In the Mothership RPG, when your ship takes megadamage it advances along track where each point of megadamage also inflicts an additional effect, as described in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit, p. 35, and also on the ship manifest sheet:

00           All Systems Normal
01           Emergency Fuel Leak
02           Weapons Offline
03           Navigation Offline
04           Fire on Deck
05           Hull Beach
06           Life Support Systems Offline
07           Radiation Leak
08           Dead in the Water
09+         Abandon Ship!

Because you can suffer more than one point of megadamage per hit and you only apply the effect of the megadamage total you land on after, there is some variation within this system. But if you want to mix things up a bit more (so that, for example, you might suffer an emergency fuel leak after weapons go offline), you could deploy a basic megadamage pyramid:

You start on the top row and mark off boxes in a random order, once again only applying the last megadamage effect crossed off on each row.

Note: This pyramid is slightly less forgiving at the top end than the original rules, as it’s possible to hit Abandon Ship at 8 megadamage.

BRUTAL VARIANT: CAPRICIOUS FATE

Combat in the void is harsh and unforgiving, for this was a place that man was never meant to live or die.

In this brutal variant of the megadamage pyramid, each time a ship suffers megadamage roll the effect randomly:

If you roll an effect you’ve already rolled, it spills over to another effect on the same row. If all effects on the row are filled, then the effect rolls down to the next level of the pyramid.

While it’s possible for your ship to suffer catastrophic damage the very first time you’re hit in combat (Abandon Ship!), there is one glimmer of hope: On a roll of 00, you still suffer the megadamage, but it has no further effect.

Variant – Fast Escalation: If you roll an effect your ship is already suffering from, you instead sink down the pyramid to one of the two adjacent damage effects (determine which one randomly).

Most RPGs use turn-based combat because it can provide a simple method for clearly resolving the chaotic realities of the battlefield. (Simultaneous action resolution, for example, can work really well with very small numbers of combatants, but then breaks down rapidly as the number of combatants increases.)

Turn-based combat, however, creates mechanical oddities: If you were in a swordfight with someone and they were like, “Hang on a sec. I’m just going to grab a pint and have a quick drink,” you’d just stab their dumb ass. But because we’re using an abstract mechanical structure in which everyone resolves their actions one at a time — even though, in reality, everything is happening simultaneously — suddenly you’re just supposed to stand there watching me take my drink because it’s not your turn.

To deal with this, we add off-turn mechanics that allow characters to react to things that they should, logically, be able to react to, even if it isn’t their turn. In D&D 5^th Edition, these mechanics include the Ready action, reactions, and opportunity attacks.

We can add one more level to this by adding mechanics that allow you to, for example, avoid opportunity attacks. We might want to do this because a character is super-skilled at drinking in the middle of combat, or maybe just because it’s a bad-ass moment. (The Disengage action in D&D 5^th Edition is technically one example of this. In D&D 3^rd Edition you could make Tumbling checks to avoid attacks of opportunity from movement and Concentration checks to avoid provoking while casting a spell.)

D&D 3^rd Edition sought to implement a lot of mechanics from previous editions of the game in ways that were both more consistent and comprehensive. This included inventing the term “attacks of opportunity” and classifying which actions would “provoke an attack of opportunity.” This made sense, but in practice it had a major drawback: It created a huge list that filled nearly two full pages of actions detailing which actions did (and did not) trigger attacks of opportunity, and you either had to reference that list constantly during play or you had to memorize it. Even if most of this list boiled down to common sense, the result was still Byzantine and arcane.

As a result, after 3^rd Edition, there was a practical impulse to avoid this “grand and unwieldy list” of actions. In D&D 5^th Edition, this simplification has been taken to an extreme: An opportunity attack is triggered only when a combatant you can see moves out of your reach, unless they take the Disengage action.

