project-nexus

[project-nexus]

A (well belated) update!

hello! its been a while since the last update, but I've been hard at work to get some substantial changes and will be making posts in the near future to explain these mechanical changes. 

Changes to setting and genre

Some major changes is that Nexus is now a science fiction, post climate disaster game with horror elements, quasi-magical elements, and an emphasis on what a capitalist society might progress after such an event, and the communities that will be made in the cracks. 

The broad strokes of the lore at the moment are that humanity did nothing about climate change until some immediate effects were seen. At the points it was directly effecting people, it caused a mass hysteria and acceptance of nuclear energy as a way to correct for carbon emissions. the nuclear power plants were largely on sea platforms to avoid being next to populated areas, but many were constructed inland also. By this point, earth was past the event horizon of climate change, and caused a huge amount of weather changes and an uncontrollable rise in sea levels. Eventually huge tsunamis and malpractice at nuclear power plants meant these power plants were abandoned unsafely to avoid the tsunami. at least one of these powerplants had a meltdown and caused a chain events. the landscape had been drastically altered and the sea levels had risen to an unprecedented degree. most governments fell or shrunk in power immensely in the following years, but cooperate owners through various means created shelter from the elements. the survivors on the surface had suffered massive radiation damage and were forced to survive in a new landscape. most documents of history were lost, though few digital archives did still exist. in the following hundred years society was somewhat rebuilt, but in the early stages many had tried to rebuild a capitalist system, of which companies grew quicker than governments and eventually became the governments, reminiscent of company towns. all the while, heavily irradiated areas (especially at the bottom of the ocean)  suffer from breaks in reality. these breaks in reality are referred to as noise, and objects or people that emit or control noise are called speakers. speaking objects are often sold to corporations and used haphazardly to maximize profits. People who are connected to the noise are often ostracized or enslaved by corporations. 

its also observed that the deeper in the ocean you go in general, the more reality breaks, to the point where the ocean floor is seen as non-Euclidean and existentially horrifying. there is a market in diving into the depths to collect speakers, but its a dangerous job that involves fighting off mutated sea creatures as well as just surviving the massive pressures of the deep. 

I applaud any of you who have read the lore dump. If this setting is interesting to you or you are interested in the mechanics (which will be posted soon), then please stick around and if your feeling generous enough subscribe to my patreon! you get access to my brainstorming document and access to my posts early!

[project-nexus]

Akay so quick 3am update since its been a while: probably gonna go to a class based system for now just so I can get this project chugging along better (trait-buy system will be revistited later) . For now Im thinking about the action economy and i think i was most abilities and actions to use Action Points (AP) and Magic Points (MP). How many of these a character have will likely be determined by class and attributes. The idea of this system will be to chain together smaller actions in a single turn or to do one or two bigger actions in a turn, ideally making a simple but dynamic and fluid system)

And i have a clear direction for a setting I want to work in, but i do not want to limit my classes too much by it. Im imagining a nautical-themed near futute climate dystopia involving remnents of our modern government clinging to power though mostly fallen, as well as neo-feudal goverents (think if walmart ran a police state, might not be acturate to the term but should give you a clear idea of what i imagine). Of course as a TTRPG, there are fantasy elements including limited magic and great beasts, mutated by radiated from long abandoned nuclear power plants that have been releasing radiation into the now risen oceans for decades. The depths of the oceans being a place of unexplored mystery filled with dangerous irradiated monsters and arcane mysteries.

TO BE CLEAR, i am not giving up on the "no classes" idea, i just think that classes are easier to work with and that not having classes meant working alone on this project would never work. I will revisit it later when i think i can tackle it.

Sorry for the lack of formality (and any spelling errors) with this post, just wanted to get one out since i had a lot of ideas today.

[project-nexus]

Announcement #4

To keep this blog from being dead as I try and work on this project, I will be posting some homebrew for D&D 5e. Feel free to submit request for things you'd like to see!

[project-nexus]

Apologies i havent updated in a bit, I am still working on this. This is going to be a less formal podt but i wanted to take a moment to say happy birthday lesbians!!! Make sure you wish your local lesbian a happy lesbian day!

Happy Lesbian visibility day to:

💜 Closeted lesbians

💜 Isolated and lonely lesbians

💜 Lesbians dealing with feelings of conflict and guilt

💜 Lesbians who have never kissed a woman

💜 Lesbians who have never had sex

💜 Lesbians who haven't been in love yet

💜 Lesbians who came out and faced rejection

💜 Baby lesbians who have just realized their orientation

💜 Lesbian girls still growing, wondering, and entirely inexperienced

This day is for you just as much. Witness your sisters, your community, and all your possible ways to live. Happiness and love is possible. Beauty is everywhere.

💜It will get better.💜

[project-nexus]

Interaction post #1: general feedback

This is mainly to give all of my followers a chance to voice thoughts, critiques, suggestions, etc about what has been posted so far, or to suggest new things for the future.

One thing I would especially like feed-back on is what future ideas like how armor and damage work, and on ideas for traits.

[project-nexus]

Update #3: Health and minor notes on Attributes and Traits.

How Health Works:

Health will be using dice progression, the default being a d8. At first level you take the full amount of the dice plus your Composition modifier and every level after you roll the dice and increase it by your constitution mod to determine how much health you increase every level. There will be major traits that will cost more points than usual to increase the health dice. You may notice a similarity between this and D&Ds system. That is on purpose.

