Hi! I’m Blake Barton. I develop games that no one will ever play.
This is the first entry in a series of posts I’m calling Monster of the Week, which isn’t about the Powered by the Apocalypse game, nor is it a dissection of my favorite X-Files episodes (if I only had the time and patience), but rather an (at least) once a week dive into an NPC stat block that I’m creating for my untitled, in-progress, homebrew, will-never-be-finished, post-apocalyptic TTRPG. It’s also a way for me to break into blogging my work, which feels… uncomfortable, to say the least. Because it’s in-progress (and usually untested), I can’t promise quality. Nor can I promise that any elements of design in these stat blocks will remain consistent. That’s part of the ride!
Because this is the first entry, I’ll introduce some of the core concepts of the game, then I’ll introduce a control creature: the commoner. If I were being smart, I’d employ some of my own advice about tabletop design and start with something fresh and interesting that gets the reader excited about playing! But I’ll be honest, I’m just a little bit dumb and a tad lazy, so, yeah.
Game Design Pillars
Of course, a stat block only makes sense in the context of the game it’s made for. Without going into too much detail, here are the current design pillars for the game:
GRITTY
- The world is dangerous and often without hope.
- Inventory and equipment is highly constrained.
- Essentials like food, water, and ammunition are rare.
- Preparedness is everything.
- There are no assumptions made about player character morality or motivations.
LETHAL
- The game does not assume that the players will always triumph.
- Health for all characters is low. Combat is fast and deadly.
- New players should be able to create a character in under 30 minutes. Experienced players should be able to make one in under 5.
- It is often a better idea for players to evade danger than face it head-on.
- Gunshots kill people. Fast.
TACTICAL
- Combat is designed as a wargame first.
- Positioning in combat is important.
- Characters have an array of basic actions and more complex abilities to deal, avoid, and mitigate damage, as well as inflict or cure various conditions.
- Teamwork is required to overcome encounters.
- Resource management in combat is vital.
SANDBOX
- In this game, the ideal campaign is a hex crawl. Players characters travel and explore.
- NPC factions operate with or without player intervention.
- Exploration is often driven by random encounters.
- Character advancement is defined by what the characters find and create more than the perks they unlock via XP.
FLEXIBILITY
- Players are rewarded for clever thinking.
- The Game Master’s ruling takes precedent over any codified rule (nothing new here, but this game is ideally played with an OSR approach).
- Complex rules can be abbreviated with core dice mechanics.
Setting… Support Pillars
This game doesn’t have a defined setting. It’s meant to be a flexible “build your own post-apocalypse” TTRPG. That being said, it’s almost impossible not to include a little bit of implied setting, so I’ll try to get ahead of that by defining what the game mostly assumes to be true here. That being said, I’m trying my best to ensure setting flexibility and options wherever possible.
- The post-apocalypse is weird.
- Radiation poisoning and genetic manipulation of mysterious origin has led to mutants, human or otherwise, roaming the wasteland.
- Some altered humans known as psykers possess powerful and dangerous psionic abilities.
- Before the collapse, governments and secret organizations studied and collected anomalies and artifacts. These strange beings, items, and oddities defy human perception, logical reasoning, and the laws of reality. They are now loose throughout the wasteland, both sought after and feared.
- Ancient cities rot underneath piles of ruins and earth.
- The predominant aesthetic of the world at the time of the apocalypse was cassette futurism (think Alien, Fallout, and Blade Runner).
Core Mechanics in Brief
It’s difficult to contextualize a stat block without knowing exactly how the values inside are used. Here are the game’s heavily abbreviated core mechanics, cutting out a lot of the introductory fat reserved for players new to TTRPGs (I’m assuming anyone reading this is already familiar with the hobby or just humoring me. If either of those are true, thank you!), and keeping a focus on the rules that are relevant to NPCs. If you don’t care about this stuff, you can skip it and head straight to the stat block.
Attributes
There are six attributes that define an organic character (synthetics don’t have endurance. More on that in another entry). These are probably familiar.
