Modern Military Kickstarter project

[aspqrz]

If you're going to use a luck stat, and varying age and experience levels, let me throw an aviation expression into the mix:
You start off with an empty bag of experience and a full bag of luck. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck...

Indeed you are correct. However, I believe that the rules cover the inherent contradiction ... Luck is a Stat, but you can also spend Experience Points to act as Luck.

Luck Stat can probably buy your way out of a deathtrap ... while Luck/Experience will buy extra dice -- for you or against your opponent or buy down any damage you are unlucky (!) enough to take.

To ensure that at start PCs don't start behind the 8-Ball, so to speak, all PCs get a small amount of Experience to be distributed amongst Skills connected to each Ability Score at start ... enough to make them less like sitting ducks!

It's also fairly easy to gain Experience - for example, amongst other things, you get an EP for making a Task Check @ Difficulty/4 (that is, you roll 8-9-0 on at least 4 dice, 0's give a reroll) and for rolling 4 x 0's on any roll.

At 20 EP in a skill area (and EPs are allocated to Skills) to increase a level, and with definite limits to how much you can increase levels, it will, in any case, be a hard decision whether to hoard those EPs for advancement or use them to enable you to survive in Combat!

Making EP expenditure a sort of a tactical and strategic decision making effort!

Sorry about the delay in replying, I've been darn busy doing the Kickstarter related stuff ... which turned out to be somewhat more time consuming than I had estimated (fortunately I allowed time for such an underestimation!).

Phil McGregor

[aspqrz]

AYE

Sorry about the delay in replying, it took longer than I expected for the KS prep, though still less time than I allowed, fortunately.

You can download, free, a low res version of Road to Armageddon: D10 Core Rules from RPGNow ...

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/155970...ttest_filtered

... to get an idea of the system. It's perfectly readable, but the graphic elements are crappy ... and it's not much use without the Gear Book if you want to actually play the game ...

Make sure you get the second file, as, for some unknowable reason, the first one I downloaded ... wouldn't ... for several others including, when I tried it myself, me ... the revised file downloads fine, though

Phil McGregor

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Thanks for the update

In other news, some of us were talking about the AFTERMATH! rpg in this thread here and discussing that two of the modules for that game were written by you.

[LT. Ox]

Super

I GOT IT.
Now ta read it today and I will get back to you and thanks!

and to answer yer questions us old USArmy Offcers can sorta read.

[aspqrz]

Road to Armageddon has gone LIVE on Kickstarter!!!

Head over to ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...y-role-playing

... and check it out!

Phil McGregor

[StainlessSteelCynic]

<bumping it again>

Just to keep it in people's minds!

[aspqrz]

<bumping it again>

Just to keep it in people's minds!

Thanks, it's now at $2872 of the $3000 target from 29 backers ... and 13 days to go!

Scoring another $128 in 3 days shouldn't be impossible ...

Phil

[Tekrat04]

You will. I'm planing to contribute at the Company Sargent Major reward level. But I need to wait till the end of the month.

[aspqrz]

RtA is 103% funded as of several minutes ago!!!

Yay!!!

Thanks to all who had a look ... and Special Thanks to the 31 Backers!!!

Phil McGregor

[aspqrz]

Well, 35 hours to go and 127% funded!

If you're at all interested, now is the time to back RtA as it is going ahead!

Phil McGregor

[CDAT]

I keep looking at it, but have no interest in print on demand (not even sure what that is). I just want a level that gets me what I need, and have not taken the time to read all of the page, and none of the levels look like it is that. I may sit down before it is done and figure out what I need to do to get it.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I keep looking at it, but have no interest in print on demand (not even sure what that is). I just want a level that gets me what I need, and have not taken the time to read all of the page, and none of the levels look like it is that. I may sit down before it is done and figure out what I need to do to get it.

Print On Demand is a benefit of digital technology, basically it allows a printing house to produce individual books or very small numbers of books and still be economical in the process (generally because it's nowhere near as labour intensive as traditional methods of bookmaking).
So for example, say you had a child and you wanted to give them book they particularly like but as a personalized edition, Print On Demand would allow you to have something like "This book belongs to -----" printed in the book and not just added as a sticky label or written inside.

[aspqrz]

Print on Demand means providing a digital file (usually some form of Adobe PDF) to an online Printer who is set up to handle short runs.

The great advantage is that it makes proofing a doddle. For example, I can (and did, and will do) send of my proof files to Lulu and their Australian printer, in Melbourne, prints them within 2-3 working days and gets them back to me in Sydney overnight. Cost (and Lulu is rather expensive) for ~160 pages, around US$5.50 per book and the same for postage.

The real beauty, as far as I am concerned, is that it enables you to do all sorts of variants that would otherwise simply not be economical.

For example, the three Core Rulebooks can be printed as individual Books (which is the basic intent) or I will be making two combined versions available ... a two Book Core Rules + Gear Book one and a three Book Core Rules + Gear Book + Modern Encounters one.

Why Well, all PoD printers charge a base fee for a single book plus a per page fee ... so, if you combine several 'books' into one you save on the additional base fees ... which is especially important for Hardcover versions where the base fee is relatively high.

Forex, the Core Rules @ ~160 pages is, as I said, around US$5.50 to print through Lulu, of which about US$3 is the base per book fee. If you wanted the three core rulebooks, assuming they're all the same page count (they're not), the cost would be US$16.50 plus postage. If you combined all three books into one, the cost would be US$10.50 plus postage. That's for softcover. Hardcover is around US$6.50 per book fee, so three books would cost 3 x 9 = US$27 plus postage individually or US$14 as a three book combined edition.

(That's the printing cost only, of course ... you have to pay the creator for access to the file!)

This would be economically unfeasible for normal publishers, in all likelihood, but for PDFs and PoD It is a relatively simple matter of me running up a combined Table of Contents and Index and adding all the chapters together with some new section artwork using the cover artwork from the one (or two) books that are being combined ...

The quality of PoD has come a long way and is now virtually indistinguishable from traditional print methods as far as the print quality is concerned.

The rule of thumb for traditional printing methods would mean similar printing costs for the small print runs that most RPG projects not done by Hasbro etc. work with (normally less than 1000 copies, often less than 500), but that has to be paid up front by the creator. With PoD the cost of printing is borne by the purchaser who (unless they're buying Premium Colour, which costs an arm and a leg) ends up paying around what they would have paid for the B&W edition anyway.

Anyway, RtA is funded, just shy of 150%, and won't be available for general release (through RPGNow, DriveThruRPG and, possibly, Amazon) till around Christmas at the earliest (for the Core Rules).

Phil McGregor