tfrpg

[tfrpg]

Playtest Results: First Preliminaries

Base Mechanics

Core five vital statistics renamed to Agility, Intellect, Psyche, Senses, and Strength in order to ensure compatibility with other Vector System products. Ranged weapons now key off Senses for their attack rolls, but may still require a minimum of Agility or Strength.

Circuits for characters now have variable pricing based on power and usefulness, rather than the original 1:1 exchange with Rank dice. Circuit points are now equal to twice starting Rank as default, but the budget can be altered at the GM's discretion.

Because of the pricing changes, circuits have been modified to be more potent, including rolling together some of the weaker ones into more effective "package sets".

Certain combinations that allowed for excessive damage, stunlocking, or other unintended bonuses have been fixed or curtailed to reasonable levels.

Rules for cannon fodder introduced to allow for easier mass combat scenarios.

Altmode

Altmodes now exist as a set of alternate statistics, from the same Rank, allowing characters to switch between them as a combat action to gain an increase in one statistic by sacrificing others.

Altmode circuits allow for a quick boost in abilities and statistics when in altmode, but only in altmode.

The purpose of this is to ensure that transforming is a valuable and strategic part of gameplay, rather than an extraneous thing that happens sometimes when players get bored or reminded that they have the ability to change forms.

Combat Circuits

Sonic Cannon now causes targets at melee range to be pinned, cannot be used at long range.

Tachyon Driver can be used without deployment at a damage penalty. Still causes damage feedback when used at melee range.

Fusion Cannon requires a combat action to charge before use, to compensate for its outrageous damage rate.

Brawler Build damage bonus in melee combat toned down to avoid one-shot kills on equal-ranked opponents under certain circumstances.

Phase Displacer given new drawbacks in the form of offensive penalties rather than an excessively long recharge time.

Slagmelter bleed reduced at short range, cannot be used at long range anymore, because it was never supposed to be usable at long range at all.

Pitfighting now allows for Strength to be used when moving from short range to melee range, rather than an Agility bonus.

Circuit-Su dodge bonus now only applies to melee range attacks.

Altmode Circuits

Flight now a ranked circuit, now gives a guaranteed success against any opponent with lower rank (including zero).

Firepower text revised to fix awkward phrasing, cost increased.

Holo-Emitter bonus to Stealth checks increased.

Tech Circuits

Armor now a ranked circuit, gives steady Endurance bonus per rank.

Diffraction Sensors now give a bonus in addition to eliminating penalties.

Inventive now has a minimum Intellect requirement, cost decreased.

Physician is now a ranked circuit, providing an increase in repaired damage when out of combat.

Uplink bonus to hacking attempts increased.

Tactician bonus reduced due to over-effectiveness in combat situations.

Imposing Presence bonus no longer applies when dazed.

Stealthmode now a ranked circuit, starting cost decreased.

Special Circuits

Matrix of Leadership and other artifacts are now ranked circuits, to allow for inexperienced wielders of such power to grow in maturity over the course of a campaign.

Junkion Resilience now has a limitation so it no longer makes Junkions effectively invincible.

Dark Energon no longer imparts an Intellect penalty.

Triple-Changer now works as intended with the new altmode rules.

Kiss Play removed due to overwhelming input on how some jokes aren't even funny.

[tfrpg]

Wait! I still function!

It's true, there have been so few posts from me lately, but the answer is one portmanteau: playtesting.

Some things in games are fairly easy to work out. If you can figure out the average damage a character can deal, then working out the right threats for them is just a matter of figuring out how to balance damage dealt with damage taken. That's just a case of mathematics. But the problem comes with any level of complexity higher than Rock-Paper-Scissors.

As an example, let's look at the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The rules were revamped heavily for that edition, plenty of changes made, and it was tested. But those who did the testing were very familiar with the previous edition, and played it like the previous edition. They did not exploit the loopholes, attempt to find ways to break the intent of the design. So they never noticed the game-breaking combinations that existed, such as druids being able to out-perform the dedicated melee attack classes, or wizards being able to shut down combats instantly with certain spells. Admittedly there is more to third edition D&D's failings than a lack of playtesting, but it did not help.

Consider the following: what if there was a weapon in a game which caused a stun effect on a successful hit? And what if there was a particular perk that characters could take that increased their chances of hitting against a stunned enemy? Put together, you could end up with a character built around the idea of stun-locking enemies, chaining hit after hit. Combinations like these are intriguing, but care must be taken that they are not overpowered. The last thing a tabletop game needs is a "win button". Teamwork and variety are important. Having a team made entirely out of stun-lock focused characters would be boring.

Which is why we playtest. We need to make sure that if combinations aren't overpowering, but are still cool enough that players will find them thrilling. But even if a game has only ten options, that's still dozens, perhaps even hundreds of potential combinations - especially if you consider that characters work together by design. So everything needs to be stress-tested, pushed to its limits. Unusual combinations need to be tried out, approaching the system from angles that might not have been thought of, to think outside the box to try breaking the game. Because if you can break the game, you can fix it.

[tfrpg]

Worldsparks: Primus and Unicron

Primus, the benevolent creator deity of Cybertron, focus of a religion that once spanned more than a hundred worlds. Does he exist? Yes. Is he everything he is proclaimed to be? Not so much. But as an entity, Primus exists, and he could be considered a god by some measures. He is a worldspark, the living heart of an entire planet, a living being on an unimaginable scale.

On a smaller scale, Primus could be considered a scientist. He was born with curiosity and good nature, content with the immaterial rather than the physical. That he was essentially a planet, and one stuck in a predictable orbit around a single star, did not bother him. He developed the ability to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, to reach out and gaze throughout the entire cosmos, observe other galaxies. He experimented, within the depths of the core, with inventions and philosophy, mathematics and poetry. When life arose on the surface of Cybertron, he watched every moment, enthralled and excited at the possibilities.

At some point in his early history, long before the proto-sparks made their way out of the oceans, Primus made contact with another of his kind. By reaching out into the depths of space, broadcasting his presence to try and find someone else to speak to, he discovered another living planet. This other worldspark called himself Unicron, and they began to talk and communicate, sharing their discoveries and dreams with each other.

