WARP
A sci-fi TTRPG where cooperation is key
Overview
WARP is a TTRPG centered on Cooperation, Imagination and Storytelling. It’s Simple, it’s quick and it’s fun! It utilizes simultaneous squad-based turns to create faster and crazier action sequences. A game session is meant to be played by a group of 2 to 4 adventurers and one Game Master.
WARP across portals to explore various exotic and imaginary locations. Complete scenarios, assemble a powerful Squad and defeat bad guys all over the Universe. An infinite number of objective-based missions await you!
A game should be easy to play
With WARP, my goal was to create a game requiring the least amount of calculations possible to keep the game flowing. Few things are more infuriating than seeing an epic fight frozen in time at its peak because players need to spend minutes tallying dice results to know how the situation unfolds. Furthermore, a lot of people get worse at math when under pressure, and end up making errors and redoing their calculations, leading to even longer interruptions to the game flow.
In order to minimize these situations, WARP uses a simple System requiring minimal calculation from the players. All roll modifiers are either +1 or -1. After adjusting the check difficulty, players simply roll 1, 2 or 3 dice, depending on their skill level, and they succeed on the check if one of the dice reaches the difficulty number. This system makes all dice rolls (Attacks, Skill Checks and Skill Saves) fast, fun and effective.
Rules & Mechanics
Exploration & Combat
During their missions, players will venture through various locations, each separated into Sectors. A sector can be a large open field, the control room of a factory, or a narrow corridor in a spaceship. When a fight starts in a sector, the creatures in the neighboring sectors might come as reinforcements after a couple of rounds, potentially turning a dangerous situation into a disastrous one. To keep your crew together and live to tell the tale, choose wisely when to be sneaky, when to fight guns blazing, and when to run away!
Squads
Creatures acting together are grouped into squads. The Player Squad includes the player characters and their close companions. Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) are grouped into NPC Squads. NPC Squads can be Friendly, Neutral or Hostile towards the Player Squad and other NPC Squads.
Your turn is up!
WARP is a turn-based game with a twist: turns are not individual, they’re squad-based! . During a round (representing 10 seconds of in-game time), each squad will play in turns . During the turn of a squad, its members act simultaneously, free to choose how to act and in which order. This form of initiative enables more freedom of play, creative combinations (combos) and improvisation, leading to more fun and epic moments!
Gameplay
When exploring, the players can freely move around and interact with the environment and the characters, making skill checks and drawing cards when necessary. When entering a Sector with puzzles, complex interactions or potential combat, players enter turn-based mode. There is usually one turn for the players’ squad and one for each npc squad in the area. Events tied to the environment (hazards, traps, weather, etc.) always happen at the start of a round, before any squad acts.
Players are encouraged to use everything they find in their surroundings to their advantage and think outside the box. Many situations can be solved easily by utilizing a more creative or resourceful approach. The Game Master should attempt to implement player ideas whenever possible, often leading to the creation of new rules and interactions.
Character Sheet
How to use it
Progression
NODES are gaps between dimensions that have been turned into safe areas by other Warpers to help their fellow danger seekers in their adventures. They serve as hubs between missions, where players can rest, recover HP, save downed characters, sell item cards and spend XP to upgrade skills.
Earning XP
When the players return to a NODE, all surviving characters receive XP points for each mission objective successfully completed by the group.
Selling Gear Cards for XP
Between missions, players can choose to sell some or all of their Gear cards to earn XP points. When selling a card, a player gains an amount of XP points equal to the marks at the bottom of the card (I, II, or III).
Skill Progression
All skills can be upgraded from LVL1 up to LVL3. Succeeding in multiple checks related to one skill unlocks the potential for further improvements in that skill (usually between 3 and 10 successes). It is up to the GM to determine when a character unlocks the potential for a skill upgrade. To upgrade a skill, a character must spend a number of XP points equal to the next level of the skill (2 XP to reach LVL2, and 3 XP to reach LVL 3).
Starting Skill Level
Before being recruited as Warpers, players have received a general training preparing them for most situations one might encounter on a mission, granting them LVL 1 in all skills.
Skills
Vitality determines the amount of damage you can suffer before dying (HP) and your resistance to poisons.
Strength elevates your physical limits, letting you carry more cards, hit harder, push & pull objects and creatures, smash through walls and crates, climb, resist Knockback and break from restraints.