- Represented by a number from 2 – 12 (though some exceptionally dangerous creatures may have attributes higher than 12)
- Have an associated attribute modifier.
| SCORE | MODIFIER |
| 2 | -3 |
| 3 | -2 |
| 4 | -2 |
| 5 | -1 |
| 6 | -1 |
| 7 | +0 |
| 8 | +1 |
| 9 | +1 |
| 10 | +2 |
| 11 | +2 |
| 12 | +3 |
Strength 💪
- Attack damage for melee weapons and self-propelled ranged weapons (like bows and throwing weapons)
- Number of body slots 🎒 (relevant for players but not NPCs)
- Carrying capacity (literally what’s the heaviest weight of item that you can pick up and carry around for an extended period of time)
Agility 🖐
- Speed 🏃♂️ (also affected by size)
- Defend rolls
- Accuracy rolls
Endurance ♻️
- Health ❤️
- Wound Threshold 💀
- Resisting harmful conditions
Perception 👁️
- Initiative (default — can be changed by the Game Master)
- Searching
- Countering dodges
Mind 🧠
- Willpower 🌀 (how much stress a character can take — for another entry)
- Defense against mental 🧠 damage
- Strength of psionic abilities
Charisma 🤠
- Maximum number of NPC companions (relevant for players but not NPCs)
Attribute Checks
The Game Master calls for an attribute check whenever the outcome of some character’s action is not guaranteed, but it is possible.
- To make an attribute check, roll 2d6. Add the specified attribute’s modifier and any other relevant modifiers.
- The target number (TN) of an attribute check is always 8 unless otherwise specified. A result that meets or exceeds the TN is a success.
- Success means the character performs the action that they set out to perform. The Game Master decides what success looks like, but success should generally fulfill what the character had in mind.
- Failure means not achieving the aim of the action and suffering a consequence such as:
- Damage 💔
- Fatigue ❌
- Stress 🙇
- Harmful condition
- Item damage
- Wasted time ⌚
- Lost progress
- Double sixes (boxcars) result in a critical success, which always succeeds and may have additional effects detailed in a rule description.
- Double ones (snake eyes) result in a critical failure, which always fails and may have additional effects detailed in a rule description.
Boons and Banes
Inspiration: Shadow of the Demon Lord
Add a boon 🔺 for beneficial circumstances and a bane 🔻 for harmful circumstances.
- When you have a number of boons 🔺 on a check, you roll a number of extra d6 equal to the number of boons on the roll. On the roll, use the highest two d6s to calculate the result.
- When you have a number of banes 🔻 on a check, you roll a number of extra d6 equal to the number of banes on the roll. On the roll, use the lowest two d6s to calculate the result.
Health and Damage
Inspiration: Shadow of the Demon Lord
When a character is harmed, they increase their damage 💔 received. NPCs die when their total damage becomes greater than or equal to their health ❤️, barring any special cases regarding conditions or damage types (such as nonlethal damage).
[Players can suffer more damage than that, but let’s keep the focus on NPCs for now.]
Damage Threshold
Inspiration: Fallout: New Vegas
- All creatures have Damage Thresholds (DT) which negates incoming damage. The DT of the damage category that contains the incoming damage type is subtracted from the incoming damage value.
- DT is split into four damage categories: Physical 🛡️, Energy ⚡, Chemical 🧪, and Radiation ☢️ (mental 🧠 is its own special type).
- Each damage category contains one or more damage types that are relevant to the next section.
Resistance, Immunity, and Vulnerability
Inspiration: DnD 5e
These apply to individual damage types rather than the four broad categories.
- Factored into damage calculation after DT.
- Damage Resistance halves damage
- Damage Immunity negates all damage.
- Damage Vulnerability doubles damage.
Defense
Inspiration: Slay the Spire
Defense is a special stat generated by certain abilities. In combat, the team that loses initiative always starts with a little defense. Unlike DT, defense is depleted as the defender takes damage. One point of damage removes one point of defense.
Damage Calculation Order
Inspiration: Lancer
- Attack Roll and Modifiers – The attacker rolls damage and applies any relevant modifiers that do not relate to the target.
- Defense – The target’s defense is subtracted from the total amount of damage dealt. Defense decreases with incoming damage.
