Possibly a bit long, but Strike From the Shadows could work for the unnamed move?
Uncharted Worlds 2nd Edition - Alpha
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General advice for designers: Sleep is your friend. When making a major design change, make it, save it to a new (temp) file, then sleep on it. Maybe donāt go back to it right away when you wake up. Take a walk or something. Have lunch.
Yesterday I was super down on my work. I was ready to gut a bunch of career Moves. Today, not so much. They do work. They need small wording tweaks, but they are still solid, yāknow? I guess low confidence + high stress really made me want to make a bunch of changes that would have been ultimately unnecessary, if not outright detrimental.
So thatās my design advice of the day: sleep, eat, drink water, trust yourself.
<3 you all. Alpha v4 coming next weekend!
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I like āHijackā as I canāt think of another word that covers both people and things.
Itās here! Alpha v4!
+++ DOWNLOAD UW2 ALPHA V4+++
Changelog
- New: Asset creation +gameplay (p.30-33)
- New: Cybernetics rules (p.33)
- New: Alien Physiology rules (p.33)
- New: Supernatural Powers rules (p.33)
- New: Formalized Core Design Statement (p.1)
- Updated: Overhauled Face Adversity (p.5)
- Removed: Eliminated Race the Clock (p.5)
- Updated: Rebalanced Cramped Quarters and Shore Leave (p.27)
- Updated: Minor balancing of all Career Moves (p.16-25)
I really feel like Iāve really started to get my writing momentum back. It takes a little while to get started, and a LOT of discipline to not get distracted, but once I hit that stride the words just flow. Feels good.
The new Asset rules are the big star of this alpha. Theyāre also some of the most loosey-goosey pseudo-mechanics Iāve ever tried to codify. Like trying to condense smoke into a building material. So Iād ask anyone checking this out, please take the time to read pages 30-33 and tell me if it was readable, usable, grok-able, etc. Heck, post a couple of Assets that youād like a character to have, if you want.
Note: I havenāt updated the example gear in the careers section to follow the new Asset creation guidelines yet. Iāll do that if/when the rules pass the sniff test.
Iām also totally down to field any questions or go through my reasonings. I check the thread daily! Meanwhile, a short breather, then back to writing. Next up will be the Economy pass, which ties directly into assets and the player motivation/reward loop, which will subsequently lay the groundwork for Advancement and XP.
Cheers!
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This is exciting stuff!
In my time with various Star Trek roleplaying groups, we usually referred to the executive officer as the āXOā. Though of course, the ExO playerās character isnāt necessarily the shipās actual XO, and technically functions more like a āCOOā (Chief Of Operations / Chief Operations Officer). So it looks a little weird to me, but I get what youāre going for.
Speaking of Star Trek. For the upcoming Economy section, I think a lot of players would appreciate some rules for running āutopiaā settings with replicators or similar devices. While currencies do exist in something like Star Trek, the average Federation citizen isnāt expected to work, and thereās a lot that is freely available from replicators.
And as a final point towards Star Trek, handheld energy weapons with various power settings are a staple of the series. Theyāre also present in Star Wars and a number of other sci-fi. But the mechanics surrounding asset powers would make these Class 2 assets, at the very least, which prevents players from starting with them. Unless āfires a focused, continuous beam of variable intensityā counts as a single power, but this seems too vague to me and offers a lot of power in a Class 1 asset considering what we know a hand phaser can do (stun, heat/burn, kill, disintegrate, breach).
With this in mind, I do have a consideration. Assets offer a lot of creativity and can really make a character unique. Itās kind of a shame that players might be forced to take certain assets so that their character is able to do their job. Such as an engineer taking a toolkit or a doctor taking medical supplies as one of their three starting assets (compare to a captain or helmsman, where everything they need is intrinsic to the ship, so all of their starting assets can be cool unique stuff). Especially if the gameās setting has the players as members of a faction and thus should have access to an Armory and have other such tools readily available.
On the Asset rules themselves, I find them all to be very elegant. I like that forms and powers are created by the players rather than picking from a list of tags. And the optional asset forms are integrated very well. The only thing I can say to add is to have a section for drones, as theyāre mentioned in a few careerās suggested asset lists.
It would be nice to see Crew return (robots, animals, people, and all). In the UW1e games Iāve played in and GMād, weāve loved having Crew and detailing the members and interacting with them, but the rules surrounding Crew left a lot to be desired. With a specific example being a recent game where the players split up a science team of two between areas, and someone rolling a 7-9 result on a Command Move towards the scientist back at the base, which mechanically affects the distant other scientist despite it not making sense in the narrative. So Iām interested in seeing how UW2e will handle it.
And in the same vein, Iām curious to see how the WIP exotic asset forms will turn out.
