zarpaulus

Instead of NaNoWriMo this year I'm participating in National Game Design Month and working on a tabletop RPG based on my Parahuman Space setting.

The rules are based on the Cepheus Engine, an open content fork of the long-standing sci-fi RPG Traveller. It's a fairly simple system reminiscent of the "most popular RPG" save that you roll 2d6 instead of 1d20 and you never get bloated with hit points, you stay a squishy mortal the whole campaign (I recommend some armor). You can read the full system reference document on this site but the final Parahuman Space RPG will include all the rules needed for play.

The RPG assumes campaigns set after the collapse of the Federation, and instead of the typical tramp trader or mercenary campaigns seen in Traveller the default campaign will be based around salvaging wrecked starships.

AKA "space dungeons."

Think Hardspace Shipbreaker or Lethal Company rather than Elite: Dangerous.

So far I have the character creation and skills chapters, which I've attached to my most recent Patreon post for patrons. I needed to come up with a system for genetic modification of parahuman characters, but the skills are mostly unchanged from the SRD save for removing all references to gravitic vehicles. I also set career mishaps to non-lethal by default ;) I intend to leave the Combat chapter mostly unchanged as well. Psionics, though, will be replaced with Technomagic while the Equipment chapter will need extensive work for augmentations.

Originally, I was planning to use a more "rules-light" system titled Faster Than Light: Nomad for this project, but the step system that used for building spaceships was not as conducive to tearing them apart for spare parts.

Eventually I intend to bring this project to Kickstarter, I'm hoping that if even if you decide not to subscribe to my Patreon you will throw a few bucks my way once it launches.