- Example: If incoming damage = 10 and the target’s defense is 10, then no damage gets through, but the target’s defense is reduced to 0.
- DT – The target has a DT for the damage type, the DT is subtracted from the incoming damage
- Defender Adjustments – The defender adjusts the incoming damage. This includes adjustments from resistance, immunity, and vulnerability.
- Result – Remaining damage is the result. The target’s total damage is increased by the damage dealt.
Combat Basics
All of these rules assume combat plays out on a grid, though I’m trying to flesh out hybrid rules for theater of the mind since I like to use both approaches when running games.
Initiative
Initiative is the system that defines which team will go first in combat. A team is a group of allied characters. The player characters are on the same team. Usually the players will fight a single, unified, hostile team, but some encounters may involve three or more different teams. When it’s a team’s turn, all members of that team can act at the same time, so long as they have not already passed. There is no turn order within a team.
- Just before an encounter is about to start, the Game Master says, “Weapons hot!”
- All players roll a Perception 👁️ check. The Game Master makes the same roll once for each NPC team, using the stats of the team’s leader or least perceptive member if there’s no leader.
- The team whose member has the highest roll goes first. The team that will go next has the next highest initiative roll.
- The members of the team(s) that do not go first make an Agility 🖐️ check and increase their defense by the result. This happens automatically at no cost.
- The encounter proceeds in the same order until the end of the encounter.
Time ⌚
During an encounter, time is measured in rounds, which each last about a minute. A round contains the turns of each team involved in the encounter. An entire encounter lasts a shift in a delving context (10 minutes).
Actions and the Two-Action System
Inspiration: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Each character has two Action Points (AP ➡️) that it can spend on its turn. All actions have an Action Point Cost (AP Cost). When a character uses an action, it spends a number of action points equal to the action point cost of the action.
- Turn-ending 🔚 actions immediately end the user’s turn regardless of their number of remaining action points.
- Free actions 🆓 have no AP cost.
Reactions
Reactions are actions taken during another team’s turn. They have a trigger and an effect. In order to use a reaction, the trigger must be fulfilled.
Each reaction uses a reaction point ↩️. Most creatures have only one reaction point. All player characters have one reaction point by default.
Movement
Inspiration: Pathfinder 2e
- A character’s speed 🏃♂️ defines how far it can move in a single stride action on land (➡️).
- Difficult terrain ⛰️ halves speed
- If a creature can move efficiently in mediums other than land, their stat block will provide special speeds such as swim, fly, dig, climb, etc.
Attacking ⚔️
Characters attack by using the Attack action, for which there’s no formal definition, but it’s nice to have labels for things. The AP cost of an attack depends on nature of the attack. Typically, bigger, more lethal attacks take ➡️➡️ and normal ones take ➡️. Almost all attacks end the attacker’s turn 🔚.
Melee Attacks
The attacker chooses a target within their reach and automatically hits. They make a damage roll with their weapon’s (or whatever) damage dice, adding their Strength 💪Modifier to the roll. Melee attacks ignore cover.
Ranged Attacks
The attacker chooses a target within line of sight and makes an accuracy roll, rolling an Agility 🖐️ check modified by the accuracy modifier of the weapon based on the range of the target, as well as any environmental modifiers such as cover or elevation. They must pass the check to hit. If they hit, they make a damage roll with their weapon’s damage dice, adding their Strength 💪 Modifier if they physically launched the ranged attack, such as with a throwing weapon or a bow.
Defending
Inspiration: Dark Souls
While a character’s damage threshold provides damage mitigation, they must use reactions ↩️ to avoid damage.
- Block uses an equipped shield or weapon to absorb incoming damage.
- Dodge attempts to move out of the way of an incoming attack, completely avoiding damage.
- Parry attempts to entirely negate incoming damage by diverting an attack with an equipped weapon or shield.
Stat Block Template
From these pillars, core mechanics, and some other alchemy, I’ve also come up with this (non-exhaustive) list of design goals for the stat block itself:
- Keep the block as condensed as possible while still providing room for a creature to have tactical depth.
- If printed, would fit on an index card. In a book I should be able to fit at least two stat blocks per page.