Agility helps you avoid attacks and traverse the environment in complex ways, letting you stay out of danger and stalk, spy and ambush your foes even more efficiently.
Speed determines your base movement.
Engineering improves your capacity to find and perform interactions with mechanical things (search for gear, hacking, repairing).
Biology improves your capacity to find and perform interactions with organic things (searching for natural supplies, monster tracks, healing).
Melee Combat lets you fight in close range effectively, staying close to your targets and hitting them with swords, knives, hammers, or anything else you can pick up and swing around.
Ranged Combat lets you fight from a distance, defeating your enemies before they approach you and using cover to stay out of trouble.
Equipment & Item Cards
Gear and items are tracked using item cards. When a character obtains something, the player controlling that character adds the relevant item card to its hand. When an item is no longer usable (limited use items and consumables) or outright destroyed, the item card is discarded by its owner.
Card Types
Item Cards are divided in 2 groups: Gear and Loot.
Gear Cards include powerful items like Helmets, Armors, Gadgets and Weapons. Helmets and Armors give Defense Bonuses, while Gadgets give special abilities or buffs. Weapons can be used to make deadly attacks. Gear Cards can be traded for XP in NODES.
Loot Cards include everything potentially useful that could be found during a mission, like a rock, a bar of soap, a bucket of water, a rope. Players will have to be creative to achieve anything close to powerful results with Loot Cards, as their usefulness varies greatly with how they are used. Loot Cards cannot be traded for XP in NODES.
Equipped gear
Helmets, Armors and Gadgets (Gear Cards) need to be equipped to give benefits. A player can have one Helmet, one Armor and one Gadget equipped at once. Unequipped Gear can be carried by the character (in the player’s hands), but they don’t have any effect.
Card Capacity
The hand size of a player is determined by its character’s Strength Level (STR), which represents its carrying capacity. A player’s inventory (hand) includes all the cards he is carrying (equipped and unequipped gear, weapons, and loot).
Movement
A character’s available movement is referred to as Movement or (M).
Base Movement = 3 x Speed Skill Level
One movement point is equal to 5 feet for in-game dimensions, and 1 inch for tabletop (or miniatures) size. When using gridded battlemaps, it can also be simplified as 1 tile on the grid. The use of a tape measure is recommended to speed up movement calculations during play if the maps used are gridless.
If a location is within your available movement, you can generally get to it. General consensus is used to determine if reaching a place would be difficult enough to warrant a skill check (the Game Master has the final say). Fitting through a narrow gap, climbing a wall or swimming could be considered difficult. For any movement or interaction, the GM sets the difficulty (easy/normal/hard). The player then makes a skill check. Some Mobility Enhancing items, such as grappling hooks, jetpacks and magnetic boots can be used to bypass some Movement Skill Checks usually required for difficult movement.
Actions
During a squad’s turn, each member of the squad can accomplish actions. Players can perform up to 3 actions each round. The number of actions NPCs can perform depends on their importance and power level (minions might only have two actions, while bosses could have up to 5).
Making a Skill Check
A player might need to succeed on a Skill Check to successfully perform an action. If an action or interaction isn’t deemed impossible by the game master, a difficulty will be attributed to it.
Your level in a skill determines the number of six-sided dice you roll when you make a skill check related to that skill: 1 dice at LVL 1, 2 dice at LVL 2 and 3 dice at LVL 3. You never add the results of multiple dice together. To succeed, you need one of your dice your rolled to match or beat the target number (difficulty).
Success and failure is determined by dice rolls in WARP. Here is an Index displaying the odds of success of all the potential rolls that could come up during a WARP game. Using it as a guide, any Game Master can ajust the game difficulty according to the power level of players to create a challenging experience.
Skill Requirements & Teamwork
Some interactions can only be attempted by characters (or groups of characters) possessing enough experience in the relevant Skill(s). A Strength Level of 2 could be required to push a heavy crate, while a Biology Level of 3 could be required to track faded footsteps.
When adjacent characters are working simultaneously towards the same goal, they can combine their efforts. Two creatures with a Strength Level of 1 could act together to push the heavy crate (requiring a total Strength Level of 2).
The most difficult challenges are often time-sensitive, requiring that all the steps be completed within a set number of rounds from each other (within any 3 rounds), or that the challenge be completed before a time limit (in the next 2 rounds). Such challenges will be almost impossible to complete without cooperating with other crew members for a faster execution.
