Goals

Strikermechanica is the rules engine (or mechanic, or system) behind the Striker role-playing game, it is an intensely skills-oriented mechanic, built to suit science fiction and modern-day adventuring

Goals of this Mechanic

StrikerMechanica is meant to be simple, but the goal is not to be rules-light.

Keep Character Progression Satisfying

It is the opinion of this author that, while rules-light may have a kind of “less is more” appeal to some fairly ardent followers of that TTRPG movement, it does not come without a cost to the depth of narrative, character development, and of the game, itself.

Let the Mechanic Help Tell the Story

Something that may be realised in future times of this great hobby is that the mechanic can help tell the story, not just hinder it, as some might have it.

But Not Be Part of The Story

If at the end of the session, players are reflecting that: “it was lucky we used that spray weapon, because it took all of the henchmen out”, you know that the mechanic has entered the story.

It is the opinion of this author that:

• PCs and NPCs following different mechanics; and
• feature, nemesis or end-boss NPCs using different mechanics to their minions or henchmen;

(so-called asymmetric mechanics) inevitably introduces game mechanical concepts into the story.

Some people might like this, GMs may find these short-hands simpler, but its hard to refute the argument that its turning an epic story into a video game, and detracting from the theatre of the mind.

Another example: I can't count the number of times that players have described their characters as paladins, clearly referring to the D&D class name. Once they've processed the image a person in shining armour, players inevitably go to all the mechanical benefits of the class. Classes also push characters down a track, which can only be (very badly) addressed with complex mechanics allowing multi-classing etc.

You will see later that the concept of Profession, while looking a bit like a class, is a much lighter idea. It does the job that classes are meant to do, which is to mediate character abilities into some kind of archetype. It doesn't though, exceed the mandate of a class, and push characters down tracks that reflect what the designers of the game want, rather than the players of the game.

Similar arguments can be made around the concept of character levels.

Summary of the first 3 goals

The players (and the GM) should feel the game, not be aritificially constrained by it, nor be directed into actions or ideas.

I have never seen a rules light system achieve this (nor many others for that matter)

And Don't Try to be All Things For All People

Science fiction scenarios that make an attempt to ground themselves in reality, tend to put a heavy strain on role-playing mechanics. There are many fine attempts to do this, particularly by those attempting to make universal RPG systems.

However in reaching for this goal, they quite understandably, do one of:

• end up being cumbersome;
• switch between mechanics to handle different part of the game;
• put up with the limitations or illogicalities; or
• pass the problem off to the players to figure out.

Or maybe they're geniuses, and they don't. Or they try something a bit radical like what is being presented here.

Tackle Scaling & Differentiation

Without (hopefully) stepping into any (religious) arguments over which mechanic or philosophy is objectively better (a position I don't even hold), I've found that there are two issues that seem to crop up when dealing with mechanics for sci fi:

1. the scaling issue
2. the differentiation issue

The two issues are sometimes intertwined, but here's an attempt to tease them out and explain them.

The scaling issue seems to come up in effects of character or equipment actions. Characters can project effects into high speed, long range or massive damage. Fantasy gaming, generally avoids this as even a dragon's breath weapon is still limited by comparison. Other modern or sci fi games often avoid it by tightening down the scenario to avoid large and small intereacting with each other, or select a single big thing, like a spaceship, and set out mechanics specifically for that. You'll recognise this type of scaling issue when you're rolling fistfulls of dice, or having to change mechanics to account for the big thing.

The scaling issue can also turn up in the form of modifiers on tasking rolls. Where the modifier seems too small or conversely too overwhelming. You'll recognise this form of the scaling issue when rolling seems pointless or illogical.

The differentiation issue is mostly seen in modifiers on tasking rolls, and mostly from a lack of differentiation in compentancy. In fantasy games this is avoided because it is assumed that the strength of a giant and the strength of a human is not different enough to prevent a number comparison between the two on the same scale. In testing strength the giant will usually win, but not always, and this is deemed acceptable. As you might be able to see, the differentiation issue can also look like a scaling issue.

There are two other manifestations of the differentiation issue:

1. the mechanic can force an artificial-feeling upper bound to competancy (such as through percentile-based or bell-curve-based task rolling, eg. rolling 3d6 for the score); or
2. the mechanic can over emphasise in one layer of ability at the cost of the other, especially where you have ability, stat or attribute as an upper level and skill as the lower level.

You'll recognise the differentiation issue when you can see a character who should not have a chance in some activity, does because of the mechanic, not logic. This generally feels jarring, ridiculous and sometimes unfair, but more perniciously, a player can feel like things don't make any real sense and they can lose faith in the idea that their decisions matter.

Strikermechanica an attempt to address both of these issues, and yet remain simple and fast.

And So, Let's Try Radical

There have been a lot of aggressive changes to realise simple, fast, scalable, differentiable and logical, and so the cost for all this benefit is something that will probably appear quite unusual at first.