This eliminates the complexity of the list by boiling the mechanic down to a single trigger, but it allows a lot of immersion-breaking shenanigans on the battlefield. And even the implementation of the movement-based trigger is kinda wonky: You can literally run circles around an opponent while firing arrows at someone on the opposite side of the battlefield, but you can’t walk past them while swinging your sword at them. And, bizarrely, this means that creatures with longer reach are actually less effective at attacking people around them.

In my opinion, if you wanted to simplify opportunity attacks, it would be preferable to either (a) eliminate the mechanic entirely (can’t get simpler that that!); or (b) go the other direction.

HARDCORE OPPORTUNITY ATTACKS

By default, any action you take provokes an opportunity attack from any combatant who can reach you.

There are three exceptions:

• Any attack action
• Dodge
• Disengage

In addition, Ready doesn’t provoke, but the action you’re readying may provoke when you take it.

Bonus actions, reactions (other than readied actions), and your free object interaction never provoke opportunity attacks.

Movement provokes opportunity attacks normally.

OPTION: BETTER MOVEMENT OAs

When using this option, movement provokes an opportunity attack whenever a character moves more than 5 ft. within your reach on their turn or moves out of your reach.

Note: Disengage still cancels all movement-based opportunity attacks during your turn. You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

OPTION: DAMAGE SPELLS

Spellcasters can use their bonus action to avoid the opportunity attack triggered by casting a spell if the spell deals damage.

Note: This rule may be useful to make some 5^th Edition spells work properly. It avoids needing to make all of those spells special case exceptions. Our goal remains One Rule to Rule Them All.

OPTION: HARDCORE RANGED ATTACKS

Using this option, only melee attack actions avoid opportunity attacks. Ranged attacks still provoke.

Note: As with a spellcaster, you might allow a ranged attacker to use their bonus action to negate the opportunity attack.

DESIGN NOTES

Positioning in combat should matter. You want your rogue to pick the lock on the door so you can all escape? Cover their back! You want your spellcaster to rain hellfire down on your foes? Form a defensive line and give them the space they need to do it.

By allowing characters to just do whatever wherever, the 5^th Edition opportunity attack rules cheapen positioning.

Beyond making the battlefield a more interesting space for tactical challenges, I also want things to make sense: If you’re going to do something that isn’t directly focused on fighting, I want you to think to yourself, “Should I really be doing this where the guy with the pointy metal can stab me?”

At the same time, we want to avoid a bunch of Byzantine complexity. We don’t want a big list of what does and does not trigger an opportunity attack: What we want is a simple, straightforward rule that we can easily memorize and apply. We want One Rule to Rule Them All. By flipping things around and listing the very small list of things that DON’T provoke, we achieve that goal.

From a practical point of view, if we end up in a situation where this One Rule to Rule Them All doesn’t make sense, it’s much easier for me as a DM for me to “break” the rules with a ruling that’s more permissive to the PCs than one that isn’t. In other words, saying, “Actually, it would make a lot of sense if this thing you’re doing that would normally provoke doesn’t provoke in this situation,” the players will be much happier accepting that than if I have to say, “Actually, this thing you thought wouldn’t be bad for you is actually going to be bad for you.” A restrictive framing, therefore, can paradoxically give us a greater liberty to make bespoke rulings when and if they’re needed.

ADVANCED DESIGN NOTES

Taking a step back from opportunity attacks, there are two different broad approaches to modeling the idea that you can’t just run willy-nilly around a battlefield or do a crocheting project in the middle of a melee without consequences.

First, you can try to mechanically enforce it: Thou shalt not.

Thou shalt not move past someone threatening you with a melee weapon. Thou shalt not drink a potion if someone has marked you as their target. Thou shalt not run through an area under the effects of suppressive fire.

(My house rules for combat in 1974 D&D, where the procedure effectively makes melee “sticky,” is another approach to this.)

You can also mitigate this approach: Thou shalt not X, unless Y.

