Just putting this out here to share some of the work I've been doing and to create some content for this community. Also because I'm not quite ready to share the full thing with larger groups.
I've mostly been creating a system for fun, and to exercise my art/design chops. I've got the base rule book done, but I was wanting to create a "pack in" adventure to go with it, which i have yet to start.
I'll include some screen shots as I go along and give some of the details around the setting and system. The title I'm currently running with is "Stellar Knights of Pendragon" and it is a sci-fi RPG based off of the myths of King Arthur.
Stylistically, I'm trying to make the book look like something from the 16-bit/SNES Era of video games, mostly because I'm pretty ok at pixel art (and not much else), but also because the concept sounds like something you'd see on the sega genesis or SNES
Cover Page:
Table of contents:
For a lot of the art, I tried to base it off of existing cover art/images from popular video games of the times, as you'll see (some are pretty obvious tracing/reinterpretation of famous images)
For the game system, I tried to go with a fairly simple resolution mechanic that lends itself to a lot of depth when it comes to including character powers and abilities. The basic mechanics are that everything is an "opposed" check, where characters roll 4d6 + bonuses against a target number/DC. Every 5 points you beat the DC by is one success. Opposition successes cancel out your successes on a 1-for-1 basis
So for example, combat is roll 4d6+stat+skill for your attack, vs a "target" number of the enemy's armor and the enemy gets to make an opposed defense check. If the enemy's armor is, say, 15, and your roll a total of 20, you have achieved 2 successes, but if the enemy rolls 1 success on their defense, it reduces you to 1 success, which represents the amount of damage you deal.
There's also something similar to advantage/disadvantage called banes and boons.
As stated above in the screen shot, the reason for a 4d6 resolution mechanic is partially because its novel, and in addition getting together 4d6 to play can happen virtually anywhere and doesn't require specialized dice to play.
The setting takes place in space (duh) in a nebula. You can see the write up below, but the basic idea is that the gasses and all in the nebula cause psionic powers to be extremely common in creatures living within the space gas. Psionics obviously take the place of any sort of magic in this setting, as i'm a big fan of psionics in general. I just think they're fun.
The king arthur stand in (Named Artur, which is barely a play on the name) is essentially an evil, paranoid, ruthless despot bent on dominating the galaxy, forming a large army akin to something like the empire in star wars.
"Knight's Armor" in this setting is also effectively something akin to power armor, and there's rules for spaceship combat, though do note that it largely follows the same resolution mechanics.
The game is class based, and each class has a list of skills you can be trained in and "knacks" you choose that give you character extra powers/abilities
monster stat block:
That's kind of a very quick write up around how the game works, there's obviously a ton more details to both mechanics and setting, since its about a 50 page PDF, which was approximately my goal for the length of the document. I didn't want it to get too long.
What do people think about this premise/idea? Anything you'd like to hear more about? Anything that sounds off-putting to you? I'm open to all feedback, positive or negative.
When it's done, I'll probably post about it, but also put it on my itch.io and on my drive thru RPG account. Note that i generally release everything i put out for free, so i'm not planning on charging anything for it.
Character sheet:
Yeah, but its still using rebuilt HD assets which make it look way better than the original game its based off of.