This continued for centuries, until Primus noticed a change in the stars. Something new had entered the solar system he called home. It was Unicron, having followed the transmissions from Primus like a homing beacon, his planetary body having been altered to allow him to travel across the endless gulf of space.

The two exchanged one final conversation, across the void, where Unicron explained his arrival. He had come to the conclusion that he must be the reason the universe existed, the sole occupant to do with it as he wished. It was his right, his very reason to be. The existence of Primus had thrown his entire sense of self into chaos. How could he be the pinnacle of all creation, the sole living entity, when Primus existed? The idea repulsed him, infuriated him, and there was only one solution he could see: destroy Primus.

The fight was unimaginable in scale, a desperate struggle at the dawn of the universe, and it was only his natural curiosity that saved Primus. Unicron was egotistical, self-obsessive, violent, but not creative. Primus, on the other hand, adored creation in all its forms, including mathematics and physics. To end their fight, he created the first space bridge. Reaching into the heart of the star that had birthed him, he bridged the gap to channel raw stellar matter at Unicron. The sheer force of the attack cracked Unicron asunder, his body becoming a new asteroid belt, but the core of his being managed to escape, limping away in agony.

The act weighed heavily on Primus. To unleash such raw and brutal aggression was not in his nature. So, when the first Transformers arose on his surface, he saw his chance to make peace with his conscience. He would help these tiny creatures, these children of Cybertron, to achieve their full potential. He began constructing a device just beneath the surface that would allow him to communicate with them, a complex transmitter-translator that would come to be known as Vector Sigma.

Through Vector Sigma, he spoke to the inhabitants of Cybertron, encouraging their development into art, philosophy, engineering, and more. He never gave commandments, nor taught his own discoveries. Mindless followers was something Unicron would do, and Primus refused to be Unicron. The children of Cybertron may have been microscopic in comparison, with mayfly lifespans that could not compete with the billions of years Primus had endured, but they were still alive just as he was. They thought, they felt, they created, just as he did. Primus did not see himself as their master, or their ruler, or even truly as their god. All he wanted was to be their friend.

[tfrpg]

Ranks and titles of Cybertron

On Cybertron, the rank of Prime is absolute, effectively the right-hand of God, chosen by Primus himself to lead his children and govern them wisely. It is a title that has been passed through many over the generations, but it is not by far the only title that exists.

After the establishment (or re-establishment, depending on your beliefs) of the dynasty of the Primes, other titles, both military and civilian, were introduced as the planetary government that would rule over Cybertron and its colonies was formed.

Two weapons were created to act as symbols of office, each imbued with powers imparted by the ancient relic known as the Forge. Stormbringer, a mass-hammer that could channel cosmic radiation into vast electromagnetic forces, and Sparkbreaker, an energon-sword that could burn at temperatures akin to the surface of a star. Both of these weapons soon became known by more common names: the Magnus Hammer, held by the one who bore the title of Magnus, and the Matrix Blade, held by the captain of the Matrix Knights.

The title of Magnus was held by the authority of all law on Cybertron, a position first held by Lex Magnus and last held by Ultra Magnus. Under the command of the Magnus were the Sentinels of the Justice Guild, officers of the law who patrolled Cybertron and the colonies. They were tough but fair, although any criminal who thought they could get away with terminating a Sentinel would soon find themselves facing the Magnus Hammer itself. The Justice Guild looked after its own.

None of the Matrix Knights held any specific title, considering their sworn duty to Prime and planet to outweigh any need for recognition for their actions. However, they all bore the insignia of their order, said to inspire fear and respect. They were the loyal elite guard of the Prime, capable and willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to protect Cybertron against all enemies. The sword itself was lost during the Fifth Quintesson Incursion, but the order of knights remained in service until the culmination of the Great War.

In the military of Cybertron itself, besides the basic ranks of "commander" and "lieutenant", there were two titles for those in position of absolute command: Supreme, the leaders of the Cybertronian spacefleets, and Maximus, the generals of the ground army. Because of the continual Quintesson incursions into Cybertronian space, a powerful military was a requirement in the early stages of the Golden Age.

Not always chosen for their size and combat capabilities, there were those who bore the title of Supreme or Maximus whose strengths lay elsewhere. Axalon Supreme was one of the greatest tactical minds in the Golden Age, whose fleet movements were considered to be like dancing. Fortress Maximus, who lived in the twilight of the Golden Age, was an expert in the design of next-generation weaponry, his designs still considered revolutionary years later.

[tfrpg]

Blasters and Brawling: Understanding Combat

Not all roleplaying games need to have combat to be engaging, but since our subject matter is a galaxy-spanning war amongst giant robots with guns that pop out of their arms, it's safe to say that we'll be requiring combat in this system. Although there will be plenty of non-combat activities that are equally as engaging, rest assured. But those will have their own updates.

Most of the time out of combat, a character can engage in any activity at any time. But during combat, it's required that everyone takes turns, to make things neat and orderly. Admittedly that's not really how fighting goes in the real world, but we're not trying to emulate the real world here. Things need to be cinematic and stylish, and also fair to everyone, so that means everyone gets a turn.

Those of you who have already played RPGs before may be familiar with some of the terminology ahead, but it's going to be explained in detail for the people who haven't. Plus the system uses some terminology you won't be familiar with, so pay attention anyway!

A battle begins when at least two characters have a reason to attack one another. One character can punch their own head repeatedly until they fall over, but that isn't a battle, that is stupidity. Nobody needs to take turns to punch their own head. Battles will typically start by two sides facing off against each other, but may be started by one character making a surprise attack. Once combat begins, everyone involved in the battle must roll initiative.

"Initiative" is RPG terminology meaning someone's battle-readiness, alertness, and reflexes. In TFRPG, initiative is gained by rolling Agility and adding up the result. The highest score takes the first turn, then the second-highest goes next, and all the way down to the lowest score, after which the highest score gets to have their second turn. The time it takes for a character to get another turn is called a round. If there are six characters, then six turns is a round. It is not a set period of time, but it is used on some abilities.

