Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Despite the retreat from Gaming Ballistic being my full-time job, I still love TTRPGs, and so I wanted to get it out there: I intend to bring Mission X to fruition in 2025.

It is focused on modern action, with inspiration from Stargate SG-1, Aliens, XCOM, and the like. A streamlined, rebuilt engine focusing getting new and experienced players to the table. Fast and smooth character generation and gameplay in the genre GURPS does better than just about all other games.

Mission X will come to the table with a consolidated skills list – about 65-70 skills that represent clusters of ability - with simpler pricing, plus reorganized and rewritten traits. Different damage scaling and using an evolved version of Conditional Injury from Pyr 3/120 embedded throughout.

This is going to be a full, self-contained game (think the Dungeon Fantasy RPG Boxed Set, not the worked-example genre books), that takes the best and most on point concepts from a very large licensed corpus of prior art, including some of my own Pyramid articles. It's designed to attract new players to a genre GURPS does better than just about any other game, fast to the table and fast at the table.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...stic/mission-x

Please click and follow the link to keep up with the project as more details become available. It won't be launching this year, but it is my top priority for 2025.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Sounds good! Would you like to write Designer's Notes for The Path of Cunning?

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Sure ... but I want to finish doing the game first. I'm still designing!

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

What can you tell us about the narrative side? What sorts of abilities will PCs have?

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

I've been looking forward to Mission X ever since you started dropping hints of it, so I'm excited to read that it's set to come out next year. I had originally been under the assumption it was more like action-oriented Space Opera - but military science fiction is pretty close to that already, so it probably won't take much tweaking to get there (and maybe it will work for that straight out of the box - the difference between the genres is often more just in what they focus on).

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Pretty mundane stuff for the core set, though I suspect at least one of the suggested settings will need some sort of psion.

The game borrows/steals heavily from Action and Monster Hunters, so there's a lot more than killing aliens and taking their stuff.

Powers/abilities that are beyond the usual set of traits and skills are strongly setting dependent, but even now I can say "it's more than just combat. A lot more."

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

That sounds accurate. I am taking pains to make sure the game engine broadly supports man-portable ranged death, which means Age of Sail to Star Trek.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Any teaser on what the "evolved" version of Conditional Injury looks like?

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

The original version had Severity 0 as "you just took the equivalent of 1xHP in one blow." A Severity -6 wound was 10x less severe, and a "scratch."

The original version had you making HT rolls, even penalized, straight-up to avoid things like wound accumulation.

The new version has Severity 1 being a "scratch," and each +6 Severity is x10 worse wound. So Sev 1 is 'scratch,' Sev 7 is "roll for KO" and Sev 13 ... unlucky 13 ... is "instantly and unrecoverably dead."

https://chaoticgm.wordpress.com/tag/conditional-injury/

The Chaotic GM is on my playtest crew, and we're giving all of the tweaks on that page a workout. Wound accumulation is 3 + HT/2 (and it works great in play still, as he noted). We have a solid universal rule for multiple hits from rapid fire.

Damage is reported not as dice of damage, but the typical wound on a typical human torso. What was (say) 6d pi damage would be about 9B+0 pi (+0), which is Severity 9, and the Damage Variability Roll is unmodified at +0, and the injury of any inflicted wounds is also unmodified (if it were 6d pi+, the new rating would have been 9B+0 pi (+1). Because the wound conditions are based on the Size and Speed/Range Table progression, +50% damage is just +1 injury level.

We did have to do some predictable things for armor and DR (and I say predictable because while I did derive the end state we're using myself, I've now seen it a minimum of two other places, so clearly a road well traveled).

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Just nodding my head saying "hell yeah" as I read this. I've played around with CI a lot: variant rules across blogs, a mental stability system, fusing it with The Last Gasp, etc. Really excited to see how this plays out in Mission X.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

I can say that The Last Gasp won't make the cut as-is, or even as some sort of "spend action points" system. That's the sort of bookkeeping we are tending to hit with a 10B+3 pi (+2) shot on sight.

Fast to the table, fast AT the table, and enough abstraction that yes, you can still get the expected effects.

Like one of the first things we brought out was a player in the test game decided to pack a full-auto grenade launcher. If you know regular GURPS, that's a "OK, everyone get pizza while we resolve all this" sort of thing. We've got a way of handling this that makes it just another Tuesday.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

This is the only GURPS product that I'm looking forward to.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

And at the other end, I want to note that during some playtesting I had a knife-wielding character in the same mix that did just fine in combat. In other words, the basis for the system and the CI and so on is so inherently robust and functional that it works at the extremes as well as it does in the middle.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

I am, as of now following the kickstarter. As with everything Douglas does, I am sure this will pack a punch, in quality and novelty. Looking forward to it.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Looking forward to it.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Impatient ! Very much ! Really !
KS alarm is on.
Regards.

PS : your gurps "version" is what I was waiting for a long time. I'm a big gurps fan since late 80s, especially 3e (less for 4e, I admit), and lately, in my rpg club I tried to get my players to play gurps but it was a failure because the trend is to soft/light/easy rpg and they wrongly feel/think gurps is the opposite of that. In the description you give of your game, it seems that you're looking for a compromise, keeping the best of both worlds, and I really like that! I can't wait to find out more!

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Looking forward to it!

Maybe it is also the spearhead for a new Space Opera line too.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

I’m pleased you’re using Cumulative Injury, in some form, but I am really pleased to hear about a smoother automatic weapons resolution. The timing seems good, too; I expect to wrap up an eight year campaign sometime next year, and want to do a space-action type game next.

Re: Mission X: Launching in 2025
 

Sad to hear you cannot maintain your dream job but very happy Mission X is still on the table.

Sounds very good! Will it include paranormal abilities (psionics, magic, super-powers)?

Again, I like what I read! I suggest you also organize advantages and disadvantages by categories (not unlike GURPS 3). It makes the game look lighter when it comes in smaller bites.

Can you elaborate on damage scaling?

Love it! It might be the GURPS game I have been waiting for!