I really like the Panic Engine, I tried a handful of one shots and completely novice players quickly understood the mechanics and how to interact with the world. Every time the players asked for more. But that's the issue, it's not really meant for campaigns. There are mechanics to improve characters, adding your remaining stress to your stats and partially recovering health while maybe remaining crippled. But that's doesn't really feel like a progression you can control and work towards in a longer campaign.Right now I'm planning on doing a soft campaign, a series of one shots open to new and repeating players, where the consequences of the previous ones affect the world as a whole. But I worry it'll be pretty weak if people want to keep comming back with the same group.Is there a better way to make them grow? Have you tried it and found no issues?Side question: Have you tried a Panic Engine variant you liked? Stuff like Gordinaak or Cloud Empress. Do you think the system has potential or should be just the original?
I tried Cloud Empress for a one shot.It was fine enough, it felt like simplified Mothership in most things. Magic failed the first time someone used it, got another random spell, they didn't really get what happened and didn't try again. Having it limited to 2-3 uses and you don't get more as far as you know kinda kills it, a lot of spells are very random and pointless.I'm kinda tempted on running Land of Cicadas, but I also felt that a hexcrawl with no type of character progression is kinda lame. You're even expected to wing how they get spells and spell materials.
>>93945515Wouldn't the inbuilt mechanics work fine? I'm going to run my first Mothership one-shot here in a few days, but the whole stress-as-EXP thing seemed like an absolute stroke of brilliance to me. Just employ the suggested homebrew that allows them to improve stats or saves, maybe tweak if there's a multiplier to the statue points gained per stress point, and dole out more advanced gear at a pace that's at once delicious and painful. The system isn't designed to accommodate superhuman PCs anyway. Give them those benefits and consequences to their actions that echo through sessions, they should be happy right?
>>93949516Players end with very different levels of stress. It's cool in its own use, but it makes for wonky character progress. Wounds also are not condusive to long lasting "adventurers".Still, as a one shot system it's extremely effective. Good luck. If the thread is still up tells us how it went.
>>93950123But that corresponds to the amount of risk they take in the session, as long as you're allowing players to take on stress at their own discretion throughout it. As for wounds, there are mechanics to (expensively) get those healed on shore leave.
>>93945515We played a 10ish session campaign with the beta rules, we only ended up with one death, but by the end everyone was pretty fucked up from mutations and mental illness.That was a fun campaign, that GM has 1e now and I'm hoping we playing something else using it soon. He really wants to run Gradient Descent.
>>93951630I don't fully get money management, I get the impression that every module just throws random amounts of money. Even in the Survival Guide and Pund of Flesh I don' really see how much money people are expected to get and use.
>>93951752There are very little changes but I do prefer 1e (the awful art in the old zines was cool in a "oh, I could draw that on the spot" kind of way). Gradient Descent is probably the only adventure that took the android concept seriously and went places with it. Don't spoil it, it's pretty cool.
>>93952679It’s tucked away in either the Player’s Survival Guide or the Warden’s Operating Guide. Also on the Warden Screen.Just a few categories of decimal points which are rough estimates.But a Teamster is earning 2-3000 credits a month with hazard pay. And noodles cost under 10 credits. That’s as much as I remember.
>>93950123Is it really that bad? One character might add 15 and the other one 4, but unless they minmax the end result isn't that big of a swing.And if they minmax you can always punish them harder.>>93954477I should give the Warden Operating Guide a second read. It seemed good enough but stuff I didn't really need. But there's probably some wisdom I could incorporate.
>>93945515Is this system playable now? I recall thinking the earlier version has some huge gaps in it's rules especially in regard to combat
>>93957593it is as playable as it ever was, I don't know if there was something weird in very early rules but the differences between beta5 and 1e are very minor.Combat isn't too prominent, you roll under combat and hit (or under instinct for enemies). Most third party content went with combat being rarely winnable, more like winning some time while you do something else. It's more Alien 1 and 3 than 2 and 4.
>>93957617It was really unclear how skills that seem to be combat related played into combat in the early edition.
>>93958595Now I want to go find the first versions.As it stands now it's just combat + 10/15 from the related skill (military training and CQC or firearms). It's not super engaging but it's not meant to reward that play style.
>>93958635if you have more than one relevant skill for the combat did you use all of them or just the most relevant one?
>>93945515I've been prepping a short campaign for Mothership and one of the first things I decided was that gaining skills and attributes would be easier than RAW.Fluff wise I'm saying part of the character's pay is in skill training during hypersleep.I'm not sure how balanced it is, but I'm thinking the option is +5 to a stat or a basic skill. You could save that point for a intermediate skill on the next "level up" as well. I think the Stress conversion is fine, even alongside this. It's mostly just to add a sense of progression for my players who are very used to DnD.
>>93958693higher rank skill in the linesame way you use hacking (tier 2) instead of computers (tier 1). You can get like 100% chance with a master skill otherwise.
>>93958693If you're shooting you use Firearms. If you're fighting use CQC. They give the same bonus. Military Training is a lower bonus skill. I'm fairly certain somewhere (in 1e) it says you can only use one skill per check. You can't stack skill bonuses. The only other thing that would come into play is Advantage from gear or positioning/environment.So it's roll under Combat + One relevant skill. In 1e anyway.
>>93958699I feel there aren't that many useful skills to justify this. I would consider giving them for plot related reassons. For example, someone who keep praying to recover stress could develop their mysticism skill, or half a dozern succesful jury riggs could result in adding that basic skill.
>>93959473what extra skills should the game have?the bases are pretty covered.
I was thinking of having a space colony as a base where tensions start building up as the players do missions out. Starting idilic and then getting shittier, people forcing them to pick sides and the station changing until it becomes the A plot. Sort of similar to Pound of Flesh but on a longer time frame and less specific.
>>93964113I though of something like that taking from Metamorphosis Alpha. It looks like a normal colony but it's actually a megadungeon with completely different biomes and full generations of inhabitants cut off from the outer world underneath it.
