apply to yourself. This +1 life point bonus for healing also applies to any empathic healing performed on you by a psionic character.

Level 5: Commando Training. During any unarmed combat or melee attack against your character roll 1d6. On a score of a six you may eliminate one combat success rolled by your enemy against you. If your enemies combat successes are reduced to zero by your commando training then they miss you completely.

Level 6: Professional Killer. You may add either logic or aggression dice (no more than two for any roll) to any combat skill roll involving small arms or hand held weapons.

Level 7: Hard to Kill. Once per game session if you are reduced to zero life points or lower and so long as you are not reduced to more than negative ten life points you awaken with one life point remaining after 1d6 combat rounds.

Level 8: Advanced Commando Training. During any unarmed combat or melee attack against your character roll 1d6. On a roll of a 5 or 6 you may eliminate one combat success rolled by your enemy against you. If you reduce your enemies successes to zero they miss you completely.

Level 9: Combat Commander. During combat you may take one die from your aggression pool each combat round and add it to the combat dice roll of any member of your team within line of sight and with which you have communication.

Level 10: Ultimate Weapon. You may add up to three aggression dice to any unarmed, melee or small arms combat skill roll that you make instead of the normal limit of two.

Experience and Character Advancement

Characters gain experience by surviving a game session. Each game session has a value of one. To advance from first level to second level a character must earn a GS value of 3 or survive three game sessions. To advance from second to third level a character must earn a GS value of 4 or survive an additional four game sessions. See the chart below for details. In any case a character level of ten is the maximum to which any hero in Rocketship Empires can attain.

Level One GS Points 0 Total Game Sessions Survived = 0

Level Two GS Points 3 Total Game Sessions Survived = 3

Level Three GS Points 4 Total Game Sessions Survived = 7

Level Four GS Points 5 Total Game Sessions Survived = 12

Level Five GS Points 5 Total Game Sessions Survived = 17

Level Six GS Points 6 Total Game Sessions Survived = 23

Level Seven GS Points 6 Total Game Sessions Survived = 29

Level Eight GS Points 7 Total Game Sessions Survived = 36

Level Nine GS Points 7 Total Game Sessions Survived = 43

Level Ten GS Points 8 Total Game Sessions Survived = 51

Pulp Storytelling and Leveling Up

Each level of advancement presents an opportunity to launch a new storyline or adventure series. Try to think of each level and the games between levels as an opportunity for a pulp serial or a comic book mini series. Try to plan ahead. Think about what villain you will introduce at the next level, how will you bring him into the story and launch the next series of adventures? What environments will your adventures take place in? How will keep the action moving and keep the story interesting?

The first adventure should be resolved (more or less) in three game sessions. The next storyline might be a little bit more involved and take four game sessions to resolve. By the time the player group has advanced to level six their characters are quite experienced and an unfolding plot might be fairly involved requiring up to seven game sessions to resolve from beginning to end. The final level of advancement from level nine to level ten is an opportunity to pull together all of the loose ends and in one eight session mega story give the characters the chance to defeat all of the major villains and bring a significant resolution to any lingering plots they have hanging over their heads. By the end of the level ten game session the characters may well be ready to retire, at least until some new major threat rears its ugly head but their ability to become any tougher as characters (outside of loot, artifacts, equipment and wealth) has come to an end.