On a character's turn, they have three actions they can use. Once they have made those three actions, it passes to the next character on the initiative list. They could, for instance, roll Firepower to shoot, or Agility to charge an opponent, or Strength to force open a door. They could also spend an action to transform into their altmode, or activate one of their special abilities (if they have any circuits that grant special abilities). Though there is nothing particularly wrong with spending all three actions shooting at the nearest target, it might not be the best tactics. Especially if that target is your friend.

Friends in combat are called allies, enemies are called opponents. Attacking allies in combat is possible, but not recommended, because it will decrease the number of your allies, and probably increase the number of your opponents. Some circuits that allow for special abilities may specifically refer to allies or opponents. For instance, the Tactician circuit can grant your allies a bonus. If it granted the bonus to your opponents instead, it would have to be called Liability, and your allies would probably switch sides very quickly if you decided to use it.

When you are actually making an attack in combat, you use what is known as an opposed roll. You roll, and then the target of your attack makes a roll to dodge or mitigate the damage. A character can use Agility, Strength, or Firepower to make an attack: punching, kicking, or slashing in melee, or firing blasters at range. The choice depends on the character's weapon circuits, as a character with no ranged capability can't fight at range.

In response, a character can use Agility to dodge the attacks, or Strength to absorb them. Once again, some circuits will improve or change things, but those are the basics. When the attacker rolls, they count their successes as usual, but for every success that the defender rolls, that subtracts one success from the attacker.

All the remaining successes are called hits. Some weapons will provide additional hits on a successful attack, meaning if you get at least one hit, you can roll extra dice which will count as additional hits if they are successes. For instance, if a character rolls 4d8 Firepower and gets 2 hits, and their weapon says that it does an additional 2d8 hits, they roll another two dice and add any successes to the hit total.

Each time a character is hit, they lose one point of Endurance. Once they are down to 0 points of Endurance, they are unconscious or offline. It's up to their attacker to decide if the final blow is a fatal one or not. Endurance can be replenished with rest and medical attention, although it takes time and effort to bring a character back to tip-top condition.

Sometimes, a character will be subjected to a condition. Conditions are not damage, but will affect the character. An example of a condition is slowed, which means the character takes -1d8 to Agility. This can make an opponent less effective in combat, or allow for an easy escape. Some conditions are caused by weapons, but other weapons exploit conditions. The Shock Knife does extra hits to surprised characters, making it ideal for stealthy attackers.

In order to see how this all works in practice, let's see a brief example.

Prowl, an agility-focused character with 4d8 Agility and 2d8 Firepower, is facing off against Blackout, a tough opponent with 3d8 Strength and 3d8 Firepower. Prowl rolls 26 for his initiative, Blackout rolls 4, so Prowl gets to move first. He decides to close the distance and get to melee range, so he rolls Agility to charge in close. He gets two successes. Blackout decides he'd rather keep his distance, so he makes his opposing roll to stay out of reach, but only rolls one success. This counters one of Prowl's successes, but he has two, meaning he's left with one and manages to get to melee range.

For his next action, Prowl decides to use his Holo-Emitter circuit to distract Blackout. The circuit says that by rolling Intellect, he can create a hologram that will make the target dazed. He gets two successes, and once again Blackout gets to make his opposing roll to see through the trick — but fails. The Holo-Emitter trick works, and Blackout is dazed: taking a -1d8 penalty on his next defensive roll.

Satisfied that he's got the upper hand, Prowl decides to attack, using his Circuit-Su fighting style. This grants him an additional d8 when making melee attacks using Agility, meaning he rolls a total of 5d8. He gets three hits, and Blackout rolls Strength to absorb the blows with his tough body. Because of his dazed condition, he can only roll 2d8, and gets one success. Three minus one is two, meaning he loses two points of Endurance.

Prowl's turn has ended, so now Blackout gets to move. His first decision is to make some distance between himself and Prowl, and avoid those close hits. Because his robot mode isn't as fast as Prowl's, he spends an action to transform into his altmode, an attack chopper. In this mode he has flight, which gives him an automatic success when moving, and a +1d8 bonus to Agility. He rolls two successes, making three total with his automatic success. Prowl rolls two successes, leaping to grab hold of Blackout but missing as he flies up out of reach.

With one action left, Blackout decides to attack. He uses his fearsome Pulse Cannon, which does 2d8 additional hits. Rolling 3d8 Firepower to attack, he gets two hits, and rolls one extra from the weapon itself. Prowl's Circuit-Su does not grant him a bonus for dodging blaster fire, so he can only roll 4d8 to dodge the shot. He gets two successes, meaning he loses only one point of Endurance. Blackout's turn ends, but despite doing less damage, he is now in a more advantageous position. The fight will continue.

As we saw in the example, there is one last aspect of combat we haven't yet covered, which is range. There are three ranges: melee range, short range, and long range. To move from one range to another (short to melee, or long to short) requires an Agility roll made to charge the distance. Sometimes this is best done in altmode, especially if you have an altmode that flies.

Melee range is up close and personal, where blows can be exchanged. Short range is close enough to have a conversation, but not close enough to step in and punch. Two Transformers on either end of a football field would be at short range, for instance. Long range is essentially anything further away than short range, but still within a reasonable distance. On the other side of the planet would not be long range, as there would be no way to engage in a proper fight. But a mile or two would be long range.

Weapons are effected by range. Melee weapons can only be used at melee range, and most blasters take a -1d8 penalty when used at melee or long range. After all, it is hard to aim when the target is too close, or too far away. A few weapons circumvent these penalties: the Tachyon Driver takes no penalty for long range use, and the Sonic Cannon takes no penalty for melee range use.

Choosing the right weapon is important on a tactical level. Every weapon circuit has different benefits that can be used effectively together, such as Prowl's Holo-Emitter allowing him to gain the advantage over his opponents and do more damage. Not to mention that in a team, each character can rely on their teammates to provide support with their unique offensive and defensive capabilities.

[tfrpg]

Explaining the unexplainable

I've said a few harsh things about the more fantastical elements of the Transformers mythos in the past, it's true, but the truth is that I do genuinely think they are an important aspect with a place in the storyline. They just need to be used carefully and sparingly, with restrictions.

