File: Crawling in your Crawler.pdf (279 KB, PDF)

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Here are the crawler-customization rules I put up in the last thread. Modeled after spaceship design from Mothership RPG. Rough draft, obviously.

File: tundra tractor rules lite.pdf (530 KB, PDF)

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>>79773953
Haven't had a chance to tinker yet, but it looks interesting
Here's this, too.

How does one explore beneath the ice? Have the cities of old frozen over completely and have been buried under hundreds of meters of ice?
Drilling isn't cozy, imo, as it would mean a lot of heavy equipment.

>>79776730
Well you have the power to lug heavy equipment around with the crawlers!

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>>79776730
>How does one explore beneath the ice
With one of these and a submarine i presume

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this gives me Transperceneige vibes
i like it

>>79777481
Correct!

>>79777481
The person was talking about surface cities frozen over and covered in hundreds of meters of ice.
There is no water.>>79778117

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>>79773892
Ahoy again dear frosty anons. I hope it isn't too early for this thread popping up again. I would've given it a week or so, but here goes nothing!

I'm currently working on compiling some ideas into a pdf of rules including what I envision character creation to encompass, some supernatural stuff, carrying capacity, resource tracking etc. I'm going to liberally steal from >>79773953 and the hexcrawl idea from the old thread amongst other things.

Dunno how long it'll take but when I get to a good point with it, I'm gonna post it here.

By the way, someone archived the last thread. So go here and vote for it, so it stays preserved in the ice for future generations.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=cozy

Godspeed.

This looks comfy as fuck. I am too tired and tipsy to contribute meaningfully tonight, but have this bump at least.

I'll see you tomorrow anons

Where do people get vegetables? Underground greenhouses with LEDs and hydroponics?

>>79779415
probably vat grown algae. most are temp-resistant and just need light

>>79779415
Some combination of that and >>79779492
Even if the outside ambient temperature is cold, greenhouses would probably still work alright too. Fresh veggies are probably a decently luxurious item, worth trading for if you can make the delivery while they're still good. Obviously, canned or frozen would be the majority.

Oh man I remember some threads a few years ago, that focused a bit more on horror but it might be useful if you have interest for such
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=A+Cozy%2C+Creepy%2C+Winter+Campaign
those threads along with the one about Magdalen islands and the creepy Urban Unease buildings were great

>>79779655
>Fresh veggies are probably a decently luxurious item
You've been in the crawler for couple of years now, travelling back and forth between the various settlements. Most of your trade is in food: scrap for food, clothes for food, tools for food, you name it. If a settlement can coax so much as a potato from the permafrost they can buy just about anything, assuming they can do so reliably. The ones with greenhouses and hydroponics are practically revered and they're always in need of materials to maintain them which means more trade for the crawlers.
You can remember the first time your crawler stopped at one of these. It had been about half a year since you first boarded, the rest of the crew were on maintenance or off trading so, as the navigation apprentice, Pete took you off to get something to eat. The old man must have been approaching 60, getting too old to stay on the crawler really but he was irreplaceable for his experience and know-how. That's where you came in, to do your best and to learn his life's work in a few years. Besides that, he knew the best places to eat, even among the dugouts serving tinned peas he had a discerning eye like no other. He'd taken through the winding alleys of this new town, sat you down and ordered two plates of carrots. You couldn't understand the fuss he was making, carrots weren't the most common food going but they still weren't worth all his hush hush and "just you waits". Then, two plates were unceremoniously slapped onto the table. Two plates of almost golden-orange carrots, little dark lines running down the edges of each one like they had been signed with great care, totally unlike the damp, pallid stems you got in tins. The first bite was heavenly, full of flavour you could scarcely imagine before then. The second was somehow even better and third better still. Pete was saying something about these being only part of a full meal Before, of course he'd remember that far back, even being served with meat. 1/2

>>79779849
those threads are exactly what this is based on, dear sir! I think I jumped on the wagon when a thread popped up about a year ago, and the idea didn't quite leave my mind since then.
>>79773953
interestingly your system for creating a crawler is a bit similar to the 'slot' system I was thinking of for a person's carrying capacity. maybe we can make it so the systems correspond with in a way.

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>>79779415
>>79779492
>>79779655
Hydroponics.
Hydroponics houses in Centrals be that Big Settlement, Bunker, Megacrawler, Icebreaker.

These places could have the factories to supply people with the winter gear they need like snowcrawler parts.
And they would also have hydroponics. It is incredibly, incredibly easy to grow a shitton of food via hydroponics. Just look up vertical farming.
You can use the water for fish farming as well, making things more efficient.
And if you lack space in your settlement you could very easily put those shelves on tracks and push them up against each other, always just sliding one out to harvest.

>>79779655
>>79780176
Canned foods being a main foodsource after the apocalypse is just total nonsense.
Fresh veggies would be the least luxurious item. Heck you can even have a mini hydroponics table hung up in your crawler above the table.

What would be truly luxurious would be different sorts of regular meat from today. Pork and beef and lamb and chicken.
These animals can only survive with the help of humans, and consume a lot of food.
So a habitat with animal farming in it would be the thing that should be exquisitely well sought.
It would probably not be exported much either, because the residents would obviously want such a treasure for themselves.

So replace the carrots with some freshly cooked tender meat and it's viable.
imagine only ever getting to eat the gamey strong tasting red meat of whatever you can hunt, and then for the first time eating turkey, or a real tender and soft nicely seared steak.

>>79780176
It had been ages since you've even seen an animal let alone tasted one, the idea of these being only a part of a full meal seemed like the fare of some gorging king. Soon enough though your plate was empty and you had to head back. The trading was done, all machinery accounted for and you needed to be clear of the North Sea Tundra before the snowstorm set in properly. So you climbed in with a full belly, set up the charts and figured out your course, thinking only of when you'd be back again.
The snow drifts past the window, you've been ferrying almost an entire hold of underclothes to trade for some tinned potatoes to then swap for fuel and so forth. Keeping your voice quiet, masked by the hum of the crawler's engine, you ask Pete if you could go back there soon, nothing's really tasted the same since. He looks at you, checks the map and calender and shakes his head.
"Fraid not, that's well out of the way right now, sorry mate." You sigh and turn back to your chart, before he continues in a lower voice, "Besides, the harvest doesn't get good for another three months, maybe we'll plot a different course then, eh?"

>>79780310
>>79780176
A steak so tender that it practically melts like butter in your mouth. So fine tasting and juicy that you can actually feel all the notes of the crispy outside and soft inside.

Not some plants that you can just suspend above a pot of water with a lamp shining on and wait till you get fresh veggies.

>>79780346
Other than this i absolutely adore what you wrote, it's awesome.

Snowpiercer anyone?

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>>79780426

>>79780396
>Other than this i absolutely adore what you wrote, it's awesome.
Thank you, I don't write as much as I'd like to so I'm glad you enjoyed it
With regards to the veg/meat thing, I just went with what the other anon wrote about tinned being the default and how fresh veg would only be available direct from where it's grown. That said I suppose the idea of only some colonies producing food and exporting it is a little unrealistic. I just like the idea of something so simple as roasted carrots instead of tinned being this fantastic luxury to one of these nomad traders.

>>79780576
Well same it just has to be meat instead of carrots.....
imagine for example someone who has never tasted bacon in their life tasting it for the first time after just living on mostly salad.

>>79780635
Nah you've got a point, I just really fucking love roasted carrots. Plus I get one idea in my head and find it impossible to deviate from that, pls no bulli

>>79780707
>I just really fucking love roasted carrots
OOoooh well then disregard my point entirely.
Also it's totally possible that no one bothered to grow carrots anywhere where that person was before. After all if you look around most fields are for some grain stuff.

>>79780732
Don't put too much thought into it, I certainly didn't, just wanted to contribute to a cool thread before I went to bed.
Idk if there are any neat prompts to go off of I might write some more tomorrow, just don't hold me to it.

>>79780787
I put a lot of thought into it!
That's why i have this name.
If there's something comfy you like it should be possible to fit it into the setting.

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>>79776730
Orange transparent chainsaws, anon.

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>>79780310
All you do is shoot down good ideas and push your own shitty views.
Quit trolling these new people.
Fuck off.
>>79780576
He's trolling you. Don't respond to him. He derailed the last thread with his autism...

>>79781104
Retarded, if true. Post the thread he did this in last.

>>79781104
>>79781135

Anon half the posts in the last thread were mine. I literally kept the thread alive, and contributed more than anyone else. Also i'm not shooting down good ideas.
Stop acting out, we're here to be comfy. I know you are too.

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>>79781135
>>>79669577
Be forewarned, my friend. He's here to push his own agenda.
Note his second post in this thread - he shoots down everything he doesn't agree with and pretends HIS way is a group consensus.

>>79781239
Anon why do you have to be like this.
I literally pointed out the posts by others that made me believe there was a consensus on the things where i believed that.
I don't shoot down things. I try to make ideas fit together as much as possible, and to alter them as little as possible while making them possible within the general feel the others are describing.
That's what i did in this thread too.
>>79780732
>>79780635

>>79773892
Crazy weather mechanics sound fun. Ice tornadoes anyone?

>>79781104
Anon, pls. He is entitled to his own opinion. It's not like his ideas are the only ones that's being put in the rulebook.
If you don't like, don't respond. I don't believe that we should strive for the amount of realism, the realismanon is promoting but his input is more useful than not, imo.

>>79781239
Didn't notice that he had a namefag on. Didn't think people actually did that here. Oh well. As long as the physical crunch is made up, we can then diverge into settings.

>>79781279
Yeah. The problem here is that every single word you write here and in that thread reminds me of this controlling bastard in University that could see no other way forward but his own. He was a good group leader, but he had the the slimiest way of saying "I hear you and I'm going to ignore you." So I'm just going to pick the best parts of what you have to say, and ignore what I don't like.

>>79781320
Heard of ice balls?
>https://www.geographyrealm.com/how-ice-balls-form/

A curiosity to be sure. Until you find them far away from any beaches and in places far below freezing. Turns out that at high tide they get swept out to sea, freeze, and go all over the place.

Or they're just a mystery of life. Like how its always cold. Or the miracle of birth.

>>79781446
>The problem here is that every single word you write here and in that thread reminds me of this controlling bastard in University
I'm sorry anon. Just look at what i actully say i try to not ignore anyone.

>>79781446
I put it on last thread to make the discussion a bit easier to follow.

>>79781320
I was thinking something like rolling nightly for the weather, with results that mostly increase or decrease the temperature and precipitation gradually, but occasionally have a sudden storm blow in. A successful check with the sensors can give you the weather for the next few days in advance: the GM just pre-rolls the upcoming weather rolls.

>>79781490
>>79781320
Maybe a space-time mechanic? Where every X hours or X miles traveled you roll for an EVENT.
And you pick which table to roll on. Breakdown, encounter, weather change, anomaly.

And then you roll on the corresponding table.
-We have already listed a ton of encounters but we could list even more.
-Weather change would be two rolls one for temperature one for weather, but you'd have to keep it a) in line with the season b) in line with the climate and i dunno how to do that yet.
-Breakdowns would be rolling for which subsystem loses how many of its quality points.
-And anomalies would need a new table .. i'll start feel free to add


>Ice hurricane
>suddenly night. Eclipse? Megafauna? Big ass cloud? Either way it's dark
>icequake from the shifting melting and freezing ice
>ice ravine opens up under half of crawler, making you stuck
>superdense blizzard, you can't see your hand in front of your face. not very harsh but don't expect to see, also you get buried.
>sudden warmth. the new unpredictable weather systems decided to make it super warm where you are and all snow and ice begins instantly melting under you.

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>>79781446
>As long as the physical crunch is made up, we can then diverge into settings.
Exactly what we're trying to do, friend.
>controlling bastard in University that could see no other way forward but his own
Nailed it! He proved to be an unhelpful stick in the mud for the entire thread. He had a few passable ideas, but insufferably rejected anything he felt wasn't 'realistic', in his narrow personal sense of the term. He drove people out of the thread and it died an early death - hence this resurrected thread.

>>79781320
lightning
whiteout
fog
high winds/tornadoes hurling ice balls
sudden temperature drop
sudden temperature rise/slush

>>79781707
Not necessarily in line with the season/climate.
I think we should go for something simpler so it's less table-wrangling and more play. Basically, you roll a 1d6 or something and consult a table. On 1 you've got an anomaly and can make a roll on a special table (inexplicable phenomena, weird stuff), on 6 you've got you regular rapid turn for the worse, also special table (blizzards, hurricanes, extreme cold that kills everything outside and such), 2-3 the weather gets better, 4-5 - worse. GM decides everything from 2 to 4 without a table and narrates accordingly.

>>79781857
>Not necessarily in line with the season/climate.
I'm just trying to avoid the "well looks like it's now minus 300°C because the temperature has continuously decreased for a month"

Also yours doesn't include less tables than mine lol just one less roll for the weather.

>>79781707
Ice hurricanes should be shit-your-pants end-of-the-fucking-world anomalies. Hurricanes are rare and fucking MASSIVE. One of those could derail an entire campaign with ease.
Icequake is a phenomenal and realistic event. A cool fun event would also be the melting of a lower part of an ice shelf, so you get a massive sheet of ice skating along and destabilized for a bit until it refreezes below. Could attribute it to geological activity.
Sudden warmth is great, taken to extremes you could have a little comfy beach episode where the players rediscover the ancient traditions of swimming and beach volleyball. Flash freeze would also be great, shit going from cold to "holy fuck" real fast.
Some version of a limnic eruption and a sinkhole could be fun as well. Maybe in some flat regions crazy intense wind that can rip up ice chunks and stuff. And finally, for spectacle, some conic volcanoes, either partially immersed in ice or as normal. Perfect to run screaming from, or watch like fireworks from the comfort of your crawler.