For example: “You can move through a threatened space if you succeed on an Acrobatics check.” Or, “If you get hit with an opportunity attack, you have to stop moving.” (If you can avoid the attack, then you can ignore the Thou Shalt Not.)

The other approach is that you can impose a cost for doing it — e.g., “You can do X, but you’ll suffer a penalty.” Or risk getting hit by an extra attack. Or lose an action.

This approach gives more flexibility: If you really want or need to do something, you can still do it. You just have to pay the cost.

And, once again, you can add conditionals that allow characters to mitigate or entirely avoid these costs.

Of course, the highest the cost becomes, the greater your need or desire would need to be to endure it. Conversely, the more negligible the cost becomes, the less influence it will have over the characters’ decisions.

If you think about opportunity attacks within this design paradigm, 5^th Edition’s opportunity attacks are clearly aiming for the second method, and my argument is that they have become so trivial that you would be better off either (a) eliminating them entirely in order to streamline combat and encourage even more movement on the battlefield or (b) using the hardcore opportunity attacks house rules (or something like them) to make them actually matter.

Alternatively, you could abandon that paradigm entirely and maybe try to implement something of the Thou Shalt Not variety.

“If I cast a fireball spell and fill a room with a giant explosion that incinerates a half goblins, shouldn’t the curtain in the room catch on fire? And how did the delicate potion bottles the goblins were carrying all manage to survive the explosion?”

“If I fell into a vat of acid… even if I survive, isn’t there a risk that my boots of elvenkind would be damaged?”

“So if I stabbed him through the chest, which is mithril shirt in perfect condition and ready to be worn into combat?”

Good questions!

Questions like this have been asked since at least the dawn of D&D (and I wouldn’t be shocked if they date back to Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign), so by asking these questions you’re part of a tradition that’s entering its sixth decade!

And, traditionally speaking, there are several broad approaches that have been taken to answering this question:

1. Let’s just ignore that sort of thing. It’s not worth the hassle.
2. The GM can just apply that sort of thing ad hoc when it seems appropriate. (GM intrusions are a great mechanic for handling this!)
3. Whenever we cast a fireball or someone gets hit by a black dragon’s acid attack, we should (a) resolve the attack and then (b) have some sort of procedure for applying (or potentially applying) damage to every single individual piece of equipment carried by the character, tracking the hit points for each individual piece of equipment. It probably makes sense to have a threshold of damage at which the item’s utility is impaired and then another at which it’s totally destroyed. Oh! We’ll also need repair rules, so that damaged equipment can be recovered before it’s lost forever!

The great thing is that anyone actually doing #3 inevitably discovers that it’s a huge pain in the ass and they rapidly circle back to #1. So it turns out there’s really only one solution, it’s just a question of how long it takes for you to reach it!

… but there are a couple things to think about.

First, it turns out that “you can cast fireball or meteor swarm and unleash overwhelming hellfire upon your enemies, but if you do that you risk losing all the kewl lootz they’re carrying” was actually an interesting balancing mechanic that varied gameplay and created interesting strategic choices.

Second, the verisimilitude of “your acid arrow melts a hole through the goblin’s chain armor!” or “as the flames of fireball clear, you can see that all the books in the library are aflame!” is appealing. It just makes sense! That’s why, after five decades, we’re still asking these questions!

Plus, it can really make the wizard’s player feel like a badass.

Is there a way we can have the best of both worlds?

Maybe.

LOOT DAMAGE!

When looting an NPC’s corpse, roll 1d6 for each:

• Armor
• Weapon
• Magic Item (or other significant item)
• Container (e.g., a backpack)

On a roll of 1, the item was damaged. (Their armor is rent; their blade broken; the potion bottle shattered.) If a container is indicated, the container is ruined and you should additionally make a check for each item bundle in that container.

Non-Fragile Magic Items have advantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and both dice must roll 1 for the item to be destroyed.)