The temptation with fantastical elements is to forgo the existence of rules. It crops up time and again, in all manner of places, where solutions to problems are just plucked out of thin air. Take Doctor Who, for instance: at the very beginning, the sonic screwdriver was introduced simply as a tool that could act like a regular screwdriver except at a distance. That was the extent of its powers, and though it seems like little, it could unlock doors and mess with machinery from across the room. A handy little gizmo, but it soon became a writer's crutch, and whenever the impossible needed to be done, all the work was dumped on the screwdriver. These days it can defuse bombs, detect holes in reality, and probably even cook you breakfast. Now the problem isn't the characters being smart enough to find a solution with their limited resources, but the writers trying to limit a device of limitless power. They got lazy with their work, relying on the sonic screwdriver to do everything, and now they're paying the price by having to work around their deus ex machina.

The same thing goes for roleplaying games. The players should be rewarded for thinking up ways for their rag-tag group to overcome obstacles. If the solution is always "Use the mystical widget you discovered to fix everything" then things become stale, boring, predictable. The moment they discover a mystical widget, they realise they've got what they need to solve everything. It becomes formulaic, and uninteresting.

In order to overcome these problems, rules are required. Limitations, like the original sonic screwdriver. For example, in Transformers: Prime, the Matrix exists as a source of incredible power and the repository of the wisdom of the Primes. However, the one time it is used, it drains its bearer (Optimus Prime) of his memories, reverting him back to the humble clerk he was before becoming the leader of the Autobots. It has to be revitalised, a task which requires those involved to push their limits. This price of use means that the Matrix will not, and cannot, be used whenever Optimus feels like it. There are consequences, not dire enough to mean it will never be used, but strong enough that it is a last resort.

The one other thing that should be mentioned is prophecies. Prophecies are not good storytelling, they are nothing short of the absence of storytelling. They remove personal motivations and all agency from the characters. The ancient evil wakes up because it was foretold, the characters must band together to stop it because it was foretold, one of them dies because it was foretold. In essence, a prophecy is telling everyone how the story goes before you actually tell the story. It makes everything boring, like revealing the punchline at the start of a joke, and then telling the joke anyway.

Not everything needs to have been written about thousands of years before it actually happens. The ancient evil could have woken up because it decided to, the characters banded together because they had a long and interesting series of arguments that ended in them putting aside their differences for the greater good, and one of them died because they realised that a noble self-sacrifice was what it would take to end everything. All the plot remains more-or-less the same, except the decisions are in the hands of the characters, not written out in advance by some ancient mystic on a cave wall eons earlier.

Unexplainable things such as bringing the dead back to life, having dreams about the future, travelling through time, or robots that speak fluent English even when talking to other robots... these are all fine. Not everything has to have a scientific explanation. But plot devices and bad storytelling aren't fine, even if they're dressed up as being "fantasy" to try and fool you. They seem like they'll make things easier for you, but in the long run it's quite the opposite.

[tfrpg]

The Iron Age of Cybertron

Intelligent life has arisen on Cybertron, mechanical beings who can understand not just the world around them, but also themselves. They are equivalent to the early hominids of planet Earth, though the comparison is somewhat tenuous. Homo erectus wasn't capable of flight.

This is the Iron Age of Cybertron, a prehistoric period which set the stage for the rise of civilization. It is a period where the early Transformers are still settling into the roles that will define them in the long centuries to come, and developing the concepts that will still be shaping their society a million years later.

The early Iron Age Cybertronians were somewhat different to the sleek and efficient machines of the modern era. Their primitive T-cogs did not allow for full-body transformations, and the concepts of speech and self-repair were rudimentary at best. They communicated in tonal beeps, clicks and whistles to impart simple information.

Social groups arose due to the actions of many being more efficient than the actions of one. An extra pair of servos or two could make the difference between gathering enough energon for a week and enough energon for a month. Bonds were formed by sharing information directly, from spark to spark. Because the spark also contains the pattern for the body's construction, this information-sharing allowed for each tribe to develop its own distinctive and unique appearance.

Due to interaction between the tribes across Cybertron, thirteen particular bodytypes arose. There were a few differences here and there, in terms of exact size and shape, but the general build was the same. The population stabilized with these thirteen bodytypes, a number that would go on to have great significance on Cybertron.

Some tribes were nomadic, and moved around Cybertron with the seasons. Though Cybertron was a dry planet, the only real liquid on its surface being energon, its twin moons brought about radical weather and tides that could shift the oceans the length of a continent. Other tribes relied on mining energon from the ground, stockpiling for the leaner months. Tribes adopted one approach or the other based on bodytype, which would eventually become the stereotypes of the modern age that would lead to the caste system.

The most important aspect of the blossoming social situation on Cybertron was the development of culture. With tribes able to pool their efforts in energon gathering, there were long periods available in which to socialize, develop language and advance other ideas. Iron Age etchings depict the visual interpretation of primitive myths, somewhat untranslatable, but the moons played an important part of primitive Cybertronian beliefs. The planet itself, with its constantly changing landscape of metal and energon, gave rise to the driving principle behind all Cybertronian advances to come: things change.

The Iron Age ended half a million years ago with a change, from scattered tribes to the first established settlements. The twin polar cities of Iacon and Kaon were built, at first just clusters of dwellings, but then developing true purpose and form. Governments were formed, the populations boomed and new professions emerged. Which one of the two truly came first is an unanswerable question, the truth lost in the fog of unrecorded history, but the new era came to be known by the heraldic colour of Iacon: the Silver Age.

[tfrpg]

You and what army? How factions work

In every continuity of Transformers, there is a war, and wars have sides. Whether they are Decepticon and Autobot, or Predacon and Maximal, all Transformers belong to a faction. There are very few lone wolves in a universe divided.

But apart from a stylish insignia and a catchphrase to shout out before a fight starts, what benefits do factions have? The answer is backup and resources, which depends upon the size of the faction. A handful of Autobots, or even Decepticons, will have objectively less to work with than a vast interstellar empire — and objectively more trouble if that vast interstellar empire also happens to be their enemy.

Such things are not static, however. A faction can recruit and build to bring itself up from the underdog or, alternatively, cut its opposition down to size. Even those factions who may not concern themselves with the Autobot/Decepticon war will still have the ambition to grow in size and in strength.

