Fria Ligans forum

Thanks for the questions and answers - interesting stuff.

I had a couple of follow on questions:
1) Does Coriolis have a random system / planet generation subsystem, similar to MYZ zone generation?
2) Does it still preserve the "damaging an aspect" trauma system in MYZ? I see that there is now just "life points", but are there also fatigue / doubt / confusion analogues, and does suffering trauma still make you less effective at linked skills? This was something my group and I really liked about MYZ.

2) Does it still preserve the "damaging an aspect" trauma system in MYZ? I see that there is now just "life points", but are there also fatigue / doubt / confusion analogues, and does suffering trauma still make you less effective at linked skills? This was something my group and I really liked about MYZ.

This second question has been answered on facebook: The answer is no, trauma isn't taken to attributes directly. You always throw your full number of dice even if you suffered one of the two trauma types.

In MYZ, the mechanic reinforces the idea of a world and its people in constant decay. In Coriolis, the outlook is a bit less bleak and there's far more hope for the future, hence no instant attribute downgrading.

Then again, if you and your group liked the mechanic that much ... house rules are house rules.


(I'd assume that recovering trauma may be a bit more difficult in Coriolis though. After all, when you're not a mutant and you're being shot at with energy weapons to boot, a good bite of grub and four hours of shuteye won't go far to get you back on your feet. )

1) Does Coriolis have a random system / planet generation subsystem, similar to MYZ zone generation?

Coriolis differs from Year Zero in that it offers a defined setting with 36 star systems.
Of course, only some of those are presented in any great detail - leaving plenty of planets (and entire star systems) for you to develop as you please.
(Fria Ligan inherited the setting from its previous publisher, if that might explain the different focus)
But no, the element of emergent stories from semi-random zone crawling is not a focus of this game the way it is central to Year Zero.

(I'd assume that recovering trauma may be a bit more difficult in Coriolis though. After all, when you're not a mutant and you're being shot at with energy weapons to boot, a good bite of grub and four hours of shuteye won't go far to get you back on your feet. )

The swedish edition has two kinds of damage: stress and, well, damage.

Stress is automatically regenerated at the rate of one point per hour, though with the (perhaps controversial) twist that each stress point has a one in six chance of not healing, eventually reducing you to a permanently mad wreck. I suspect play experience will force FL to lower this risk eventually.
Damage is also automatically regenerated at 1 point every hour, but only as while you still have damage points left. At zero damage points, you're out, and you need first aid.

Those damage points thus represent vitality or energy more than real injuries, called critical damage: these are rolled semi-randomly as an added consequence of being "out" - and require days if not many days to recover from (even assuming medical assistance) - I'm assuming that's what you mean by more than "a bite of grub and four hours of shuteye"

The swedish edition has two kinds of damage: stress and, well, damage.

Thanks for the clarification.

So the stress points are Coriolis' version of MYZ's rot points, I guess — a mechanic I haven't even dared to introduce properly in MYZ because my group sure is not used to having their characters corrode over time. Same or worse for Coriolis, but I guess that a lenient GM could always introduce extensive psychological counseling as a way to reduce what explicitly isn't meant to be. Heck, the Counsellor concept as a tremendously worthwhile addition to ship personnel may be the first I may design in addition to the character roles given.

I would have preferred a system in which players may receive critical injuries while still standing and fighting – after all, the most epic fights put protagonists at such a considerable disadvantage. Then again, the more freedom I have in narrating battles, the better, and rolling on critical injury tables has the tendency to slow down battles considerably.

Compared to MYZ, are there still "stunts" to pull for several successes, and in particular: in melee combat, do you still give up your next action to defend ... ?

Yeah, I kind of always assumed that damage in MYZ was more akin to D&D "hit points". I.e. not necessarily serious injuries, but more battle fatigue and minor scrapes and bumps. The criticals are where the serious injuries happen, which than take days / weeks to heal.

The strain damage thing is interesting... seems like it'll work like MYZ rot points, which means that mechanic may need a bit of work. Permanent rot points can accumulate very quickly in MYZ with a few bad rolls. It's tolerable in a game where one of the main themes is "everything decays", but not so good for capturing that "Firefly" kind of feeling, IMO.

Still, a lot depends on the details. If strain is rarer than rot, or if the side effects of accumulating permanent strain aren't as bad as accumulating permanent rot, it may be OK.

In Coriolis - as opposed to MYZ - you actually do suffer crits "while standing up", that is, not only when you're at zero hit points.

Stress does work a little like Rot, yes. The thematic background to permanent stress points is the Dark between the stars that corrupts people's minds, sometimes with permanent effects. Suffering stress is not that common in the game however, so we believe that PCs losing their minds for good will be a rare event indeed.

you actually do suffer crits "while standing up"

Excellent.

*rubs hands maniacally*

Uhhm, on that note, can "crit" mean "instant death" here as well i.e. are such entries part of Coriolis' critical hit table?

Yep!
In the Swedish version there are two entries that are instant death.

Yep!
In the Swedish version there are two entries that are instant death.

If that's a D66 roll, that sounds like MYZ as well (the individual critical injuries are probably somewhat different). Though in Mutant, you even have the express option in writing to forgo rolling critical hits (the rulebook describes a simplified rule that doesn't have the risk of insta-death).

Hmmmm, not sure whether I would have liked a bit more tweaks from MYZ to Coriolis here. I do hope that melee combat was revised a good bit though.