Phaserip - Behold! The ARG!

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The second one is easier for me to read.

I've skimmed over the issue you put up earlier. It's a great layout. It has a style that suits the material, but it is clean and easy to reference as well.
 
TristramEvans said:
Anyone prefer this version? - I can't tell if its harder or easier to read
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Nope, I find the other format more readable, even though I know this one is easier to fit on a page.

I'm late to this thread as well as FASERIP - only picked it up and read it a couple months ago. I'm a fan of the system, so I'm going to have to check out your take. I really like what you are doing with all the graphics and layout. That's all I can comment on so far.
 
Looks like you need to make both versions available.
 
Baulderstone said:
The second one is easier for me to read.

I've skimmed over the issue you put up earlier. It's a great layout. It has a style that suits the material, but it is clean and easy to reference as well.
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Very glad to hear that. Readability was my primary concern, my original was so over-designed and hard on the eyes. I wanted something that would look good on the page but also be useful as a text in-game. After a lot of research went with Sitka for the main font, which isn't styalized, but was specifically designed (with Science!) to be easily read and even help with Dyslexia! For the section and chapter headers I used League Spartan and League Gothic, which was the font developed for the Dark Knight film posters.

In my publishing draft, I'll probably be cutting back the colours, and go for black and white styalized art in the blocky Mignola/Kirby style, save for a few colour splash pages, and the chart of course. Speaking of...

Baulderstone said:
Looks like you need to make both versions available.
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Yeah, I'll probably have the big (long) one printed on the inside covers, and use the other for reference on the page. Ideally, actually, it'd be nice to have a fold-out one attached to the back cover, but I'd have to look at the cost margins for that.
 
Interesting, just tried desaturating it to see how it read in B&W...looks like I need to go with a much lighter shade of red, but the other colours are pretty easy to distinguish.

ARG! 2 bw by TS Evans, on Flickr
 
Edgewise said:
I'm late to this thread as well as FASERIP - only picked it up and read it a couple months ago. I'm a fan of the system, so I'm going to have to check out your take. I really like what you are doing with all the graphics and layout. That's all I can comment on so far.
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out of curiosity, which edition of FASERIP did you pick up?
 
Apparition said:
I have that as well. It's not entirely FASERIP though. From what I understand, it's a mixture of FASERIP, ICONS (mostly the powers and power descriptions), and Golden Heroes. The name is confusing.
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Well, shit. Where do I get the real thing?

I did think the powers seemed pretty similar to ICONS, but since the ICONS abilities seemed similar to MSH, I thought the borrowing was happening in the other direction.
 
Edgewise said:
Well, shit. Where do I get the real thing?

I did think the powers seemed pretty similar to ICONS, but since the ICONS abilities seemed similar to MSH, I thought the borrowing was happening in the other direction.
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MSH is FASERIP. FASERIP is the name of the system in MSH, like MEGS is the name of the system in DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes. So if you have MSH, you have FASERIP.

If you don't have MSH, check out this page.
 
Edgewise said:
Well, shit. Where do I get the real thing?
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lol, ok I've expressed annoyance about this very possibility since that "FASERIP" retro-clone came out.

Basically, what happened is TSR released the very popular Marvel Superheroes RPG starting with the basic set in the early 80s, followed by the advanced set, and then a revised basic set in the early 90s before the gameline was discontinued and the Marvel license eventually went to other parties. All the original books can be found for download at Classic Marvel Forever, under the 'Resources' tab (at least for the time being, its very much a Star Frontiers-like situation, in that at any time a company could call for the stuff to be taken down, but for now its tacitly allowed because the current rights holder of the system (assumedly WOTC) has no plans to use the system and no longer have the rights to use the Marvel IP, and its likely just below the notice of Disney.

Fans began referring to the MSH game affectionately as "FASERIP" , basically for as long as I've played, because that's the acronym formed by the attributes in the game: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. I can't think of a comparable situation with another RPG.

