Month: March 2024

The 23rd Letter, 3rd Edition playtest doc

It’s out there in the wild. We are inviting you to the Playtest.

Either join our little Discord or, if you already own The 23rd Letter 2nd Edition, check your inbox as you’ll have been sent a link.

The highlights are

  • New character options in a new archetype-based system
  • More focus on The Network
  • Explosive escalation of Psychic Talents with Stress
  • New system compatible with Year Zero Engine (allowing you to take advantage of supplements for Twilight 2000 or even Blade Runner)
  • Foundation of a new story arc for the mid-21st Century

Where you can help?

  • Tell us what you like and what you don’t like.
  • Help us decide the final art style for the game
  • Find us on the Discord and chat about what you want or need in a game.

Power Armour (Living Steel) for YZE-Step

An M.I. lives by his suit the way a K-9 man lives by and with and on his doggie partner. Powered armor is one-half the reason we call ourselves "mobile infantry" instead of just "infantry." (The other half are the spaceships that drop us and the capsules we drop in.) Our suits give us better eyes, better ears, stronger backs (to carry heavier weapons and more ammo), better legs, more intelligence ("intelligence" in the military meaning; a man in a suit can be just as stupid as anybody else only he had better not be), more firepower, greater endurance, less vulnerability.
A suit isn't a space suit—although it can serve as one. It is not primarily armor—although the Knights of the Round Table were not armored as well as we are. It isn't a tank—but a single M.I. private could take on a squadron of those things and knock them off unassisted if anybody was silly enough to put tanks against M.I. A suit is not a ship but it can fly, a little; on the other hand neither spaceships nor atmosphere craft can fight against a man in a suit except by saturation bombing of the area he is in (like burning down a house to get one flea!). Contrariwise we can do many things that no ship—air, submersible, or space—can do.

The Powered Armour suits used by the Seven Worlds, the Starguild and the Dragoncrests.
There are three types:
Heavy – used for front line combat
Medium – used for activities within Cities
Light – used about starcraft

There is a fourth, Skiffdress, which is specifically used for boarding actions. It is uncommon for Starguild troops trained in one type to be experienced in another type though within the Seven Worlds, the chassis is common and only the armour weight is exchanged.

HCPA – 450 kgs of metal, ceramics and electronics designed for front line combat and limited by the amount of ground pressure.
MCPA – 300 kgs of metal, ceramics and electronics designed for situations where flooring and roofs will not support the heavier armour.
LCPA – 150 kgs of ceramics and electronics for the more fragile environments found aboard spacecraft.

Common to every Power Armour variant are:

Power Unit – this unit is sized for the armour. These run off rechargeable packs which lasts 24 hours – HCPA requires 3 packs, Medium requires 2, Light requires only 1.
BiComp – the brain of the armour, handling the control of the servomotors as well as
targeting systems, medical circuits and comms. This is not an artificial intelligence but a well trained expert system.
Life Support – at the most basic, this is air supply and thermal controls but also includes some basic medical attention (supply of painkillers, tourniquets) and basic refreshment for a deployment of 24 hours. The Life Support medical component will also re-seal the suit if it is punctured, has a homing beacon and can, if necessary, excise a limb to save a life.

People without Power Armour are seriously outmatched.

The Armour increases strength and reactions, it enhances perception with automatic target acquisition and contextual holographic interpretation of visuals The suit has passive sensors (video and audio receivers, vibration detection) as well as active sensors (ultrasonics for navigating through smoke, radar for location of other craft and armour users). The suit also possesses seismic sensors for detecting stresses in ground surfaces.

Apart from Armour, the suit provides ECM countermeasures including radar dampening, and spectrum regulation systems which not only allow a degree of chameleon-like camouflage but also can reduce damage from directed light offensive systems. The sensors used to emulate the chameleon patterns will also detect advanced targeting and laser painting. In a non-combat environment, this chameleon technology is used to designate unit colours, insignia, rank and even emoticons.

The suit struggles with Thermal dampening but can reduce heat output to environmental levels for one hour before systems after affected. Usually the rear of the suit is a large heat source. The Thermal Dampening System is refreshed by one minute of complete shutdown of operations (which may cause a significant heat flare).

Each system/subsystem within the Armour can be damaged if the armour is penetrated. The human within is just one such subsystem

System Stats
Against Human Combatants without Armour, Automatic Success (but roll for additional
successes).
Targeting Computer adds +2 to hit in Melee or Ranged
ECMs mean -2 to hit with electronic targeting.
Camo means -1 to hit with optical targeting.

A precog walks into a bar …

Now a few weeks into the first play-test of the 3rd edition of The 23rd Letter, I wanted to post some updates on what’s been going in the game, and a few reflections as both Referee and game designer. First off, let’s talk about the party, which in this edition is by default a Cell in the Network. If you’ve never player T23L before, the Network is the psychic underground, a loosely connected group of people (some psychic, some not) who help each other to survive, and to keep off the government radar. This game is set in St. Louis, Missouri, chosen because it’s a big city, in the middle of the USA, which none of my players have been to.