Fragile Items or items that are particularly vulnerable to the attack(s) suffered (e.g., paper blasted by a fireball) have disadvantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and a 1 on either die means the item has been destroyed.)

Area Effects, like a fireball or dragon’s acid breath, trigger a check for all unattended loot in the room / area of effect. You can wait until the PCs start looting to make these checks, but a check is made for each area damage effect! (If there are valuables about, use with caution!)

DESIGN NOTES

The advantage of a loot-focused approach is that the bookkeeping is pushed to the point where the party is, in fact, looting the bodies. Listing, distributing, and recording loot is, of course, already a moment in the session that’s focused on bookkeeping. So rather than bogging down the action-focused combat sequences, this system.

By using a simple binary check (destroyed or not destroyed?), we’re also simplifying the mechanic so that it can be resolved quickly and efficiently. Simply grab a fistful of d6s, roll them all at once, and check the condition of each item as you list it for the players.

You can easily tweak this procedure by varying the dice size until you’ve got a frequency of loot damage that feels right to you.

GRITTY VARIANT: PC EQUIPMENT

In addition to checking for loot damage, when a PC is slain or brough to death’s door, make a damage check for their equipment (as per the loot check).

These checks might be triggered only if a PC is actually killed. (“We were able to raise you from the dead, Norgara, but not your plate armor.”) Alternative thresholds might vary depending on what edition of D&D you’re playing, and in some cases you might have multiple triggering events:

• D&D 5^th Edition: When the PC has to start making death saves.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC has negative hit points, even if they haven’t reach their death threshold.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC suffers massive damage.
• AD&D: The PC is reduced to 1/10^th their maximum hit points.

For a truly brutal variant in any edition, you could also trigger an equipment damage check any time the character fails a saving throw against an area effect. (Or, for a less painful version, when they roll a natural 1 on a saving throw.)

DESIGN NOTES

In D&D 5^th Edition, in particular, triggering an equipment damage check on death saves gives them an extra bite. You REALLY don’t want to be popping up and down on the battlefield! Get some healing to your allies!

INCIDENTAL DAMGE

Incidental environmental effects and damage — e.g., curtains being set on fire, windows being blown out, spilled oil being set aflame — is still be handled by via GM fiat and the whim of description.

If you want a rudimentary procedural generator for this, however, you could roll an additional 1d6 for each area effect and, on a roll of 1, make a point of including a significant environmental effect (e.g., the dragon’s acid breath melts the floor, creating difficult terrain; or the fireball spell causes the barrels of oil in the room to explode).

ADDITIONAL READING
Shields Shall Be Splintered!
5E Encumbrance by Stone

Disclaimer: I am not entirely sure how serious I am about this.

In Night’s Black Agents, the PCs are considered to be operating under one of three levels of funding:

• Insufficient Funds
• Steady Funds
• Excessive Funds

As described on p. 95 of the Night’s Black Agents rulebook, their level of funding determines what types of supplies they can easily obtain. (For example, agents with Steady funds can buy same-day plane reservations, while those with Insufficient funds can’t. If you’ve got Excessive funds, on the other hand, you can just charter a plane.)

If you don’t have the funds for the op you’re trying to put together, then you’ll need to figure out some way around your constrained funds. (And the game gives you plenty of tools for doing this, ranging from hitting up the black market, reaching out to friendly contacts, making it for yourself, or stealing it.) You can also, of course, try to figure out how to improve your funding, which usually means doing some sort of job.

(You can also find details on this in the Night’s Black Agents system cheat sheet.)

The great thing is that all of this encourages the players to dig in: Whether it’s stealing what they need, sourcing from a black market dealer (who may betray them to the conspiracy), or taking an iffy job that pays well enough to keep them swimming in silver bullets for a few months, all of it fuels the complexity, paranoia, and tough choices at the heart of the espionage genre.

