Hailing frequencies open (Intro & OOC chat)

Actually, is there a way to see the other character sheets? It doesn't look like it, but I thought I would ask. I'm cool with "no" but I always like to see how everyone ended up.

OK! Honestly, I never even noticed the bottom toolbar!

I can only see Douklan. I can't see Slaine.

As an aside, where do I make it public?

https://gamersplane.com/forums/thread/2656/?p=93906#p93906

Fixed Slaine Rowan, he was public, then I went to look at my characters and messed it up. He should be back.

Oooohh!

I thought you had to enable the "book" icon to get the character into the game. I didn't realize that it made it public, too. Not a problem. All my characters are apparently public! Cool!

Are there holograms in this setting?
I'm not thinking realistic, more like one or two color, very basic and a little badly rendered holograms.

Hmmm. I was gonna say probably not, but Star Wars had them, so I figure it should be at least possible. So, not full color or anything, but two-tone holographic projections would seem to make sense.

I'm kind of picturing just extra flavor for things that already exist. maybe things like...

Yup. We have them (see the setting thread). I already posted a couple of messages using that. =)

You did! I forgot.
Should have checked.

No problems =)

Thank you, much appreciated! I am not a professional game designer, just an amateur one (I am a professional software developer / data scientist / manager) but I am very interested in feedbacks and suggestions. This is a playtest of a homebrew RPG after all :)What do you think? Looking forward to hearing from you.

As a side comment from a third party, you mentioned giving Hank and someone else a break for otherwise bad rolls; you could codify that. So, add up the modifiers for a character's attributes and give bonuses if they are too low. Maybe even use a graduated scale. So, for example, if the cumulative modifiers are over 4, then no bonus. If it's 1 to 4, the get a bonus skill or attribute increase. If it's under 1, they get a bonus skill and attribute increase. If any attribute increase changes the cumulative modifier, then the bonus changes, too.

So, let's look at Hank. He started with 12, 11, 9, 9. That translates to +1, 0, -1, -1. The cumulative total is -1. Because of that, he'd a bonus skill and bonus attribute increase. Let's say that happens twice and he increases both 9s to 10s. Then his cumulative total becomes +1 and now he only gets a bonus skill or attribute increase, but not both.

Someone like Slaine, whose cumulative attribute modifier total is greater than 4 would get any of those bonuses.

Kinda what you were doing anyway, but this makes it more formal and builds it into the system. Obviously, you'd have to work through what the thresholds should be, and if you need more than three levels, but I think the overall idea would be quite workable.

When rolling to aid is the DC below what would be the aided DC? (It doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.)

I'm pretty sure you are of the intended party.
The biggest issue here is the benefit I get to making the admissions and the like later, giving me a higher chance to succeed at anything I want, and to be less likely to waste time. If I have better base stats and then I get more training these effects may compound.

Meaning I have 17 skills with an average of a + 3.35 modifier (stat+skill)
Whereas Douklan has 16 skills with an average of +3.1
Hank however has 19 skills but with an average of +1.7
This means that even if Hank was able to adjust some skills to have less(let's say... 17 skills) and turn those into bonuses training for skills already gained, their average would only be about +2

Weapons
Just looking at a little bit of the balance of weapons.
It doesn't quite seem right that vibroknife is worse in every way compared to a hold out pistol(lacking range and damage)? And that a slughtower pistol and rifle are also on par with a hold out pistol? (The average damage and bell curve of damage are similar enough)

Here is a list of rolls in order that may be useful for damage rankingsThings get slightly less clear with D10sA thought would be to add AP(reduce enemy armor for that attack) to vibroweapons but that adds a whole new mechanic to decide what would get it and how much to balance.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of aid in RPGs. I think you each are talking about a different kind.
What Douklan did here was perform a task that, if it succeeded, would have had a beneficial effect on the scene. I might have kept the heat off of my allies, so their DCs would be lower, but it was a distinct task that I was doing for a particular outcome unrelated to Corbin's task. I was helping the scene, not Corbin specifically.

What it sounds like PhoenixScientist is talking about is an Assist or Help action, where one character works with another character to perform a single task. For Douklan to have helped Corbin in this sort of way, he'd have to have been doing something related to Corbin's hacking the terminal. Is there a mechanic for one character to assist another directly in this way?

Oh, I realize that. The fact of the matter is that someone with a cumulative attribute modifier of +9 is just going to be way more effective than someone with a cumulative attribute modifier of -1 or 0, particular since those attribute modifiers are included the skill rolls. However, my suggestion is not to balance that. It is simply to help mitigate that.

Also, if you want it to be a little more guided, then simply require that the bonus skills can only be applied to existing skills rather than taking new skills.

And the ranges I gave were purely illustrative to feed into a simple example. If they need to be bigger, so be it.

I do totally agree with you @daryen . Just looking at it from a different place.

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So @htech Please understand that any ... Critiques are coming from a place of enjoying the ideas and setting and wanting to help refine it into what it really could be.