A faction is defined by its own statistics, like a character would be, except there are just two: Size and Supply. Size is how large the faction is, and Supply is the resources available to it. The faction's insignia, its motto, mission, and all other details are part of its bio, and not a requirement to function.

Rather than Size being a literal count of how many members are in the faction, it's abstracted out a little, so an additional two members (usually) won't bring the numbers up, but an additional twenty might. It's an exponential scale.

At Size 0, a faction consists of one solitary member. At Size 1, it consists of anywhere up to 10 members. Size 3 is up to 20 members, Size 4 is up to 50 members, Size 5 is up to 100 members, Size 6 is up to 200 members, Size 7 is up to 500 members, and it continues on in that fashion.

In Transformers: Prime, the Autobots would be a Size 1 faction, being more than one member but still in single digits, and the Decepticons would be Size 4 or possibly even Size 5.

Size determines how much backup you can expect in the field. If you call base in the middle of a firefight and ask reinforcements, the number of reinforcements you get is equal to the Size of the faction. So the Prime Autobots, as per our example, can get one 'bot as reinforcement: Ratchet, typically. Meanwhile the Decepticons can muster 4 (or 5) Vehicons if they require reinforcements, due to their Size being 4 (or 5).

Backup isn't just limited to reinforcements, either. A faction can call in for a hacker to tap into systems remotely, or for a ground/spacebridge for extraction, or a shuttle and a pilot, or anything that might save their chassis. However bridges and shuttles aren't free, which brings us to Supply.

Supply is a rating, like Size, that covers the material wealth of the faction. Like Size, it starts at 0 (penniless) and increases exponentially. The higher the number, the more resources the faction has to play around with.

All those various items — ground/spacebridges, shuttles, etc. — have a Cost. For example, continuing with using Transformers: Prime as our go-to example, the Decepticons have a warship called Nemesis, which is outfitted with guns, a medical bay, a computer system, a cloaking device to avoid unwanted human attention, a groundbridge, and presumably a big hefty engine that keeps the whole thing running. It's a rather impressive mobile based of operations, so it's Cost 10.

Do the Decepticons have Supply 10? No, they don't. Because if their ship crashed and blew up completely, then you can bet they wouldn't have the resources necessary to rebuild it from scratch. However, the Nemesis itself counts as a resource: it has that swanky medical bay, after all, among other things. So if it crashed, the Decepticons would have even less Supply than they did before!

If they did have Supply 10, then they could build a second Nemesis, or a new one, depending on the state of the original. But if they did, that would take up resources. All that metal for the hull, energon, machine parts, and so forth. Building something with a Cost as high as your Supply will reduce your Supply by 3 steps. So after constructing Nemesis II, the Decepticons would have Supply 7.

If the Cost is one step below Supply, it reduces by 2 steps: a Supply 8 faction building a Cost 7 device would end up with Supply 6. If the cost is two steps below Supply, it reduces by 1 step: a Supply 8 faction building a Cost 6 device would end up with Supply 7.

However, anything 3 steps below or more is considered to be so trivial (in comparison) that it does not reduce Supply at all. For instance, a vast interstellar empire with Supply 50 does not need to worry about the cost of warships. It still won't treat them like toys, of course, but it won't need to scrape up the necessary resources to build one. It's a vast interstellar empire, it probably has a fleet of hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, out patrolling its territory.

Supply rises and falls with the actions undertaken by the faction, which can lead to many interesting missions. The Decepticons might have set up an energon mine that the Autobots can take out in order to prevent them from being able to complete their spacebridge — or they can take the mined energon to raise their own Supply. On the other hand, the Decepticons might need to raid a human military base to obtain the experimental technology required to enact their next insidious plan.

Cost and Supply work together to ensure that factions not only have a means to obtain shiny new plot devices, but also look after what they've got. If a spacebridge is destroyed, it means more than just not having a means to traverse the galaxy anymore, it means a new one must be built, and there needs to be enough Supply to afford one. Even that vast interstellar empire, with its extraordinarily high supply, cannot simply sit back and relax. If the Quintessons invade, then whole planets might fall, and that Supply 50 could soon dwindle to Supply 20 (or less!) if action is not taken to drive the invaders back.

Moreover, factions as a whole allow for small-scale efforts to impact large-scale events. If that war between empires takes place, then the actions of a handful Transformers might seem insignificant. But these things scale. The Quintessons might be a Size 50 Supply 50 faction, but the forces on one of the conquered worlds are, in essence, their own faction. A much smaller one. Then we see the actions of those Transformers start to seem more important. By undertaking missions here and there, destroying mines and warships, they slow reduce the Supply of the invaders. Just one step here, one step there, but slowly making progress until the tide has turned and suddenly they can't afford to build one more war machine, let alone the dozens required to subjugate the planet.

The Quintessons lose a planet, the empire regains it, and their Supply shoots up a few steps. The actions of a few, the actions of the players, have changed the course of a war spanning entire planets. Pretty damn heroic.

There's one more thing about factions that is quite important: who's in charge. Faction leaders must deal with politics and the responsibilities of their position, not only to stay in charge, but also to keep their followers alongside them. But those mechanics will have to wait for another time and another update.

[tfrpg]

A few notes on time, timelines and continuities

Time is one of the few problems I have with Transformers, because there seems to be altogether far too much of it. It's like someone just started to slap the word "million" into an otherwise reasonable series of events and nobody noticed.

In most continuities, the recorded history of Cybertron is measured in tens, sometimes even hundreds of millions of years. Quite often there exist characters who have actually been alive for all that time. Yet they are shown to exist on a comparable timescale to human beings, thinking and acting as humans do, able to communicate with humans without any difficulty. Hasn't anyone behind all these continuities and backstories realised that a million years is a really long time?

Millions of years is geological time. It's a scope that we human beings cannot properly conceive of, with our lifespans rarely topping a century at best. It is time enough for continents to move, new species to arise, stars to be born and die. The entirety of recorded human history is barely even 1% of a million years. That was time enough for us to progress from mud huts to spaceflight, despite numerous setbacks throughout the ages.

All these millions, and the occasional billion, just seem to be superfluous padding to make things seem really impressive. Which, truth be told, kinda works when you're a little kid. But it's a shortcut, and a bit of a cheap one at that.