As I’ve been running Night’s Black Agents, though, I’ve found myself wanting a little more structure for tracking and making rulings on the PCs’ current funding status. Partly for my own sake, but also because I think having some structure will help the players feel in control… which will drive further strategic decision-making and create interesting choices and dilemmas in play.

PATRONAGE

If the PCs are supported by a patron — an intelligence agency, occult billionaire, etc. — the patron will provide either Steady or Excessive funds.

This funding will only change if their patronage is endangered (e.g., their patron is killed or the PCs are blacklisted).

Note: If you don’t want to worry about fluctuating funding, just give the PCs some form of the patronage. If you don’t necessarily want it to come with a string (or even a face attached), consider some sort of trust fund. I would generally recommend having patrons offer Steady funding, thus encouraging the PCs to occasionally have to figure out how to get their hands on Excessive funding when the occasion calls for it.

STRAINED FUNDING

If the PCs are providing their own funding, then they begin each op with a Funding pool of 5 points.

Each time the PCs make a significant purchase, they have to spend one point from this pool. The GM ultimately decides what constitutes a significant purchase, but they should remember that Funds should still effortlessly cover regular expenses and typical lifestyle. (And, of course, they should try to be consistent in these rulings.)

Tip: I’ve found hotels to be a useful way to think about this. A group with Steady funds, according to the rulebook, can stay in a normal hotel. So if they want to book a four-star hotel? Or simultaneously rent rooms at multiple hotels? Those are probably significant expenses.

On the other hand, a group with Excessive funds can regularly stay in four-star hotels, so that wouldn’t be a significant expense for them. If they want to rent a $10 million mansion, on the other hand? Spend a point of Funds.

The group with Steady funds, however, couldn’t rent the $10 million mansion from Funds. (If they need such a mansion, they’ll either need to improve their funding or they’ll need to create a bespoke solution for using the mansion.)

If the group needs to make a significant purchase, but they don’t have a Funding point to spend, then the op has strained their Funds. They can continue making significant purchases, but they will begin their next operation with strained funds.

If the group has strained funds — e.g., Steady (strained) — then they begin each op with a Funding pool of only 3 points. In addition, if a group with strained funds once again needs to make a significant purchase when they don’t have a Funding point to spend, they’ve exhausted their funds and their funding level drops by one level (e.g., a group with strained Steady funds would now have Insufficient funds).

Repairing Strained Funds: If a group has strained funds, they can take action to repair it — e.g., doing a well-paid job or robbing the payroll for a black ops mercenary team. If that happens, simply remove the strained condition from their funds.

Optional Rule — Strong Funding: In addition to strained funding, you could also introduce a class of strong funding — e.g., Steady (strong). This doesn’t increase the group’s Funding pool, but if a group with strong funding strains their funding, they only lose their strong funding status. (So it gives them some protection from strained funds.)

Optional Rule — Out of Cash: There’s no funding level below Insufficient, so if a group with Insufficient (strained) funds runs out of Funding points, they can no longer make significant purchases for the remainder of the op.

Note: This can easily doom an op. They can’t travel, get a car, or even rent a hotel room. In some campaigns, that can easily be a feature (and strongly motivate them to solve the problem). But if that doesn’t sound interesting, just don’t use this optional rule. Insufficient funds are punishing enough all by themselves.

Optional Rule – Insufficient Funding Crisis: Alternatively, if a group with Insufficient (strained) funds strains their funding again, this will trigger a funding crisis: Their car gets repoed. They get kicked out of their hotel room. A source of stability badgers them about unpaid child support (and they can’t use that source of stability to refresh until they solve it).

Note: Remember, there are already rules in the game for improving your current funds.

OPTION: STRAINED PATRONAGE

As another option, even if the PCs have a patron, you can still choose to track funding strain: The agents won’t necessarily find their funding pulled, but they might have to do one or two “budget ops” while their accounts are being audited or deal with some other logistical or bureaucratic consequences for taking advantage of their patron’s generosity / abusing the tax payers’ money.

