Bay 12 Games Forum

The events of Soul Eater played out twenty years ago, with the ending changed rather a bit. None of the survivors know quite what the specifics were, but the main events were devastating enough to know it was bad. The first warning was when people started going crazy, and the sky turned red, but that didn't last. That would have been too easy. Roughly twelve hours later, every piece of electronic technology on the planet was destroyed in a rolling wave of destruction, and, for those previously fortunate enough to have a soul strong enough to manifest abilities, magic, turning into weapons, things like that, it was worse. Every power they had turned against them before the sparks from the exploding tech had died out. Weapons manifested inside people, tearing them apart, magic users mostly exploded with a thematic mushroom cloud, and the few who had an active Soul Resonance going managed to take out a good sized chunk of the landscape when they went.
It isn't nearly so bad now, of course, but the magnetic field responsible for most of the bad stuff stuck around, made powers more difficult. Still ruins any tech outside of a Faraday cage, and it scattered the poles all over the place, but all in all, things are pretty good.

2d6:

*----- [2!!] Critical Disaster -400%
**---- [3!] Disaster -200%
***--- [4] Perfect Failure -100%
****-- [5] Great Failure -50%
*****- [6] Failure 0%
****** [7] Partial Success 50%
*****- [8] Success 100%
****-- [9] Great Success 150%
***--- [10] Perfect Success 200%
**---- [11!] Overshoot 400%
*----- [12!!] Critical Overshoot 800%

Stats:
   Each point in a stat provides a (+1/+1) to success up to [7], and (+.5/+1) over [7].
   Resilience: Resistance to physical harm and blocking (+5 health)
   Lethality: Inflicting physical harm and aiming (+1 damage)
   Agility: Avoiding things and hiding
   Speed: Reaching things and noticing things
   Power: How much soul energy can be stored (+5 max soul)
   Recovery: How fast soul energy is replaced (+2 soul regen)

In addition, there are two mutable stats: health and soul.

Health: Physical wellbeing, general ability to not die. Injuries will be superficial as long as health remains, but when depleted, chunky salsa comes into play.
   Base health is 10, each point in Resilience increases it by 5.
Soul: The energy to use abilities outside the realm of human capability. If soul is fully depleted, mental chunky salsa takes over, and bad things can happen.
   Base soul is 5, each point in Power increases it by 5.
   Soul regen is 3, each point in Recovery increases it by 2.


Interference:
   Interference is the result of the magnetic storm engulfing the planet. It makes all techniques more difficult based on its strength, which varies based on distance from a Pole.
   The two poles of old Earth are gone, replaced by numerous lesser poles, where the Interference is weaker. Most current cities lie on a pole, both because of the relative ease of creating working tech, and because all compasses in the area will point back to it.

Techniques:
   Capped at a (+2/+4) bonus to success/effectiveness.
   Each character has three basic techniques, and roughly, three tech trees, although without true boundaries between them.
   Almost anything can be considered a technique, but the three basic techniques should lead to new applications, and be relatively simple.
   A new technique in acquired on either a critical failure or a critical success.
   Weapons generally start with a Partial Transformation technique, usable in general action, and providing passive bonuses to stats.
   Starting techniques have a (+2/+0) success bonus.

Abilities:
   Capped at a (+4/NA) bonus to success, no cap to effect.
   Each character has three abilities, allowing additional actions or benefits without the variety of techniques.
   Characters can only have three abilities at a time, and cannot easily replace them. As a general rule, losing and replacing an ability is extremely traumatic.
   Anything eligible to become a basic technique is also eligible to become an ability, but the character will be unable to progress by developing new techniques based directly on the ability.
   Abilities have a (+1/+1) bonus to success/effectiveness from the start of the game. Replaced abilities do not benefit from this.

Tandem Techniques:
   In the event that two players are able to effectively resonate with eachother, they will gain an additional tech tree and basic technique, shared between them. This is not limited to weapon/miester pairings, although that pairing has additional benefits.


Turn Structure: Each turn, players can post an action, possibly including sub-actions. One roll is made for the action and all its sub-actions together; this roll is eligible to grant experience if it fails. Any other rolls made during the turn are saves, and cannot grant experience.