>>79781927
What about wandering pressure ridges?

>>79781927
>limnic eruption
Cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>Flash freeze would also be great
man how could i forget that. yeah
>volcanoes
yeah i had these in my random encounter table... i think it's time to organize encounters into different tables.

I'm gonna do it a bit later when i'm not half asleep.

>ice hurricanes. i agree, but the other anomalies should be able to derail the campaign with ease too
a beach episode is a derailment, so is getting stuck, so is suddenly drifting on moving ice, or gases trying to kill you

>>79781989
wdym?

>>79782010
Russian has a specific word for those, but the wiki only gave me this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_ridge_(ice)
Of a particular interest might be these things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamukha
Maybe a huge field like this that needs to be travesed like a labirynth dor several days and that can shift overnight.
Maybe people go there and sometimes get lost, and those passing along these jagged ridges can sometimes hear weird sounds at night.

>>79782104
Ooooh that's cool!

>>79781992
True. Maybe derailment was the wrong word. A hurricane is longer-lasting and more damaging than the other events on average though, with the exception of the highest tiers of volcanic eruptions. Think Pinatubo. The chances of solving a hurricane in one session doesn't seem realistic.
>>79781989
Wandering pressure ridges need some element of tidal force iirc. If all the oceans are frozen that's going to be trouble, but if not then sure, great idea!

>>79782129
They do, yes. But in this case I think realism can be relaxed in favor of fun.
Or one can build a whole questline based around free-flowing water somewhere in the depths beneath the ice or whatever it is that's moving it.

>>79782129
>oceans
I think we wanted oceans that aren't frozen solid so we can have seasons that allow forests and such.
But i've been wrong on consensus before.

>>79782162
Well a lot of the action would take place over the ocean with most of it being easily traversible, so if they're not literally frozen solid, then that's enough spots for these things to occur.

>>79782129
Ah so you meant in terms of consequences for the hurricane.... okay....
But remember civilization in the north would be sparse.
Hurricanes are damaging because they mess up human infrastructure.
If humanity in the ice wastes consists of bases here and there, then encountering a hurricane wouldn't mess you up too much, especially if you're in a machine that weighs as much as a dozen tanks.

>>79782207
True. Hurricanes technically wouldn't even happen I imagine, the water wouldn't be nearly warm enough. You could take that lack of realism as an opportunity to overhaul them a bit into something more interesting, seeing as you're probably right in that it likely wouldn't do much damage to a crawler.

>>79782207
He just can't stop himself from shitting on ideas he thinks are 'unrealistic'...

>>79782265
They could still happen. Jupiter has massive storms and they're not too hot.
The point is that we have very little idea how a terrestrial planet with liquid water but much lower temperatures would behave in terms of climate so a lot of stuff is possible there.

>>79782291
What are ou on about.
I literally explained why the ideas WOULD be feasible.

>>79782265
>wind blows antenna off
>ice balls travelling over 150 miles per hour will puncture windows, damage and destroy everything outside
>will disrupt radio
>will disrupt sensors

>>79782328
Jupiter is hugely different from Earth in terms of atmosphere. Still, not here to shill any kind of realism.
>>79782332
That'll do. Is there any kind of really absurd, near-magical disasters in this setting? Just real anomalies people struggle to explain?

>>79782370
Yes but the point is that this earth would also be very different in terms of atmosphere from the one we know.

And yeah we have some supernatural stuff. There were some ideas involving megafauna and psi powers.

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>>79782370
>anomalies people struggle to explain?
Why yes - this thread is built upon spooky, eery winter wasteland encounters.
Mysterious radio signals.
Odd weather.
Strange finds.
Unknown entities in the wintry wasteland.
Madness.

The whole vibe is one of mystery, eeriness, and comfiness in the face of all the bleak weirdness. Ghosts could be real; or it could be aliens; or other survivors; or simple deluded madness; or something else???

>>79782582
>>79782489
Phenomenal. Slightly spooky and comfy is the best combination imo. Carry on gentlemen.

>>79780426
>>79780482

https://youtu.be/ufzNMqqKCi8

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Oh a new idea!

An anon mentioned different terrain difficulties for the hexcrawl aspect.

Maybe we could make the tables depending on this.
It makes sense, if you're over sea ice you're unlikely to suddenly encounter a volcano, and you're also not very likely to find a megacrawler in a mountain range where it doesn't even fit.

So maybe something like this:
>grey areas are mountainous terrain
>blue areas are sea ice
>yellow areas are ice plains
>orange areas are difficult snowy landscapes
>dark green areas are forests
>light green areas are taigas

And then you could have different sorts of encounters based on what tile you're on.
You could limit certain snowcrawlers from going on certain terrains. Megacrawlers for example would only be able to move easily on blue and yellow areas as anything else and they simply wouldn't fit.
A big crawler would have difficulty moving in a taiga, while even small crawlers would have difficulty moving in a forest, and only small scouts like pic related could move there.
Mountains would be difficult for all, and there might even be some that are completely impassable, necessitating a detour around them.

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>>79782705

"Stop!", Vasily cried, "Wait"!
Little Sasha was too far away already. Understandable, of course, ten days of flash freeze turnging into an equally flash thaw will make you want to kill yourself. Sasha was young, so rapid pressure changes didn't affect him as much, but for a 12 year old sitting inside a heated sweaty KUNG doing nothing but sleeping is a special kind of torture.
The Weatherman gave an "all clear" a couple of hours ago and the first thing the rascal (Vasily's favorite) did was grab Mukhtar, a pair of skis and set off into the golden glowing white snowplains.
"Should be okay." Anya's goggles flashed as she watched the setting sun. "An hour left. Better go after him though."
"Mukhtar should keep him safe. Besides, the engine needs-"
Anya's stare could be felt even through her heavily tinted goggles, so Vasily sighed, scratched his beard, sighed again then put on the skis and went after his son.
He caught up with Sasha pretty soon, although the caravan was already hidden behind the hunchbacked horizon.
Sasha was standing just at the edge of a field of snow pillars jutting out of the ground. Mukhtar whimpered quietely and ran towards Vasily, wagging his tail.
"Dad..."
"It's okay, son. Turn away." Vassiliy took the boy's shoulders and gingerly turned him away, cringing at the half eaten face of the yooyor. He waved a quick Cross on the thing and decapitated it with one quick swing of his icepick. "You don't look them in the face, you hear me, boy?"
Sasha was shaking and didn't answer.
Vasily glanced over the other frozen bodies. No faces. Good.
He kneeled before his son.
"Do. You. Understand? Say it!"
"Yes, f-father."
"Good. Now take Mukhtar and go - no looking back!"
They walked in silence for some time, finally, when the caravan was in sight, Sasha asked:
"What are... those things anyway, dad?"
"Yooyor. Ones who are lost to the cold."
"But why so many?"
"People are curious. Yooyor like curious."
The sun was almost down when they reached the caravan.

>>79779492
Algae grows pretty well on the underside of ice sheets too iirc. The liquid water's a pretty good temperature buffer and the resilient bastards can secrete antifreeze compounds into the environment. That algal film feeds plankton which feeds fish which feeds seals which means sweet sweet blubber for you and me.
>>79780426
Transantarctica too. Lower tech and a lot grimmer but the coal fired hearths have a similar cozy charm.

>>79782906
Pretty cool. A bit too creepy but still cool.

>>79782946
>sweet sweet blubber for you and me.

>you wouldn't club a seal

Especially when you can just eat the fish.

>>79783070
I've started working on this before I saw this thread, it's slowly turining into a novel or a bunch of short stories. Naturally, I'm curious where you guys will go.

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>>79783070
>too creepy
>just eat the fish
Do you see how this asshole operates, yet? He's the self-appointed lore-keeper, only his lore is acceptable...everything else receives faint praise, at best.

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>>79783305
Anon it can be too creepy for me.

And the second thing was literally just memeing.

Here, reposting because the thread last time died right after I posted this, and while I like it (because I came up with it) I'd like to hear everyone else's objections. I know there's one other guy in the thread who talked about writing rules, but we haven't had any dialogue on core mechanics, just about handling the hexcrawl and peripherals.

>System is dice pools, d10s, simple 6+ is success. Pool is attribute (4ish total) + skill (12ish?), nothing else. Number of successes is important, and drives most skill check results. Successes are capped by your equipment.* Any 1s you roll are Exhaustion, crossed off from your skill/attribute until you rest somewhere comfy.

>This thing about equipment limiting number of successes is a key point and is weird, admittedly (I don't know of other games that do that), but I think it reflects something important about the setting - great gear with no skills is garbage, but great skills with no gear is too, and if your gear is rubbish then even a very skilled person is just barely getting by. There are games where the hulking brute does more damage with his fists than normal people do with their swords, and a brilliant talent can expect to whip up a solution with just the clothes on their back, but I don't think this game should work that way. Survival here is about taking care of your resources, knowing what you can and can't do. It's perfectly reasonable for Survivorman to say "I'm not going out in that, not without a parka. I'll freeze before I make it 2 clicks," or for the genius mechanic to tell her skipper "it's not the kind of 'broke' that I can jury-rig, we need the actual parts." And that's something that can develop organically, rather than by GM fiat, if you let some problems require a gear solution.

>>79782582
Here's some ambiguous weirdness.
>Most mysticism tends to personify the weather in terms of traditional folklore but a persistent minority of crackpots colour the sky with human ingenuity. To them the almost malevolent blizzards could be anything from auto-atmospheric geoengineering processes undoing damage with no regard for practicalities on the ground to deliberate climate sabotage via shading satellites still fighting a long dead trade war. The most apocalyptic visions loop right back around to primal terrors, they say that experimental ice phases forged under arcane pressures and rife with strange impurities sink to the ocean floor and are kept in check only by their imperfect catalysis in what is to them an alien environment. Ravings about ice-9 or not there's no denying that snowflakes are sometimes far sharper than they have any fight to be.

>The world under the ice is plenty unsettling for the simple risk of crashing into it, fear of things crashing up adds a whole new dimension to the unease. Half remembered wars have blurred together in memory as secret sub bases overlap with geopolitically significant missile silos and colonial outposts exploiting newly thawed resources. All these would be long burried but the hidden personnel or possibly their automated caretakers are assumed to carry out their strange works mostly undisturbed, probably looking above with the same apprehension that we look below.

>All that remains of most Stirling engines are their stately wheels lying toppled in the snow. A few still stand proud and pumping, the trickle of waste heat from the servers below keeping them efficiently cool even as energy is recouped. People don't say "cult" to their faces but it's clear that the data divers wrestling corruption and lost data formats have taken dedication to strange heights.

>>79784039

very nice, anon - more, please!

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Wendigos in the classic mythological sense, people turned to cannibalism through starvation in the endless winter, transformed into monsters.

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Possible source or inspiration.

>>79785591
That is not comfy

>>79786018
>>79785591
By which i mean wendigos great, starvation and cannibalism turning people into literal nightmares....not so much.

>>79786040
the point of the icecrawler setting is not "100% cozy 100% of the time" there should be weird paranormal/creepy stuff with the rare instance of downright horror

>>79786407
People seemed to subscribe to the 90% comfy 10% creepy that someone said last thread.
I didn't know anyone wanted outright horror in it.

>>79785591
Most are mindless and savage. Some are cunning and savage. Really tough ones might possess eerie psychic or elemental powers.
And here >>79785702 we have the Raiders. Also mindless, cunning, and savage, but they are slightly more civilized and less supernatural than scary Wendigos - more comfy.
Cool.

>>79786459
There was no such consensus. Outright horror has always been a part of this since the very first thread. Please find and read the previous threads.
>>79786407
I'd say comfy at 50% maximum. Perhaps this should be a scalable thing, for individual groups to adjust as they see fit?

>>79786040
The starvation happened centuries ago, when the world was first freezing. Wendigos don't suffer from old age and while they're always hungry, they can't starve to death, so they'll be just as dangerous for anyone to break into their bunker as they were when they first became wendigos.

>>79782906
that's some cool shit anon. keep the fluff coming!
>>79783070
I dunno man. Creepy stuff is in this world. Honestly, I sometimes feel like it's the actually interesting part, and the 90% comf are mostly setup for the horror so it stays scary.

But having 'inactive' signs of the creepy stuff being out there might be a really good element for this setting. It could become something mundane, in a way, like finding a carcass eaten by wolves. You'd be disgusted and perhaps alarmed, but it's just how it is out in the wilds.

