November is halfway gone, and the targets have been set. We have been feverishly at work on the next upcoming project. The first iteration of the BMD rulebook, dubbed First Blood, is on target for release at the end of the month!
Not everything will make it into this release! A properly complete TTRPG system is one that can feasibly answer any reasonable/relevant question players can have. BMD will not be there just yet, but it’s already more than enough to draw blood. Let’s see what to expect in the upcoming rulebook.
The sounds of battle spill into ears across the galaxy! Take up your sword and join the Primeval Patterns warband! Woe-bringers wielding warspoils are funding the march! Their names spread fear in the enemy ranks, and their glorious PDFs are secured!
Who will draw First Blood? Who will seize the crown of the galaxy? Join us! Fight! Take your men to WAR!
Chapter 1: Basic Elements of Play
The first glimpse at the book gives a new player some basic instruction. This covers:
Dice Mechanics explains Dice Pools and Ace Pools, the simple randomization tools that BMD uses.
Warfare on a Galactic Scale gives a brief summary of the basic premise of the game—the Sol Crusaders’ war against mankind’s alien masters.
Personae and Their Properties explains the basic attribute scores that define how all creatures interact mechanically in the gameworld, including some examples of attacking and defending against attacks.
Chapter 2: Creating a New Campaign
This is a checklist for getting started. This “chapter” is a very short outline of the steps needed to start from scratch; it’s a simple but necessary guidepost for new players.
Generate a Starting Star Sector
This gives us a map to represent the gameworld. A full listing of important star systems, their relative positions, uncharted space, and so on!
Determine Faction Dispositions
Who owns what? Is one of the alien races dominant in this starting sector? Where does the Sol Crusaders fleet begin play in the sector? These questions are answered in this step.
Create Troop Leaders
Now that we’ve got a campaign map populated by the factions, we can create some characters! We need Troop Leader characters to play the game in the prescribed manner.
Play!
This is more complex than it might seem. How do we get started playing? What should our initial goals be? What happens if we fail dramatically? Where can we go from here?
This game has a lot of ideas and provides a very different experience than today’s conventional TTRPGs. Orienting players towards prescribed play will help them understand the game.
Chapter 3: Creating a Troop Leader
A yet-unpublicized character creation system is housed here. Initially, we were using a simple roll-for-stats + roll-for-traits style of creation. What is in place now is much more integrated with the Sol Crusaders’ existence and purpose.
The three historical stages of mankind’s defeat are represented here:
Contact
Transition
Enslavement
Through each of these stages, our character pursued some path. This is similar in nature to Traveller’s character creation.
Each path comes with a test. Success and failure on these tests provide for a huge variability in outcomes. It is even possible for our character to die in character creation.
Choosing a Character Class
If we make it out of character creation intact, we will have a character fit to lead men—or at least imbued with something special enough to gain the attention of the Prophet!
The three classes—the Warthane, the Hierophant, and the Armacogitar—have requirements, and we can choose any for which we meet those requirements. The class Infamy Rank structures, unique abilities, and special directives are fully laid out in this chapter.
Chapter 4: Psionics
This chapter is simple. We briefly explain what psionics are, the source of psionic power, and what it means to be an Awakened Psion. Then we have a listing of psionic abilities (psicrafts) and their detailed effects.
Chapter 5: Personnel
First we have an explanation of Mustering, the process of gaining new followers. Next, we have the listing of Traits—special qualities that figures provide to units they join.
Lastly, we have a section devoted to Organization. This crucial system outlines how to combine men into a fighting force. How do we derive and summarize the combat performance of a collection of fighting-men? It’s explained in detail here.
Chapter 6: Equipment and Supplies
This chapter covers weapons, armor, tools, and other miscellaneous equipment. In the upcoming release, it will be relatively barebones. In time, the listings of items with concrete usages/interpretations will expand.
Notably, this chapter will only cover Terran or “universal” equipment—not alien weapons or tech.
