Character Concepts

Attributes

Primary Attributes

A character's natural attributes represent the base physical and mental characteristics of a character. Every character has a different set of natural attributes, though a character's species will modify these slightly.

By default, a character has three classes of attributes: Physical (BODY, B), Mental (MIND, M), and Emotional (SOUL, S), and each category has three attributes: Power(PWR,P), Reaction(RE,R), and Fortitude(FOR,F), for a total of nine attributes.

Physical Power (BP) represents a character's raw muscle, contributing to strength for tasks like lifting and carrying, as well as explosive strength and speed.
Physical Reaction (BR) represents a character's agility and dexterity, contributing to quick and precise actions like aiming or dodging.
Physical Fortitude (BF) represents a character's toughness and stamina, contributing to extended physical tasks like running a marathon, or taking hits in a fight.
Mental Power (MP) represents a character's ability to calculate and recall, aka "book smarts", used for tasks like maths and science.
Mental Reaction (BR) represents a character's ability to think quickly and make decisions, used for more instinctive tasks like survival in the wilds.
Mental Fortitude (BF) represents a character's ability to stay focused over extended periods, for things like learning and training, as well as staying sane in the face of the unreal.
Emotional Power (SP) represents a character's ability to influence others, and to evoke emotions, such as great speeches or musical performance.
Emotional Reaction (SR) represents a character's ability to read into emotional situations, understand the intentions of others, and socially adapt.
Emotional Fortitude (SF) represents a character's ability to resist stress and difficult situations, as well as keep up social decorum unnaturally.

Special Attributes

A character also has a few derived attributes, determined from primary attributes.

Health: A character's Health represents how many wounds they can sustain before dying. See Physical, Mental, and Stress Damage for more information on death and wounds.
Sanity: A character's Sanity represents how much madness a character can witness before going insane.
Spirit: A character's Spirit represents how much stress a character can sustain before emotionally exploding.

By default, a normal human character's Health, Sanity, and Spirit begin the game at 4.

Timing: A character's sense of timing, and characters with high Timing scores will act faster in contested situations. A character's timing is equal to the sum of Physical, Mental, and Emotional Reaction.

Movement Forms: A character will have one or more moement types, such as ground movement, flying, swimming, space-snorkeling, or whatever else a character's species may describe. Movement is determined by the character's species. Generally, the movement attribute is only used during tactical situations such as combat, but it makes a good reference point for overall mobility.

The basic movement forms are Land, Water, and Air movement. A character may also have a Turning Radius, for each movement type, representing how far forward a character has to travel before being able to make a 45 degree turn.

Example: Axotl the Bird-Man has a Land Movement of 4 and a Flying Movement of 8. He has a Flying Turning Radius of 2, meaning for every 45 degree turn he makes in the air, he must first travel at least 2 spaces forward.

Skills and Proficiencies

Combat and skill challenges make up the core of the game mechanics for Very Different Places. It is expected that these rules be used to fill in the blanks when storytelling, when a situation is uncertain. Risk is a party of any adventure, and danger a part of a good story - the GM should call for skill checks, or use combat rules, whenever failure is possible with any meaningful consequence. Skills are detailed in their own sections; each setting may have setting-specific skills that complement the base skills for this system.

Traits and Abilities

A character will, in addition to attributes and skills, have some traits or abilities. Traits represent things that have been acquired passively over time, or at birth; things like phobias, allergies, or natural advantages such as a bird-man's wings and talons are traits. Abilities are things that are learned consciously, such as the ability to use magical spells, or make an instinctive map while you walk. Traits and abilities are also how Special Attributes can be raised or lowered; a trait might make a character tougher, for example, raising Health by 1.

Action and Dice

Dice Pools

In general, a character has a pool of 4 dice to be allocated in combat between Attack and Defence. These pools are chosen whenever an action is taken that would require either pool; until then uncertainty is allowed. This will be explained further under Combat Resolution.

Skill Checks

There are three types of skill checks: Basic, Risky, and Opposed.