The game was and is very well regarded, and there's been a number of "retroclones" and revamps/variations since the advent of the online homebrew. The earliest, and still going, is G-Core by Dilly Green Bean games, which replaced the original table resolution with a purely dice-based mechanic. Another early adaption was Technohol 13's Universal Heroes, which is primarily focused on adapting the system to media properties such as GI Joe, Transformers, even Planescape. 4C, or "The Four Color System" was an attempt at doing an "OSRIC-like" free license generic version of the rules.

Steve Kenson originally did an online adaption called the "Superlative System" that crossed the original FASERIP game system with Fudge. This later evolved into Icons, which mixed in elements from FATE.

Finally, along came Gurbintroll games who did their own retro-clone, blending in a few elements from other games, and annoyingly named it "FASERIP", bound to cause confusion, because the old guard still refers to the original game as FASERIP. Frankly, I think it was a bit of a dick move.

Anyhoo, "Phaserip" is obviously a nod to the nickname of that original system. What I'm doing here is a little bit different than the other games mentioned though. In the 30 years running the system, I've streamlined it in a number of ways, added some houserules, and adapted it to various other genres, including investigative horror. So I'm starting with a tweaked version of the system including my houserules, but the majority of the book will be a deconstruction and discussion of each element of the system, how I use it for other genres, and then just tons of GM advice (something I think every RPG lacks). Phaserip isn't a "clone" exactly, its relationship to the original game is comparable to DCC's relationship to D&D. I call it a "Retro-vamp RPG".
 
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TristramEvans said:
Finally, along came Gurbintroll games who did their own retro-clone, blending in a few elements from other games, and annoyingly named it "FASERIP", bound to cause confusion, because the old guard still refers to the original game as FASERIP. Frankly, I think it was a bit of a dick move.
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It is a dick move! I knew the history behind the acronym, but I just assumed that this FASERIP was some kind of OGL or public domain version that was considered definitive by the community. I knew just enough about the original MSH system that these assumptions jibed with the rules themselves.

It's a shame, because I think it is a pretty decent update of what I remember. But I should really look through the original stuff before I commit to any comparisons. Speaking of which, many thanks, Lunar Ronin Apparition, for putting me back on the right track. I'm getting my copies as we speak.

Anyway, TristramEvans TristramEvans, I've had more of a look at PHASERIP and I like what I see. The layout in particular is very nice; I'm working on my own adventure and I'm envious. And speaking of names, I appreciate that the one you chose both reflects its origins with a more than a nod to the differences.
 
Working on Issue III I've been struck by an idea, and I don't think I've ever seen this done in a game, so looking for some feedback as to this is something worth doing. Basically, I'm thinking of taking one Issue (chapter) and basically using it as an extended example of play, by transcribing the events of an entire one-shot I've run. From the planning stages, to the actual gameplay, including discussions of rulings I made as a GM during the game. My thought processes, player reactions, how I field questions, how combat played out, etc.

Is this something that would be helpfull or useful in a rulebook?
 
TristramEvans said:
Working on Issue III I've been struck by an idea, and I don't think I've ever seen this done in a game, so looking for some feedback as to this is something worth doing. Basically, I'm thinking of taking one Issue (chapter) and basically using it as an extended example of play, by transcribing the events of an entire one-shot I've run. From the planning stages, to the actual gameplay, including discussions of rulings I made as a GM during the game. My thought processes, player reactions, how I field questions, how combat played out, etc.

Is this something that would be helpfull or useful in a rulebook?
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It's the kind of thing that would come down to the execution. As a general rule, extended examples of play can be highly illuminating, or they can be something I skim past.

It would be pretty cool if you could manage it though. I think you should give it a shot.
 
TristramEvans said:
Working on Issue III I've been struck by an idea, and I don't think I've ever seen this done in a game, so looking for some feedback as to this is something worth doing. Basically, I'm thinking of taking one Issue (chapter) and basically using it as an extended example of play, by transcribing the events of an entire one-shot I've run. From the planning stages, to the actual gameplay, including discussions of rulings I made as a GM during the game. My thought processes, player reactions, how I field questions, how combat played out, etc.