Chapter 7: Vehicles and Emplacements
Vehicles function similarly to properly Organized units of fighting-men, but they have behavior and functionality that requires their own system. In summary, vehicles are conceptually considered to be a list of components. These components serve various functions, and they come under threat when the vehicle takes damage.
There are two fundamental types of vehicles: Integrated and Modular. Integrated vehicles (also called Single-Segment) vehicles are smaller (Size 4 or less) and have all their components crammed into and on top of one another. Modular (or Multi-Segment) vehicles are instead built from segments or modules that are focused on a single purpose (component) and can be chained together to create larger and more powerful machines.
Future Targets
The construction of Multi-Segment vehicles is part of the vehicle construction system. This, unfortunately, will not be a viable release target for the upcoming First Blood rulebook. The vehicle design system has some issues which need focused problem-solving to put into a proper state. Even taking the time to reconstruct the system is not enough because some “art” assets are needed as player aids and for defining templates. Since time is short and these art assets can’t be rushed, we decided to leave out the vehicle building system for this release.
Secondly, there is an intention to expand the component system into one with slightly more granular control. As of now, the component system is simplified—for example, a propulsion component for a Size 4 vehicle comes in (Size 4) Small/Medium/Large, conceptually. In the future, we will choose a specific type of Propulsion such as wheels, tracks, turbines, and so on; this will allow for substantially more control over design bonuses and penalties and better allow us to convey what monstrosity we’ve just built.
Chapter 8: Systems of Resolution
Here we have the various systems that govern specific interactions that BMD players will frequently encounter.
The Combat Round
In BMD, we use 1-minute rounds plus a simultaneity assumption—all the action on the battlefield is happening continuously throughout the round. Additionally, we use a mass-action design where Force Commanders—the leaders of a side—declare what their units will do before initiative is determined. This gets rid of the problem of players choosing individually what they will do one after the other; it’s all decided in bulk and then executed simultaneously.
However, the combat round is formally divided into distinct phases where the order of resolution is strictly determined by the rules at all times. This strict order of resolution will (hopefully!) only be needed when tricky sequence order questions arise. This is where we can find answers to questions about “what happens first?”
Attack Resolution
Attacking and defending is the most central unifying concept of a wargame, and all the information about how to resolve attacks can be found here. This includes information about Weapon Class and its effect on Damage and Accuracy.
A very important concept in BMD—the Assault—is defined here. Combat at range is entirely different from the brutal fighting that happens in close quarters! When units close distance to enemies, they form an Assault which is a kind of accelerated melee table-cleaner. Assaults tend to end rapidly and are brutally violent—all Damage is doubled! Additionally, Assaults can be progressed multiple times per combat round—normal attacks are only resolved once.
Assaults are important to understand because they also cover essentially all interior fighting. Interior spaces are separated into Assault Zones—for example, each segment in a Multi-Segment vehicle is an Assault Zone! Any area that is dense enough with cover and provides limited sight-lines is conceptually treated as an Assault Zone. Units move through these zones based on their Assault Rating, which determines how many they can cover in a combat round but also their face-off initiative if they run into opposition hiding in the zone.
Morale
We’ve previously discussed Morale here before, but in testing it had problems. The previous method was either confusing or it created the need for too much accounting and “remembering” what had already happened in the round.
The current method for Morale is simple, and universal. Certain conditions will require a unit to make a Morale check during a specific phase of the combat round. If those conditions are met, the unit makes the requisite number of checks. If they fail, this section explains what they must do.
Damage and Destruction
In the attack resolution section, we see how to allocate Damage and make Toughness rolls and so on. But what if we fail those Toughness rolls? We lose HP. Vehicle components lose Durability. What do these losses entail? That’s all explained in this section!
Signature Size
This section explains the function, meaning, and importance of Signature Size. We see how it affects many considerations and ties into other key systems.
Noise & Motion
The NM system can be used to understand and adjudicate attempts at stealth. Noisy areas drown out the sound we make! That logic is extended to create a simple system to answer how difficult it is to move around beneath notice.