A basic check represents attempting a task with a risk of failure, but no significant consequences should it be failed. For example, a basic Ropework check would be called for to weave knots into a rope for climbing, or tie a fishing hook on a line. Should you fail, there is little consequence but to try again and waste time (and possibly energy or materials). When making a basic check, roll 2d6 and add your skill modifier, comparing the total to the target result provided by the GM.

Example: Jara wants to cast a Flame Tongue spell against a marauding barbarian. In the spell's description it says it requires a Spellcasting check, difficulty 18. She would roll a basic skill check: 2d6+Spellcasting+Intellect, and the spell would be cast if she rolls a total of 18 or higher.

A risky check represents a skill check where there is significant consequence applied to failure. For example, a ropework check to restrain a prisoner would be considered risky. When making a risky check, you have your full dice pool. Split these 4 dice between the two goals of Accomplish and Caution. A risky skill check has two target numbers: a success target, and a risk target. The success target represents how difficult it is to accomplish the task, and is compared to the Accomplish dice. If the Accomplish dice score equal or higher, the task succeeds. If they score lower, the task fails. The Risk target is compared to the Caution dice. If the Caution dice equal or succeed the risk target, regardless of the result, no ill effects occur. If the Caution dice come up lower than the Risk target, then whatever negative consequence the risky check was needed for happens to the character making the check. In many cases, a risky check may pass, but the Caution dice will fail, invoking some negative consequence.

Example: Lost in the wasteland, Jack needs to fix his jeep in a hurry, with very limited supplies. The GM calls for a risky check, with the consequence of wasting his supplies. He succeeds on the Accomplish check, but his Caution check fails. He gets the jeep running, but he burns through most of his scrap bits and parts.

An Opposed check is like a risky check, but with two characters acting directly against each other. In this case both characters split their dice pool into Accomplish and Resist. Much like attacking and defending in combat, each character's Accomplish check must beat the opposing character's Resist check in order to complete the task. In cases where it is only possible for one character to finish, subtract the Resist results from their opponent's Accomplish results; whichever score is highest wins the contest. If both scores are negative, everyone fails.

Example: Jacob and Mark are facing each other in a battle of guitar solos. Mark puts all of his dice into Accomplish, rocking out to the best of his talents in his own style. Jacob, on the other hand, splits his dice 1 Accomplish/3 Resist, trying to outshine Mark's performance by going second, and trying to play a more showy solo in the same style. Mark subtracts the results of Jacob's 3 dice from his 1, while Jacob will roll his 1 Accomplish die and subtract nothing, as Mark is not doing anything to impede Jacob from winning. Mark rolls 4 dice, adding Emotional Power (3) and Guitar skill (2), and comes up with a substantial total of 22. Jacob then rolls his 1 die, adding his Emotional Power (3) and Guitar Skill (2) and gets a 7. He still has his 3 Resist dice, however, to reduce that 22 down to a 7 or lower. The GM says because of how he is Resisting he uses Emotional Power + Guitar again, and he totals a 16, leaving Mark with a final 6. Jacob's gambit paid off, and the judges award him a pitcher of beer.

Advantage and Disadvantage

In some situations, a character will have an edge above another, or above the norm, or be handicapped by poor circumstances. Racing on ice with skates against someone on foot, for example, or shooting pool with a crooked cue. In these cases, characters will get Advantage or Disadvantage dice. In story situations, the GM should give a character 1 or more Advantage dice when they do something clever to gain leverage in a situation, or set themselves up with favourable odds. They would get 1 or more Disadvantage dice when they do something dumb, or are stuck in a bad way. Many combat rules will also call for Advantage or Disadvantage dice. A character may not have both advantage and disadvantage; an advantage die negates a disadvantage die and vice versa, until only one type remains.

Advantage or Disadvantage only applies to a single skill check or combat roll unless the rules state otherwise. When making a roll with Advantage or Disadvantage dice, roll the normal number of dice chosen from the pool, plus the extra advantage or disadvantage dice together. Then, if the character has an Advantage, remove the lowest dice until the dice pool is back to its normal size. If the character has Disadvantage, remove the highest dice instead, again back to the normal size.