Perhaps there is a level of paranormal that has become mundane. Like if anomalies are all the way out to paranormal, there could be megafauna and fantastical creatures that are more in the middle of the spectrum and therefore better understood by people. To quote a bit of lore from the olden threads:

>What, the ghosts and spooks and shit? Nah, they don't bother us without a reason. They ain't stupid - our crawler's solid metal, lotsa light and smoke and fire. They hate that shit. Y'know, most of the time, they ain't all that bad. Oh, sure, they're dangerous an' all, but...really, most of 'em just want to be left alone. Sure, there's a couple scary fuckers out there - heard about a native spirit tearing shit up out there a few years back before some crazy bastard ran it over - but most of 'em just want to be respected and left alone. Be nice, and some of 'em might even take it into their heads to be nice back. Still want to be careful - spooks helping looks a lot like spooks hurting - but it's handy to stay on their good side.Understand? Good. Now go take that geo-whatsit shit off the back. What? Yeah, I said to stay on their good side. That don't mean being stupid enough to invite them in, greenstalk!

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>>79783534
I'd have to test this in play, so it's hard to give feedback yet as I've never played with a dice pool system before I think. Love the idea of exhaustion being part of every check though, and gear becoming important in order to do anything well.
>This is where we'll get our orange transparent chainsaw, boys.

>>79786459
Maybe you should take some time and actually read through the archives. I think it might help decrease the gap between the differing visions in this thread.

Hmm, id probably use the Nemesis ORE system if I ran this. But I have a question. Iam always a bit confused about when people talk about comfy settings and games. I get that a setting can have a mostly comfy vibe, but how the hell can you run a comfy campaign? Do the mechancs help somehow? How would you run this in a comfy way?

>>79787870
I think the key to a comfy campaign is having a persistent world that the PCs can make honestly better.

Start out with a small settlement that has to struggle to get enough supplies stocked for each winter. Then let them discover other nearby communities, and establish routes through the snow between them. They can use their money and the parts they scavenge or trade for to help the settlement buy/build a second crawler, then help train the crew for it, so that they have some help keeping the new routes open.

Let them get to know all the people in their settlement, and the neighboring ones, and the other crews in the area. Let them get involved in those people's lives and help solve their problems. Let the PCs have their own problems, and work those out too. Let them meet someone special, get married, have a few kids.

I like the idea of >>79787349
that a lot of the really bad stuff happened a long time ago. Different GMs will probably run it differently to suit their playstyle, but I think the world should be generally "getting better." Maybe not quickly, and maybe not even unambiguously, but there should be signs. They might run into people who think it's going to keep getting colder and colder, or that some resources are just inherently going to run out, or are just generally nihilistic, but the players ought to mostly have hope a the future that's better than their present. And the campaign can be about reaching for that future.

>>79787870
It seems everyone has different expectations of what that word means in a TTRPG setting.
I think it's about the overall mood, as you said, but since no one seems to have actually played this, it's hard to define how to weave this feeling into a game that doesn't end up just being boring.
Personally, I'd keep quests and adventures somewhat mundane most of the time and focus on the struggle with nature, wildlife, and people. Social conflicts, weathering the storm, exploring the wilderness and ruins of the old world... that kinda thing should be kept interesting and explore the setting in many ways while trying to reduce violence wherever possible (they're not soldiers but more like park rangers/couriers in my mind). If you want some more action, make the weather more brutal, the landscape harsher to traverse, people more desperate and mistrusting.

And then, 10% of the time, make it full blown horror or mystery. Let the players be hunter by a winged creature of the night. Add in zombies, or an anomaly that threatens to trap them in a timeloop for all eternity.

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thread question:
what do we call the snowcrawler crews? what is their job title?

ideas from mundane to 'special'
>rangers
>pioneers
>scouts
>pathfinders
>wayfarers
>hounds (because they get sent to and fro, doing all the dirty work)
>renards (french for 'fox', referencing their characteristic signal colors)
>domovoy (helpful russian house spirit. guards home and cattle, but if you don't bring him tribute, he might leave and cause illness)

>>79788231
Why not just call them Snowcrawlers? It kind of makes them sound like plucky eccentric comrads

>>79787868
Some lore i thought of looking at those towers:

-Musicman Radio-
Once these used to be number stations, but now they are occupied by a gentleman who fashions himself a DJ and turned it into a radio tower. he trades for any music media Snowcrawlers can find him. He plays old records, 8tracks, zoom players, etc, but sadly his collection is still quite small. Old Musicman though is industrious, and when he gets bored of playing old world music, he tries making it himself on whatever instrument he recently bartered from the snowcrawlers.

Hes terrible at it, but lord knows, hes trying his best. And when youve been out in the taiga for that long, with nothing but one radio station...you start to appreciate his off key harmonica.

>>79788285
I figured Snowcrawlers would be the name of the vehicles.

>>79783070
you would eat both. that's what real arctic explorers did. they ate everything they could get.

>>79773892
this is cool, it remembered me a dream i had some time ago about being in an icey world as part of a local militia, it had people walking around the snowy wasteland with bolt action rifles and big cozzy coats but some people had "mechs", wich where mining equipment modified for combat ala dead space, dont remember much of it but i remember something about it being a colony mining world and there being a civil war outside the planet so people got stranded there and started figthing over food production facilities
is not full on the theme of the thread , but it reminded me it

Gonna bump this while I work out my document on character creation. Curious about feedback once I'm done.

here's a random plot idea for now.

>the Snowcrawler comes across a settlement on their route. people are distant, but friendly and after a few beers in the local tavern, the crew has even made some friends.
>eventually a person comes up to them. people refer to him as an outsider and a madman, but they give you space as the guy seems insistant to talk to the crew.
>he warns the players not to pass through a certain abandoned town along the road north and almost breaks down in tears when he tells them he had been caught there for years.
>says he went in there as a boy and only managed to escape this nightmare a few weeks ago. no one in town believes him and now he lives in an old shack that hasn't been used in decades. says his family used to live there, but when he came back people only remembered an elderly couple by that name who passed away some years ago.
>your next destination lies along that route however. planning a way around could add a week to your journey, and takes you through rough terrain.
>players get to decide
>if they go through town, there is a chance to be trapped by an anomaly (if they fail to see the telltale signs). the time loop might be its own puzzle. they could run into the boy during different stages in his life. If they find and follow the grown-up version of him, they find the way out. If they manage to solve it their own way, they even have the chance to help the boy out before he is stuck there for decades.
>if they go back to town, it'll be exactly the way it was when they first entered. people greet them the same, but no one seems to reognize them. Depending on their experiences within the anomaly, the strange man might also 'reset', or live there happily with his family, recognizing them as the people who had helped him escape when he was a boy.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ice-trek-these-are-the-voyages.483118/

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>>79781104
>>79781239
>>79781798
>>79783305
shut the fuck up with your shitty drama and post more icecrawlers

Bump. Requesting a little teaser of the mechanics in your CC document. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect!

>>79791526

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>>79797502
alright, well, I didn't get far with the compiled rules in English yet, and my first notes are all in German and kinda all over the place. But I started a first draft of character creation we can discuss.

Specifically looking for feedback on traits. What traits would you add, if any, and why do you think they should be seperate from attributes/skills?
Same question goes for conditions.

What do you think of the attributes? I didn't keep the classic D&Desque ones. For example, I split Dexterity into Physique (feats of strength, speed and stamina) and Wits (hand-eye-coordination, reaction speed, quick thinking, but also perceptiveness, ...) since we're not going for an epic hero's journey where you need to simulate the difference between an elegant duellist and a brute with a club that much. The focus is more on different ways of problem solving, splitting mental facilities into Brain, Wits, and Psyche.

I also noted down my idea for carrying capacity for gear, a list of skills I thought would be important (feel free to add any that you feel are missing), possible professions onboard a crawler, and a small questionnaire for session 0.

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>>79773892
What waifus are in this setting? There's nothing "cozy" about a living space filled with stinky dudes. But it's different if you're doing chores outside all day then come back inside to your shortstack gobbo.

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>>79773892
oh boy, do I have one neat "documentary" for you:
https://youtu.be/f6R-h06IsJw

>>79799232
you do you anon.

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>>79791526
That has a cool late 60’s sci-if feel to it.

>hook: the players receive intel, or hear a rumor about some ancient tech in the area— it’s in the forbidden zone (cue music)
>nearing the forbidden zone, they discover refugees that tell the story of a lost dome city
>refugees barely escaped with their lives - the city is a terrible dystopia
>ice cave nearby where some escapees had to be left behind
>Line: players need to enter the ice cave and rescue the refugees. Their talents could be useful
>Sinker: the cave is guarded by a mad robot who freezes people and animals
>Epilogue: the refugees have long lost talents (computers, engineering, etc) but are soft and naive. The dome city is home to thousands, but is isolated and dangerous in its own way. Future hazards and plot hooks?
>helps put the present in perspective by telling the story of humanity’s past

>>79800381
>plot twist: one of the refugees is a “Sandman”- a policeman whose job it is to apprehend “runners” or people who are over 29 years of age for execution. He seeks recognition and heroic status for bringing in these runners and the outsiders to justice.

>>79786536
Okay.

>>79787349
Interesting.

>>79787830
>Perhaps there is a level of paranormal that has become mundane
this is a great idea, but i was more about the actual horror element of horrific wendigos.


>>79787868
well i just saw someone say 90% cozy 10% creepy last thread and no one challenged that person on it


>>79788815
Fair, but also to be fair you have other sources of food both canned and fresh.

>>79800381
>>79800452
Well computers and engineering wouldn't be lost talents because you need those for literally everything to keep your crawlers and other habitats running, but, other than that this is fucking perfect i love it.

>>79799491
Gobbos it is! Though I still don't see why I need this dumbass setting. I can have gobbo lolis in any setting.

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>>79788231
I've toyed with a couple for my own snowcrawler setting - caravaneers, pioneers, snowrunners, messengers. They're pretty mundane right now, but I think something that could be cool would be exploring the theme of connections - how snowcrawlers connect and keep settlements together.

>>79788379
Back in mid 2020, there was an older thread that had some really fun ideas regarding radio stations and crawlers. They could serve as as pseudo-landmarks and recurring characters in campaigns, reference points for players to know where they were. Could be really neat, emerging from a brutal storm to the familiar jingles of some pirate radio station in home territory.
https://warosu.org/tg/thread/S71521805
I think it was this thread.

>>79788153
I like this concept - the idea of the world getting better, people working together to build a brighter and warmer tomorrow. It'd lend really well to longer story arcs and plot hooks as well - continued infrastructure development and reclaiming of old facilities, rather than just isolated quests or discoveries.

>>79781446
>controlling bastard in University that could see no other way forward but his own.
That's a pretty good way of putting it, actually; with him, it either has to be realistic, has to be modified to be realistic or it's automatically shit.

Dismissing ideas just because they can't happen in reality kind of partially defeats the point of working with fictional settings, doesn't it?

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Here's the hexcrawl map from before.


What types of terrain should there be?


>>79802840
>has to be modified to be realistic or it's automatically shit.
It isn't automatically shit

>Dismissing ideas just because they can't happen in reality kind of partially defeats the point of working with fictional settings, doesn't it?
Look anon what we know is real.
It is therefore easier to immerse oneself into something, if that something at least kinda follows a few concepts of reality.

It is also a way to make things fit together.
Nothing has to be fully realistic, and i have not dismissed any idea as shit.

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>>79802875

>>79780426
>>79780482
My thinking exactly

I've half a mind to just hide both of you shitters. You clutter the thread. Just stop.

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You need transparent orange chainsaws

>>79798665
>additional traits
I have no idea what the difference is between traits and skills and attributes, anon. Can't help.
But your work is excellent so far!

>>79803120
Sorry, my bad. I got pretty carried away.
I'll just agree to disagree with him and leave it at that.

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>>79802380
Yeah, but can snowcrawler engineers and computer techs build prostitute dispensers? I thought not.

>>79803193
I think you are confusing hoes with icepicks here, friend.

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Other than conventional locomotion like tracks and wheels, what other mechanisms could crawlers have in various configurations? Different platforms could be pretty interesting, both as flavor and in terms of mechanics.

Auger drives would probably be one of the more obvious alternatives, as well as aerosani for lighter craft. Any others come to mind?

>>79802840
Love the webm - large anomalies sitting on the crawler would be an interesting obstacle: how the hell do you get them off without the crawler getting trashed?

>>79803274
Depends on the animal or anomaly, I suppose - something a bit more mundane like an animal could probably be scared off with flares or lured off with food, but an anomaly could be a much trickier problem - depending on how otherworldly it is, of course.

One potential scenario that comes to mind is if anomalies have an adverse reaction to heat - players might have to weigh between using up precious fuel / exposing their crawler's interior to drive off the anomaly, or sitting tight and hoping the thing fucks off on its own before supplies start running low.

>>79803347
Heat is a weapon. Neat.
Could also have good cheer, camaraderie, and comfiness be repellent to the anomalous beasties. This would be why they try to sap courage and cause fear and trepidation and loneliness: they must weaken our defenses before they can strike physically.

I'm still looking for ideas to make the terrain types for the hexcrawl more concrete.
What should the terrain types be?

>>79782705
>>79803064
Yes and all those things then ended with me incorporating the ideas anyway. don't be a dick.

And yeah i shot down OTHER GAMES i didn't like not ideas of anons per se.

I didn't dismiss any single idea of any anon throughout all these threads.

>>79803193
lol

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>>79803420
I dunno about cheer/camaraderie being inherent repellants - it does kind of make sense thematically, what with warmth and humanity driving away the anomalous terrors, but at the same time I can't help but be reminded of old children's shows where the bad guy gets repelled by the power of love and friendship. It'd probably depend on the GM and what sort of game feel they want to go for, I guess.

