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Design Notes: The ORBIT Rpg
The Orbit Universe
I like science fiction, I like that genre known as "space opera". So I created Orbit to fulfill mine and my friends' desire for high adventure without the boredom of typical hard sf. Think the original Three Musketeers plus Star Wars and you've got a close match to what Orbit is about (Farscape with a bigger budget and far better writing). The Orbit universe is defined up to a point so there is some framework for Players and Game Refs to go by, but I leave room for improvisation (though not abandonment). Also, I didn't want Players and Game Refs to have to be rules lawyers, so I tried to keep things trimmed down and logical (die rolls are related to stats and skills, not arbitary "levels of character experience"). 99% of the time die-rolls exist for a reason.
Character Creation
Orbit uses the basic 100 point system (100 points to divide up among 5 stats; Body, Health, Agility, Tech, and Wit). I wanted players and GMs to have more variables--a d100 worth of possibilities instead of the traditional d20 or d6. Plus, it's easy to understand that when your character has a 40% chance of success, the target number is indeed 40.
The Stats
Stats actually get used in the game for most actions. They get modified for special actions (melee, complex & specific skills etc.) Normal actions ("non-adventurerer type actions") are just a given--of course there's no die roll for those. Yet for non-specific (skill) actions like jumping, climbing, and so-on, the character's stats are used as they are (base), but only when there is an unusual twist to that action. A character's physical stats, at their peak, are still their base stats. I was aiming to make it logical, since I don't think that a sci-fi space opera type game should get bogged down by die-rolling for things like jumping off a ten foot wall. However, jumping off a ten foot wall into a moving hovervette is another thing. Like I said, high adventure without the rules-lawyer crap.
Skills
I did this by level because I believe that a greater skill with a particular piece of equipment, or weapon, should gain any character a greater chance of success. For example, I know first-hand from my military experience that while a successful shot from a standard 9mm pistol may inflict 1d6 points of damage, in the hands of an experienced marksman it can (and should) do more.
So it's the level x the weapon's base damage, to determine damage. Anyone who has ever fired a real weapon knows that a twitch, or an eye-blink, can make the difference between a tight group and a not even landing a hit within the silouette lines. Plus, I really think I've aced the "swords vs. guns" problem in rpgs (page121).
The Presentation
My only peeve about my own game is that it is limited by the sometimes crude methods required by having done the thing myself. Literally. With noble exception (My wife's creation of the Void Knights' mythos and the NPC backgrounds) Orbit was made by me alone. And when I say "alone" I mean it in the purest sense of the word. I wrote, typeset, cut and pasted-up, conceptualized and illustrated, photocopied, collated and bound the thing by hand, myself. I did it all to keep the price down because I feel (particularly after the Warhammer 40k books) that any rpg core rulebook that costs more than $20 is a rip-off. I also put the Game Ref's rules in the main core Orbit rulebook. Again, because separating one set of core rules into two books is just unforgivable. Especially since most "game master's" manuals usually end up as anemic tomes with little to offer that could've been included with the player's manual for next to nothing.
That's the reason for the binding. Which most gamers I talked to said they could care less about anyway. It all ads up to a low price. Which was one of my secondary goals.
Experience
Gaining experience affects your character the way you decide. More points for what you want.
This is high-adventure after all, and it's a game. The impossible should occasionally be possible.
Overall
Above all else, I made Orbit fun for Players and Game Refs. Orbit features choices! So I included every bad stereotype of sci-fi (alien babes who, for some reason, especially dig earth guys, beautiful but deadly assassin alien babes, big "F'n" guns and comic relief in the form of ridiculous lifeforms and alien culture shock). Plus a lot of other cool things you would have to play the game to find out about. Like the zealous but completely aloof Void Knights, Adepts whose logic-based form of metascience/magic has no saving throws (because it's based upon the cold logic of ones and zeros), lifeforms who distill their own venom to make powerful narcotics, etc. Mercenaries, strippers, hackers, fanatics, junkies and just all around fortune seekers. New rpgers will find it easy to learn and play, and more experienced gamers will find room to grow and create their own sectors of the galaxy. Hardcore sci-fi geek, or tech-savy cyberpunk--you know what I mean? Conan the Barbarian, or Chemical Brothers. Whatever.
It's always gamers' choice.
Jeff Diamond
Orbit Headquarters