- Colorful iconography assists looking up stats at a glance
- No lore inside the stat block itself. Only mechanics (though it’s impossible to avoid at least a little implied setting).
- Because the Game Master needs to run multiple enemies at the same time, the options provided by the stat block should be relatively few (1-4 actions, 1-4 traits, 1-2 reactions) and not overly wordy (<= 50 words).
- Use keywords to condense meaning when possible, but do not rely overly on keywords when a short, common sense description makes more sense.
- All math is pre-calculated. For example, if an attack needs to make an accuracy roll, the given range modifiers should already include the NPC’s Agility 🖐️ Modifier.
None of these are hard rules of course. I’ll bend them and break them as I create weirder, more powerful creatures.
Here’s the layout of the current, uncondensed stat block template for this game. If one of the elements isn’t relevant to a certain NPC, it’s not included:
NAME | SIZE | ROLE | THREAT
Types: []
Health ❤️ ?
DT: 🛡️? ⚡? 🧪? ☢️?
Speed: 🏃♂️? [+ special speeds]
Senses: []
Vulnerabilities: []
Resistances: []
Immunities: []
Condition Immunities: []
STR 💪? (+/-mod) AGI 🖐️? (+/-mod) END ♻️? (+/- mod)
PER 👁️? (+/-mod) MIN 🧠? (+/-mod) CHA 🤠? (+/- mod)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TRAITS
- Trait 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ACTIONS
- Action 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
REACTIONS
- Reaction 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
BOSS ACTIONS
- Boss action 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
INVENTORY
[]
Commoner Stat Block
COMMONER | MEDIUM | INFANTRY | LOW THREAT
Types: Humanoid
Health: ❤️ 7
DT: 🛡️0 ⚡0 🧪0 ☢️0
Speed: 5 meters
STR 💪7 (+0) AGI 🖐️7 (+0) END ♻️7 (+0)
PER 👁️7 (+0) MIN 🧠7 (+0) CHA 🤠7 (+0)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ACTIONS
- Wooden Club ⚔️➡️. Melee. Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning. Defense 1.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
INVENTORY
Wooden Club
Commoner Professions (d8)
Inspiration: Mausritter
One thing I like to do when making stat blocks is provide variants, quick ways of rolling NPCs that use the same stat block with minor adjustments. As a GM, I hate throwing six identical goblins at my players, but if I haven’t had time to properly plan an encounter, it’s difficult and time consuming to select a team composition from multiple stat blocks (potentially across multiple pages of a book hundreds of pages long!). Variants allow for me to be a bit lazy. I can throw those six goblins out and roll a die for a few of them to shake them up enough to add a little spice to an encounter without much overhead.
- Farmer 👩🌾 – equipped with a sickle (1d6 slashing, Defense 1, 1AP, Ends turn)
- Trader 💵 – possesses basic valuables like food, water, and maybe ammunition (1d6 TN 5)
- Miner ⛏️ – wields a pickaxe (1d6 piercing, Defense 1, 1AP, Ends turn) and a headlamp
- Addict 💉 – carries SweetDream, Painkill, or DiscoAngel
- Entertainer 🎸 – has a guitar or other portable instrument
- Cook 👩🍳 – has a cast iron pan (light), a box of matches (light, d12 use), and 1d4 units of fresh food
- Fisher 🎣 – has a fishing rod
- Pilgrim 🙏 – openly religious
Design Process
Here’s a breakdown of how I drew up the stat block. In reality, my process is more windy and feel-based than this list, but I’ve tried my best to order the chaos.
Fantasy and Goal
First, I define the following to get a picture of the character:
- Fantasy: A human that’s doing their best to survive the wasteland. They aren’t gifted with exceptional experience aside from the basics. They’re likely a laborer that sticks close to organized settlements — living day-to-day as a worker under armed protection rather than a warrior, specialist, or adventurer.
- Goal: Build the most milquetoast, basic, foundational human character possible (I’ll look in the mirror for reference)
Stat Block Elements
Now to the thought behind the elements within the stat block:
Name: Commoner
A creature’s name has power. Ideally, it immediately informs what this thing is so that the GM can wrap its purpose in their mind. I settled on “Commoner” because that satisfies the “absolute basics” requirement. It’s descriptive enough to be self-evident while still providing the GM room to adjust.