Personally I'd probably go for actual physical warmth being the main deterrent, but with having camaraderie and strong relationships also projecting their own sort of "warmth" - not necessarily strong enough to be the main repellent factor, but strong enough to hold its own as a last resort should the bonds between crewmates be strong enough.

Running out of fuel and heat should still be a pretty big "oh shit" moment since you've lost your main defense against both the weather and the anomalies, but if you and your crewmates trust in each other enough - you might just make it through to see the dawn.

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Where are the snowcrawlers traveling to? Are they following the seasons? Fleeing the psychic storms? Are they part of a great network of snow and landcrawlers keeping humanity United in a new ice age? Is there even ROOM on a snowcrawler for a prostitute dispenser?

>>79803731
They can bake onaholes and then recycle them to produce food bars.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Spare_Parts_(audio_story)

>>79803731
>Are they part of a great network of snow and landcrawlers keeping humanity United in a new ice age
I think this is what most people wanted.
A loose network of Central hubs and outposts with thousands of miles between them and some tribal territories.
With the storms flying planes would be too dangerous most of the time, and drones wouldn't be able to carry heavy supplies like the crawlers and all infrastructure from before the frost is frozen over.
The only remaining solution is snowcrawlers on land and icebreakers where ocean ice is thin enough.
Also we've had multiple ideas from multiple people for snowcrawlers. The regular ones that players would normally use would be smaller, 50m or so max, but there would also be megacrawlers acting as mobile versions of the aforementioned Central hubs and icebreakers. These could be up to 300 m long, and would therefore absolutely have room for a prostitute dispenser.


>>79803771
Jesus christ.


>>79803579
Hm... would you want to have cozyness as an actual stat? Like warmth and cameraderie and the comfort stat of the crawler all contributing?
Iunno if that would work.

this whole thread is giving me Ironsworn vibes. If i had to run this tomorrow I would probably use that. It has interesting exploration and has the feeling of isolation down, although it lacks any comfy.

>>79783534
I really like this idea of being limited by gear and skill. it gives characters two branches they need to tend to in order to better their chances at survival. Also the exhaustion should totally be a constant threat. Your stats being chipped away by your exhaustion feels like a better alternative to HP, if you hit zero in a stat you make a desperation roll and either die or are taken out of the scene.

>>79804030
I think warmth should be a separate stat from cameraderie - there's other things that physical warmth might affect where cameraderie wouldn't really apply, like fuel consumption or storage of certain goods (like livestock).
Not sure if cozyness should be a stat, though - feels like that should be felt, not described.

>>79804413
Yeah but with it being a stat it could affect things. And it could be a soft hidden variable.
Combining the other stats.

I imagine the crawlers travel to "cities" like giant antarctic bases similar to frost punk, which are safe havens but lack total self-sufficiency. Thus the crawlers help them trade resources and people they need, as well as searching for ruins and food in the icy wastes, and trying to find more suitable ice base locations.
I do feel like it's important to have these safe bases to allievate player and character stress between missions, but they should be pressured to never stay for too long: there's an engineer that is the only one who can properly fix a generator in another town, or a sick kid who desperately needs a vaccine, or diplomatic treaties that can prevent ice war, etc.- and your crew's gonna brave the wastes to keep the world comfy in spite of the risks.

>>79804030
maybe Snowcrawler get sent to inhabit different outposts for a season and then be responsible for the land around, like park rangers. Since there are vast stretches of no man's land in between any point of interest, you'd still have to travel far to get anywhere, but instead of living in the crawler, it's more of a work vehicle, and your comfy base is actually a building.

>>79804237
what if someone or something actively hurts you? if every damage is skill damage, wouldnt that start a death spiral real fast?
I do think total exhaustion and insanity (physical and mental fatigue) should be tied to your skills, and end in effectively removing that character from the game, but perhaps they should be seperate from things like wounds and general health?

>>79804413
>>79804549
I think comfort should be used as a means to regain lost points in the aforementioned fatigue levels. Cameradrie as an active defense is a bit... the wrong vibe imho, as >>79803579 also said. I'd rather have warmth, light, noise as more physical attributes to repell spooks. I do like the idea of emotional energies working with spirits, but maybe it'd be something that pulls them, rather than push them. Anger, conflict, turmoil could attract malevolent creatures, and lack thereof (because of good cameraderie could simple be less interesting to them.

>>79805207
>which are safe havens but lack total self-sufficiency.
Well also nothing is ever completely self sufficient.
All settlements big or small will want to manufacture their own food and snow gear, and that could be seen as a sort of self sufficiency, but you'd still need materials for the factory and such.
Even absolutely luxurious high tech arcologies would probably need this or that item from somewhere else.

>>79805380
>and lack thereof (because of good cameraderie could simple be less interesting to them.
That could work, too.
>>79805207
Yeah, that sounds good - mobile "cities" do also allow regular rotation of content without necessarily needing the party to leave the region entirely. Would also serve as convergence points for other crews that the players might then interact with for info or even collaborate with on runs.


On a side note - this might be a bit schizo tech for some of you guys, but I happened across this and found it pretty neat:
http://www.theatomicpriesthoodproject.org/
For those anons running a more heavily post-apoc game, this could be an interesting development or plothook.

>>79803141
attributes are your natural disposition: how strong you are, how smart you are, how attractive you are etc.
skills are things you have learned/obtained: shooting, chess, steering a ship.
attributes and skills will likely either give you modifiers for skill checks, or additional dice if we go for the dicepool system.
traits are basically abilities with a little more detail within the story, like the ones described in the pdf. in other games, they will also include some combat abilities which I left out here because that's not the aim of the game.

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https://www.comnap.aq/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/COMNAP_Antarctic_Station_Catalogue.pdf
Some reference material for you lot to go off. Running something in an artic shithole is something I'd run in the future.

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>>79805486
>>79805207
I suggested a sort of market or meetup of crawlercrews, that is each month or so in a different Central base in the region.

Crawlers come from far and wide looking to trade for exotic goods or stories, and at night they have a huge bonfire going.

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>>79806047
that shit was gold and has been fixed in my list of encounters :p

by the way, I've collected quite a lot of those in a document, a random mess of hooks I liked, badly organized into 'cozy' and 'creepy' but with overlappings here and there. regardless, I'll share the document, maybe it'll help someone.

>>79806351
I think i'll organize all the encounters people said into encounter tables.

>>79806364
also from the old threads? cause there be gold buried there, m'boy!

>Theres a forest that moves that no one knows the location of and there are several grim stories about (it moves.)

>>79806402
Uuuuuh i can't scour through all those threads... if you want to you could port the encounter ideas they had, but i can't go through all the crawler threads years back :\

>>79800381
>MY BIRDS! MY BIRDS!!
classic.
>>79806408
there is a lot in the pdf I posted here >>79806351 but I don't think I will put all of it in table form. I'd probably include it during session prep.

>>79807231
I will though. I'll compile tables today or tomorrow

>>79806351
Suggestion for an encounter
>You come across a number of crawlers, twisted into pieces and impaled unnaturally into the ground in a manner reminiscent of trees. As you pass the wrecks, you swear you can feel something watching you from their windows.

>>79783534
what do you think aboht adding a safety/risk check option to this?

a safety check would mean you use less dice, but ignore 1s. It's meant for something you are so proficient in, you are good enough to do it routinely. It might still fail, but never so spectacularly that you'd hurt yourself.
a risk check would be the opposite. You get extra dies for the roll, but if there is at least one 1, you fail it on top of taking Exhaustion.

This mechanic worked reeeally well in a german TTRPG I've played. It's always optional, but brings in the tickle of gambling, and especially in a tight situation, making that risk check is an awese feeling.

>>79811695
I like. Any systems that use it except your German TTRPG?

>>79811827
none that I know. if I remember correctly in Splittermond, regular rolls are 2d10+modifiers VS. a difficulty rating. rolling a 19 or 20 is a crit success and a 2 or 3 is a crit fail. a safety roll uses 4d10, taking lowest 2, but no crits exist, and risk rolls use 4d10, taking the highest, but any combination of two dice that would make a 2 or 3 overrides everything - even if the other two would make a crit success.

>>79773892
I feel like those tire chains might be a little too small to actually do anything

>>79788216
It's very player reliant but I'd also stress day to day character interaction. A scene about spicing up a monotonous drive about differing folk tales is good worldbuilding and can be seized on by the GM as a means of making the world feel more interconnected. You could even incentivise that kind of thing by making a point of including minor worldbuilding the players bring up.

>>79812595
that's why I included the questionnaire in the pdf I made on CC. so players already have contributed to the world and ideally have a base to invent some story on.

But you're right, maybe part of a classic rest could be conversation - so a mechanic reward for narrative interaction. We could think of a few light rules or a framework for this.

How about this:
>if you made someone laugh - remove 1 exhaustion
>if you found out something new about someone - remove 1 exhaustion
>if you practice your hobby, describe how you do it - remove 1 exhaustion

>>79778278
If a city is actually entombed in ice like that there's no real exploring it. The ice formation will distort the buildings so they'll collapse early in that process. You won't have a pristine city inside a glacier.

>>79813679
As an ongoing process and key element of gameplay. Metacurrencies really turn some people off but depending on the tone you go for it could be something like for every bad omen the GM sets up the players get an opportunity to "defensively" world build (the reverse might encourage players to stay silent and safe).

>>79813843
is it meta-currency? and in that regard, wouldn't any mechanically promoted roleplaying become meta-currency?
conversation could be just optional, additional ways of regenerating even more than you could by simply using the rest mechanics. giving incentive rather than forcing roleplay. I think if you want players to spend their idle time by immersing themselves in their characters, you have to either have players who are already way into that, or give them a goodie for it.

>>79813721
glacier ice forms not from water but from snow. and the forces inside will have broken the buildings eventually but not immediately, so there will be half collapsed and bent building suspended in the ice.

>>79811695
I really like the idea of scaling risk and reward. My original idea was just that because you're mostly staying in a (more or less) comfy crawler, you'd usually be restoring most of your exhaustion each night (up to a point). So staying within that level of exhaustion would be basically zero risk, and exceeding that is increasingly risky. But having something that's built into the dice rolls themselves is good - it's a little more intuitive, and the players can really FEEL when they're taking a risk.

I'm not sure what effect making some rolls 'non-exhausting' would have, though. Someone earlier worried that exhaustion would cause a death spiral - and that's exactly true, and kind of what I intended. That's kind of what freezing to death is (there's a short story, "To Build A Fire," that was on my mind coming up with it). It's not a very rapid spiral, only triggering on 1s on a d10, but having to weigh the 'threat' of exhaustion kind of puts the PCs in a survival frame of mind, knowing the environment has the ability to put them in serious trouble even without any kind of GM fiat.

So allowing 'safe' rolls shouldn't mean the players always have the option of backing away slowly. I think that end of 'safety-vs-risk' is more at place being about avoiding crit-fails. Those are another good source of sudden danger, kind of a different flavor of it from getting exhausted. We don't really have a defined Criticals rule yet, but putting risk-vs-reward in there is definitely a good idea.

>>79818103
Yeah, I was also the anon bringing up the death spiral. I agree that things should have the potential to get out of hand fast - it is the freezing, creepy, wild north after all. Guess the level of escalation can't really be gauged without doing some playtesting first.

The point of safety rolls is to simulate being so used to a certain task that you can do them rather safely, i.e. without hurting or exhausting yourself. Since it removes a die from your pool and thus diminishes your chances to succeed at the check, you'd only use it for skills where you feel confident to make the check regardless (because you have enough points between your attribute/skill to make a good pool even so). However, doing things safely is also doing things boringly, so you also lose the chance to have a critical success. Both 1s and 10s should get ignored imho. I'm not sure what rolling a 10 should do normally yet though.

One thing I'm having issues with is turning the 'gear cap' concept into a solid mechanic. I like the idea of it, but how do you define which gear caps what skill? Not every skill needs a tool. And what should be the caps anyway?
Let's say it's down to a single d10 if you don't have anything to repair that broken motor, even if your attributes/skills would give you a pool of 3d10. If you have a screwdriver, does it unlock all the d10s you need, or give you a new cap of 2d10?

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>>79813721
Could still be a cool possibility - maybe with local worm-like fauna tunneling through the glaciers and creating corridors the players can traverse in search for loot.
Imagine - sunlight dimly sifting through the cyan ice as the party creeps through the tunnels, doing their best to avoid alerting the residents. "Floating" wreckage or structures suspended in the ice that the players have to navigate through in order to get to their objective.

It could absolutely make for a really awesome encounter.

>>79818533
i think the cap is after the roll. in this example you would roll the 3d10 that your stats+skill would net you. without tools you would have no chance at fixing that engine. with a screwdriver you have a cap of 1. if any of those d10s are a success then you fix the engine, but since the number of successes equals potency and youre capped at 1, it probably takes you a lot longer than if you had a full toolkit that would have let you use more of your successful dice

i think youre right that some skills dont exactly need tools. maybe those can have a natural cap of 1 without tools. but that fancy hat could still be of use when trading and give you a bigger cap.

>>79820264
>local worm-like fauna tunneling through the glaciers and creating corridors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotheaded_Naked_Ice_Borer

>>79822163
hm, I'm not sure I totally grasp it yet. So you'd always have a cap of 1 if something doesnt need a tool? At that point, why not just always count only the highest rolled die? It might be easier to simply narrate what is and isn't possible... fixing an engine without any tools is simple not doable - no need for any dice mechanics. The best thing you can do is diagnose the problem and maybe do something that will give you a bit more time until it breaks before you fix it.