Is this something that would be helpfull or useful in a rulebook?
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Would this be in text or comics book/comic panel form?
 
Ronin said:
Would this be in text or comics book/comic panel form?
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text, I don't think I could pull that off, although I did like the comic panel vs text interpretations examples in the Vampire: Dark Ages rulebook, so that is a thought. But that wouldn't include the stages of putting together the scenario, etc.

Hm, you have got me thinking now, though...
 
The best example of play that I have seen has been what Victory Games did with James Bond 007. They had about 5 1/2 pages broken into two columns. The left column was essentially the story version of what happened in the game session, free of rules and chatter and dice chucking; the right column was what went down at the table and how the rules were used. It's rather like those books of Beowulf or Canterbury Tales you can buy where the left page is the original Old English and the right page is the modern English translation.

James Bond 007 made it incredibly easy to understand the rules presented in the prior chapter because anything I didn't immediately grok was explained by the play example.

Another cool play example was in Prince Valiant, because it's about the only one I can think of where the example includes the session going a bit off the rails of what the referee had prepped for. I always thought more games should address that as more often than not it seems players will do something unpredictable.
 
Yeah, Prince Valiant's example of play is one that's impressed me for years as well. I'd like to try and capture that sort of spontaneity on the part of players and impress the need for GMs to go with the flow and improvise.
 
Alright, so back to Phaserip after school kept me away from it for a few weeks.

And of course, the first thing I do is read from the start and begin with the revisions.

Here's the newly revised (and spellchecked) Issue I:
https://ia601509.us.archive.org/3/items/Issue16x9_201804/Issue 1 6x9.pdf

So big changes:

First off, for years I've divided out Psyche as a form of "Sanity Points" mental health pool. I did this when I started using Phaserip for Call of Cthulhu, and functionally it worked fine. But when doing a deep consideration of the game this caused me several issues:

Both Psyche and Arete are based on the cumulative ratings of the Mental Attributes. This seems incredibly inelegant to me, and muddles the definition of the two.

I'd replaced Psyche in the Mental Attributes with "Courage". Again, this works just fine for the horror games, but I became really uncomfortable when it came to defining Courage in regards to superheroes. Even if I was defining it as Willpower, it still niggled at me to invite comparison between the bravery of various superheroes. If you ask someone on the street "How brave is Batman on a scale of 1 to 10?" the answer, without thinking is 10. But this is true of pretty much every superhero ever. Courage goes with the territory, it's a defining feature. The outliers are just that - unique in being outliers.

So in the last 2 games of Phaserip I've GMed I returned Psyche to it's place in Attributes, and instead situations that previously would cause loss of Psyche instead cause loss of Arete. It had a surprisingly powerful effect in the game: because Psyche/ San points are so abstract, there was very little reaction to losing them in the course of a game until it got to the point the pool was so low they were actually in danger of bottoming out. But with Arete, because its a valuable resource in the game, each point lost was felt. It upped the anxiety of the players perfectly corresponding to the situations their characters were in.

Moreover, it makes sense in the context of the superhero genre. Arete encompasses the concepts of resolve and will, and events that affect a character emotionally wear upon their confidence. I can cite numerous examples of comicbook storylines where a loss of confidence inhibited a hero's abilities and performance, perhaps the most blatant being Spider-man 2, where mental issues and self doubt actually cause Peter to lose his powers entirely!

So Psyche has been restored as the seventh Attribute, and the Factors are now Health, Arete, and Continuity.

Oh yeah, Stamina is now back to being called "Health". This was again about muddled definitions. Durability actually defines Stamina, and this is born out by the Durability rolls in the game. This specifically occurred to me when I was writing up the rules for Drowning. Because of the term Stamina I kept wanting to include extra rules on top of the Durability rolls to induce loss of Stamina points. I rejected this as over complication, but became acutely aware that the term just didn't fit in the way it was being used.

