A Scifinity Update

Work continues apace on Tim Kirk's and my Alternity microlite retroclone, Scifinity. We've nailed down basic character creation, and it looks like this:

* Choose your Job (career). This will provide a -1 step situation die bonus to any rolls where your Job is applicable. We're looking at also having your Job provide an action check (initialtive) bonus based on the bonus from the Job's old Profession from the original game.

* Choose your Attributes (ability scores). You have 30 points to distribute among PHYsical, MENtal, and SOCial attributes. These are bound by the classic 4-14 range for human characters. A rating of 11-12 gives you a +1 step resistance bonus (a penalty applied to an opponent's roll to affect you adversely). A rating of 13-14 gives a +2 step bonus.

* Choose your Skills. You have 4 points to distribute among Combatant (combat spec), Envoy (diplomat), Freelancer (free agent), and Technician (tech op). A skill category's rating is added to your appropriate attribute to determine your skill total when you make a roll where the category applies.

* Health (durability) is in two pools: Stun and Wound. These are both equal to your PHYsical score. Stun damage depletes your Stun pool, and Wound damage depletes your Wound pool and Stun pool both. Fatigue and Mortal damage from the base game will not be included in the core Scifinity game.

* Choose your equipment, including weapons and armor. We're looking at a set starting resources (money) pool for all characters.

Tim and I are thinking about whether to include psionics and cyberware in the base game, or release them as "modules" to optionally add to the core. I think I'd prefer to do so, meaning we can clean up and playtest just the core, finish it up, and release it to the world, then take our time with the options.

I am super excited. I don't think I could have done this alone. Without Tim's patience and creativity, I would have gotten frustrated, caught up in questions I wouldn't have been able to answer, and I would have given up early on. Scifinity is becoming real!