Making a Skill Save
Some attacks and effects will be resisted or avoided by using a skill, rather than relying on the defense score. Knockback effects (that attempt to push you) might be tied to a Strength Save, Poisons might call for a Vitality Save, and Explosions might require an Agility Save. When making a Skill Save, your level in the relevant skill determines the number of dice you roll (as with skill checks). The number representing a success (the minimum number you need to roll on one of your dice) depends on the power of the effect, and ranges from 2 to 6. When a creature succeeds on a Skill Save, it is completely immune to the effect during that round. A failed skill save will result in a loss of HP or a bad Condition being inflicted upon the creature.
HP, Healing, Life & Death
The maximum HP of player characters is equal to 2 + their Vitality skill level (ranging from 3 to 5 HP). Other creatures and destructible objects have between 1 and 10 HP. Bigger vehicles and infrastructures are tracked as multiple components (parts), each tied to a function that stops when destroyed.
Creatures can only be healed while they have 1 HP or more. It is important to Heal injured allies before they are downed to keep them safe, alive and able to fight.
When a creature is reduced to 0 HP, it falls to the ground, drops all items except it’s currently equipped gear cards, and becomes downed. The only thing a downed creature can do is speak. Downed creatures can only be saved if they are extracted safely and brought to a NODE (hub) for a full recovery. If an already downed character gets injured, it is killed permanently.
When an object (or all of its components) is reduced to 0 HP, it is destroyed. Repairing damaged objects might be possible with a good engineering skill check, sufficient time and related materials.
Enemy Difficulty
Since combat is the most frequent type of encounter players will face in WARP, the enemies are designed as challenging threats that get easier to defeat as players grow stronger, leading to a satisfying sense of progression when playing multiple missions with the same character.
The health of each enemy type is set by calculating the number of hits needed to kill a creature based on average damage. For more variety and complexity in combat, it is suggested to use different kinds of creatures, vary the number of enemies, and create enemy subtypes (variants). Subtypes can be easily designed by assigning different Armor Bonuses, Skill Levels, Equipment and Special Attacks to any basic Enemy found in the Creature Index.
Hits to Kill for each Enemy Type
Making an Attack Roll
The maximum number of attacks a creature can perform in one turn is determined by its Speed Skill Level. To make an attack, a creature spends an action to use a Weapon Card or a Loot Card in its possession, targeting a creature, an object or a point. Information about an attack’s damage, skill saves and conditions are indicated on its item card. Creatures can also perform unarmed or improvised attacks when no weapons are available to them.
When attacking, attack rolls are used to determine if attacks hit or miss. The number you need to roll to successfully hit with an attack is the Defense Score of your target.
Reflex Score
The Reflex Score (Reflex), is determined by a creature’s survival instincts (Agility Skill).
Reflex Score = 3 + Agility Skill Level
When an attack roll is lower than the target’s defense, it means the attack landed on the target’s equipment or nearly missed, without wounding the creature. When an attack roll is equal to or higher than the target’s defense, the target loses an amount of HP equal to the damage value of the item used in the attack.
Defense Score
The Defense Score (DEF), is determined by a creature’s natural defenses and any protection bonus granted by its equipment (Helmets and Armors).
Defense Score = Natural Armor + Equipment Bonus
When a creature is taking damage, it reduces the incoming damage by an amount equal to its Defense Score. Some attacks and effects ignore armor. Defense Score can range from 0 to 3. Even if the total armor bonus amounts to more than 3, the highest Defense Score a creature can have is 3. If this situation arises, instead of wasting armor points, the gear can be shared between players to ensure that multiple characters reach an Defense Score of 3, increasing the party’s odds of survival.
Making a Melee Attack
Melee attacks can be used against targets adjacent to the attacker. The damage dealt by a melee attack is calculated by adding the Strength Level of the attacker to the weapon’s damage. The damage dealt by unarmed attacks corresponds to the attacker’s Strength Level.
Making a Ranged Attack
Direct ranged attacks can be aimed at any targets within line of sight, as long as at least half of the target is visible. Indirect attacks are special ranged attacks that can be fired over cover or bounced on surfaces to reach targets out of sight. Ranged attacks deal from 1 to 5 damage (indicated on the item cards).
