Leyline Press Blog — salvage union design blog

Our core design goal with Salvage Union was to create a simple-to-learn mech tabletop role-playing game, which retained the essence of the genre while vastly simplifying its mechanics and learning curve. One key aspect that makes mech games appealing is the ability to customise your own unique mech, fine-tuning its various options to your tastes. In Salvage Union, we wanted to intertwine this customisation with the role of salvagers scouring the wasteland for scrap. This blog explores the challenges myself, Panayiotis Lines  @panny_lines, and Aled Lawlor,@aledlawlor, encountered in developing a salvaging and crafting system for Salvage Union that met these design goals....

One of the key mechanics that makes Salvage Union works is the numerous Systems, Modules and Abilities that allow players to directly ask The Mediator (GM) questions and get true answers from them. For example the Spectrum Mech, which can be piloted at Tech 1, the starting level of play, has the following Mech Chassis Ability.  Data Scanner: The Spectrum is a mobile data repository that has all manner of information stored within it. It is able to scan objects to both gain information about them and store that data to access at a later time.  Range: Close // Short...

In our last article we explored why skill systems and modifiers didn’t work for Salvage Union.  One of the main reasons people want to have skill systems and modifiers in a tabletop roleplaying game is because of niche protection.  Players within a tabletop roleplaying game want to feel that their character is good within their defined role. The player who picks a melee combat focussed class wants to feel like their character is more apt in melee combat compared to the character who has picked a stealth based class. That stealth based player wants to feel like their character excels...

This is part of a series of design blogs exploring the development of Salvage Union a post-apocalyptic mech tabletop roleplaying game currently live on Kickstarter here. 

One of the most common pieces of playtest feedback we get for Salvage Union is to add stat modifiers, advantage or additional die bonuses or some variation thereof to the games core d20 mechanic. This article will explore why this is a bad idea for Salvage Union due to its different approach compared to other tabletop roleplaying games that do use such systems.  

Salvage Union runs off of a core d20 variable resolution mechanic. This mechanic is flat for all rolls and both pilot characters and mechs all use this same table with no additional modifiers. There’s 5 different success levels as you can see below. 

This is part of a series of design blogs exploring the development of Salvage Union a post-apocalyptic mech tabletop roleplaying game currently live on Kickstarter here. 

Salvage Union is a hack of the Quest RPG and in our last blog we explored what Quest is you can read that here.

In this blog we're going to answer a question we get a lot which is 'Why Quest?'