Minor notes:

To determine the skill modifier, you divide the attribute mod into the skills under the attribute. For instance if I have a +3 in MEN, I can then split it up in anyway I see fit between knowledge, intuition, and creativity so long as it adds up to the original +3. You cannot use negative mods in skills to boost another skill. If you have a negative mod in a attribute then it functions the same way but with negative numbers divided up instead.

Traits are going to use the same point pool to buy major and minor traits. Major traits will obviously cost more than minor traits.

[project-nexus]

Announcement #3: Trello Board

What is Trello and why do I care?

Trello is an organization tool for helping you keep on task and orderly. Its purpose here is to do that, AND keep you all up to date on what I am currently working on and what I plan to work on without having to write a long form post such as these. Its not a replacement (hopefully, seeing as this is only the 3rd one), but more of a progress bar.

Any and all things I work on for Project: Nexus will be put on there.

The board is here.

[project-nexus]

Update #2: Races, Classes, and the lack of them

Why there aren't races:

It is my understanding that 1) calling them 'Races' and then saying they are better at these things than other races is a bit problematic, so I would instead like to opt out of using race as a mechanic in this game.

Why there aren't classes:

I have chosen to not include classes because they have been pretty limiting in some games. Games like D&D 5e tend to get old fast when College of Whispers Bard has the same abilities. The way character creation is in 5e is easy, yes, but also tedious, hands off, and restrictive in my opinion.

I am not here to analyze 5e and what does or doesn't work in my opinion (though you will likely see plenty of that), so i will say that my goal with this is to make a system that allows for variety in character creation while also being easy to understand, and hopefully stream-lined, and this is partially inspired by my frustration with 5e character creation (probably one of the few things i dislike about the game)

If there aren't Races or Classes, what is there?:

Simple: Traits!

Traits come in two varieties, Major and Minor.

Major traits (MATs) serve to augment the core of your characters function and ability, these can be things that totally change your play-style or are too powerful to be Minor traits.

Minor Traits (MITs) only minorly alter your character or aren't powerful enough to be considered Major Traits. While this isn't a new or revolutionary idea, I think it is one that works well.

Well how do traits work then?:

While the specifics aren't totally worked out, the idea is to have point pools for character creation. Two separate ones for major and minor. Most traits will be the same point cost, but I imagine all of them will have the same power, so a point cost may be in order. Alternatively, a single point pool could be used, but there would have to be a point difference with major and minor as well.

Additionally, there could be optional rule (which may subtract from simplicity) which allows for Negative Traits, which would allow you to regain trait-points for their respective pools. Neutral Traits, which have a positive AND a negative and cost no trait points. Further, there could be Trait Requirements which may require that you are of a certain level before taking, have a certain score in an attribute/skill, or have another trait (such as a negative on). These combined could make for some really interesting interactions, progression, and balancing!

There could also be special traits out side of major and minor that are associated with your heredity or upbringing, but that's runs into the sane issue that races have, and if they aren't like that than they can be flavored to be as such if a player desires.

I also enjoy the idea of naming combinations of traits, but that's mostly up to the community to decide.

[project-nexus]

Update #1: Core Attributes

Attributes:

There are four key attributes:

Physical

Reflexive

Mental

Magic

These each contribute to your ability to preform actions within these categories. In form with other TTRPGs, they will effect your rolls. The reason they are broad is because this is supposed to be a simple to understand system, and are further specified in skills, where they can be separated.

Rolling for the Attribute Score:

Rolling for attribute scores functions similar to how it does in 5e, but the scale is shifted down. In practice this means you roll 3d4 and only keep the highest 2. When you add these up, that is your score. The maximum for the score is 10.

Attribute Bonus:

This bonus can be calculated by subtracting 5 from your score. For instance, if my score was 7, than my bonus would be +2 because 7 is two more than 5. If my score was 5 than it would be 0 because there is no difference, and if my score was 2 the bonus would be -3 because it is 3 less than 5.

Skills:

Im not entirely sure how I want skills to work. One of my ideas was dividing the attribute bonus into skills, which means with a PHYS of 8, your PHYS mod would be +3, which you could then divide into your skills. Perhaps +2 in agility and +1 in strength. This would mean that when you make an agility check, you add the +3 of PHYS, AND the +2 from agility for a total of +5. There is also and argument to be made from only receiving the modifier from the skill and not the whole of PHYS.

Another idea was using a similar system to 5e, with proficiency and expertise, it is simple and effective but I really don't want to directly copy D&D with this. Pathfinder 2e has an interesting system but I'm unsure. Let me know your ideas or if you have critiques!

^ *a design for the Character Sheet, as well as a list of all the skills

[project-nexus]

Ill be making a few posts about how the basics of the game work. As they are changed in the future, update posts will be made.

[project-nexus]

Introductions

Hello and welcome to Project:Nexus! I’ll be answering a few basic questions here to familiarize any newcomers to this blog and project. 

Firstly,

What is “Nexus?”

Project: Nexus is a fantasy table-top role playing game (TTRPG) that aims to address some issues with many other TTRPGs as well as provide a game that may be enjoyable for beginners and veterans of the genre by providing a simple to understand set of rules that also support creativity and depth. Above everything will be the question “how easy is this to understand?” which will manifest in most things from the mechanics to the formatting and wording of the core-rulebooks.

How does this differ from other projects?

This project will accept ideas and criticism from the community, and aims to provide a free TTRPG for people to play with long term enjoyment. The focus is on easy to use customization with the intent to create a character creation simple that is not just a lot of copying down features with very little choice in abilities. you can be as versatile or as specialized as you like.

Monetization

This project has an emphasis on making all its tools required to play be free to use. A Patreon and/or Kickstarter may be opened in the future, but will not be required to play.