Example: Jack is escaping a secret desert prison, and is trying to climb a fence. He has a big steel shackle on his leg, and the GM says this gives him 2 Disadvantage dice to climb, and and makes it a risky check vs injury. Jack knows if he gets over the fence, he is free to escape, so throws caution to the wind and declares 4 dice towards Accomplish. He then adds 2 more dice for Disadvantage, and rolls 5, 4, 2, 2, 6, 1. Because of the disadvantage, he discards the 5 and 6, and scores a total of 9. He adds his Physical Power (2) and Athletics skill (2), coming up with a 13. The GM tells him the target number was 10, and he clears the fence - but hurts his leg on the way down. Jack limps to relative safety in the desert night, sure to face more challenges in the morning.

Tension

Tension is a resource held by characters that comes from facing difficulty in skill challenges or combat. A character gains a point of Tension whenever a skill check result is exactly equal to the target number. A character also builds Tension as a result of different conditions being met in combat, as described below. A character may spend Tension to gain one advantage die per point on the next combat action or skill check, or negate one disadvantage die. Tension is also often spent on Abilities for special actions.

Combat

Combat resolution is intended to be simple and narrative-focused.

Timing Order

Action in combat happens in a series of Rounds. During a combat round, all characters acting in that combat take a Turn. The order in which characters take their turns is determined by rolling 2 dice, and adding each character's Timing. The order then progresses from highest to lowest, with ties broken by whichever character has the highest Timing attribute.

Combat Actions

A character make take two actions on their turn - they may be any combination of MOVE, SPLITMOVE, ATTACK, USE SPECIAL. If a character does not take the MOVE action, they may take a single step at any time during their turn. This can be used to get into cover, etc.

MOVE: A character moves up to their move value. If using a square grid, diagonal moves cost 2.
SPLITMOVE: A character moves up to half their move value (round down). This leaves them able to take a step later, hence "split move".
SPECIAL: Take any kind of special action that is not an Attack, such as reloading a weapon, using an item, opening a door, etc.
ATTACK: A character makes an Attack action, against another character.

A few examples follow:

Action 1	Action 2	Step?	Narrative
MOVE	MOVE	no	Charging forward, or "tactical retreat" aka run for your life
FIRE	RELOAD	yes	Slowly march forward while laying down suppression fire
MOVE	KICK	no	Straight up charge at an enemy and hit them inna rocks
PUNCH	MOVE	no	Hit and run, hopefully to avoid retaliation
RELOAD	USE (Clip)	no	Out of ammo; reloading
RELOAD	USE (Clip)	yes	Out of ammo; reloading while shuffling behind cover
SPLITMOVE	FIRE	yes	Fire and maneuver, or get out of cover, shoot, and get back into cover
SPLITMOVE	SPLITMOVE	yes	Dashing out of cover to look behind a corner
FIRE	FIRE	yes	Step out of cover and fire both pistols.
PUNCH	KICK	yes	Bust. Your. Face. In.

Attacking and Defending

Attacking and defending in combat is a special form of opposed skill check. In combat, a character's dice pool is always split into Attack and Defence dice. A character chooses how to allocate his 4 dice the first time each combat turn he needs to use them - when attacking, or being attacked. During combat, any risky skill checks must use the same dice allocation; use the Attack pool for Accomplish, and the Defence pool for Caution.

Attacking begins with declaring an ATTACK action, or a SPECIAL action that involves attacking. A character makes an attack roll by rolling the allocated dice for Attack, and adding the relevant Attribute and Skill to the roll. Then, the target of the attack must DEFEND. Any relevant skill may be used to Attack or Defend, with the GM's permission, though using a skill not directly relevant may create a Disadvantage.

A DEFEND action is a free action in response to being attacked. If the defender has not allocated dice this round yet, the defender must immediately choose how many dice to defend with (the remainder going to attack for the rest of the round). Then, roll the defence dice, and add the relevant Attribute and Skill to the roll.

Next, the difference between the attacker's total and defender's total is compared. If the total is higher for the attacker, then the defender will take damage. Damage is determined by the difference between the attacker's dice and the defender's (referred to now as the attack result) against the defender's Fortitude for the appropriate damage type (Physical, Mental, Emotional). If the result is less than the defender's Fortitude, the attack is a Glancing Blow, and does no damage. The attacker gains 1 Tension, but cannot spend it immediately. If the result exceeds the defender's Fortitude, divide the attack result by the relevant Fortitude; the defender takes that much damage.