Finally, Archetypes just weren't working for me as Traits. Even as an optional rule. So they are gone, and instead form the basis of an optional system of random chargen, also addressing that some players really just prefer to randomly generate their Heroes.

That's the big ones.

Ever since returning Psyche to the Attributes, I have been seriously wrestling with going back to the classic Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche lineup. My original concerns over copyright have been abated by the buffers of numerous retroclones over the years. But the struggle now is aesthetic in nature. I really, really prefer "Wits" over Intuition. It just perfectly encompasses all the elements the characteristic represents. And Durability is just a term I intimately associate with superhero Attributes, ever since the highly influential Series II Marvel Trading cards, which first introduced "power ratings" outside of RPGs to superhero descriptions, continued to this day in both Marvel and DC write ups.

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TristramEvans said:
So in the last 2 games of Phaserip I've GMed I returned Psyche to it's place in Attributes, and instead situations that previously would cause loss of Psyche instead cause loss of Arete. It had a surprisingly powerful effect in the game: because Psyche/ San points are so abstract, there was very little reaction to losing them in the course of a game until it got to the point the pool was so low they were actually in danger of bottoming out. But with Arete, because its a valuable resource in the game, each point lost was felt. It upped the anxiety of the players perfectly corresponding to the situations their characters were in.
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This sounds like a good design choice. And I say this with limited memory of precisely what "Arete" does, but I'm guessing it's a pool of points you can use to boost die rolls fairly arbitrarily.
 
Edgewise said:
This sounds like a good design choice. And I say this with limited memory of precisely what "Arete" does, but I'm guessing it's a pool of points you can use to boost die rolls fairly arbitrarily.
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Arete is the equivalent of Karma points in the original game. It's a resource used to directly increase die rolls on a point for point basis.
 
Are you calling it Arete because you were worried calling it Karma is a copyright minefield or do you think it works better?
 
Endless Flight said:
Are you calling it Arete because you were worried calling it Karma is a copyright minefield or do you think it works better?
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Personally I've always thought that "Karma" was a weird choice for the stat name in MSH. But I do admit that "Arete" threw me off at first.
 
Endless Flight said:
Are you calling it Arete because you were worried calling it Karma is a copyright minefield or do you think it works better?
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Originally, yeah, I changed the name of every game element for copyright reasons.I first conceived of 'Phaserip' as a publishable game unto itself (as opposed to just my informal houserules for FASERIP) just after 4C came out. Or, more accurately, in reaction to 4C.

At the outset of the project that became '4C' (originally 'FASERIP' then 'Four Colour'), I was a huge supporter. This was back during the so-called 'wild west' days of RPGnet, and online retrocones had just started to appear. There were numerous flamewars at the time regarding the legality of such games outside of the protection of the D20 OGL. I think OSRIC had just come out a little beforehand, and the term 'OSR' was not in common parlance yet. Hundreds of would-be armchair lawyers chimed in with conflicting ideas, and I think wer were all jut waiting for the C&D notices to start showing up.

Around this time Phil Reed, an actual "professional game designer" known for products such as GURPs Discworld (I think he is CEO of Steve Jackson Games now) started a thread entitled "FASERIP-an OSCRIC for Marvel Superheroes":

Phil Reed said:
No, it doesn't exist. I've considered it many times, though. Imagine creating a game called FASERIP that rebuilds the old MSH game in a format that makes it possible for publishers to produce supplements that would be compatible with the old game.
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Many posters immediately expressed enthusiastic support for the idea, myself included. MSH had been OOP for over a decade at that point, long ince supplanted by Marvel Saga and then the 'stones' game (which is, I think, greatly under-rated and deserving of its own retroclone/clean-up at some point, but one thing at a time). We'd gotten a revised Basic set, but the much anticipated Revised Advanced set was so much vaporware. Excited discussion began on revisions to the gam we'd like to see. Phil Reed stated that if he could get a few weeks free, he would write up the game and put it up for free download and printing through LuLu.

