Having spoken to Nathan on a few occasions, including recording an interview with him for a local con, I don't think he would mind you putting out a free PDF of optional rules for Action Tales.
I imagine if you contacted him using the form here, he'd even give you express permission.
I really dig Lancer but I find the narrative play mechanics lackluster; I'm going to use the Wild Words SRD to flesh out those narrative mechanics so they are just as interesting as the mecha combat.
Zombie World would be a good resource to research for this, as would Untold, the Rory's Story Cube RPG that hit and then was gone. I bet Tarot-sized cards would work for this, both for interpretive/inspirational art and some written prompts. I believe DriveThruCards has a template for them, which means you could print a slick prototype deck.
I'm writing COMMENTS! You had no COMMENTS! So here's a COMMENT!
Hats off for the idea. I had thoughts zipping through my head just looking at the sample cards.
One question, though: how does the game hold up over extended play? If someone were to get the same card three times in one evening, as an example.
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I do not. I'm an older gamer, so I'm a bit old school and keep my notes on my laptop. I will send you a copy of the pdf when I get it further along.
I am integrating the cores, renaming them Resistance Pools, by tying each one to an attribute: Health to Physique, Stamina to Synergy (a measure of synchronicity between mind, body and spirit), Focus to Intellect, and Effort I renamed Tenacity, and tied it to Spirit (a measure of determination, charisma, and sense of self). I moved Tenacity to the opposite side for aesthetics of the character sheet I'm designing.
My OpenD6 variant is based primarily on Star Wars: Live Action Adventures. It used only the roll of a single d6, treated as a Wild Die added to the sum of Attribute + Skill. My idea is to give players 3 Action Dice they can spend as they choose to act and react. You could spend all three on one action but would be left with nothing to react.
I'm mucking about with an old favorite - OpenD6. This is the system behind the original Star Wars RPG. I am definitely riffing on that iteration of the system, most especially the variant used in Star Wars Live-Action Adventures which used only a single d6 for task resolution.
The wrinkle I have thrown into the mix is giving each player a small pool of Action Dice. Players are free to spend as many or as few of their Action Dice on a given action, however the dice only refresh at the start of the player's next turn. If they are fired upon, while piloting a ship or on foot, they would want to spend an Action Die to evade.
I am also adding some narrative elements to the game system to refresh Character Points, Fate Points, and clean up XP gain and expenditures. I am using a bit from the business courses I took in college - the SWOT analysis.
In business, an entrepreneur wants to be aware of their businesses' Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats. I'm applying this to characters. Strengths and Weaknesses are comparable to Advantages and Disadvantages, but Opportunities and Threats are more narrative. Each character should have a Main Drive and a Secondary Drive; motivating factors. Why are you here, why do you adventure, etc. Opportunities are narrative cues to move towards those goals and Threats are obstacles and barriers they need to surmount in order to accomplish their goal. The GM can use these as guideposts to build adventures that should theoretically have more player buy-in. When a player exploits an Opportunity, faces a Threat, or achieves one of their goals, they earn XP. The player may then write a new Drive with attendant Opportunities and Threats.
Early days, and now I must drag me off to work.
I am tooling around with an OpenD6 variant to smooth out the action economy, make the game feel more dynamic, and deal with issues arising from dice pools that are too small and too large.
Instead of building d6-based die pools with an Attribute + Skill, roll and total all of the dice, one of which is an 'exploding' open die, you take an Attribute and add a skill for a base value and roll one die that is open and may 'explode.' This is similar to Star Wars Miniature Battles and Star Wars Live-Action Adventures.
My wrinkle is to give players an action pool, starting with 3 dice. When you want to shoot your blaster, fly your ship, slice a terminal, etc., you choose how many action dice to assign to it, and the rest of the dice are your available actions until the start of your next turn; so if someone fires at you or your ship or the computer tries to counter your slice, you can use the remaining dice to respond, or maneuver, or fire back, etc. At the start of your turn, if you are unharmed, your pool of action dice refreshes.
I also want to add in some tags for customizing equipment and narrative rules just 'cause I wanna.
Kudos to range bands. I seem to recall reading a game not too long back that used a banana as the range finder XD.
Is Land Management and Seasonal action a downtime thing between skirmishes?
Just a thought - it might be neat to include some kind of Revolution counter that when the ruling class abuses their lessors for their special abilities to kick in causes a third party to enter the fray and complicate matters.
This also seems like a place where you could take the classic console RPG approach (for that matter, I think this is even how the Monster Hunter franchise works) and make each part of the bigger monster a separate piece. Damage the legs and wings until they cannot fly anymore, then the front limbs, no more claws, but we haven't isolated the head, so watch out for bites and venomous spit attacks!
This also lets you have the monster take multiple actions and compartmentalize its various moves in a similar manner to PC sheets so the GM doesn't have to deal with analysis paralysis, either.
As for the random weapons, maybe the random stuff is incidental, but you take those and the other materials to a workshop and make the bespoke gear. Maybe you need one of those incidentals to use as the basic weapon type frame and use the monster mats and some currency to make the custom gear you want. This would be almost animist, with players investing some of their power in their weapon made from monster totems.
I would suggest taking a look at the way LIGHT does that in Vulcan, trading bounties for tags.
I think part of the problem is that controlled position is misunderstood by many. A controlled situation happens when most variables have been locked down by the players; this usually takes time ad planning. They are in this position due to past efforts coming together.
An example of this: An ambush on the player's turf with escape routes barricaded off and all automated devices are in the hands of the rigger and the decker. A kill box. Or a meeting with a Mr. Johnson in a building they control, they arranged the security, and all personnel in place are theirs or allies.
Controlled situations don't happen easily. Shows like Leverage and Burn Notice give really good examples of controlled situations.
Anthem is one of my inspirations, too. My suggestions if you want to make the attributes more about the pilot is to focus on what the pilot is doing while in the exosuit.
For accessing the power of the exosuit, I'd go with Overdrive, or maybe Redline.
For accessing the suit's speed, I'd go with Reflexes, or the name the responsive system is sometimes referred to in fighters, Livewire
For the methodical use of the exoframe I might go with Accumen.
I thought that was going to be your stance, especially in light of what occurred with FRAME, but I didn't want to assume and be, 'that guy.'
TROPHY was one I thought of, too. However, the text reads in a more formalized manner, leading me to conclude they ran some copy past a lawyer.
Do you mind if I reference this post when this question arises? It seems implied, but again, I don't want to make an ass of me and Mption.
I was enthusing about the LUMEN Jam over on r/RPGdesign and a solid question came up. Zireael07 asked, "Nitpick: there is an SRD, but it doesn't say how it's licensed. Is it Open Game Content? Open Game License? Creative Commons?"
IANAL; From my reading of the landing page and the SRD itself, this appears to be a simple 'gentleman's agreement.' Essentially, 'give me credit and I won't take legal action.' I'm fine with that, but this might be a barrier to some people, therefore some form of license might be in order, if only to make other potential designers more comfortable with using LUMEN.