So for the purposes of the setting canon of TFRPG, all of Cybertron's recorded history takes place over the course of 500,000 years. Half a million. That's from the first development of civilization all the way to the modern day. By comparison, humans didn't even really exist 500,000 years ago, but our primitive ancestors had managed to master fire. So while we worked on fashioning flint knives, Cybertron was building cities. Still impressively old, but not incomprehensibly so.

However, and this should be stressed, this is just the setting canon for TFRPG that I wanted to write. As I said in the first post on this development blog, it's one interpretation of a modern myth. It's not the only interpretation out there, and it's not the only one that you can play using TFRPG.

The mechanics for TFRPG are broad enough that you could play G1, Beast Wars, Animated, Prime, or even your own personal creation. A few little tweaks here and there are the most it'd take. It's not a universal system, it is designed specifically for giant transforming robots, but luckily that's pretty much the unifying theme of all Transformers continuities.

So if your ideal Transformers setting would have, for instance, a united Cybertron under the command of Ultima Prime in the year 2122 working with human allies to fight back the invading Quintessons, then that's not just acceptable, but encouraged. Be creative! Be bold! Dream big! Just don't forget that a million years is a really, really long time.

[tfrpg]

Tech Specs

Working out how to define a character is one of the most tricky aspects of designing a roleplaying game. A balance must be struck between simplicity and complexity. You want to give the players the option to create nuanced characters, but not force them into an unplayable mess. It is probably the most important part of any game system, simply because it's the first thing any player will use. If creating a character takes hours, or the use of a calculator, or a dozen separate books, or all of those three combined, then it's a bad system.

The goal of TFRPG is that character creation should take the average player somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes, including all the time spent thinking up what sort of character you want to play. It should be easy and accessible, enough that anyone who has never played an RPG before can understand what to do. As a player, your time should be spent playing the game, not looking through a list of 3000 choices to figure out which ones are applicable to your character.

All characters in TFRPG start with a Rank, which defines how experienced they are. It determines how many dice can be assigned to their statistics, how many circuits they have, their Endurance, and a whole bunch of other terms that are about to be explained - so sit tight, and read on.

Statistics are five basic areas of a character's general ability. They are:

Agility

Firepower

Intellect

Psyche

Strength

Whenever you need to undertake a task, you roll dice, and the number of dice you roll is based on the stat you need to use. If you are dodging shots in combat, Agility. If you are the one who's doing the shooting, Firepower. Intellect covers mental prowess and learned skills. Psyche is for when you are using your personality, whether to inspire or intimidate, flatter or deceive. Strength is, simply put, raw physical power.

Rank = dice, so if your rank is 10, then you have 10 dice to assign. That means you can have 2 dice in every statistic, giving you a solid lineup. However you could reduce Strength and Firepower down to 1 each, and boost Intellect and Psyche up by 1 each. Or vice-versa. The way you distribute the allotted dice into your stats is up to you, the player, to best represent the character you want to play.

Circuits are skills, talents and other options that give characters a wider scope beyond just their basic abilities. They come in three distinct categories: general, altmode, and weapon.

General circuits are things that are accessible at any time, such as medical training, or armor plating. They may only be properly usable in robot mode, like with medical training, which needs the kind of fine control a truck isn't known for.

Altmode circuits modify the character's altmode, surprisingly enough, granting things such as flight or increased speed. A lot of these circuits work by granting bonus dice to stat rolls, meaning your character can be more agile (or stronger, or even smarter) when in altmode.

Weapon circuits are, well, weapons. They can be ranged or melee, and have a variety of interesting effects that can be combined for the purposes of tactical combat, which is objectively the most fun kind of combat. Weapon circuits are not technically required, but considering that there is pretty much always a war on in the world of the Transformers, you might as well have something.

Endurance is hit points, health, how long you can stand up before falling over, your basic durability. Taking hits in combat, experiencing extreme conditions, and other taxing moments will take away from a character's Endurance. When you hit 0 Endurance, that's lights out.

A character's base Endurance is equal to their rank, so a Rank 10 character will have Endurance 10, but there are circuits that can increase Endurance to allow for especially tough characters.

So, in summary: A character's Rank is how much you can "spend" on each aspect of their technical data. Statistics are how competent you are at any given area. Circuits give you new skills, weapons, and other benefits. Endurance is how durable you are.

At any point, but hopefully a plot-specific one where it will make sense, the GM (that's "game master", the person who acts like a combination referee and storyteller) can increase a character's Rank. So our Rank 10 character can be increased to Rank 11 after completing some difficult missions. This means they get an extra die they can assign to any of their stats, an extra circuit, and an extra point of Endurance.

But we must not forget the most important part of a character's tech specs: the bio. Their backstory, personality, their aspirations and fears. A character needs character, after all! Not to mention a good name. For the best results, characters should be made when you are with your group, rather than solo. Personal connections and shared backstory make teamwork much more interesting!

There'll be more on teamwork the next time we talk about system mechanics.

[tfrpg]

This is just the development blog, so I'm going to be a little more wordy and in-depth here than I will be in the finished product. There won't be any big essays on evolution, and it won't be required reading anyway. You don't need to know where you came from to figure out where you're going.

In any case, the reason I am opting for a less... magical origin for the Transformers in this continuity is because I find the idea of creator gods (and the inevitable ancient prophecies that follow) to be monumentally lazy storytelling. Whatever good intentions there are to begin with, it eventually ends up as there being more focus on what happened in the distant past, rather than the here and now - which is where any good story should be. I'm not against Primus and Unicron existing - they do exist in-setting, and will be talked about in later updates - but I think it's far more interesting to focus on the Transformers as free-willed, independent beings who write their own destinies.

As human beings, our culture and our conflict have been born out of uncertainty and curiosity. If we had been created, built even, for a singular and specific purpose... then what would be the mystery in life? What would we strive for? We would be empty, soulless tools. I wouldn't want to be like that, and I don't want my Transformers to be like that.

Any explanation of the rise of life on Cybertron must start with mentioning one very important factor: energon. Energon is not unique to Cybertron, it is found across the universe, but on Cybertron it was once as common as water on the planet Earth.