Phil Reed said:
It couldn't be an exact duplicate of the old game, but I feel you could come close enough for people to use it without any problems
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(incidentally, it was also in this thread that I was introduced to The Superlative System, which would become Icons)

The thread continued with mounting excitement, and Reed continued to drop hints that if he could find a way to justify taking the time off to write the book he would. He was confident in his ability to alter the system in a way that retained the original intent but woud be free from copyright concerns, and we were all psyched to get a new, modern version of the classic game.

Eventually, a crowdfunding campaign was set up to fund Reed writing the game. It wasn't much, this was before the days of Kickstarter. I put in immediately, as did many others, and we swiftly had the amount that allowed Reed to take the time needed to do the game. And that's how we got '4C'. I can't recall how long it took; my sense of time was muddled by Christmas-like anticipation; but I think it was only about a month or so, so kudos to Phil Reed for that at least.

Unfortunately...it was a piece of crap. A slapped-together, unfinished & disjointed hack job.

Looking back with some degree of objectivity, I'd clearly built up some unrealistic expectations. Outside of some goofy D6-system derived Duck Tales and Groo the Wanderer RPGs me and some friends had concocted in grade school, I knew nothing about the actual process of writing a gamebook at the time, or how unrealistic it was to expect anything like I wanted or had pictured in so short a time. But even so, I was more than disappointed, I was actually angry.

And so, like many others in this hobby before me, I set out to write the RPG I wanted to see. At the very least, it wouldn't be possible to do worse than 4C.

Anyways, in regards to copyright, I took the notion Reed put forward about renaming everything as the best means to avoid any trouble, and my first step was to come up with alternative names for every element of the game. This was more finicky than you might imagine, as I have very particular aesthetic tastes. Everything had to 1) evoke the spirit of the original game and 2) fit together in a way that I found linguistically pleasing. I spent countless hours armed with a thesaurus, trying out different combinations of Attributes in an early attempt to create an acronym. I eventually gave up on this in favour of the influence of the aforementioned Power Ratings of the Marvel Series II Trading Cards which I'd adored in my youth.

Of the alternative/substitutions I cae up with, I'm the most proud of "GESTs" and "Arete."

In the original game, dice rolls are called "FEATs", and acronym for "Function of Exceptional Abilities and Talents". I found the term 'Gest' i a dictionary of archaic English, a medieval term meaning "Daring deed or heroic exploit", and co-opted this as an acronym for "Gauge of Extraordinary Skill or Talent."

Finding an alternative for Karma was a bit trickier. I needed something that captured the concept and was consistent with the game premise. I'd encountered the term Arete used previousy in an RPG, Mage: The Ascension, but I don't recall now how it was defined or used in that system. In this case I came across the term reading up on the origins of the concept of Heroes in ancient Greece.

I'm going to quote Wikipedia here as the handiest resource:

Arete (Greek: ἀρετή), in its basic sense, means "excellence of any kind",The term may also mean "moral virtue". In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential
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I'm sure you can see how it not only provides an alternative to Karma that keeps many of teh same notions, but also expands upon this.

In the years hence, the expanded meaning(s) of Arete informed a lot of how I looked at the game. So the answer to your question at this point is "kinda both". I began to read up on Arete, and how it was employed by Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. And this in turn created nuances in how Arete functioned in the game itself.

Anyways, now, years later, several FASERIP retroclones have come out, and I've become less concerned over the copyright issue. Functionally, I think the system sits in a sort of a copyright void similiar to DC Heroes, in which it was at least jointly owned by Marvel, who either have no idea or simply could care less about it (hence the Classic Marvel Forever sit allowed to exist in peace all these years), and partly owned by TSR, which no longer exist. If WOTC wanted to make a push for ownership of the system, they could, but it would be highly unlikely that they brought suit against any clones, and anything that even got to court at this point would be protected by about a dozen other similar games wherein the copyright was not defended and the system itself has become entwined in various degrees with the OGL.