Area of Effects (AOE)
Some attacks target everything within an area. Melee AOE attacks originate from the attacker, while Ranged AOE attacks are centered on their point of impact. The effects of some AOE attacks can be resisted or avoided by succeeding on a Skill Save.
Hiding, Ambushes & Avoiding Combat
Hiding
While a character is unseen by another creature, he is considered Hidden from it. A hidden creature can be found if it makes a loud noise, if it moves using more than half of its movement, or if it is seen.
Sounds
Items are either Silent or Loud. Using Loud items to make an attack or interact with the environment reveals your position, putting all creatures in the sector on high alert, while using Silent items lets you stay hidden.
Vision
Most enemies see 180 degrees in front of them (the 180 degrees behind them being their blind side). Some enemies have a wider vision (and a smaller, or even nonexistent blind side). Some creatures have superior senses, like thermal vision, letting them see through smoke.
Ambushing a creature
When a creature is attacked by a Hidden creature, it is surprised, rendering it Immobile until the start of its next turn.
High Alert
If an enemy character sees you or survives an ambush, it will immediately alert all other members of its squad. Once alerted to the presence of enemies in the vicinity, a creature enters High Alert, and can no longer be ambushed. You can still hide from creatures in High Alert, but they won’t receive a penalty to their defense when attacked by a hidden enemy. Hiding from foes will still reduce their ability to attack you effectively, since they need to see you to use direct attacks.
Carrying another creature
A creature can carry another creature if it’s strong enough. Unwilling creatures can make an Agility save to avoid being picked up. While carrying a creature (be it alive, downed or dead), the carrier can only perform the move action or the drop creature action. Furthermore, moving a second time will costs 2 actions instead of 1 (for a total of 3 actions).
Conditions & Penalties
Immobile
Immobile targets (Zero Movement) don’t add their Agility Skill Level to their Reflex Score, Automatically fail Agility Saves and can’t move.
Zero Gravity Zone
Unless they have a way to control their movements (like a jetpack or a grappling hook), creatures inside a Zero Gravity Zone have their Movement set to 3.
Stuck
Objects and creatures in contact with sticky or restraining substances like mud, quicksand, goo, glue or ice can become stuck. While stuck, a creature’s movement is set to Zero (Immobile).
Steam & Smoke: Vision Block
Smoke and Steam blocks vision, letting you sneak past enemies without alerting them or entering combat. Ennemies that don’t see you will not target you with attacks.
Slippery surfaces
Some surfaces can be slippery, like ice, water, soap, or oil. When walking onto a slippery surface, a character will make an Agility Save. On a fail, the character falls to the ground, and its movement is set to 3M until it leaves the slippery surface. If a character had moved more than 3M before falling, it slips in a straight line until it exits the slippery surface, and its movement is reduced to Zero (Immobile) until the start of its next turn.
Special Damage Types
Frost: Frozen
Strength Saves are used to recover from Freeze Effects.
While partially frozen, a creature loses 1 action point, and it receives a -3 penalty to Movement. If it’s still affected by a freeze effect at the start of its next turn, the creature must use an action to try to recover. On a fail, the character will freeze even more and become Stuck.
Shock: Stunned
Stun effects last 1 round. While stunned, a character is Immobile and can only perform the Recover action on its turn. Vitality Saves are used to resist and recover from Stuns.
Toxic: Poison
While poisoned, a character is weakened and loses 1 action point. Vitality Saves are used to resist and recover from Poisons.
Fire: Burning
While burning, a character takes 1 damage every turn. Agility Saves are used to stop the burning condition. Water and cold effects can also be used to stop it.
Acid: Corrosion
Acid is an environmental hazard. Whenever a creature or object is in contact with acid, it starts melting. Acid deals 1 damage to mechanical targets, and 2 damage to organic targets.
Player Perks and Specialties
Upon creation, each player character gains one of the following special features:
Ghost. You can remain silent (and hidden) even if you use more than half of your Movement.
Medic. When you use a healing item, it gives 1 extra HP. You start each mission with 2 Medkits.
Professional Hacker. You can attempt to hack robots or computer programs from a distance (6 M away).
Runner. Performing an attack doesn’t interrupt your movements, letting you flow through the battlefield in a flash.
Scavenger. The first time you Search for Items in a sector (Search Action), you roll twice.
Arsenal master. You can combine the Unequip Gear and Equip Gear actions to swap one piece of equipment as a single action.
Fast hands. When you pick up an item, you can use it as part of the same action.