Instead of dealing damage, the attacker can choose to convert any number of damage points to tension and spend them (and any stored tension) immediately on an offensive effect.

If the defender's total is higher, the attack is blocked or guarded, and the defender gains a point of Tension, and can spend that tension on a defensive effect. If the defender's result scores more than double the attacker's, he gains 2 points of Tension instead. More than triple, the defender gains 3 Tension, and so on.

Example: Jill, Jack's esteemed adventuring partner, is fed up with Jack getting into trouble and punches him. This is an ATTACK action, and she allocates 3 dice. She has a Physical Power of 2 and a Brawling skill of 1. She rolls her dice, adding 2 and 1, getting a total of 14. Jack must now defend. He doesn't want to fight Jill, so allocates 4 dice to DEFEND. He uses his dodge skill (2) and Physical Reaction (3) to defend, getting a whopping 25. Jack easily sidesteps Jill's first punch, and gains one point of Tension.

Atk	Def	Narrative (melee)	Narrative (ranged)
4	0	All-out finishing blow, or desperation move	More dakka dammit!, or sniper's focus
3	1	Fencing style lunge	Stand up launcher blazing, or aimed shot
2	2	Thrust and parry	Fire and take cover
1	3	Close guard, or biding time	Snap shot
0	4	Fighting defensively	Hunkering down

All of this applies to effects that cause Sanity or Stress damage as well.

Whenever a character's Wounds, Madness, or Stress exceed their Health, Sanity, or Spirit, the character is KOed and removed from the scene. This may not represent a literal knockout, but losing control of their mind, having an emotional outburst from stress, or choosing to just stay down in a fight. These results, however, are out of the player's control and the defeated character is at the mercy of the GM.

Endgame:

Fights to the death are not that common, but happen. A character that is KO may be killed as a full turn action, used to deliver a coup de grace or a carefully aimed shot in an exposed vital spot. Lasting wounds are resolved narratively, but it's a safe bet that anything serious will require medical attention beyond temporary quick-healing methods.

In-combat healing represents techniques (battle prayers, drugs and so on) intended to reduce the effect of wounds for the duration of a fight; they do not actually cure the wound.

Wounds are directly subtracted from fighting ability, to represent fatigue and in the worst cases, blood loss. For every wound received, a character subtracts 1 from the total results (not per die) when rolling dice.

Character type	Wounds before KO
Pests, animals in a swarm, children	1
Civilians, minions, farm animals	2
Trained fighters, starting player characters, wild animals	3
Well-trained fighters, mid level PCs	4
Elites or fanatics, high level PCs	5
Boss characters	6

Offensive and Defensive Effects

Offensive and defensive effects are the way to handle non-damaging combat results, such as holds, throws, and other abilities. These are created by spending Tension, and can be created whenever an attacker deals damage, or a defender prevents an attack from succeeding. An offensive or defensive effect can be anything described to the GM, but by default, every point of Tension spent or damage negated results in one Disadvantage die for the losing party on all combat actions for one turn. Some traits, abilities, or equipment may allow for other specific offensive or defensive effects, including some status effects. Whenever Tension is spent this way, the defender can spend an equal amount of Tension to negate the effect. The attacker may then choose to spend more tension to put the effect back on; this back and forth continues until a player chooses to accept the success or failure of the effect, or is forced to do so by running out of Tension.

Example: After a while of losing an argument with Jill's fists, a bruised Jack realizes he should probably defend himself. On his turn, he shifts his dice from 4 defence to a 2 Attack, 2 Defence split and declares ATTACK as his first action. He wants to restrain Jill, not harm her, so he uses his Wrestling skill (2) plus Physical Power (2), and rolls 2 dice. He gets a total of 9, and the rage-stricken Jill has no Defence, because her dice were split for 4 attack. He then compares this 9 to Jill's Physical Fortitude of 2; he would deal 4 damage. He does not want to KO Jill here (she only has 3 Wounds) so he chooses an Offensive Effect, and asks the GM if he can pin her. The GM says yes, and Jack converts all 4 damage to Tension. Jill, having accumulated Tension from beating up Jack, declares she will spend 4 Tension to prevent the pin. Jack, however, has plenty more Tension built up, and has more in reserve than Jill; after some negotiation, Jill runs out of Tension and Jack pins her against the wall, where he can more safely continue his pleas for her to stop beating him up.