As such, I've recently begun going backwards in some of my re-naming. But here I'm encountering the aesthetic issues I've previously mentioned. At this point, I like "GEST" better than "FEAT". And switching back from Arete to Karma means rethinking a lot of the in-game justifications. It's actually an ongoing struggle at the moment. Part of me wants to simply retrun entirely to the original terms of the MSH system, and wear the banner of the system's origins loud and proud. Another part of me remains quite pleased with my own ingenuity in re-naming the game's mechanics, to the point of now preferring my version over the original. I mean, how could I go back to the "Universal Resolution Chart" when "The ARG!" (Action Resoution Graph) is so much more fun?

To complicate matters further, a large portion of the game is devoted simply to discussing how to effectivey alter the system to fit the needs of the game it is used for, up to and including alternate names for the Attributes anyways that reflect any given setting.

For example, in my Victoriana-by-way-of -Dr-Who pastiche "Professor When and The Women of T.I.M.E." I use the Attributes:
Daring , Finesse , Brawn , Fortitude , Wits , Judgement , and Resolve, with 'Constitution' in place of Heath and 'Moxie' in place of Karma/Arete. In fact I went so far as to alter the names of the Echelon Ranks to suit the setting:
1 Deficient
2 Unfortunate
3 Adequate
4 Fine
5 Superlative
6 Extraordinary
7 Astonishing
8 Miraculous
9 Inconcievable
10 Ungodly

Likewise, in my adaption of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon to the system (something I haven't discussed here yet, just another freebie I was going to put out using the game to fulfill what I saw as a missed opportunity with the cartoon in that no tie-in to the RPG was ever done), I replaced the terms with appropriate D&D isms:
Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche became:

Thaco, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution. Intelligence, Wisdom & Charisma

with Hit Points naturally replacing Heath, and "Alignment" for Karma/Arete

With that in mind, I wonder how much it matters what terminology I use for the base system? And yet, I do care, because...I dunno, "personal aesthetics" I guess.

Leaf by Niggle.
 
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Edgewise said:
Personally I've always thought that "Karma" was a weird choice for the stat name in MSH. But I do admit that "Arete" threw me off at first.
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I think "Karma points" fit the association of Marvel with the 60s origins and Stan Lee's attempts to blend in pop culture words with obscure verbology. "True Believers", "Excelsior", etc. Moreover, by this point, Karma points have entered common usage outside of the game (much like Call of Cthulhu's 'Sanity Loss') to the extent that they even have an entry in the urban dictionary.

Which I realize is a point against my using the much more obscure "Arete", which requires explanation for every new player. I'm not sure how big a hurdle that is (my players seem to catch on quickly enough, but then, I'm not sure if I replaced the term Arete with Karma tomorrow they'd even notice the difference)
 
FOR anyone interested in what's up with Phaserip, I found that writing to a page design was way too impractical an approach. I was wasting so much time making everything look pretty and harmonious, with constant editing to format, that I wasn't getting the writing actually done. So I copied all the text onto a simple word do with no formatting, and began the arduous process of editing. There was a fair amount of rewriting as well, but I progressed at a much faster pace and 5 issues/chapters are finished, with the majority of writing done or 3 more.

The layout of the game so far is:

Issue 0 - Primer
(a general introduction that runs through all the basics of the system with copious examples. These 5-6 pages are meant to be all a new player needs to read before they begin playing.)

Issue I - When Wakes the Protagonist
(Methods of defining characters in system terms, character creation, and player advice)

Issue II - Saving the Planet
(Basic rules systems, including movement and using skills, and defining the game world in system terms)

Issue III - Vs The World
(Combat rules, including duels, mass combat, and chases, as well as injury and healing)

Issue IV - Tools of the Trade
(Resources, finances, equipment, weapons, vehicles/mecha/robots, cybernetics, gadgeteering/inventing, and headquarters)

Issue V - Thus Spake Zarathustra
(superpowers, using powers in combat, power stunts, martial arts stunts, and psionics)