  • Richard Moonglow – in his mid-50s, Richard lives out of his old VW camper van and would’ve been a hippie if he hadn’t been born two decades late. He is a powerful Precog, but in his worldview “everything just happens the way it was meant to, man.”
  • Clark (NPC) – Clark is a Cryokinetic, an unusual psychic power which allows him to reduce the temperature of things around him. However, just before the start of our game, Clark went missing.
  • Joy Mary Smith – Joy is a nurse in her late 30s working at a local hospital. She first encountered psychics while treating Clark after he was in a car accident–when he regained consciousness, he froze his saline drip! She’s been helping the Cell ever since.
  • Detective Jenny Blake – Jenny works for St. Louis Metro PD, in their Domestic department. She has a chip on her shoulder about being overlooked for promotion or better roles, and helps the Cell partially out of spite for her job. She and Joy are close friends, having met because they are neighbors in their apartment block.
  • Vonbella Alexander – Young, blonde and classically beautiful, Vonbella is a medium, talking to the spirits of the dead to help her clients. In reality, she’s a minor Telepath, who reads her clients’ minds and makes up stories to fleece them of their hard-earned cash. Hey, everyone’s gotta make a living, right?
  • Bryce – Bryce is Clark’s brother and is traveling to St. Louis to find him. He works as a chef, mostly to help cover up the fact that he is Pyrokinetic.

Each player decided for themselves whether to be a psychic (or Esper, as they’re also known) without really talking to anyone else, so we ended up with an interesting mix of three Espers, and two regular folks (or Nulls, as they are sometimes called). We’ve had three sessions after character creation. Our first two sessions were played without Bryce, because his player was unavailable, and Bryce just arrived in the third session.

Session 1

Richard receives a message from Royal, one of his Network contacts. The group meets up at their favourite Waffle House to discuss the message. Clark’s brother is coming to town, which is when the group realizes that they haven’t seen Clark in over a week. The message also instructs the group to collect a package from a drop location. “Blue Monday, 3C, location Bravo.”

Jenny stops by the motel where Clark has been staying, only to discover he checked out a week ago. Some questioning of the staff led her to the lost and found box, where she discovered his copy of Call of Duty for the Xbox, which had been left behind under the bed. Why wouldn’t he pack that?

The group scopes out location Bravo: it’s a warehouse out in the suburbs, and it’s closed (it’s a Sunday). They decide they’ll come back when it’s open, because the message is a little on the cryptic side. Maybe they can just go in and ask for Blue Monday?

Notes: there wasn’t much in the way of psychic activity in this session, although Richard did attempt (and failed) to see if his precognition was telling him anything about Clark or location Bravo. This is when we realized (as game designers) that even though Richard was a Major precog, he was not any likelier to succeed than a Minor precog on the dice roll, and we decided that Major powers should get to roll two dice for their powers rather than just one. This is now so fundamental to how the game works that it was definitely a good call!

Session 2

Richard received a precognitive vision in his dreams, and decided that the right time to visit location Bravo was actually later that night. (As the Referee, having both a Telepath and Precog in the group gives me a lot of opportunity to help shape the story without being railroading too much. I realised I hadn’t given enough info in my cryptic message to be truly useful, so I added this bit in).

The group arrived at the location only to discover that someone had been there before them. Tire tracks in the ground were the first hint, and then the door to the warehouse being broken open was the dead giveaway! They went inside all the same, and in location 3C in the warehouse, in one of shipping company’s cardboard boxes, was a baby, wrapped in a blanket. A hastily scribbled note in the box read “Blue Monday.” The group decided they should smash up the warehouse a bit, figuring that vandalism would be less likely to draw attention than a break-in where nothing was taken. (The Cell received 1 Heat for this, bringing them to 6, enough for the Referee to roll at the end of the session to see if anyone takes an interest in their activities).

Joy and Jenny took the baby to the hospital to check it over for its health, while Richard and Vonbella went to a 24-hour Walmart to buy some baby supplies. They all met back at Joy’s apartment and deliberated about what to do. Eventually they decided to send a message back to Royal to ask for further instructions. While waiting for an answer, they tried to figure out what had happened to Clark, and eventually worked their way into his email account (passwords aren’t as secure as you think, when you have a Telepath for a friend). They discovered he’d posted a personals ad and had been arranged to meet a woman about a week prior. He’d sent no further emails since that date. Jenny took note of the location they were meant to meet for later reference.

The answer came back from Royal by the end of the session. “Split in half. Keep half and drop the other half at location Echo.”

Notes: Joy’s player spent most of the session holding a make-believe baby and trying to keep it soothed. I think there was maybe one or two dice rolls the whole session, and virtually no NPC interaction (apart from the Walmart staff) – the group just roleplayed everything out among themselves and had a blast. As both Referee and game designer, this was very positive feedback! The players know their characters and how their relationships and are happy just acting them out.