Finally, hereās some write-ups of a few assets from different sci-fi media:
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Force Push [Class 1]: A supernatural power of the Force; fires a wave of telekinetic energy from the userās body that knocks targets backwards.
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Holocron [Class 2]: Handheld cube-shaped information-storage gadget with a holographic display (1) that can only be used through the power of the Force (2).
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Lightsaber [Class 1]: Light plasma blade weapon that can cut through nearly anything.
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Phaser Pistol [Class 2(?)]: Handheld directed-energy phaser sidearm (1) with multiple power settings, able to stun, kill, or disintegrate (2?).
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Regeneration [Class 1(?)]: A power granted by the Rassilon Imprimatur; allows the user to enter a regenerative state upon sustaining lethal damage, preserving their life at the cost of altering their body and personality.
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Sonic Screwdriver [Class 3]: Pocket-size, handheld gadget that can be used as a scanner (1), universal remote control (2), or a lockpick, able to open electronic or mechanical locks of nearly any complexity, given enough time (3&4).
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Telekinesis [Class 2(?)]: A supernatural power of the Force, granting the ability to lift, move, and otherwise manipulate physical matter in a variety of ways.
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Tricorder [Class 2]: Handheld gadget with data interface and scanner for taking scientific measurements
Thank you so much for your in-depth feedback @CCCXLII! I really appreciate the effort. Iām definitely taking notes here and seeing what fits, thought Iād address/answer a couple of the Star Trek things.
This is a bit of a holy grail that I tried to hit in UW1: a system without money, but with socio-political clout as a resource. Itā¦ didnāt fly. Or at least most players couldnāt quite grok it. Itās a sad commentary in a way, but folks have a lot of trouble creating narrative tension within the bounds utopic, non-scarcity settings. Even Star Trek stories often deal with lack of resources/materials/whatever. Scarcity has kinda been humanityās number 1 enemy since the dawn of our species.
Speaking of sad topics: from a gameplay standpoint, the acquisition and expenditure of wealth/resources is one of the easiest and cleanest gameplay loops around, even more than ādoing violence to people who want to do violence to youā (which is a close second as far as gameplay motivations go).
That said, it may be possible to tweak in a āsemi-utopiaā by removing the need for purchase for certain elements. For example, āRoom and Boardā never costs anything at a Federation station, no matter the duration of the stay. Simple tools can be fabricated, so as long as you have a replicator nearby, it counts as having most professional ākitsā (though you may have to recycle), etc. Complicated stuff like weaponry and stuff need to be āpurchasedā but then we fall back into either an economic model or a very nebulous social-credit system.
Thatās kinda working as intended. Class 2 assets are professional/military grade assets that are usually purchased and provided by a faction or organization (which keeps tabs on them and expects to get them back). Federation phasers (both pistols and rifles) are definitely Class 2s. That said, civilian-grade phasers (for private use/ownership) are much lower powered, and would definitely fall into a standard Class 1 Asset. Personally Iād consider Disruptors to be a quintessential Class 1 firearm in a Trek game; easy to make, variants for a number of species (Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons, etc), and commonly used by more violent randos like the Maquis and the Orion Syndicate.
Iāll try to get a few more answers in once Iāve digested a bit more, but heck, I like nerding out about Trek.
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Iām no Trekspert but this makes me wonder if Star Trek does have an economy ā¦ based on recycling. You have to throw stuff away in order to have the mass to replicate into the things you want. If everyone can replicate anything then raw materials still get depleted ā¦ which in any utopia has to be frowned upon. So are there expectations that you throw stuff away broadly in proportion to what your replicator demands are?
Members of Star Fleet must hold themselves to a higher standard than anyone else on this, so tracking (recycling) credits (cRedits) could still be representative of best crew practice? The bad guys abuse the benefits of recycling by others so always have anything the GM wants to give them, but Star Fleet ā¦ certainly not, unless they have the cRedits ā¦
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Aaaaaaa 
But seriously, thanks for running this, especially using the 2E rules! If thereās anything that causes confusion, just hit me up! Iāll try to toss together a 2E compatible character sheet this week.
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Brief update: Work on v05 of the Alpha is going well. Expanding the Harm section to properly incorporate Asset Harm and Resistance rules, and working on the Economy section.
On that note, I wanted to talk about Crew as Assets. Back in UW1, I had interpreted Crew as a sort of independent Asset that characters could have. Leaving aside the unintentional problematic situation of, like, owning people, it still created a bit of a weird gameplay unbalance, where the GM was expected to take on additional roles that were subservient to a specific character.
This could often lead to scenarios where either a given characterās Asset took up too much of the overall game time (because they were independent, free willed, loyal, and capable) or the Asset was a dud or a detriment (because they would get into trouble, refuse to do things, and generally be jerks). Additionally, unlike most Assets, a Crew could theoretically be there to assist and interact with all the characters.