Energon is a high-energy…

[tfrpg]

Faction Profile: Quintessons

Quintessons are mechanical life that evolved, much like that of Cybertron, on the distant world of Quintessa. However, rather than being energon-based lifeforms, their planet was covered in dark energon, a substance akin to energon but with an incompatible wavelength. It may be due to the unique properties of dark energon, but the evolutionary path on Quintessa took a much different turn.

Rather than adaptive transformations, to allow for versatility from the individual, hyper-specialization arose. Dozens of different subtypes, each designed to excel at a given task, all working together to act as one. On Quintessa, the hive mind rules.

A Quintesson hive is called a vespiary, headed by a singular Magistrate. The Magistrate is an immobile brain, or more accurately several brains in one body. It interprets data, makes decisions, and speaks for the vespiary when required, its polybrain perfectly adept for multitasking.

Below the Magistrate are the Notaries, which are like smaller Magistrates, possessing imagination and intelligence, though lacking in free will as they are only capable of doing as instructed by the Magistrate. Their responsibility is any task that requires creative thought, such as scientific research, or overseeing a remote operation. Like Magistrates, they are immobile.

Serving the Magistrate and the Notaries are the Bailiffs, their numerous attendants. They are the appendages of the immobile castes, carrying them around, feeding them, whatever they require. A Magistrate or Notary can also speak through them, allowing it to communicate without risk to itself. Like the rest of the Quintesson drone castes, Bailiffs have no free will, nor any real mind to speak of.

Outside of the Court, comprised of the Magistrates and Notaries (along with their Bailiffs), Quintessons are divided up into not just workers and soldiers, but also vehicles and ships, even laboratory equipment. There are no machines in a vespiary that are not part of it. Everything must be loyal, and accounted for, for the sake of security.

Because the Quintessons are not a singular empire. A singular Quintesson empire would have to rely upon there being a singular Quintesson vespiary, and the problem is that while every vespiary wants to be that vespiary, none are in a position to risk it.

Millions of years before, the vespiaries drove all other life on Quintesson to extinction, and have existed in an uneasy peace ever since. If a vespiary openly attacked another, then they would lose soldiers in the battle, weakening themselves for all to see, and then they'd be in the perfect position to be attacked themselves. So it is only out of paranoia that they tolerate each other's existences.

Not that they don't try and destroy each other at every available opportunity, of course. But each move must be subtle, calculated, and done in secret. Sabotage, secret raids, and most commonly of all: mercenaries.

Quintessons hate other life as much as they hate each other. Everyone else is just competition for resources, since the Quintesson definition of "resources" is broad enough to include the whole universe. So Quintessons find malicious glee in hiring or tricking other races into attempting to destroy other vespiaries, as it is a win-win scenario. Regardless of what happens, someone is bound to be eliminated.

Cybertron first made contact with the Quintessons during the Silver Age, resulting in wars that lasted through into the Golden Age, after which point Cybertron's newfound unity provided the strength of arms required to deter any vespiary. Those Magistrates smart enough to realise a lost cause retreated back into the uncharted regions, and nothing more was heard of the Quintessons... until after the Great War.

With Cybertron in ruins and its inhabitants scattered to the solar winds, the Quintessons have begun to return.

[tfrpg]

The origin of life on Cybertron

Any explanation of the rise of life on Cybertron must start with mentioning one very important factor: energon. Energon is not unique to Cybertron, it is found across the universe, but on Cybertron it was once as common as water on the planet Earth.

Energon is a high-energy substance that is found in both solid and liquid states, though the former is more common than the latter. While in solid form, it is inert, and must be refined into its liquid form in order to release the energy within. Naturally-occurring liquid energon is rare, and is also toxic to most forms of organic life on direct exposure. So don't try drinking it.

So the story begins billions of years ago, on a metal-rich planet orbiting another sun, with two moons in the sky: primeval Cybertron, a world devoid of all life... so far.

In the vast energon oceans of primeval Cybertron,the incredible tidal forces of the two moons were at work. The strong and regular tides saw the erosion of the metallic shores, filling the energon oceans with ferrous sediment, which in turn became magnetized by the constant movement through the high-energy liquid. The movement of these magnetic particles through the energon caused small eddies to occur, temporary swirling collections of energon interconnected by electromagnetic forces, on a microscopic scale.

At some point, these little eddies stopped being temporary. They gained stability and became the first proto-sparks, equivalent to the first single-celled life on Earth. Yet being formed from energy, rather than solid matter, their existences were short. Because they were clusters of charged energon floating in an ocean of energon under the constant tidal stresses of the two moons, sudden currents or collisions with other proto-sparks would disrupt their fragile cohesion and dissipate them back into the ocean from which they were born.

But some proto-sparks had a greater electromagnetic charge than others, and could not only retain cohesion better, but attract in more energon to grow larger and more complex. The larger they grew, the more ferrous particles were attracted, until over the generations these proto-sparks developed the first shells. At first just protective clouds of ferrous particles, they soon became solid metallic shells that prevented the proto-spark within from losing cohesion.

The primeval energon oceans of Cybertron were soon teeming with life in the shape of small metal spheres, each with a few apertures to allow the intake and expulsion of energon for the purposes of nourishing the proto-spark, and as a primitive jet-propulsion system.

Natural selection favoured those proto-sparks with larger, more complex shells, because an exposed proto-spark in a sea of energon would not last long. Especially since some proto-sparks had developed the first predatory instincts. By having thick prows on their shells that they used like battering rams, they could smash weaker shells apart, and eliminate the competition for energon in their territory.

Over millions of years, life on Cybertron began to diversify. The first plants appeared, sessile mechanisms that used roots to draw energon via pump stations developed from the crude propulsion systems of their distant ancestors. The mechanisms that proto-sparks could construct grew more complex, arranging the machinery slowly through the manipulation of magnetic fields.

Gradually the plants began to move out of the oceans onto the shoreline, keeping their vulnerable bodies out of reach of the competition while using their root system to take in energon from a safe distance. They flourished, and spread out, becoming the largest forms of mechanical life on the planet. They spread away from the oceans, further inland, where over millions of years they developed the ability to burrow their roots into the ground and tap reserves of solid energon, their whole bodies acting as refineries to turn it into liquid form. The whole planet was eventually covered in plantlife, from pole to pole, the rough and rocky terrain smoothed out by plantlife.