Issue VI - Beyond the Boundary
(Magic, the occult and supernatural world, dimensional travel and alternate realities, and magical items)

Issue VII - Ruling the World
(GM's section)

Issue VIII- Conquering The Planet
(Villains, plots, criminals and crime, the underworld and organized crime, the justice system and vigilantes)

Issue IX - Taking Over the City
(settings, city and town creation, travel, random events and encounters)

Issue X - How the Cookie Crumbles
(A complete example of a play session including prep, how it played out and concluded, and analysis)

Appendix A - Alternate rules
(alternate character creation systems (random roll and point-buy), combat and campaign options)

Appendix B - People in Your Neighbourhood
(Character examples, NPCs, villains, henchmen, animals, aliens, and monsters)

Appendix C - Charts
(reproducing charts from the rules, encounter and random event tables)

Issue VII is what I'm spending most of my time on, as it's the largest. Issues 0 through IV are finished, V and VI almost finished. Issues VIII and IX are still in outline forms. Issue X is 50% done, Appendix A 25%.

The Primer I'm going to offer separately as a free pdf. Prior to posting the Primer though I'm putting out Professor When and the Women of T.I.M.E. which I'm currently working on the art for.
 
Professor WHEN is meant to serve as an example of adapting the Phaserip system with a hyper-focus on a specific theme. In this case, a tongue-in-cheek etsy of Doctor Who based around Victorian sensibilities combined with 50s retro-futurism. This iteration of Phaserip is minimalist, using d10 rolls and a simplified ARG!

The system terms are renamed to evoke the setting;

Attributes used are Daring, Finesse, Vigor, Wits, Reason, and Composure, with Constitution in the place of Stamina, and Moxie in place of Karma/Arete. Likewise the Echelons used are: Hapless (1), Inadequate (2), Typical (3), Fair (4), Surpassing (5), Prodigious (6), Extraordinary (7), Miraculous (8), Inconceivable (9), and Divine (10). Alot of this is just me having fun, hence the game is laden with my particularly odd sense of humour. Like the game de-emphasizes combat, so the combat system is explained (confusingly) by a drunk Irish pirate.

Professor When is clearly HG Wells, playing Charlie's Angels with a group of female historical figures. His time travel device appears in the form of a Grandfather Clock but contains inside a pocket dimension that resembles a Victorian manor. The Professor populates it with women he's travelled in time and saved from a horrible fate. The Women of T.I.M.E. include Ada Lovelace ("The Countess of Numbers"), Lily Bart (from Edith Wharton's House of Mirth), Grace O'Malley (The Pirate Queen), Lucy Westenra (from Dracula), and "strange woman from the future" Lyndi Bopper (along with a host of historical alternates from around the world).

One of the setting's conceits is that travel outside of the solar system is impossible because of an "Aetheric Stormshield" just past Pluto. However the Solar system itself is highly populated. When's outer space adventures feature numerous potential antagonists...

The Bunny Queen, Beatrix Potter, is a former companion of The Professor, turned space pirate.

The Creature from Dimension X is a Mythos-like Cthuloid would-be "Elder God" who can't get anyone to worship him, so he's largely harmless. He tries to start cults but they tend to only feature 3 to 4 disciples, in the example case an insane homeless man who thinks he's a superhero, an elderly lady a few cats shy of a litter TCFDX recruited going door to door, and a perpetually stoned musician.

The Dodecahedrons are sort of like Daleks crossed with the creatures from E.A. Abbott's Flatland.

The Malicious Martians are the tripod-riding creatures of Well's War of the Worlds.

The Nefarious Neptunians are like Deep Ones crossed with 40K orcs.

The Perfidious Plutonians are very 50's MST3K-style SciFi alien invaders.

Silvermine is another former companion of The Professor, Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor, who in a quest for eternal youth due to her vanity, ended up becoming host to a space parasite in the form of a silvery encasing of Tabor's body. Think a female Silver Surfer...

The Slimy Saturnians are basically blob-men who subsist on gasses, resembling Dralisites. They are at constant war with the Serpent-Men of Titan.