Representation and Scale
This section is mostly design notes for now. The intent is to provide meaning to game scores so that gameworld measurements can be converted consistently to real-life measures such as inches or centimeters. Whether we want to play theater-of-the-mind or one-to-one representation on the table—or anything in between—this section answers questions about what is happening in the gameworld based on our representation.
Chapter 9: The Campaign
This is one of the important targets for the First Blood rulebook. This chapter, referring to the systems previously laid out, explains step by step how to begin a new campaign (following up from Chapter 2) and then what to do once the campaign clock has started ticking.
By no means do we expect this to be in a finalized form for this release, but the basic elements need to be established here. This is a highly prescriptive chapter that attempts to convey the vision of the game to someone who has not mastered its systems.
We also hope to include some class-specific campaign “role” information in this upcoming release. This will serve as context for how the classes contribute to the war and what a Troop Leader’s motivations and daily concerns might be like.
Chapter 10: The Enemy
The Yazimfa, Dhross, Vessamar, and Galactic Council factions are defined and outlined here. For the First Blood release, we expect a substantial and usable—but not complete—display of each of these factions.
In particular, the faction forces are a priority target for readiness. A huge number of forces have been completed, but many more are still on the block. Players need something to fight, after all!
Chapter 11: Generating Places
This is an intense chapter, detailing how to “discover” various places. Places are Sites (specific detailed locales), Star Systems, Celestial Bodies (planets and moons), Settlements, Space Stations (not a viable target for this release!), and Influence Centers.
Our modest description cannot do this chapter justice; it is a collection of content generating machines!
Chapter 12: Encounters
This chapter is a priority focus for the First Blood rulebook. Many of its systems have already been detailed extensively on this publication, but formalizing an explanation into a set of rules is a task that takes substantially more effort.
Here we see explanations of Sides in an encounter and how their relationships and potential combat advantages are mediated by Response rolls.
Different kinds of locales will logically have different sorts of encounters. Namely, the important locale distinctions are Deep Space (not a target for First Blood), Solar Space, and Celestial Bodies—including wilderness, settlements, and the Influence Centers in those settlements!
This chapter has suggestions for how to set up encounters, including Encounter Templates which mark out an area and specify deployment rules based on Response rolls. The target is that these will be usable but not highly detailed yet.
Future Targets
Notably missing is the Signals & Intelligence chapter! We simply do not expect to have the time to make this informal system a worthy addition before First Blood release.
Since deep space travel—and in particular, Uncharted Space—is more of a concern for characters of high Infamy Rank, many of the elements that support space travel have been minimized, simplified, or simply tagged as future targets.
The vehicle construction system is one that has a definite character but will require substantial time to craft to completion. Pictured below is a Dhross “Skycharger,” a Size 5 planetary assault lander with some bombardment capabilities.
And then there is the (rather simple!) Terran “Hephaestus” battlecruiser at Size 6.
Designing, double-checking, and presenting these kinds of diagrams is a systematic step-by-step task, but it takes a lot of time! Eventually, all of these large ships—including Size 7!—will be fully diagrammed and conveyed in an efficient manner directly in the rulebook so that our boarding parties can raid them, Assault Zone by Assault Zone, as the LORD intended.
Several systems (such as Site generation) really need supporting appendices. The equipment, technology, and behavioral particularities of the alien races are another example. These kinds of things will be slowly added over time but are not a priority target for this release.
Grind Over Matter
In order to do these ideas justice and meet the targets we’ve set, we continue the mad dash to fill the rulebook. Ready the assault pods! Collision imminent!
Thank you for your readership! Primeval Patterns thrives on the basis of the sincere interest and support of hobbyists like you.
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Very excited!
The "Getting started" checklist sounds like it will be very helpful. I always get annoyed when I have to hunt for the part of the rulebook that I need for a step in character creation when they could have just told me roll for XXXX on Table XX.
Do you think you will be making map templates and the like?
Strong and streamlined presentation. I've got a feeling this game will be making waves!