Iāve got my own thoughts on how to approach this, but Iād love to hear opinions on the idea of āowningā NPC Crew as an Asset, or if there are specific games that do that idea particularly well.
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Iāve seen it played in Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World. The crew is simply not played by the player, but are used like traditional Skills. Only the success / failure / cost are taken from the palette of āthe burden of powerā. I think @The_Bearded_Belgian knows these tropes well from a game he created about an ancient King with tough decisions to make.
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Iām of the mind that āCrewā as a concept is too varied to treat as a mere Asset. Thereās a world of difference between Players who want:
- a nameless faceless crew under their command
- a trusted contact
- a personalized team
- a robot to follow them around
- or a Chewbacca for their Han Solo
Thereās also a sliding scale of a Player being fine to have crew as an NPC vs a Player wanting a companion that they have control over, like a space wizard and their familiar. And in a similar vein, as you say, the issue of investing in Crew possibly feeling like a detriment or dud based on the GM. Personally, I think the only way to fix this is to always have Crew be under the control of the Player, with clearly defined mechanics as to what they can do.
As an aside, perhaps generating Crew, in whatever form they might take, could be a part of character creation? The galaxy is a big place, and no matter how much of a loner you might be, everyone knows at least someone. This has the advantage of fleshing out backgrounds and giving the GM story hooks to use, as well as signaling early on for the players that the presence of crew should be something they think about (e.g. it should be discussed whether having teams of people onboard the ship fits with the planned tone and setting of the game). Not to mention that Crew could really gum up a Shipās components, in the sense that the Playersā Ship potentially needs to have living space for all of them, if everyone chooses to have Crew onboard the ship rather than as contacts. So it really benefits the game to think about this as soon as possible.
I like how Companions ( http://companions-aw.org/ ) handles its āThe Commanderā playbook, which has the Player being the leader of a small team. You can have a maximum of 3 characters in your team, but can increase the max size through advancement. You divide 3 āesteemā among the Team members, with each character starting at 0 esteem, and you raise a single characterās esteem by 1 every time you advance. When a character reaches 1 esteem they gain a āspecialtyā, which allows them to use a single Move in your stead or at your command, and they roll with +esteem. They get +1 forward to this move if their specialty matches yours. Any consequence happens to them instead of you, and you canāt gain any experience from their actions.
To adapt this mechanic for UW, one idea might be that Crew always matches one of the Careers, but they only have one half of their Career Move. For example, an Academic Crew might be able to āanalyze biological, political, or economic dataā, but be unable to āinspect debris, damage, materials, or artifactsā. And if a Player doesnāt want multiple crew members, perhaps they can spend multiple āCrew Slotsā on a single Crew to give them more abilities. A Player could also choose to assign their starting Assets to their Crew, such as having a Protocol Droid Crew with a built-in (Cybernetics) universal language translator.
Of course, these ideas donāt really handle large āTeamā/āFacelessā Crews. But maybe itās better to always treat such groups as pure NPCs that will generally follow the commands of the player characters to the best of their abilities, with outcomes dictated according to and appropriate to the narrative. After all, they arenāt necessarily all loyal to you, and thereās issues of how to track damage for the group, etc.
Itās not only a question of power balance or narrative focus. Flagging problems attached to a capacity is nice, but itās also an order the player makes at the table.
But then, if the crew is a Chewbacca, itās always around, always close : someone needs to play it, or maybe they are limited in their expression and action. And thatās problematic in another way that a faceless mob of gangsters or sectist is not.
I have been tagged and thus should answer. 
Many of my games are about what it means to be a leader (rulers mostly) and thus focus on these things. Which is to say that it mostly works because itās the focus of the game to be a leader. It will make you care, possibly, about what the people you rule over/lead/etc do. Itās also meant to teach, so itās a bit in-your-face and refers to principles learned in (religion) class.
Mainly it comes up with me as a sort of GM playing the world the kids playing the game are ruling over. If they mistreat their population, there might be a rebellion. If they rule well they might be celebrated. If they show mercy and give enemies a second chance the enemy might better their life and turn into an ally (but they also might not, although, seeing they are kids and the concepts I teach, more often it will).
I havenāt read the document, so Iām not sure what the question is, but Iād think on what specific consequences might be of good management or mismanagement of your ācrewā. If itās PbtA, have some thought about mixed results. Questions where you need to make choices that will always hurt someone in the group, that will bring division and create tension. Then they will need to balance choices to keep the group together and such. I think those might be issues that might be āfunā for a leader type to explore.
I also usually emphasize the two main types of leaders. The Boss type leader, who sets the rules for others, who demands things and is very strict in that regard. And then youāve got the Lead-By-Example type leader that leads by showing how itās done, by helping out his or her crew, by being caring and compassionate about them. The main example is King Saul versus King David in the Bible, but a more apt one is King Herod (the older, the one who killed innocent babies to remain in power) vs. Jesus as āKing of the Jewsā or āKing of Heavenā (who washed the feet of His disciples and died in the place of others so that mankind could live).