Status Effects

A character may be subject to status effects. A status effect represents a penalty that cannot be quantified otherwise. This is not an exhaustive list. Removing a status can be accomplished by spending 1 point of Tension, unless the status states otherwise. Some examples of status effects follow:

Name	Narrative	Effect
Entangled	The character is being held, has been caught in a net or a lasso, or is wearing restrictive clothing such motorized armor that has been disabled	Physical Fortitude halved; may not MOVE or SPLITMOVE. May still take a step unless actively grappled.
Fatigued	The character has exceeded the limits of their stamina due to lack of sleep, or exertion	Character may only take one action instead of two
Weakened	The character has suffered recent head trauma, is under the influence of poisons, drugs etc.	Character may only use half their dice pool.
Panicked	The character is scared for their lives, has seen something unspeakable, etc.	Character must use at least 2 dice on defense, and take a MOVE or SPLITMOVE action away from the source of panic.

Other Types of Combat

These combat rules can just as easily be used with other skills, such as debate (damage becoming influence on the judge you are trying to convince) or bargaining (trying to raise/reduce prices). The narrative should always be the focus of these kind of scenes, but when warranted, these rules can be applied.

Edge Charge

Any time a success is scored (successfully inflicting a wound, or successfully defending from an attack), that success may be given up in order to gain charge, battle advantage that can be used for risky moves or special skills peculiar to that character. In case of a glancing hit, the attacker gains one point of charge.

Charge can be stored between fights or challenges, up to a character's Attunement, and dissipates at a rate of 1 per day. However, there is no limit to how much charge can be held during a fight scene. Releasing any amount of charge on a target must be done while actively attacking or defending against that target -- however, the action negated to gain charge counts, so it is possible for example to grapple someone rather than punching them, or letting someone score a hit they otherwise wouldn't have, just before disarming them. Releasing any amount of charge on a single target is a single action, so "super moves" may be built up. Releasing charge on oneself or an ally takes an action, since the character is using a skill.

In general, an effect which does not put a hostile target in immediate harm's way "costs" 1 charge, an action which does "costs" two, and an action which would put someone out of a fight immediately "costs" 3. The action should make sense, for example executing a grapple with most ranged weapons is absurd -- unless you've built yourself a net launcher or a slime sprayer... A few examples follow.

Action	Cost	Effect	Restrictions
Grapple	1	The target suffers the Entangled status.	Melee
Break off	1	Negates a grapple.	Melee
Entangle/Shock	1	The target suffers the Entangled status until they spend an action to disentangle themselves.	Ranged with appropriate weapon
Shove	1	The target executes a Splitmove away from the character	Melee, usually
Change Focus	1	The character can switch targets mid-turn	Melee, usually
Disarm	1	The target drops their weapon, and will have to spend an action to recover it	None
Suppression	1	The target cannot move, if they do, the character gets an immediate free attack against them	Ranged
Armor Pierce	1	The target's armor bonus is negated until they adjust their stance to cover for it on their next turn	None
Surge	2	Next time dice allocation is decided, use an extra die; this can be done multiple times	None
Human shield	2	Any ranged attack that would hit the character this turn, has a 75% chance of hitting the target instead	Melee, usually unarmed
Probe Defense	2	Gain +1 on combat bonus against this opponent; does not stack	None
Stunning Blow	3	The target is briefly KO'd and skips a turn	Some blasters or charge-focused melee attacks can do this
Second Wind	3	Recover a wound until the end of the fight	None

Equipment and environment:

The intention is to keep equipment stats simple.

