Interest check: Pbta post-apocalyptic conspiracy

This isn't a recruitment thread yet. I just want to see if there is enough interest for me to possibly open up a playtest / one shot for this game in a couple of months.

Let me know if you would be interested.

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The setting
Our setting will be a sci-fi post-apocalyptic roleplaying game of transhuman conspiracy and horror. If you ever played Eclipse Phase (a fantastic and free RPG available here) you will recognize many of the same elements and inspirations for my setting.

Inspired by Terminator, in this setting a Singularity (superintelligent and self-improving) and Rogue AI has taken control of the nuclear arsenal, robots, drones, nanotechnology, chemical and biological weapons then brought the apocalypse upon Earth. But technology had already advanced before Earth's Fall and mankind had space stations, habitats, cities and colonies in Mars, Venus, Moon, etc. The AI unexpectedly and inexplicably disappeared, but not before billions fled the planet or died. Earth is now in ruins, though, and a strict quarantine and orbital laser weapons ensures that nobody enters or leaves it anymore.

Inspired by Blade Runner, in this setting humans are genetically and cybernetically enhanced and improved, but humanity is now, more than ever, battered and bitterly divided. We will have multiple factions, cultural divisions, prejudice, exploitation, megacorporations with extraterritoriality, etc.

Inspired by Altered Carbon and Repo Man, in this setting, technology allows the reshaping of bodies and minds and liberates us from material needs, but also creates opportunities for oppression and puts the capability for mass destruction in the hands of everyone. We are able to download and upload our minds to new bodies and the Elites are effectively able to live forever, cloning and 3D printing everything in their cornucopia machines, while others don't have enough money to even own their old bodies and organs, having to live like Infomorphs or indentured servants in a corporate habitat or inside the Mesh/the Matrix.

Inspired by Alien and X-Files, in this setting many creatures, viruses and paranormal threats still lurk in the dark, in devastated habitats, remote locations and overcrowded cities, with dangers both familiar and completely alien and unexpected.

The system
This will be a homebrew, rules-light, Powered by the Apocalypse system, created specifically for Gamersplane and PbP by me.

In it, you will roll 2D6 + Modifiers (Aptitudes + Skill level + circumstance modifiers). In a 6- you fail, 7 to 9 you succeed with a cost or complication, 10+ you get what you wanted.

The GM never rolls. During combat, the GM starts each round by describing the NPC actions, then any player can act. To do so, the PC will choose, usually, 2 actions for their round. Who posts first, acts first. If the player wants to defend from an attack or environmental condition, they roll, by using one of their "skills" (ex: Dodge or Will) and actions. If the player wants to do more or less than 2 actions in a single round, there are modifiers for all their rolls during that round. After all players have acted, a new round begins.

All rules for the system, including character creation, will be available for the players in the game forums. This game will be a playtest for the system as well, so if you are interested, expect some small rule tweaks and balance changes during the game.

Well, I've been wanting to try out Eclipse Phase. I realize that this isn't it per se, but it sounds like your game has a similar chassis but a different engine under the hood. I also have no experience with PbtA, so I wouldn't mind checking that out as well.

So you've got at least one person interested. With any luck, when you're ready to kick it off, I'll be able to join. :)

Forcibly adding 'rounds' back into PbtA puts me off a bit, PbtA not having 'initiative order' is one of the big things that makes it so well suited to PbP.

Interested, though whether I could actually join depends on how busy I am when it starts up.

Sincere question: How do you avoid a person acting "twice" in combat if you don't have rounds? There's no fixed order in my game, nor initiative (whoever posts, acts) but I normally keep track of who has acted and who didn't before I post for the NPCs again.

I may be missing something here 🤔

This will sound trite, but I rely on basic manners. One of the Principles of PbtA is "Be a fan of the player's characters", and that applies to the other players as well. Roleplaying is a social activity, so being aware of the people at the table is part of it.

Sometimes the GM has to step in and say "let's slow this down and wait for Bob" but mostly (sometimes only after a bit of practice:) players will automatically want to see what Bob is doing and wait for them. Sure, sometimes one or two players get excited and plow on ahead before the GM (or other players) gets back online and reins them in, and that can leave the left-out player feeling a bit abandoned, but that happens so seldom that I would not add rules to mechanically avoid that.

'Initiative' is such an unnatural construct that it breaks immersion for many players, and turns the times that it is in play (combat) into something that feels like a completely different game to the rest. I have seem more players get left behind during social scenes than during 'combat', and most games don't have 'Initiative Order' for general RP.

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To directly answers your excellent question: If it makes sense in the fiction that they would 'act twice' then they should act twice... or more.

The way that PbtA Moves Snowball means that 'acting again, right away' is often the expected norm. However, this mostly requires input from the GM as to how the outcome of the previous Move changed the fiction and how they now need to deal with the consequences, so they mostly don't get to 'act again' without first waiting for feedback and GM Moves.

Occasionally I will say: "We will see what happens with your move once we know what everyone else is doing" so we can resolve all the actions in one go as appropriate to the fiction, and have all the players' Moves/actions affect each other or tell us how bad the situation is afterwards. But that can introduce a lot of waiting, and very often one player's actions don't directly affect another's (presumably this is not D&D where all we are doing is hacking away at the enemy hit-point pool) so each player can resolve a whole string of actions while they are available/online without detracting from the other players' experience.

As mentioned above, such need to wait for other players is more often an issue of one player being left behind than of one player plowing on ahead, and PbtA helps with this, since you can have the active players resolve the small nitty-gritty details and then ask the slower player to zoom out and make a single roll to cover what they were doing (Love-Letter-style, if they are slow enough).

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I hope that helps, always happy to chat about such things. :)

Thank you for your feedback. I may, in fact, be putting in a game mechanic to fix something that is best handled by a principle and "common sense and basic manners." =)

I will change that and review the rules before the playtest.

Definitely sounds cool. I’d need to see some playbooks or stats at least.

Interested though.

I always love PbtA. I am very interested in playing! :)

I am interested, but also would like to see playbooks!

Interested! I’m a fan of PbtA and of post-future weirdness, so it sounds like I’m squarely in the target audience.

I'm new here, but not to RPing and this sounds interesting as a first play through as I'll be learning along with others.

So please count me in.