On the Action Economy


This is always a sticky wicket for games. 

My highest priority in designing Sinless was making a robust frame that was easily understandable. I wanted the thing you would guess the rules would be based on your TTRPG experience to be the rule. 

So, and stop me if you've heard this before, Sinless has Simple and Complex actions, and a Reflex action. A complex action is two simple actions. You get them at the start of the round.

Holy shit, you could probably just sit down and play a cyber-sorcery game without needing to take a college course and reference reddit!

Now this isn't novel or particularly special. But we have a "Summoner" situation. Speakers summon spirits, riggers command drones—there are a lot of situations that create this 'action economy' problem, where certain people act a lot. Examples include wired reflexes in Shadowrun 3e, Summoners in Pathfinder 1e, and utilizing the bonus action in 5e.

There are many solutions to this, but Sinless uses the cohort system.

You can get exploit actions (from VCR's, Wired Reflexes, Henchmen et. al.) that can only be used for a specific purpose. Adding more drones doesn't get you more actions, you have to divide your actions among your cohorts.

This 'restricted extra action' system is flexible and descriptive rather than prescriptive. Did you take fascination and train a tiger or dragonelle? Get an exploit action to command it in combat. 

This also fits the tropes of action movies, much like the way dice pools work, your focus is limited and you choose where to apply it. 

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Hack & Slash 

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