FURTHER READING
Review: Night’s Black Agents
Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet
Review: The Persephone Extraction
System Cheat Sheet: Night’s Black Agents

GM: The blue-skinned humanoids approach and begin speaking in a fluted, lyrical tongue. Anyone speak Avariel?

(much shuffling of papers)

Rashid: Nope.

Sara: I’ve got Sindarin, Carcinan, and Ashkaral. That’s not the same thing, is it?

GM: I’m afraid not.

Whether you’re playing a fantasy, science fiction, or historical campaign, it’s not unlikely that PCs — who often go roaming far and wide — will end up running into a language barrier or three. Some GMs may choose to handwave this away, perhaps even invoking some diegetic device like a universal translator to justify the wave.

Language barriers, however, can also be fun: They create an unexpected challenge, and can often force the players to come up with creative solutions to work around them. In the real world, one way people work around language barriers is by using a pidgin — a simplified form of communication featuring a limited vocabulary.

BASIC PIDGIN

To establish a pidgin in your RPG of choice, have the PC make a Language skill check.

The margin of success on this check establishes how many words the PCs and the other language speakers can establish in common. In practice, treat this as a pool of points: The player can spend one point from the pool each time they want to use a new word. The words they’ve used to far should be listed, and they can use the established words (or new words purchased from the pool) however they want in an effort to communicate.

This works best in systems that will generate a margin of success roughly between 1 and 20.

• If you’re using a percentile system or some other system that generates high margins of success, you’ll likely want to divide the margin of success to establish the pidgin pool.
• If you’re using a success-counting system, decide how many pidgin pool points are created by each success rolled.

The NPCs are generally limited to the same pool of words which has been “unlocked” by the player, although the GM may choose to introduce additional words if they so choose. (These additional words will also be available to the PC going forward.)

Tip: The GM is also encouraged to include literal words from the unknown language in the NPCs’ speech. Clever players may be able to figure out what these words mean and be able to start using them without paying points from their pidgin pool.

ADVANCED PIDGIN

Here are some optional/advanced rules that you might use in combination with the basic pidgin rules at your discretion.

RELATED LANGUAGES: In the real world, it’s easier to establish a pidgin if you know a language that’s more closely related to the one you’re attempting to communicate in. (For example, the Romance languages are all more closely related to each other than any of them are to Japanese.)

If you have an established language tree, you could apply a penalty for each step of difference between the closest known language and the target language. (Or impose disadvantage beyond a certain threshold.) If you don’t have a language tree, this might be a great opportunity to start one! Alternatively, you can just make a call with your guy about whether or not the languages are Closely Related (bonus or advantage), Related (normal check), or Distant (penalty or disadvantage).

EXPANDING YOUR PIDGIN: Each successful conversation the PC manages to have in the pidgin can grant them the opportunity for a new check to add more points to their pidgin pool. What constitutes a successful conversation (i.e., did you successfully communicate what you wanted and did you understand what they wanted?) is determined by the GM.

FROM PIDGIN TO FLUENCY: Some RPGs are smart enough to include a mechanism by which PCs can learn a new language. If so, then the player can choose to transition from pidgin to fluency by simply spending the appropriate skill points, selecting the appropriate perk, or whatever that mechanism might be.

If your RPG of choice doesn’t feature such a mechanism for some reason, you might consider setting a progress clock at the same time that the pidgin pool is established. You could then use downtime actions (as described in detail in So You Want to Be a Game Master) to fill the progress clock; or perhaps successful conversations could similarly fill the clock (while conversations that go awry would do the opposite). When the clock is filled, the character becomes fluent in the target language.

Alternatively, the first time you fill the progress clock, the character becomes fluent enough to make social checks with a penalty or disadvantage. You can then set up a second progress clock, which can determine when full fluency has been achieved and the penalty/disadvantage can be dropped.