Midwest Mancers - Playing the Game

Basic Terms

GM: The Game Master. One person takes this role. They will determine the scenarios the players end up in, and control all characters and creatures that aren't used by the players; whether allies or enemies.

Player: A player will build a character to play in scenarios determined by the GM. There can be anywhere from 3-5 players.

Roleplaying: Civil and Exploration gameplay is considered roleplaying gameplay where you will play out scenarios with your characters to solve problems or screw around.

Stat: The core of a character, stats affect everything you do examples are: Intellect, Strength, and Adaptability.

Skill: A task that can be mastered through experience such as Small Arms, Diplomacy, Chemistry, and Hazard Tech.

Round: 6 seconds in-game. A round is completed after every character in the encounter has taken their turn. Every round each character gets one Reaction.

Turn: A single character or player's actions. Every turn a character gets a Main Action and Bonus Action. Within the fiction of the game all turns happen at the same time during a round so turns also take 6 seconds.

D6, D10, D20, etc: This refers to a die with that specific number of sides. So a D20 is a 20 sided die.

Checks: Outside of combat your players will explore worlds and adventure. Interesting things your players want to do will require rolling and adding whichever stat or skill most fits the situation (Mnvr for winning a race, Strength for lifting a heavy object, Basic Tech for repairing something like a generator or engine, See Stats and Skills for more info). Players will roll against a value predetermined by the GM.

Contest: Two characters roll against each other adding whatever stat or skill applies. Whoever gets higher wins. For example if a player wanted to arm wrestle an NPC they would each roll Strength + D20 to determine who wins.

Experience Points: XP or Experience Points are accumulated when you hit milestones. By gaining XP you can level up.

CL: Character Level, a number that tells you the overall power of your character. Currently is this goes from 1-20.

PC: Player Character, these are built and controlled by the Players.

NPC: Non-player Characters. These are used by the GM, they are the characters who the Player characters will interact with.

Modifier (Mod): Modifiers are additional numbers added to your checks, contests, or combat actions.

Movement: How far (in feet) your character can move in 6 seconds (one turn)

Crit Success & Fail: Almost any roll that uses a D20 has Critical Success on a roll of 20 and Critical Fail on roll of 1. You'll then roll a D6 to see the severity: 1 least severe, 6 most severe. A crit success means you completed a task extremely well and a crit fail extremely poorly.

Advantage & Disadvantage: Advantage means you get to roll your die twice and use the higher number. Disadvantage you roll the die twice and use the lowest number. In rare cases this can be Double or Triple, meaning you roll it 3 or 4 times and take the lowest or highest. Sometimes abbreviated to: adv and disadv.

HP: Health Points determine how well your organic flesh is holding together from interstellar beatings. Each of your Limbs (Head, Torso, Left and Right Arms and Legs) has its own Health. Once a limb reaches 0 health you have an injury. This can be fixed by a doctor. Mark the limb as injured. If the limbs health hits 0 again before you fix your injury you will lose that limb permanently and will need to replace it with a cybernetic or bioengineered limb.

Playing the Game

Skill and Stat Checks:

Stat checks are checks that only use your stats and require no specialized skill. Stat Check Roll = D20 + (Stat)

Skill Checks are rolls that use specific skills: Skill Check Roll = D20 + (Skill) + (Modifiers)

Modifiers can come from Stats, Armor, Consumables, or Tech

So if our character Lexal wants to analyze a creature, and he has 5 Biology, and our Intellect Modifier also gets added to all Science skill checks. He has 8 Intellect giving him a modifier of +3 so Lexal's roll will look like this: D20 + 5 + 3.

If Lexal was wearing Symposia Robes he'd get a +1 to his Intellect giving him +4 to this roll.

If he took a Novice Neural Stimulant on top of that he'd have another +1 to Intellect giving him a total of +5 for his Intellect Modifier, until the Neural Stimulant wore off.

Anyone can attempt any level of check but there are checks that are impossible for your character.

Check Difficulty Table: At higher levels Stat checks are smaller than skill checks as indicated by the table.

Novice: Easy 5, Hard 8

Journeyman: Easy 15, Hard 20, Stat checks -5

Expert: Easy 25, Hard 30, Stat Checks -10

Master: Easy 35, Hard 40, Stat Checks -15

Mancer: Easy 50, Hard: 55, Stat Checks -20

Rolling as a Group: In the event that the whole group is attempting something a roll may need to be done as a group. In this instance the difficulty of the roll should be multiplied by the number of players present and the total of all the players should be added to attempt this action.

Game Scopes: it's important to understand the scope of the campaign your about to start, here's an example of the different scopes your campaign can have:

Community Scale: A very small scale story involving the fate of a single community and the groups that run it.

Planetary Scale: A story that involves the fate of a planet and the factions that vie for it.

Interstellar Scale: A story taking place on multiple planets and stars systems that concerns the fate of larger interstellar Factions.

Galactic Scale: A story that determines the fate of the entire galaxy and involves the largest factions within it.

Rank:

All items, NPCs, creatures, and Chemicals have a Rank that shows how powerful it is.

The ranks are as follows: Novice, Journeyman, Expert, Master, Mancer

These are often abbreviated as: N, J, E, M, and M+

Intro

Combat