I really like the idea of gear having a clear value for skill checks, but I'm not sure we've found the best system for it yet... I'll keep thinking about this.

>>79820264
This sounds awesome, and very Mountains of Madness.

>>79825816
continued

how about this for gear:

Your Snowcrawler has a set of useful items: a prybar, a toolbox, the famous orange transparent chainsaw, ...
Each tool has its own durability/HP counter.
Before venturing out from your Crawler, you get to decide what to bring with you (equipping yourself for, say, exploring some ruins, is in my mind something that would be fun as a player, right?).
If that tool comes into action, you take another d10 but roll it seperately from the rest of your dice pool (you could also use one that is of another color, point is you have to know which is the 'tool die').
The tool gives you a bonus, rather than being mandatory for a task. You can still attempt a roll, and it's up to the GM to decide whether or not you'd absolutely need a tool to succeed in the end.
If the tool die rolls badly, it gets damaged and 'caps' not the dicepool but the *outcome*. for example:
>2d10 + 1d10 (toolbox) to fix a machine.
>rolled: 5, 8 + 2
>8 is technically a success. However, your capabilities are limited without tools, and the tool die rolled only a 2. So your outcome would be as if you hadn't had a toolbox at hand.
>'you fiddle around, but can't find the right tool for the job. eventually you grab something that looks right, but applying it just ends up sending sparks your way and slightly smolders your tool. The stench of melting plastic fills your nose as you fling the tool into the box, and decide that you'll need to retry another time. You did however find out that it was the doohickey that was flabbergasting the thingamajig, so you open the valve to keep it from overheating for a while longer.'

>>79825958
If the tool die succeeds, it opens up a range of better outcomes. in the example above, you'd simply fix the machine.
Outcomes can range from failure + damaged tool, success + damaged tool, just failure, to just success.
Depending on the situation, the GM may decide to let the tool do most of the work (even if your attribute/skill pool rolls badly, a prybar isn't that complicated to use and opens the door for you) or whether a certain expertise in using that tool is still necessary (you applied the bandage to stop the bleeding, but it will still need to be checked by a real medic later on in order to properly treat the wound).

Reagan looked through the binoculars once more, just to be sure.
"Aw, hell." He muttered to himself as he confirmed the hulking approaching ice crawler advancing on their position. He watched it's goliath feet circle up, hydraulics screaming so loud he could hear it from his own as the gargantuan behemoth lifted itself forwards.
"Paw! Paw, come topside! We got a crawler coming through!"
General Max "Ice Wall" Hopkins came up to the observation deck, dressed in regal blue Union robes, tinged white by frost. He grabbed the binoculars from Reagan and glared through them towards the unknown crawler.
"Dixie hicks... Confederacy shouldn't be doing nothing out here."
Reagan scratched his head. "Paw, how d'ya know they're confederacy?"
Hopkins assumed a commanding posture and narrowed his eyes at the walking giant. "Union territory, blessed by God as it is, is specifically suited for wheeling, but down south the lot use walkers to crush the snow heaps underfoot. And, if we get close enough, about every comm channel we have is going to be filled with the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Get to the command deck with me, and keep yourself scarce in the company of your father's friends."
Both father and son clambered to the command post, already ablaze with action as Union officers shuffled about under the watchful eye of a 13 starred American flag, one star for each Union allied crawler still operational.
Hopkins marched over to the main communications array, radar already having picked up the Confederate signature. He nodded to the radio operator, who gave him the mic.
"This is General Hopkins aboard Union crawler 'New York' to Confederate crawler, you are in violation of Union borders."
The air crackled to life.
"This is General Foster aboard Confederate crawler 'Texas', we are from-" The opposing general was quickly cut off.
"I don't care where the hell you're from, boy, you are in violation of treaty! You ought to have a damn good reason for marching through these parts.
1/2

>>79827097
"We are currently fleeing from a nasty avalanche some miles south, the ground's unstable over there. Just lookin for a place to stay the night."
Hopkins' knuckles flashed white as he gripped the radio. "Well, you ought to look somewhere else, because I will be damned if I let a Confederate crawler packed to the brim with potential threats onto Union territory! You listen, and you listen well, you are out of here by the hour or I swear by God that your crawler will be a new snowdune!"
The voice on the other end chuckled. "And I don't supposed all those weapons yer packin are going to do you much against what caused them avalanches?"
Hopkins faltered. "What?"
"Oh, now you'll hear me out?" announced the voice on the other end smugly. "Some old world metal giant done woke up, and seems real pissed at the current state of affairs. Every bullet you waste on us is one you won't have when that thing comes a-tumblin north."
Hopkins stared intensely out of the deck window. "Well, you still ain't going to be staying here."
"No reason not to be diplomatic about this, what do you say we both take this thing on, split the scrap 50-50?"
Hopkins smiled and checked his gold plated pocketwatch. "60-40 and you crawl on out of here alive, boy. Prep your guns, 20 minutes and we waltz our way south."
Hopkins put down the radio.
"Make ready for battle stations, and try to be discrete about the friendly fire. We move in 20."

>>79825816
>>79825958
>>79826013
Ah, so I think you guys understood the original idea: roll your Attribute+Skill, and then Equipment determines the max number of successes. Two (related) questions were

>1) what does that look like in play?
Part of idea was that (unlike most games) the default skill check represents an extended effort, roughly an hour of working (obviously different for different skills), and accomplishing tasks is a matter of accumulating enough successes. So number of successes per roll is really important, both because you get things done quicker, and in fewer rolls (less chance of exhaustion). Different skills might each work a little differently, but the emphasis should be extended tasks rather than binary success/failure.
For the example you gave, fixing a machine with inadequate tools, I would see it like so: "I pry off the access panel and get a look at the turbine. I've got a two in wits, two in mechanics, so 4d10, but I've only got my standard toolbox on me, so capped at 1 success. Because I'm trained in mechanics, I can tell it'll take 5 successes (GMs call, or scenario based), so about 5 hours work if all goes well. If there's nothing much going on, no pressure, I'll just roll it real quick and start hiking back. There's always a chance I'll roll poorly, or get exhausted and have to take another shot after a rest, but the rolls themselves can be resolved pretty quickly. But if there's weather coming in, or it's getting dark, etc, now I need to make some choices. And the GM keeps making these ominous encounter rolls..."
Each skill probably has it's own peculiarities - maybe a given breakdown has a "Successes required" and also a "parts required," and if those parts aren't on hand then you're SOL. But my thought was to make rolls less about "does it happen" and more about "what'll it cost you" - in time, exhaustion, limited supplies, etc. Uncertainty in those costs, and gauging that risk, is where the decisions come in.

>>79828019
(con't)
>2)what if the skill doesn't need a tool?
My thought was that everything does, at least in principle. I want to avoid things like "Perception" checks or "Knowledge" checks, where you either succeed and get to move the story forward, or you fail and get stuck. If the GM wants you to know something, he should just tell you, and if he wants it to be tricky it's better to explicitly give ambiguous information than to roll between giving the info or not. In the cases where the GM just needs a quick mechanical answer, either base it on their skill ("What's your Navigate? 3? Yeah, you'd know about how magnetic anomalies disrupt compasses") or roll a straight Attribute and keep all successes. But I was thinking of skills as things that inherently have an equipment associated with them.

Exception proves the rule, maybe: Survival. That's a tricky one. Maybe in this context, your equipment is a set of survival tools (knife, hatchet, rope, etc.). Or, taking a different approach, maybe it's a characteristic of the environment you're in: a desolate icefield might be a 1, a lush pine forest crisscrossed with babbling streams is a 5, etc. Just spitballing.

And none of this to say I don't like your ideas, or that my way is the only way forward. Just wanted to explain further so the thought process was clearer. (So much of mechanical design is based on assumptions! It's hard to put it all into words. But that's the job.)

>>79773892
>cozy
Why do manbabbies speak like this?

>>79828402
because it's nice to be cozy. whether manbabby or not

>>79828019
those replies were all just me.

I like the direction you're headed, where some things simply take a while and you either work with or skip time passing as tasks are completed. I think this works well with the sort of setting we're building, and the weather changing and resource managing aspects of the game. So I'd definitely want a framework like this in our game. Number of successes over an amount of time would probably work really well. I can imagine a crew being stuck somewhere in the wilderness, trying to prepare a shelter for the night while still hoping the mechanic can fix their Crawler in time. Or huddled around their scientist, as he attempts to hack into the mainframe of an abandoned reactor, nervously waiting and praying the nuclear mass under their feet will be deactivated before it becomes unstable.

So if I understand you correctly, you'd make it so that every skill has something of a basic equipment (standard toolbox in your example for mechanics, a pot for cooking, a first aid kit for medicine, ...) that would be needed to enable players to use a skill in the first place, and thus caps it at 1. Fair so far. But you'd need to define each item that raises the cap for each skill, at each level. What do you need to have mechanics at 2? Not only would this list be long, this template might not work for every skill, as you've noticed with Survival. And I'd try to avoid having completely different rules for every skill.

What we'd need is a streamlined ruleset for these types of tasks. Things can a) need tools, b) need time, c) need resources. What if only some, all, or none of these requirements apply?

>>79830012 (cont.)
I see your point regarding knowledge and perception, but I'm against just a straight attribute roll. That always bugged me in other systems. Someone who has high INT (or Brains, in this case) shouldn't just know everything. Besides, even a generally stupid person can have a lot of knowledge in a specific topic. That's why I included Know (x) as a skill, to reflect the difference between Know (Politics) and Know (Literature). Glancing at their skill level as a reference is one solution, but then how do you make Navigate 3 different than Navigate 4, for example? These differences should matter and be tied to a mechanic, not just a GM's feeling.

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>>79830012 (cont.)
Okay, how about this:

As a standard, all tasks are capped at 1. You only really need one success for things that don't take a long time anyway. Wanna sneak by that guard? Roll for Wits + Sneak, manage if there is a success, fail if there isn't, take Exhaustion for each 1. Easy.

Some skills need tools. Sneak doesn't. But what are you going to bandage that arm with? So there.
These skills need tools in order to be attempted. If you have the basics, you can do most things that only take a hot minute. Put a bandaid on. Bam, Medicine.

Now, sometimes shit will take a while. We can call these Complex Tasks for now. It's stuff like changing a tire, or taming a horse, or navigating the Snowcrawler through a fucking blizzard.
For these, you want as many successes per hour as possible. Maybe we have a little invisible progress bar the GM hides up his sleeve. How long until that wheel spins again? How patient is the horse until it kicks you in the nuts and runs off? At what point are you no longer a crew inside a vehicle, but frozen, canned meat?

For Complex Tasks, you'll have to spend time, and time means weather changes, waning sunlight, attracting attention, and consuming resources. All the things you don't want in the vast frozen wilderness.
If it's a skill that needs a tool, successes per hour are capped at 1, as long as you have that basic tool. If the skill doesn't need any tools, you are capped at 1 as long as only using your hands.
To get the cap up, you need advantages. An advantage can be a BETTER tool, a helpful mentor, assisting crewmembers, etc. Each of these instances raises your cap by 1, so you can overcome the challenge faster.
This way, we don't need to define each level of gear.

Now, what if you aren't attempting a Complex Task, but you do have a helpful tool, does it work the other way too and give you an advantage if you attempt to do something fast?

>>79830012
That sounds like you get what I intended, yeah. I think survival and exploration are the key themes, moreso than fast action. In terms of what equipment is needed for each level, I think the limiting factor should be weight/unwieldiness and rarity/fragility moreso than cost/quality. Equipment at 1 is portable and convenient, about what you can carry on your person (a toolbox or tool belt, backpack radio transmitter, a few basic survival tools, a revolver, etc.) Level 2 should be portable with some effort(a sled packed with tools), but mostly lives in the crawler. Higher levels are a greater struggle - if you absolutely need to bring it along, it's split up between several people. They might also be delicate or hard to replace. But it should never be a build-hunt - "I need to buy a +3 toolbox so I can be the bestest mechanic!" is the wrong feeling. "It'll be easier if we drive the crawler up here so I can use my workshop, but that'd risk it getting stuck. I'll make do with hand tools" is more what I'd be aiming for.

You're right that this makes a lot of specific rules for specific skills. I think that's okay as long as individual characters (and thus players) only need to really understand their own specialties. The same way that fantasy has tons of spell rules, but only the wizard really needs to know them, or only the hacker needs to know the hacking rules in a cyberpunk game. We should still try to be concise and consistent (same general framework for each), but I think if you can get each specific skill's rules down on a half-sheet or so, that's fine. I think the game is kind of about 'skill specialists', so depth in the skills is taking some of the space from combat rules.

>>79830982
Opps, crossed posts with you. (Are you on European time?)

I generally like your system here. It actually kind of fits what I was saying about mostly wedding around with only level-1 gear. I still like having *some* defined levels of gear, but having other things modify it makes sense and works well.

The GMs 'progress bar' might be invisible, but it's also sometimes fun if it isn't. For example, some of the threats (weather, darkness, random encounters) mesh in well with the hexcrawl format, and might just be the normal rolls that go with that. If the GM wants to add their own special stuff, that's great too. A mix of "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" is fun.