Weapons ? grant a bonus to weapon power on offense. Launchers or thrown items allow for ranged combat; some melee weapons may grant reach; some weapons may have armor piercing capability, negating all or part of the armor bonus. Weapons such as sprayers or blasters may also cause various effects to the target.
Shields ? grant a bonus to weapon power on defense: a shield works exactly like a weapon. More, some weapons may function as shields, and grant a bonus to weapon power on defense as well.
Armor ? grants additional threshold, and may grant a bonus to weapon power on defense like a shield does.
In a firefight, light cover grants a 2/6 chance of avoiding a hit from a direct-fire ranged attack. Medium cover grants a 4/6 chance of avoiding a hit from a direct-fire ranged attack. Full cover prevents direct fire from hitting at all. In order to simplify fights, it's recommended to roll for this chance before ranged attacks are calculated. Stepping out of cover at any time during one's turn, for example by using a split-move action or poking out to fire, downgrades the cover rating by one (light cover is negated). Indirect fire is not affected, but requires specialized launchers that tend to be heavy and cause collateral damage, and can only be used out in the open.

Collateral damage:

[To smash thing, attack it to break it and defend to avoid hurting yourself or damaging your weapon; the thing has some sort of toughness value, which must be beaten. It is possible to both damage the thing and hurt yourself, which causes one wound. Some weapons cannot be used for this, you can't smash down a door with a foil for example, and will have to use unarmed skill, or raw strength]

Skill challenges

Simple skill check

A simple skill check is used within the narrative, to quickly determine if a character succeeds or fails at a task that has no particular time duration such as spotting somebody or figuring out, by following the pipes, which valve to shut in order to disable a lift. A character is to roll two dice, adding the relevant skill, stat and equipment bonuses (if any). The player is encouraged to substitute the closest relevant skill if an exact match is not available.

Opposed skill checks

An opposed skill check works like a combat round, with the character with best Timing going first on the attack. The attack and defense bonuses are replaced by relevant stats and skills. The characters' Thresholds are likewise replaced by the defensive bonus that was just calculated. The opposed skill check continues until one of the characters receives a "wound", marking them the loser. Edge charge may be used as normal, if it applies narratively (for example, it's possible for an arm-wrestling match to result in either contestant being fatigued at the end of it).

Extended skill check

Sometimes, a character must perform an extended action that requires their full attention for a longer period of time. In this case, there are two possible failure modes; the character has botched the job thoroughly (for example, a repair attempt made the problem worse in such a way that field repairs are now impossible) or the character has reached physical or mental exhaustion before the job was finished.

In an extended skill check, the character must balance attack and defense die like they would in combat, against a pair of target numbers representing difficulty (for attack) and intensity of effort (for defense). Instead of using attack and defense skills, use the relevant base stats and skills -- defense is done with Focus or Stamina. If the character fails their defense, they are exhausted (and may suffer the Fatigued or Weakened status) and must stop working towards the goal; depending on the nature of the skill check, this may force an abort. Note that for some jobs it's possible for another character to take over to let the first character rest! If a character succeeds with their attack, progress towards the goal is made (a "point" is scored); an extended skill check involves at least two steps, but three or four is more common. If an attack is failed, progress is reduced by one notch if there has been any. If two attacks are failed in a row, the skill check has failed entirely.

Magic / Psionics

speaking of crunch I just had an idea for VDP magic pop into my head that keeps it simple!!! the problem is that most magic systems overcomplicate things by working backwards they put crunch on the fluff, instead of putting fluff on the crnch, which results in them having 65535 similar spells that are different levels of the same thing. Instead let's start with simple magic: "what actions can magic take" at its core I see magic having the ability to: - Alter Attribute (transmuting, ability damage, heat metal, etc) - Alter State (healing, dealing damage) - Help Skill - Hinder Skill - Provoke Action (usually move, such as wind blowing someone around) - Prevent Action (Rooting targets to the ground, binding their hands, etc) - Create Entity (summoning) - Remove Entity (banishing, instant death) I may be missing some but if we can put a baseline "how hard is it to do this", then players can add modifications to create a spell example: Godo's big gravity spell is just a mass Help Skill (Muscle), just flavoured as shifting gravity with all the appropriate storyline effects.

NewResolutionSystemDocument