Session 3

Vonbella wakes up from some awful dreams, where she’s being interrogated, somewhere near to the Gateway Arch (the big landmark in downtown St. Louis). She tells the group some of it, but it’s pretty vague and the group decides not to take any action.

Bryce arrived in from Florida, after a long bus ride on a Greyhound. Richard picked him up and brought him back to Joy’s apartment, where a very suspicious Vonbella and Jenny interrogated him. At one point, Jenny pulled her gun on him, trying to provoke a reaction (when she did this with Clark, he accidentally froze his coffee!) Bryce, however, was not as easily triggered as his little brother, so Vonbella tried to read his mind, which led to some Pyschic Friction (this is a new mechanic, and basically the Espers push against each other psychically until one of them backs down … or explodes). Both Bryce and Vonbella came off badly from this incident, nursing some aches and pains and generally disliking each other intensely, but Jenny was happy that they’d proven Bryce was an Esper at least.

To help calm things down, Richard takes Bryce to go help in the local soup kitchen, and on the way they send a message to Royal asking for a face-to-face meeting – surely there must be some mistake, nobody could really be suggesting to split the baby in half?! Jenny spends some time during her working day to look at footage of the park where Clark was meant to meet his date, and discovers that Clark was grabbed by two men who injected him with something and tossed him into the back of a van! She immediately panics, and worried that everyone is at equal risk of being grabbed, sends the bug out signal to everyone (which the group agreed would be a picture of a Quokka). Everybody gets their emergency bags and heads out of town to a log cabin near the commune where Richard used to live. On the way, Richard picks up the reply from Royal, with a location for a meeting the next day.

Out in the cabin, Jenny brings the group up to speed. She may have overreacted, but everybody thinks its better safe than sorry. Bryce talks a bit about he and his brother’s past, how his parents were killed because they wouldn’t let Clark be taken by “some guys in suits”, and how Bryce’s talent literally exploded out of him that night. Vonbella makes some off-colour comments about his history, and pisses Bryce off even more, but Richard plays the peacekeeper. Everyone settles in to try to get a night’s sleep before they go back to the city tomorrow.

Notes: Bryce and Vonbella generated a lot of Stress dice on themselves and each other with their Pyschic Friction, so they are tense and angry. This also spills onto Richard because when Espers are close together, they feel each other’s stress. It’s going to be difficult for the group to get any sleep at all tonight …

Reign of Fire for YZE-Step

Challenged to make a Reign of Fire game with our current 23rd Letter rules gives us a bit of thought.

In Forbidden Lands (YZE), dragons are pretty nasty. Even the small ones.

MIGHT 32 (that is ridiculous but we will come to it)
AGILITY 4 (equivalent to d10)
WITS 4 (equivalent to d10)
EMPATHY 2 (equivalent to d8)

They have Armour 8 (We can halve that to 4 and they’re still badass).

Skills: RECON d8, Lore d6, Persuade d6

And they attack like ALIENS, Roll d6.

  1. Claw Attack 10 base dice with 2 damage which translates as 2d12 with base 2 damage.
  2. Dragon Roar, everyone has to make a stability/CUFcheck
  3. Dragon Wind 6 base dice with 1 damage which translates as d10+d8 and if you take damage you’re knocked to the ground (Prone)
  4. Fire Attack, Range Short, 12 Base Dice, Damage 1 which translates as Range 2, d20+d12 with fire intensity D plus one step for each success against 1 HEX. Not blast damage.
  5. Tail attack 8 base dice with damage of 1. Roll 2d10 instead and if hit, you’re knocked to the ground.
  6. Firestorm 12 base dice and damage 1 which is Range 2, d20+d12 to hit, Fire intensity D against all PCs within 2 hexes increasing by 1 for each success.

The ‘Might 32’ bit is really their Hit Points. And with Armour 4, good luck scoring that one. There is a special rule for a called shot at -2 (due to size) for the eyes or scales. And that reduces armour to 2. YOU CAN DO IT!

You can get the full details in HERE BE DRAGONS.

Why Yeezy?

So, you know we have switched from out ERIS House System to the YZE for the Third Edition and we have been asked why.

The first reason is that it’s a decent system. It’s pretty grounded, pretty lethal and abstracts a lot of the bookkeeping (reducing crunch while maintaining verisimilitude). We are using the Step Dice version which is used in RPGs like Twilight 2000 4th Edition, Blade Runner, Terminal State, Exsanguine, micro2K, De Occulta.

The second is to take advantage of a lot of great content that’s been created for the Twilight 2000 4th Edition RPG. For a slightly more military campaign, the scenarios and equipment would be invaluable.

The third is making the rules available for games which need psychics but maybe don’t include them in the base game. Could Blade Runner do well with psychics? Hell, yeah.