>>79799324
This post needs more attention,though I suspect that might be why this idea came up in the first place

>>79828402
>manbabbies
nice buzzword retard

>>79831169
maybe at the point where you have a full workshop at your disposal you can completely uncap the skill and just test your abilities to your heart's content. It's going to be a rare exception anyway, I presume.

After you reiterating it, I'm beginning to kinda like the idea of having skills with their very specific own ruleset actually. It would be cool if players who don't know a skill would look on in complety puzzlement while the expert just waves them away with a 'I'm busy' attitude. But maybe that's too ambitious for now.

>>79831346
Yes, I am. Austria to be exact. Guten Abend.

What would be gear that you'd define?

For progress, I was thinking about having some physical trackers on the table. Maybe the storekeeper of the Crawler could have stuff like rations, fuel, ammo in front of him at all times, while you could bring up temporary trackers for timed events, expert jobs that take a while, or even a chase scene.

>>79815402
Stop and think for a minute. That would only be the case if the ice formed immediately. It won't, it will form at ground level and then grow upwards. It only takes minor distortion at ground level to collapse the floors above.

>>79833210
I really like the idea of the mechanic player and the captain getting in a "you said it would be fixed by tonight" argument. And it gives individual players that sense of having their own wheelhouse.

I would define exactly one item of gear for each skill (with different levels within it). Maybe a few extra for environmental effects (flashlights, ECW coats, etc), but if gear is tied directly to skills, you know exactly what you need.

The reason I wouldn't want to uncap entirely is that the crawler itself is an important piece of equipment, and different crawlers might be designed with different parameters in mind. Though that would be a useful simplification if we feel like things are getting too complicated.

I love the idea of having little subsystem handouts on the table for each major station. It distributes the bookkeeping (which could otherwise get overwhelming) and gives the feel of sitting at a particular station in the crawler. Here are some station ideas:
>Driver
>Navigator (basically the map)
>Sensors (tracks radio communications and weather conditions)
>Quartermaster (tracks food/fuel/Comfort level)
>Engineer (tracking subsystem breakdowns/repairs)

>>79833350
anon no, that's not how that works. glacier ice forms from compressed snow, meaning it decreases in volume. not increases like when you freeze water

>>79818533
I love me a good death spiral. It makes sense that people don’t run at 100% until they hit 0 hp. But I do understand that pinging characters stats will add up. If we are afraid the this might be too slippery a slope we could add a bit of a cushion in the form of stamina or spirit. Instead of a large pool of hp we can have a small pool that regenerates with cozy moments and then start hitting stats after that. The stat loss would be more difficult to recover than stamina (maybe you have to make back to a town or major station so you can recover?)

>>79803256
Depending on how smooth the ground is and how fast you want them to go, ground effect vehicles like the caspian sea monster could work.
Alternatively, modern day hovercraft could also work.

What's Christmas like in this setting? Is Santa real? Do people even remember what Christmas is, or is everyone mystified by the fat guy in red who discreetly passes you a bottle of whiskey or a new pair of socks every year?

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>>79836783
You board up your windows and block your chimney. It's an old tradition, and many call it a needless superstition. But those who don't sometimes hear noises on the longest night of winter, are awakened from their slumber by a hot sickenly sweet breath, or find disturbing wooden carvings in their homes come morning.

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>>79803256
>aerosani
As cool as they are, i don't think they would work well. You can basically not traverse anything that isn't snow, and it makes very little sense to have an indirect method of propulsion when you have direct contact with the ground anyway, it's only good if you have an exceptionally light vehicle, that MUST drive on top of the snow.
BUT if that's the case and you can operate that without the wind blowing you away, you can instead literally build a carrier drone.

>auger drive
Very cool. But only limited usefulness far up north or in the winter season further south, as some stones sticking out of the ground can immobilize it and destroy the thread. It's also excruciatingly slow.
Because of the large surface area and lightness of the drive however it's great for snow and water. A recent project apparently used it as a backup drive for conventional tracks. Same as an aerosan except for heavy vehicles.

>wheels
Are great but difficult to use. Inflatable? Then their maintenance will be difficult and they would be very hard in the cold. So they would either wear out quickly, because of being flexed while cold, or would have to be pumped up fully, which would make punctures and getting no grip a lot more likely.
Not inflatable? Then their maintenance is inhumanely difficult, and they are heavy.

>tracks
Only work on very heavy vehicles, because they themselves are incredibly unbearably heavy. This is what most snowcrawlers are, though, and they do work on pretty much all terrains, are rugged, and somewhat easy to maintain.

>ground effect
Only good for unobstructed sea ice, at which point you could use aerosans or planes.

>hovercraft
For lighter things it isn't much more complicated than an aerosan, provides a smoother ride, is less easily damaged, works over all surfaces, and can carry heavy loads.... though it does require a beefy motor and the skirt in the cold would wear down quickly.

>There's also this thing UHLAC
http://youtu.be/9kbZKMES28Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJClB1OHhwo
Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connector

It was an awesome concept but at the moment it just doesn't have much benefits over a regular hovercraft, since no one tries to use those in heavily subzero temperatures.

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>>79803256
SKIS

>>79838062
orange transparent skis

also that's an aerosan

>>79838062
>>79836271
>>79835858
So, what exactly is the orange transparent tech in this setting? I always assumed it was some sort of hard light growing up since it couldn't overheat or freeze up.

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>>79836783
>One of the arcologies is called the Workshop and is inhabited primarily by pointy-eared midgets. Probably inbreeding.

>>79839480
Isn't santa one of the most powerful beings in the DC universe and specifically visits Apokolips on christmas specifically to give Darkseid a lump of coal and then leaves?

>>79836783
why are people so obsessed with inserting christmas into media? it's a shit holiday.

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>>79838062
GEVs would be pretty cool - could be well suited for either long-distance high speed freight along known trade routes. It'd be a nice explanation for things like faster deliveries / inventory "updates" in more distant outposts, since ekranoplans can carry a lot more cargo than normal aircraft.
The smaller ones could also work as patrol or exploration vehicles alongside conventional crawler "motherships", kind of like how motorboats might work with a standard ship. Same for aerosani.
Maybe there's even aerosani/ekranoplan pirates that operate out out of hidden bases or captured crawlers.

>>79773892
okay neat this is one of my most favorite settings and by far the comfiest.

Will be following.

Maybe dead of winter style game where its crawler and you pick tiles and buildings to randomly explore as you get to them ala mansions of madness

>>79842956
It's.... a pretty cool holiday. It's pretty much the best holiday.

Also it's a winter thing and we're making a winter themed setting.

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>>79807248
how's this coming along dear realismanon? I'd be curious to see what you made.

I was also thinking further about the hexcrawl idea.
So as anon defined before we have a map full of hexes, each with about 10 miles or 15 kilometres in scale. These are large enough that you'd only really need to define their terrain I think: rough, flat, forest, mountain, city, water if there is open water, whatever.

Then you'd cut one of these bigger hexes into smaller ones, let's say 19 hexes to make it somewhat granular, but not too autistic.
I'd say on each of these hexes could be one thing. Could be a building that's still intact and salvageable, could be a geothermal spring, could be fuck-all except for lots of ice and open sky. This way, players can draw their own map and it doesn't get too full of shit, besides you have the potential to find something interesting on every hex you explore.

What players find should be at least semi-random, and rolled from a long list of possible places and events, with about 60-70% of finding nothing interesting in this vast, empty landscape (otherwise you'd have the Skyrim effect of never reaching your destination because you found too many distractions on the way).

If players just travel through one of these bigger hexes, it is assumed they take the shortest path through its sub-hexes, which would mean 5 chances to find something per big hex (let's call 'em World Hexes and Subhexes for clarification). If that's too much granularity, one could go down to 7 Subhexes per World Hex, with a straight line through being 3 Subhexes long.

So that would be a list anons could add to here, if they want to.
>patch of black ice
>geothermal wellspring
>geyser
>deep crevasse
>cave
>carcass
>broken vehicle
>travellers
>unmapped settlement
>tracks/traces
>abandoned building
>fenced off area
>old military complex
>wildlife

>>79844127
not too well lacked the energy.

>>79844319
that's alright. It's quite a volume of plot hooks already.

besides random encounters, how do we want to design salvage? also random rolls from a list depending on what terrain they are in?

I'd like it if there was a way for players to bend their luck a bit. For example, by using a certain skill akin to Investigation, Survival, Navigation or Orienation, they should gain a higher chance to find salvage they are specifically looking for - while still having a randomizer and the possibility to have bad luck.

for example:
>ah shit guys, I dropped my toolbox while we were being chased by that mammoth. I need a new one incase something breaks, but we're weeks from the nearest town with a general store.
>maybe we can look through this 'ruined city' World Hex over there and find an abandoned workshop or something.
>I'll roll Investigation to look for signs among the ruined streets. Perhaps there is a workshop noted on this old map we have?
>I rolled terribly. Dang, any trace of the workshop that used to be here has been swallowed by the ice. Guess we have to keep looking somewhere else or hope to stumble upon a toolbox by chance.
>I rolled well. Cool, there seems to be a workshop in the area, and it's not completely engulfed yet.
>Ah, we made it inside and found some tools, but not what we need. Suppose it's been looted before.
>Thank god, a toolbox! It's a bit rusty, but I can work with this!

>>79835662
there's a boardgame called Captain Sonar, which is basically Battleships, but for two teams of 3-4 players each.
Each player takes a role and either
a) exclaims where to go on a map (NESW)
b) tracks the other team's movements to figure out their position
c) 'readies' a system for use. can be torpedoes, radar, etc.
d) tracks what breaks (depending on which systems are used) and tries to 'fix' it (iirc going certain directions unlocks fixes or certain directions are blocked... don't know anymore)

it's a pretty cool game. Too stressful for this, but potentially a good resource for inspiration.

Each skill mechanic/minigame should not be difficult. Like 'shapes into holes' difficult. But still somewhat obscure to the observer.

>>79836399
was thinking that maybe not each Exhaustion point would reduce the dice pool, but maybe there's a health bar of sorts, that would give -1d10 every 3-5 points of Exhaustion? That way it's a bit slower perhaps.

Or we split it into physical/mental Exhaustion.

Or Exhaustion doesn't remove dice, but rather gives the player a condition like 'sick', 'paranoid' etc...

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>>79845988
>radar
meant sonar of course.

pic related are what player a), c) and d) have in front of them, respectively. Each time a) declares a direction, d) has to cross off a system in the column for that direction, breaking c)'s systems more and more. If a system is broken, it cannot be used anymore. But d) can repair a string of symbols (the ones connected on their sheet by colored lines) if they cross off all symbols in one 'string'.

It's a bit random, but makes for cool interactions.

Another question:
If a player has exactly 0 dice in their pool for whatever reason (0 in both attribute and skill for example) - what happens then? Is there some sort of 'incompetence roll'?

>>79844471
I think there should be a rudimentary economic system. Since the entire fee of the setting is basically cozy trucking and RV adventure camping and everything includes logistics, the salvage and such should be rolling for a salvage type, and then rolling for a value.

Rolling on tables for stuff is the easiest way to make a system simple to play but produce complex results.

I personally don't like luck bending and other meta feats. The things following organically is often simpler and better for immersion.
Instead of "there was no toolbox inside" it could be "we found none".

This brings an interesting mechanic to mind.
One could have a hard and a soft event rolls.
Essentially hit and damage dice but for non combat.
You roll once depending on the tile you are on, and then if it's a success, then you roll based on the skills of the people involved. The latter would be repeatable with time.

So:
>oh let's look for a workshop here in this sea-ice plain.
>okay 1d100 success on 100.... wow you actually rolled 100 you find a tipped over snowcrawler that has been used as a mobile workshop, inhabitants gone.
>cool i look around for the tools i need
>okay 1d10 success on 5 and above.... nat1 you bang your head on the door and cant look for tools until your bleeding head is bandaged for 4 hours.

Alternatively

>i want to look for a workshop in this city area
>okay 1d10 success on 7 .... 4 no luck, it seems to be a financial district, no repairshops in sight.
>but i have a great investigation skill!
>well then i guess you could try looking in the janitorial closets and parking garages of the buildings, but you can't materialize a workshop from thin air

>>79836271
That's from Lego, correct ?

>>79803771
Just bake those patented /k/ brownies, then you don't have to bother re-cycling them.

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So no-one's posted this yet, then?
Okay; I'll do it.

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>>79848877
For those who don't know; Stand Still Stay Silent is a scandinavian post-apocalyptic comic about some people who are recruited to go out into the post-apocalyptic wilderness to recover valuable books and such.

>>79848877
Oh, I've seen this before. Think it was posted in one of the previous threads, too.
Books and literature being a valuable commodity certainly could have interesting implications.

I want to make a character in this system, how would I do that?

>>79852571
At present? Austriabro posted a rough-draft character sheet, but we weren't totally settled on any specific parts. Maybe a better question to ask is: what attributes and skills do you think should be important?
My inclination is to keep the number low I expressed a preference for 4 attributes, maybe 12 skills; Ausbro had 5 attributes and I forget how many skills on his draft. Other than that I don't think anyone has weighed in.

>>79854427
How is HP handled? I think a basic 4 of strength, vitality, dexterity, insight are fine, and if you want 5 split insight into street smart (cha/wis) and book smart (int/wis) And are skills tied directly to attributes?

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>>79849126
Here's the relevant comic page about books being valuable.
This is where one of the expedition's investors/organisers gets the idea for the whole thing.