The Vexing Venusians are basically space vampires, led by Elizabeth Bathory, yet another former companion of The Professor.

Ultimus Rex is a Superman parody wherein a technologically-advanced Dinosaur civilization faces the Extinction Event, and a scientist couple send their only son in a space capsule to survive on another planet. In this case the pod lands on Titan, largest moon of Saturn, home of the Serpent Men of Titan. Besides possessing limbs and being much larger than the alien snakemen, because of the increased gravity, Ultimus develops incredible strength, and the slower rotation around the sun increases his lifespan. He's ruled as superhero/tyrant king over the Serpent Men for centuries.

The pdf is only 22-23 pages, a brief overview of the setting, game rules, NPCs and Villains, and a string of adventure seeds.

I'm illustrating it in the style of Kate Beaton's Hark a Vagrant
 
TristramEvans said:
FOR anyone interested in what's up with Phaserip, I found that writing to a page design was way too impractical an approach. I was wasting so much time making everything look pretty and harmonious, with constant editing to format, that I wasn't getting the writing actually done.
[ . . . ]
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If you know your Schlock Mercenary, Maxim #1 is pillage then burn.

Maxim #1 of producing any document, especially rulebooks, is write then compose.

At one point in the late Jurassic I worked as a typesetter.[1] If I can impart a suggestion, don't over-decorate. Struggling to fit to a layout suggests that your layout might be more elaborate and prescriptive than it needs to be. In this regard less is more for a number of reasons, not the least of which is so it doesn't get your writing bogged down in trying to fit the layout.

I've seen a lot of overdecorated rule books in my day; I'm not convinced it looks particularly good and it certainly doesn't add clarity. Virtually no other genre of literature that I'm aware of actually does this, with the possible exception of 'for dummies' books. For a giggle, count the number of art directors (not artists) credited in the D&D 5e players handbook. Now (for a test) find a noob player and time how long it takes them to figure out how to generate a character correctly.

There's a lot to be said for KISS in this regard.

[1] I was never all that good at it, and I'm now doing stuff that pays far better.
 
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I'm still working on my Spectra System. Designed to do Cartoon Post-Apocalypse it's scaled way down from MSH/Faserip, but that may be a mistake. I'm tinkering. (Also I have too many colors and am adjusting the charts to favor the player a little more.) I call Health "Defense" (because really its ablative Defense only at 0 are Checks made or something that bypasses Defense.)

I also used Fate for Karma (Karma is the idea that good deeds get rewarded makes sense for a superhero game.) Still tinkering. I wanted to be more superhero compatible, but as noted I scaled it down the system, so animal companions are more useful. I may correct that though so its closer to original FASERIP.

This was my chart (the colors fit the theme of the fictional cartoon apocalypse world I created, Second Sun, because the new star in Earth's system is violet.) Scroll sideways its a got a lot of dice result columns. Link:

Stats:
Strength
Prowess
Endurance
Coordination
Tenacity
Reason
Awareness
 
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Tristram, Are you going to Kickstarter this? If so, are you doing an open playtest beforehand?
 
Spinachcat said:
Tristram, Are you going to Kickstarter this? If so, are you doing an open playtest beforehand?
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I'd like to do a Kickstarter to fund a small print run, in 6x9 HC format with a few extras as stretch goals, like a wallet-sized ARG! card.

As soon as Issues 0-6 are complete though, I'll be putting together a playtest pdf.
 
To be perfectly honest, this is a labour of love, and I haven't put much consideration into its financial viability as a product. If it reaches a dozen people who will actually enjoy using the system as I have then I will feel like I accomplished something. But I'm mostly doing this as one of those life things; "I accomplished this" in a way that I'm reasonably satisfied with.
 
Here's a question...
should discussions on effects of high degree burns, radiation sickness, poisonous venom, etc go with the presentation of the related Intensities (currently done as a chart in Issue II), or in the section on Injuries and healing?
 
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