Homebrew Diary: Attrition, Factions

The Expedition! rpg seeks to emulate, simplify and yet retain the relevance of resource management in exploration fantasy RPGs like the early Dungeons and Dragons games. However, it does this in a different way, as I explained before. Instead of having a big list of items to buy, the game assumes you have what you need in the form of Expedition Points. There are three kinds of Expedition Points – Sustenance, Delve and Magic points. Each of these represents a subset of the items that adventurers traditionally used in games like D&D, but without having to tally and track their individual existence. These points determine how long can you adventure for and allow you to utilize the concept of “your equipment” and manipulate it in the narrative however you need.

Attrition

I already talked about one way that Expedition Points work. You can spend them to gain Expedition Boons, which are basically “advanced uses” of your equipment. For example, you are assumed to eat everyday, but if you use the Hearty Meal sustenance boon, you eat a bunch, spend more Sustenance Points than normal, and thereby gain a bonus. Boons in the alpha are pretty simple and there’s not that many of them. As we go along I’d like to break them up a bit and include more, but for now, the way they are works as an introduction to the concept and a springboard to new ideas.

Another way the points work is through Attrition. Attrition sounds bad, but players might like it over the alternative. Attrition happens when you fail a task. In most games, if you fail a check to do something like climb a wall, you fail to the climb the wall. Pretty simple really, but there’s one problem – you’re going to try again, because the wall is still there. In fact if there’s no other way but the wall, you’re gonna have to keep trying until you climb that wall. In Expedition! this works differently. In Expedition, when you fail a check, you suffer Attrition. You pick a type of Expedition Point, you lose points from it, and then you manage to complete the task. So for example, if you fail to the climb the wall in Expedition, you can, say, pick Sustenance. Then you say “I climbed the wall…but a whole bunch of our rations spilled out of my bag while trying!” Or some other calamity involving your resources.

This keeps the game moving, while still offering an incentive not to fail. If you lose all your points, to any of the pools, you start suffering Deprivation, until you ultimately have to leave the Expedition site.

Shifting Gears

But there was another thing I wanted to talk about too, and that’s the Monster section of the book. I decided to write the sections in a different way than normal. Most books would just lay out a list of monsters in alphabetic order, or by order of danger or something. In Expedition, rather, monsters work in Factions. Factions are groups of monsters with some interconnection and synergy. For example, there’s a Goblin faction with Goblins, a Goblin boss… and poorly domesticated Goblin animals:

Goblin Dog [Foe] {Non-Sentient}
Description: The Goblin Dog is a warty and brutal green animal. It isn’t much of a dog, and is also not well domesticated. In fact, it is not domesticated at all. Once released from its cage, the Goblin Dog will maul both friend and foe.
Vitals: 12 Protection Rating, 30 Momentum, 1 Endurance, 2 Soak
Goblin Eater. Once per turn, a Goblin Dog can instantly kill a Goblin in its zone to gain 1 Edge and a +2 bonus to attack rolls for 1 round.
Bulky: A Goblin Dog suffers the Hindered and Toppled conditions for 1 extra round than normal, and takes -1 extra penalty from them.
Task Modifiers: +2 Power, +1 Maneuver, +1 Awareness
Base Combat Modifiers: +2
Base Combat Damage: 3d6+2
Conditions: Overwhelmed, Crippled, Toppled, Broken.
Rampage: The Goblin Dog makes a +1/+1 versatile piercing melee attack.
•1 Edge: The Goblin Dog can convert Strikes on the target.
•2 Edge: The Goblin Dog can kill a Goblin to regain 3d6+5 Momentum.
•3 Edge: The Goblin Dog deals Strikes to the target equal to the amount of Goblins it has killed within the last three rounds.

The “Goblin” referred to here is any Goblin Faction creature in the current combat.

Each faction is designed around the interplay in their abilities and some mild interplay in their fluff. Current planned factions for the alpha are Goblins, Undead, Abominations, Mercenaries and Wilderness.

Beyond the Alpha, factions will also have Faction Boons, that the GM can use the faction’s own Expedition Points to combat the PC’s efforts in the Expedition site, and PCs will have Counter Boons, which function only against certain Factions.