>>79854796
Id wager that vitality isnt really needed. Then that way you have a even split between body and mind stats.

>>79836399
>>79845988
Then either you can have split mental/physical exhaustion or two health pools that you have to balance (Vitality-physical and Stability-mental?)

>>79855543
I think your second response is better; split Vitality into two extra stats to measure physical and mental well-being. Dropping vitality is utterly silly, in a system based on survival in a harsh environment the ability to, well, survive and weather is extremely important. Splitting it not only keeps an even balance, but the stability angle could go well with the various proposed supernatural things, extreme stress, and prolonged isolation. Usually people just manage HP from a pretty simple angle, but managing mental stability may require players to actually engage with the comfy aspect of the setting- make your friends laugh, tell morale-boosting stories, work together as a team, relax in a warm crawler.

>>79856402
Two physical stats = Strength and Dexterity
sum of those two = Vitality, degraded by Exhaustion

Two mental stats = Wits and Empathy
sum of those two = Stability, degraded by Stress

>>79841146
Yes. He slips past Apokoliptian defenses every year

>>79856657
I would call it Might + Finesse = Vigour, degraded by Exhaustion

>>79857779
Stats and subskill ideas:

Might: Physical strength and ability
>Brawl
>Endure
>another thing

Finesse: Physical coordination, balance, prowess, poise, precision
>Shoot
>Hide
>Drive

Wits: Knowledge and application
>Navigation
>Engineering
>Medicine
>Cook

Empathy: Social skills
>Barter
>Lie
>Persuade

How large are our dice pools looking like?

>>79858034
I estimate anywhere from 1-10 dice per roll works, with something like "carry a heavy load along a clear, flat trail" being 1 success and "pilot a nearly-broken snowcrawler through a blizzard over splitting ice floes while trying to stay awake for 48 hours after getting shot twice in the ankle without first aid" being ten successes.
Most rolls will be around 1-3 successes needed though, and players will probably have 2-5 for each stat starting off, with only the most skilled experts having 10.
I do think players should be able to combine their pools for most tasks to emphasize teamwork and camaraderie.

>>79848935
Sigrun best girl.

>>79859395
What about teammates rolling half their pool and adding any success to the successes of the main guy? I much prefer it to the main guy receiving extra dice

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>>79844127
I've checked out your idea of the hexes, but i think those things should be encounters not actual hexes. As in the hex should only be stuff that influences the environment and navigation difficulty, not just something to interact with or something that only changes the feel.

Like
>sea ice field
>sea ice pressure ridges
>old world settlement under glacier
>snowed in city
>snowed in town
>safe route / old highway / old railway
>taiga
>forest
>snow field
>snow hills
>mountain
>impassable cliffs
>thin ice on water

Anything else?

>>79855229
Other than just an avenue of profit for players, could book / knowledge recovery be worked into the progression system as well? Either just as a means for player characters to boost mental stats and skill checks, or maybe as a background improvement to the facilities and services of settlements they frequent.

I'm not too good with game design, but something like them finding rare books on local terrain could be read by a character to improve the Navigation subskill or sold to a settlement to improve their services (ie. goods or repairs being cheaper due to other crawlers having an easier time supplying the area).

If you wanted to make it more of a player choice, you could also rule that deciding to absorb the information from the book first makes it unavailable for sale until X amount of time has passed - either ingame, or maybe in terms of sessions. It'd present players with the question of whether to sell the book now for immediate monetary benefit and local improvements, or to study the book first for more long-term character gains that will accompany the crawler into other regions.

>>79857951
Maybe a comfort skill under empathy, for dealing with and helping others deal with fear during spooky encounters.

>>79865192
Being able to empathize with your crew would also go a long way to keep from driving each other crazy due to long times in an enclosed space.

Interesting stuff anons! Will look through it a bit later!

>>79865172
I can see old engine repair manuals give good bonuses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welteislehre
Even before the ice came that cold mirror reflected humanity in otherworldly ways. Great men frustrated by the present's inability to prolong their life were said to be obsessed with achieving the next best thing: flinging themselves into the future to benefit from the toil of their descendants. The complexities of stress-activating cell repair processes and anticipating probably cognitive damage led to a caste of charismatic health gurus who in time delved deeper into pseudoscience to satisfy their client-acolytes' visions of unperishing crystal. It is said that vaults across the frostlands are dug to bury the scions of cryogen cults where according to scripture they lie not dead but dreaming. That working freezers might hold magnates from the old world is a disturbing thought for what would they do on finding their descendants so lacking but flee further into the future using technology now desperately needed elsewhere.

>>79848877
>>79848935
Where is the shitter?

Bump!

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>>79869026
Dunno, but here's where it all goes irl.

>>79773892
I am unreasonably pissed off by the size of those front windows.

>>79862884
fair enough. I'd still probably reduce it to one encounter chance per hex, at least in one day.
how about buildings? are they encounters or terrain? if a subhex is 2-3 miles (3-5 kilometers), they could be both.
Alternatively, one could define 3 levels of building density: 1 (scattered structures), 2 (buncha buildings), 3 (city)

>>79847142
> personally don't like luck bending and other meta feats
It's not really meta at all though. They roll well, they find what they're looking for. They roll badly, they don't. It's how most RPGs handle it.
It's only bend your luck in the sense that they can use certain skills to specifically search for something instead of all salvage being utterly random. And I think it just makes logical sense - if you're practiced in repairing machines, you can fix an engine and if you're practiced in investigating or scavenging, you know where to look for stuff you need.

>oh let's look for a workshop here in this sea-ice plain.
I wouldn't allow them to find a workshop in any kind of area. As a GM I would roll to see what even is around them first (generating the hexes and what 'spawns' on them if you will) using this list >>79844127 which would be extended. Basically defining the tipped over snowcrawler from your example first. Then, if it's a *reasonable* place to look, I'd let them search for what they need.

>okay 1d10 success on 5 and above.... nat1 you bang your head on the door and cant look for tools until your bleeding head is bandaged for 4 hours.
This seems like a stupid outcome and wouldn't make much sense to me desu.
As a player, I'd be annoyed at that, rather than immersed.
First: I'd let players use investigation to find places where there could be loot, not the loot within the places. That should be randomly rolled from a list defined by the place they're looking in.
>Instead of "there was no toolbox inside" it could be "we found none".
This way you could fail at finding a thing, and just keep looking at the same place until you roll well enough to do so. That seems a bit shit honestly.

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>>79847142

>i want to look for a workshop in this city area
>okay 1d10 success on 7 .... 4 no luck, it seems to be a financial district, no repairshops in sight.
>but i have a great investigation skill!
>well then i guess you could try looking in the janitorial closets and parking garages of the buildings, but you can't materialize a workshop from thin air
this, exactly.

>>79854427
>Austriabro
pic related

>>79857951
I like where you guys ended up here.

My initial thought for having only Physique as a combination of Dex/Fin and Str was that it's not a heroic game where it's important whether someone is good at acrobatics and fencing, or weight lifting and hammer swinging (all of those should have been Strength anyway, desu).

That's why, rather than catching things that require hand-eye coordination and precision in Dex, I let them fall under the more mental Wits.

Another thing I never liked was that characters with high Int always seem to be able to know everything. Just because you're a wizard or something doesn't mean you understand politics, chess, and literature.
Hence I split the mental skills in 3: Brain, Wits, and Psyche, to give players more possibilities to decide what kind of problem solver their character is.

Finally, Charm is simply Charisma with the exception that it doesn't include Intimidation (which never should've been Cha anyway). It can also - quite simply - be a hotness stat. Depending on your Charm, people immediately take more of a liking to you.

I really like the idea of having a 2-2 split between mental and physical though, and having a combination of each set define your two "exhaustion bars".

I do think Exhaustion and HP should be somewhat different though. First, every person should have the same HP, because no matter how swole you are, a bullet to the groin will hurt you just as much as it will the skinny nerdy kid.
Second, even though Exhaution will eventually kill you, it shouldn't have the same effect as being punched in the face. It should happen gradually, and give you negative effects along the way.

>>79881090 (cont.)
>>79857951
after reading through your exchange I'm inclined to agree with Finesse though. It felt weird placing skills like Sneak and Aim with Wits or Physique.

I suppose things like Perception shouldn't be attribute based, but either a straight d10 for everyone, or GM decides what anyone notices. So there's less and less reasons to leave Wits and Brain seperate.

Not so sure about Empathy yet though. It might be too powerful to basically have the equivalent of Cha and Wis in one attribute, especially if things like mental exhaustion, anomalies and psionics come into play later, which would likely work with this stat a lot.

>>79859395
I never thought about quite so many dice. In my mind, 4d10 was already a pretty large pool.
I'd try to keep that number down and maybe only require 1 success for any given task, unless it's a matter of how many successes per hour are needed to reduce the time of a Complex Task.

>>79880504
The latter options seems cool that's what i was trying to do too in the list of hexes.

As for buildings they should have a chance to be present. Not as encounters but as a randomly appearing. So if someone asks if there's a butchershop, you roll a die to see if there is one depending on the hex

How do we handle time?
There's a few factors to make time a resource players think twice about throwing away:
>weather changes
>day/night cycle
>drawing attention in the form of random (dangerous) encounters
>using up other resources like food/fuel

Should there be a chance once every hour for a random encounter? Then we'd need a long list of encounters, preferably ranging from good ones to dangerous ones.

We need a system to create semi-realistic weather patterns. Probably also a random table, but with 'steps' between each? So you can't go from blizzard to sunshine in the course of one hour (and then back to blizzard).

How does the night factor in? Is everything simply more dangerous? I guess that could work. Weather sucks more, encounters are automatically bumped up to a higher threat level?

>>79880789
What spawns should be different from the hexes though. Remember the base hex type thing just came up because an anon suggested terrain types to deal with navigation and movement difficulty.
>find places where there could be loot
but that's exactly what their investigation stuff wouldn't help in.
Like if you are on a city hex and its a financial district, you won't find a mom and pop's plumbing business in there no matter your inverstigation skill.
Read through the mechanism i proposed.

You need to independently have locations and then if it's a place that could reasonably have something, THEN you can try to actually look for where the things may be hidden.

>and just keep looking at the same place until you roll well enough to do so.
Yes that's precisely the point.
A pristine workshop would have tools somewhere.
It's just that maybe you can't find the hidden locker where they keep it.
If something can be expected to reasonably exist somewhere, the idea that it just isn't there because you are too dumb to find it is nonsense and unimmersive.

Like just because i am deaf and blind and thus can't find my lost dog, doesn't mean that my lost dog isn't in this building.
And given enough time i should be able to stumble upon it.

The way presented above with "there is no toolbox" depending on someone's skill is precisely the meta bullshit that's immersion killing.
There is one objective universe that does not depend on who is looking at it.
This is the absolute basis of immersion, and the absolute minimum you need to have for the "cold and uncaring ice wastes" feel.

>>79883205
I've also detailed this previously, addressing every single one of the things you mentioned.

There should be a random event each time half a day passes or a hex is traversed, depending on the hex the people end up in.
If it's a settlement it would have different encounters than an icefield.
If it's a mountain, the breakdown events are more likely than in a flat snowed over road.
And similarly for weather.


So to repeat myself:

You could roll dice each time you cross a hex or 12 hours pass.
First roll determines event type. Weather change, encounter, breakdown, nothing.
If you roll weather change, you roll to determine a change to precipitation, wind, fog, temperature, or pick these from a table.
If you roll encounter, you pick the encounter table appropriate for the type of hex you're on, picking one if there's multiple things at the same time.
If you get a breakdown, you roll to see which system is affected, and how badly it is affected, the latter depending on the harshness modifier of the hex and the weather.
If you roll nothing, you roll a 1d10 and if you hit 10 you get a paranormal event.

This is good stuff anon, keep it going

>>79884039
sounds good! sorry, that bit must've gotten buried somewhere. At least I didn't have it in mind anymore.

what about day/night? I figure night should be treacherous. If it's just a regular encounter I suppose it would be enough to make the danger harder to spot, or you'd need to set up some light and basic safety parameter before stopping for repairs etc. Maybe the paranormal chance is higher?

>>79884426
I honestly have no idea for that yet. Can you come up with how to involve the night in this?

>>79883898
so you'd define the districts of a city? that sounds hella annoying to me. Do you roll on that? What if the entire city ends up being a financial district?

Whether it's realistic or not, it's a bit shit gameplay to keep repeating the same checks until you make them. It's better to fail and move on imho.
Lots of places would be looted, inaccessible or the items ruined from the cold/rust/what have you.

>Like just because i am deaf and blind and thus can't find my lost dog, doesn't mean that my lost dog isn't in this building.
that's a terrible analogy anon.

>>79884458
sure, when I find the time. Prolly not today or tomorrow though

>>79884568
The game world shouldn't be influenced by the mere ability of who perceives it.

It's entirely reasonable to be able to repeatedly check things. Not just in looting but in other things as well. Sometimes there isn't anything to find and that should be a hard thing, but if there is something to find, then you shouldn't have to give up because you looked once and didn't find it.

It's the same as in dnd, that a checking for traps shouldn't be "there are no traps" just "you see no traps"

>>79884605
maybe, but if you failed to find traps in DnD, you also shouldn't be able to constantly re-check for traps. You should take your fail, and run into those fuckint traps.

