Unofficial Motorcity Fan RPG (in development)
since there was some interest, here’s a post detailing what I have so far and what I need to do work on.
The System
I started out basing the dice system off of Lasers & Feelings, but it wasn’t quite as specific as I needed it to be. So I changed it to d10s and some kind of skill-based point-buy system (still taking elements from L&F).
character creation consists of 7 skills, each w ten dots. you’re given 25 points to distribute amongst the skills of your choosing. you can fill up your points in a skill to a maximum of 9.
the skills are:
Animal Handling
Vehicle Handling
Hardware
Software
Cool
Fighting
Athletics (yknow all the crazy shit mike does? this is the Mike Skill)
dice rolling uses d10s. whenever your character is in a situation that calls for the dice, roll 1d10 and compare your result to the amount of points you put in that skill. If it’s at or less than your skill’s number, then you succeed! if it’s more than that, you fail.
if you’re prepared for the situation or an expert in what you’re doing, add a respective +1d10 (for a total of 3d10). the dice pool increases your chances of getting a successful result. If you have no points in a skill you’re rolling, well… I haven’t figured that out yet. maybe you gain a point in that skill at the end of the session.
gms currently don’t roll dice. this may change later, but I like what it provides to the vibes and narrative (I might elaborate on that in a separate post).
combat is more narrative than mechanic. you roll w your skills just like you would for other situations. I haven’t designed a harm tracker because I really like the way combat in Masks: A New Generation works, where it’s about give and take and the emotional impact of combat. how physically hurt your character is is fluff compared to whatever earth-shattering realization their opponent just launched at them. unlike in pbta games though, this game doesn’t utilize moves, so implementing something like conditions would be clunky unless they alter your skills somehow (maybe while under a condition, when rolling a skill roll two dice and take the worse option).
depending on the environment or circumstances your character came from, it might give you an extra skill point in specific skills, but idk about that function as of yet.
The World
the world is, of course, motorcity. but what does that mean? what is revealed by watching the show is a lot, and there’s certainly more implied and confirmed outside of the show (chuck’s self-customized cybernetics, for example), but I think a lot of the missing pieces will have to be filled in and inferred from what might realistically happen. it’s real late at night for me rn so idk if these sentences are making sense. figuring out the intricacies of deluxe and motorcity and possibly even the detroit of jacob and kane’s time is definitely the hardest part for me.
let’s just call this section a big work in progress for now.