These are of course extreme examples, and most people would fall somewhere between the two on the axis, but yeah, those are things leaders are known for.
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I appreciate the feedback, itās certainly given me food for thought. Especially the divide between squads and allies.
Squads
In moving to a more tight-knit, self-sufficient default setting, I feel that there may be less room for sprawling multi-person crews. Yes, thereās a certain thrill in playing the Chief Engineer with a crew of workers, or a Head of Security with a bunch of cops/enforcers at your beck and call, but I donāt feel they fit, mechanically.
Thereās always part of me that wants UW to be a wide-open game that can let people play the setting and scope they want. But at the end of the day, PbtA-style mechanics are closely tied to genre, and UW is firmly in the Big Damn Hero space opera. I fear Trek-style large crew gameplay would end up being superficial and unsatisfying. Or just a completely different game (hmmmā¦ note for the future).
Allies
As @DeReel mentioned, the issue with making a Chewbacca-style NPC is that while they get second-billing, their importance in the plot is undeniable. They are 50-75% of a PC, which is a lot of responsibility and mental overhead. Someone has to play that character. And more importantly, there have to be systems in place to make them more than obedient, mindless automatons. They should instigate, attract, or suffer drama. They should act, succeed, and fail.
I feel NPC crewmates have more of a place in UW as itās shaping up, but not as a player-owned Asset. They certainly could fulfil specific roles that the ship needs, which is especially useful with smaller, 2-3 player groups.
Iām toying with a very simplified āNPC creationā system, choosing one of the 10 Careers that most represents their skillset, and would incorporate Burdens, just like a player character. Possibly even a random burden.
Design issues to be addressed:
- Who creates them? How many NPCs can you have?
- Are they equals? Do they share in rewards? Can they leave, be fired, be replaced?
- Who decides what they do, what they say, how they act? Who plays them?
- Can they act alone? Can they assist the player characters?
- How do we resolve their actions? How do we determine if they succeed?
Iāll keep tinkering with this on my end, but if anyone has any further opinions or examples, Iām super open.
Hello, the āanchorageā of the stories is important too : a NPC on a planet is not the same role as a NPC on a ship. AW (then BoB) builds a community and itās mostly the GM thinking āoffscreenā eyes on the Relationship-map to bring drama toward PCs.
Even after it didnāt work out in UW1, thereās still part of me that wants to add narrative to UW2ās economy and move away from a galactic standard currency. Itās probably a bad idea! Butā¦
My latest design is basically a sliding scale for the ship/crewās resources and lifestyle. Each level has its own mini-ruleset and narrative expectations.
- Falling apart
- Scraping by
- Breaking even
- Comfortable
- Well appointed
- High class
While this certainly helps create a certain tone (and gives a mid- to long-term goal to aim for), the actual mechanics of stuff like āhow do we actually get from x to yā is still a mystery.
Feels like it could use wealth/credits as experience to level up? Or maybe each level would have a number of achievements, and if you complete a % of them, you move up economically. And if you donāt do any (or if you do the āanti-achievementsā) you drop down. Hm.
As a design exercise (all values subject to change yadda yadda)
SCRAPING BY
You have barely enough to keep flying, and you often have to make sacrifices and compromises in your day-to-day. Food is bland and rationed, thereās little spare power, and your gear is rough but serviceable.
- Disadvantage on Shore Leave.
- Can afford and maintain up to three Class 1 assets.
- Little spending money.
Advancement | +10 increase to āBreaking evenā, -10 decrease to āFalling apartā
Completed an easy job: ++
Completed a lucrative job: ++++
Sold a unit of cargo: +
Docking and refueling: - -
Ship repairs: - -
Medical care: -
(Each tier of wealth would have its own + and - triggers)
Iād appreciate thoughts on this. It feels like Iām poking around something interesting, but Iāve been burned before.
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Iāll admit that tracking multiple things isnāt my preference, so Iād hope tracking wealth was optional rather than baked in.
If I think about why resources are important then I come down to flavour ā¦ a reason these characters are on the game, so I see it more a session zero conversation than a mechanic.
Once it becomes a mechanic then you can get into disparities between what different characters can do in the game world starts to twist what Iām looking for in a space opera. I guess you can make it a choice for playgroups as an improvement for which they can cash in XP ā¦
Bottom line ā¦ I canāt think of many players I know who come to PbtA for that kind of trad resource tracking or inventory management.
Thatās true. Greatness has no metric.
And maybe you still want some quickly verbally + mechanicallly defined options for various flavors of the game ?
āX successful mission criteriaā is obvious when using Other kind : one dice for each criterion. The implementation either falls into place or falls off.