>>79884680
>you also shouldn't be able to constantly re-check for traps
I mean... that's just literally not realistic.

You can literally take 10 and take 20 on certain tasks if you have unlimited time.

And we are working on making time a limited resource here so you'd have to balance whether or not you can try for the fifth time to repair the transmission against your dwindling supplies.

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Here's a rough sketch of what i meant by harshness.
Things could have a harshness rating. For example your snowsuit could be good against 12 cold protection but only 5 weather protection because it's the inuit type with leather on the outside that would get wet.
Or your crawler could be protected against the heaviest icehurricanes at a lvl100 weather protection, but be unable to navigate the dense and wreckage littered streets of a snowed in city at terrain resistence 11, but on the other hand it might also protect you even if the temperatures fall below -100°C

And driving over an impassable cliff would be impossible without specialized gear and most likely result in you being absolutely wrecked.

In each category you'd subtract your vehicles limit from the current condition and what remains would be the stress your vehicle experiences in terms of damages and such.
So if a vehicle has 20/14/20, and is driving over a hex with -80°C, in a taiga, with some rainfall, then the latter two categories are fine, but you'd be left with 32-20=12 stress from too cold temperature.
I've tried to make it so that roughly one point of resistance in either category is worth the same.
If you have any improvement suggestions or ideas for new elements, or a new category please tell!

>>79780635
Bacon and many other meats are designed for long-term storage, fresh steak would be a luxury yes, but bacon and jerky (and anything smoked, salted, dried) and of course sousages should be fairly available, especially if the captain of your crawler knows what he's doing and treats his men whenever he can.
Hell, even stuff like "canned steak bites" could be a thing, if, say, a meat-farming settlement wanted to sell the little bits and pieces of low grade beef they are left with after meticulously cutting up the animal. It would definitely taste like shit, but most people would buy it regardless, just to say that they eat steak sometimes.

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>>79884875
A regular car for example would be for example 3/5/7
Any colder than -15 and your motor won't start, any harsher terrain than a snowed over road and you would get stuck, and a true blizzard might blow you off the road.
A motorized ski would be 10/15/6. You'rre be able to operate it close to -40, you could easily get it over ice pressure ridges, but avoiding the pitfalls of glaciers and getting over difficult mountainous terrain might be too tall an order, while even a normal thunderstorm would leave you with difficulty navigating.
A drone would be around 8/200/5, because it would require its batteries to not freeze, it could easily go over any terrain, but more than light rain would make it unable to operate


>>79884978
>long term storage.
Well yeah but... who would sell it?
The settlements that actually have such a large agrarian surplus that they can afford to keep pigs would definitely not waste those precious few animals on shipping it off to some ungrateful outsiders.
It would be rare like caviar and wagyu steak today. Delicacies that have cheaper variants, but not everyone tastes them during their life unless they seek it out.

>>79869026
About twenty paces away from wherever you stop for the night.

>>79885133
Now THAT is the epitome of uncomfy.


Imagine having to get out of your bed in the middle of the night, put on your snowsuit boots, go through the airlock so the rest don't freeze to death, then grabbing a flashlight and walking around outside in the pitch black surrounded by trees, getting away from your safe haven, having to strip down so you freeze half to death, then try to maneuver in a way so you don't shit over your own clothes, trying desperately to get it over with as ice starts to form on your nipples, and then being unable to wipe as the rest is already frozen to your ass, so you just put a toilet paper piece there and oull your clothes back on, hobble back inside, and try to strip down to wipe again in there and then throw the toilet paper pieces in the trash, the noise already having woken up literally everyone else.

Jesus fucking christ.

Also the washroom is opposite the entrance.>>79869026

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>>79841146
>>79857711

>>79884739
>that's just literally not realistic
Oh, god, you're a dense insufferable fuck.
A mechanic isn't going to magically fix the engine if he keeps trying six times: if his knowledge and skill failed the first time, repetition won't do it for you.
Now, he can decide to rush or to take more time; if he rushes and fails, then he can take more time and try again - but that's it.
None of this 'repeat until you succeed' bullshit - it's exactly like your retarded idea of no character deaths.....

>>79885347
and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we call him realismanon.

>>79773892
>>What are we working on?
"we", I don't know this "we".
>+Setting details: What do we want? What don't we want?
I'm kinda iffy on the post apoc, I've been trying to make a cross between flatearth/infiniteplane and space station 13. The benefit of an apoc setting is that you can use a familiar environment (earth) but throwing in mutants and even mysticism (fallout). The issue with the flat infinite plane earth is that its pretty much string theory multiverse but on the ice sheet... like, what threat will the players face... what if the players want to stop by one of these worlds... It's kinda hard to hash out, even though I like the concept.
>+Core Mechanics: What should the game itself play like?
Nightshift x SS13 = You use skill checks to maintain your snowcrawler, with man hours on tasks determining initiative and the passing of time. It forces the characters into difficult positions where they have to juggle tasks and random encounters.
>+Hexcrawl Details: Terrain types? Weather effects? Random encounters?
Yes

>>79773892
Damn I wanna make a video game about this

>>79781239
wheres there engine for this crawler?

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>>79889437
Anon ffs most systems have repetition or 'take20' stuff in them.

>>79891588
It's distributed under the floor and in the front.

Here's a view of the transmission box from inside the cabin.

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>>79894112
>>79891588
The entire concept was designed to be a closed system like a ship, so you could repair the engine while inside, not having to go out in the cold.

This had one unintended consequence: the seals were not great, and exhaust gases and soot kept constantly coming into the cabin, making the atmosphere there awful.
The next generation of the kharkovchankas therefore put the engine and driver compartment out in the front again, negating the benefit of easy repairs and no need to suit up every day.

>>79857779
love might and finesse. not totally sold on vigour just yet but those are mere semantics.

>>79857951
Im almost tempted to have skills be write in. like you have up to 4 slots per stat and you can assign a single word skill per slot. otherwise this is a decent list.

>>79859395
>>79881176
Have to agree that i also accounted for smaller dice pool. somewhere between 2d10 and 6d10. In some difficult situations those could even be penalized 1 or 2 die because something is either difficult, dangerous or both.

So character-wise we can do 7 points among the 4 main stats, with none being allowed to be over 3. I want to say you need at least 1 in each. And perhaps 10-12 points to allocate among the skills (also capped at 3d10) so a character can look like..

John is bookish engineer with dexterous hands.
Stats
>Might= 1
>Finesse= 2
>Vigour= M+F= 3

>Wits= 3
>Empathy= 1
>Stability= W+E= 4

Skills (if we use preset list)
Shoot-2
Drive-2
Enginerring-3
Cook-1
Barter-2

So Vigour and Stability are your primary "health bars" but i think they could also work as resistance stats or something akin to saving throws. When something is actively trying to hurt you (either physically or psychologically) you roll to resist and your successes cancel out damage. (This would be along with the small chance of gaining exhaustion/stress by rolling very badly in skill checks too)

This would mean that the more hurt you are the less resistant you will be to further harm so this pool should be able to regen quickly (a warm moment of respite in the crawler or a cup of hot cocoa). If you push yourself so hard that you run out of either pool then the next harm dings one of your base stats of that type (these should be more difficult to heal). If you hit 0 in a stat, you black out, are taken out of the scene, or die.

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>>79890799
I think the closest we've had in terms of video games would be something like FAR: Lone Sails.
It's a single-player game without crew interaction and an environment that seems more salt-flats than snow, but it does have some very pretty visuals that could be tweaked for a snow setting.

Pic related is an early point in the game with a bunch of stranded cargo ships on a dried up seabed/lakebed.

>>79799232
>>79802807
You stupid coomers need to be hanged

>>79885347
>having woken up literally everyone else
And the jotunn who proceed to rip your feet off while you desperately try not to get poo on your shivering hands

>>79803064
wow, shit taste man has logged on there, huh?

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>>79799232
>>79802807
Anon what the fuck. You come into a thread asking for something that doesn't fit it's kinda realistic modern world, and then say that everything apart from what you asked for is stupid.
Are you trolling.....

(also you have washrooms in all proposed crawlers, and no one said you can only have men in there, there specifically even was a post last thread about married couples operating a crawler, as for gobbo lolis, just have like gene editing or something to give your waifu that look. that way it's less insane)

>>79896886
Are you the same person? Because anyone who wants to hang people is either deranged or trolling.

>>79897173
We get it anon.
The point is that having to shit in the woods with the bears is not a good idea.
But there isn't a single crawler design where that is the case so it's all good.

>>79897245
Yeah i don't like Dune, i haven't heard of deserts of kharak, Metro was a really cool story, but utter nonsense, and i actually liked mad max.
If you call that shit taste then suit yourself.

>>79890751
As for the post apoc i did suggest that the whole thing could take place on an alternate planet instead with a colony ship arriving and trying to tame the wilderness. That would account for why you have specialized factories for getting your gear from despite being so few, and it would allow you to throw whatever you want at the players.

If you reeeeally want an ice plane, might i interest you in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alderson_disk
It's absoolutely retarded, but who knows maybe there is one out there.
The plus side is that you would have billions and billions and billions and billions of times the surface area of the earth to explore, and you could literally drive out of the habitable zone, until it is literally too cold to breathe.
On the downside it inevitably comes with a non iced over habitable zone and even hellish heat further inward from that.

>>79827097
>>79827190
Did they end up rescuing Anne Frank from MechaHitler's claws?

>>79881176
continued train of thought from here.

regarding attributes and health:

I do like Finesse for precision of movement and the like, but I'm not totally sold on the 2/2 split of attributes between mental and physical yet, for the following reasons:

>Finesse shouldn't have anything to do with how much you can take imo. Might should, and therefore maybe be the only stat that defines your physical endurance.
>Wits as replacement for allround Intelligence has a lot of potential to creat a know-it-all character. As in, you roll on Wits to basically know every fact, just because you're smart.
>Empathy as a mix of Wisdom and Charisma is just too strong imo, especially if things like psionics come into play.

I don't really see any reason why it needs to be this 2/2 system. It seems sort of satisfying at first glance, with its symmetry and all, but I'm afraid it reduces a character's ability to be unique in their skillset a bit too much.
Imagine a few of the most important jobs on board a Snowcrawler:
>Cook: Wits
>Doctor: Wits
>Pilot: Finesse and Wits
>Mechanic: Wits
see where I'm going with this?

Since it's not supposed to be a combat-heavy game, imo it's important to give enough differentiation between ways of thinking and perceiving the world. I wouldn't want a group of players who all have to be good at the same stat, and therefore have similar approaches to problem-solving.

>>79894475
>Im almost tempted to have skills be write in. like you have up to 4 slots per stat and you can assign a single word skill per slot. otherwise this is a decent list.
Interesting take! Care to give an example and why it would work better in your opinion?
>somewhere between 2d10 and 6d10.
sounds like the sweet spot to me.
I think attributes should tendentially be a bit lower than stats, if only to promote expertise in certain fields (let the Biologist feel different from the Interpreter, even if both work with Wits/Int/Brain whatever we call it in the end).
I'd also give the possibility to have an attribute at 0, and create a different rule for rolling on a skill you have absolutely no talent for whatsoever. Something like a straight, unmodified d10, but only succeed on a 9+

>>79897344
>If you call that shit taste then suit yourself.
I'll suit myself.

>>79898307
>>79898387
cont.

As I said before, I'm inclined to agree with Finesse as a useful stat, but to me it doesn't make much sense to have it connected with resisting Exhaustion. At best, you could use it to dodge something dangerous, but your ability to do card tricks won't help you in resisting the cold (obviously I'm exaggerating, but you get my point). Your stamina, and overall physical health (represented by Might/Physique) does.

As for mental capabilities, I think there should at least be a differentiation between logical and emotional intelligence. At the same time, the stat that makes you charm others shouldn't be the same as 'reading' people. Sure, there's some overlap there, but in general the most extroverted people aren't the most understanding. And there should be space to make both the egocentric performer and the quiet, empathetic artist.
Hence, my reasoning for Brain - Psyche - Charm as mental attributes.

As for their role in calculating health, it doesn't have the same pleasing symmetry, but I'd do it like this:
>Might/Physique gives you physical resistance against the weather, exhausting tasks, sleep deprivation, etc.
>Finesse can be used to dodge faster dangers: attacks, falling trees, etc.
>Wits/Int/Brain gives you mental resistance. Your mind is stable and can rationalize certain things away, even if they defy explanation.
>Psyche/Empathy in turn makes you feel unnatural things before they reach you. Maybe you're actually more susceptible to mental effects with it, but you're also the one who gets to actually sense the paranormal, along with reading people.

>>79898583
Disregard this entire post. Maybe I was too married to my ideas. I changed the semantics of things, and now it falls into place quite neatly with your ideas.

Might/Finesse = Physique and Motorics
instead of just dexterity, Motorics takes into itself reaction speed, perception, composure, basically the whole nervous system. Which can definitely help against Exhaustion.

Wits/Empathy = Brain and Psyche

I took out Charm as its own attribute and made it a skill instead. One that runs on Psyche, which is basically Empathy, but not exclusively tied to social skills.

The solution here is the same as the one I had in mind for my problem with Intelligence as an attribute. Simply make attributes less strong, and enable specialization through skills. This way, not everyone who is empathetic is well-spoken or charming, and not everyone who is the latter also understands and reads people well.

quick reminder to vote for this thread in the archives.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html