The first mobile land life developed to fill a niche: predatory herbivore. By attacking the refinery plants, they could gain access to the refined energon within. This saw the development into the first "true" sparks, as intelligence developed. Energon was used to fuel powerful engines that enabled land travel, and then later flight. Cybertron soon had land, sea, and air filled with mechanical life.

Those mechanisms who could contort their bodies to retract in appendages, or adopt a more streamlined shape, flourished. It soon became quite the advantage to be able to partially transform, and from there full transformation developed. But with multiple forms to operate came the need for increased processing power to cope. The machines got smarter, their neural networks more complex, and millions of years ago the first intelligent transforming robots came to exist.

This was the end of the Prototechnic Era, and the beginning of the Iron Age, a period when primitive Cybertronians would discover and change the world around them... a period to be explored in another update.

I am, however, obligated by certain boards of education to present an alternate theory to, quote-unquote, "teach the controversy" - which I will now do with a lack of enthusiasm:

There is no such thing as evolution, there were thirteen original Transformers who were created fully-formed by the omnipotent powers of Primus, the creator-god, in order to fight Unicron, yadda yadda yadda.

You can read more about that subject later. In the mythology update. Where it belongs.

[tfrpg]

Explaining the dice roll mechanic

Roleplaying games have a curious history that has no singular origin, but the first creation we would consider a roleplaying game would be the original Dungeons & Dragons, as created by David Arneson and Gary Gygax. From these humble beginnings in the early 70s we have progressed, now more than 40 years later, to a world where we have taken great strides in design theory. But not everyone plays roleplaying games, so I'll explain the center of TFRPG - and the center of almost all roleplaying games: the dice roll mechanic.

Technically you don't need to use dice, you just need a random element. You could use cards, coin flips, anything that puts control out of human hands. Dice are traditional because they are tactile (being fun to roll) and easy to handle. They are the impartial judge that stops arguments before they even start, by determining whether actions succeed or fail. In essence, they are what make a roleplaying game a roleplaying game.

The dice roll mechanic is the term for what you need to do when rolling those dice. In Dungeons & Dragons, that dice roll mechanic is a single twenty-sided die (a d20), with varies bonuses and penalties modifying the result. Other games have different methods, including TFRPG.

TFRPG uses the d8, the eight-sided die, because of various reasons which may or may not include personal preference. It also uses what is called a "dice pool" mechanic, which works out pretty much exactly how it sounds: a bunch of dice pooled together.

When you attempt any significant action in TFRPG - nothing simple like walking around, something that requires real effort - you need to roll for it to see if you succeed. It can be anything from leaping over a chasm, to breaking into a secure computer network, to shooting down a jet. This is one of the strengths of a well-designed system: you will only ever need to remember how to do one thing in order to do anything.

Every character will have statistics, which will be covered in depth later, but for now you can think of them as areas of general ability. Strength, agility, intellect, even firepower - each of these will be assigned a portion of dice. You can divide the dice up equally, or you can sacrifice some statistics for others. More agility at the cost of strength to make a small, agile character. More strength at the cost of agility to make a big, brutish character.

When you attempt that task, it will relate to one of your statistics. Let's say you're leaping over a chasm - that'd be agility. So you take your agility dice and you roll them. If you were breaking into that computer network, you'd want intellect instead, as it's a more cerebral activity.

Our example character will have three dice in agility, meaning to leap over that chasm the player will roll three dice. The aim is to get one of the dice to show a result of 5 or higher. That's a success, and means the character accomplishes their goal. Now, with three dice, those odds are pretty good. After all, our example character is pretty agile. But with only one d8 in agility? Well... might be risky.

There will be times when you get temporary additions to your dice pools. For instance, going back to that chasm and our attempts to leap over it, what if you were in vehicle mode? Transformers are typically much faster when on wheels, so transforming might grant you an additional d8 to that leap, improving your chances... provided you've selected a nice vehicle mode for yourself. You might even have a jet as your altmode and forgotten that you could simply fly over the stupid chasm instead.

Sometimes, though, characters will encounter setbacks or other conditions that will negate a success. Meaning if they roll one success, then it would count as none. So they would need to roll two successes in order to actually succeed, the spare being "eaten up" by how difficult the task is.

These setbacks will crop up most often when you are engaging with someone else, in combat or otherwise. When you engage someone else, they get to roll as well, and all their successes count against yours. Meaning they can use their agility to dodge your shots in a firefight, or use their intellect against yours in a battle of wits.

All of that will be explained, in more detail, in later updates. For now all you need to know is that any time you want to do anything, you're going to roll some eight-sided dice and check to see how many are 5 or higher to see if you succeed or fail.

[tfrpg]

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong!

There's a couple of reasons I like Transformers, the first of which being that I grew up during the 80s and 90s and (like any child my age) giant robots were totally awesome.

The second reason is a little more nuanced. Over the years we've seen Transformers turn from a prolonged toy commercial into a franchise, a veritable empire of continuities and different interpretations. Each one has its own take on things, but there are elements that remain consistent. Two factions of an ancient race of robots, gifted with the ability to transform, fighting a war between good and evil. It's something of a modern-day myth.

Myths are supposed to be interpreted in new ways, that's the whole point of them. There is no singular, "correct" interpretation of King Arthur, for example. But the elements of his story have remained the same over the years... more or less. Even though modern myths have led much shorter lives, they're still myths at heart. So it doesn't matter whether Optimus is trukk or munky, so long as he is Prime.

So what about games? The whole point of a roleplaying game is (or at least should be) to allow a group of friends to explore a story together, to create a narrative by playing roles, and allowing in an element of chance and risk to spice things up. What this means is that the rules of the game should focus on allowing that narrative to fit the genre perfectly. Simply put, in order to play the best Transformers game, there should be a system built for Transformers games.

Though originally I'd just planned for this to be a simple birthday present for my li'l bro, I started to find things mixing together. My love of robots, my love of game design, and my love of mythology. They all crashed together and made this into a much more ambitious project. It won't quite be any Transformers you've seen before, but it will still be recognizable as Transformers - and it will be as fun to play as it is to write, I hope.