Type: Humanoid
The game assumes that most people wandering the post-apocalypse are humanoids. This doesn’t necessarily mean human, but in my world it would be.
Size: Medium
All humanoids are assumed to be of medium size.
Role: Infantry
I’ll get more into roles on another post (see this article on creature roles in Flee, Mortals!). In this game, infantry are frontline, primarily melee fighters. I don’t want to give a basic commoner anything more than a rudimentary melee weapon, so infantry fits.
Threat: Low
Threat is honestly vibes-based right now and needs further review when I get along to encounter-building assistance for Game Masters (something I think is absolutely necessary to a GM guide in a game with an emphasis on combat). The commoner doesn’t have a gun, so I consider them a low threat.
Type: Humanoid
Mostly covered already. I picture a human, so their type is humanoid.
Health: 7
Because the commoner is a human, I follow the game’s 1:1 rule for Endurance:Health. Keeping health low means combat is faster and more dangerous. Players should think twice before getting themselves into a situation that could lead to violence.
DT: 0
Because the commoner doesn’t wear armor, they have no DT
Speed: 5 meters
Base speed for a medium character with 7 AGI wearing no armor is 5 meters.
- Speed (meters) = (AGI + SIZE) / 2 [Small = 1, Medium = 2, Large = 3, etc.]
Senses: None
The commoner has no special senses for the GM to take note of, so it doesn’t need to be here
Vulnerabilities, Resistances, Immunities
See above.
Attributes
The average attribute score in this game is 7 (+0), so having all 7s for a perfectly average character makes sense.
Traits
I’m not aiming to make the commoner interesting. For simplicity’s sake, they have no passive traits.
Actions
As a humanoid, actions such as Dodge, Grapple, Shove, Block (etc.) are implied, so all that needs to be included here are the actions unique to the commoner. Any denizen of the wasteland would be wise enough to have a basic weapon, and a wooden club is about as basic as it gets.
I use the Melee, Damage, and Defense keywords in the action description to provide a brief overview of the attack’s stats and nature. These keywords are common-knowledge enough to be useful, so I don’t need to employ natural language like “The wooden club must be used within 1 meter of its target. It deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage and can be used to provide 1 point of defense when blocking.” Bleh.
Reactions
Only adept warriors get reactions like Attack of Opportunity (get a reaction melee attack). The commoner has nothing special to do while it isn’t their turn.
Boss Actions
Yeah… no (I’ll explain these when I write an entry for a boss)
Inventory
I’m still up in the air on what exactly I want to include here. For now it’s things like items, ammo, and equipment. I don’t include clothing because basic clothing that doesn’t provide benefits is implied. It just adds a layer of inventory management that isn’t needed (and trust me, I’ve got inventory management in spades).
Conclusion
Well this has been a neat little experiment and a whole lot more work than expected. In future entries, I’ll be able to leave out all the introductory material and focus on the stat block content itself. Until next time 🙂
Addendum: Inspirations
Because I went into detail on the game’s mechanics, I’d like to provide a list of the games, books, films, series, and creators that inspire me while creating it (in no particular order).
Video Games
- The Fallout series
- The Metro series
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2
- The Last of Us
- Control
- STALKER
- Inside
- The Dark Souls series
- Caves of Qud
- Mount and Blade: Warband
- The Alan Wake series
- The Mass Effect series
- Slay the Spire
TTRPGs
- Forbidden Lands
- Twilight 2000
- Mausritter
- Into the Odd
- Electric Bastionland
- Gamma World
- Shadow of the Demon Lord
- Pathfinder 2e
- Fabula Ultima
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Old School Essentials
- Knave
- Lancer
- Mutant: Year Zero
- Starfinder
- Blades in the Dark
- Traveller
- Mothership
Books
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
- Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- A Canticle for Leibowitz
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Gunslinger by Stephen King
- The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost
- Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
- Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
- The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Films
- Children of Men
- Annihilation
- Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049
- Alien
- The Mad Max series
Series
- Twin Peaks
- The X-Files