ForeWord — Introduction & Definitions

ForeSight (1986), pp. 9–12 — a best-effort cleanup of the machine-extracted original; expect residual OCR noise. Compare with the source PDF. About this restoration.

[1.0] ForeWord

Designer's Notes: ForeSight (abbreviated FS) was originally intended as a science-fiction based role-playing game, but has been extended to a generic format. However, it is presented in these core rules as a science fiction game-system, rather than as a skeletal system.

In general, the rules are formatted as follows: Designer's Notes: are comments by the designer of a general nature, regarding rationale, explanation, and so forth; Definitions: are of (commonly used) game terms and objects; Procedures: are explanations of game mechanics in terms of quantities and objects defined in the game rules.

ForeSight was designed with certain parameters in mind. These were the minimisation of problems common to many currently available role-playing games, namely:

(a) Perceivable differences between observed reality· and the ramifications of the game system, ie. falsehoods implied by the game-system, and truths denied by it. (Equally, I felt that between these extremes, likelihoods of given events should be plausible.)

(b) Interned inconsistency in fact, and of style and tone, within the rules themselves, combined with numerous situational special cases, ego games with a different rule to govern each skill.

(c) Poor rules grounding of non-combat actions by characters. In many games the only set of rules that a player can depend· on are the combat rules, which means that in a tight situation, these are the rules to which players often turn.

(d) Increasing complexity of games attempting to avoid the above.

The design approach was straightforward: I took a very nice resolution system (the ease-factor - quality rating system from James Bond 007) and made it capable of dealing with more diverse circumstances than it had been able to, and in some cases more realistic·; I used this system for, more or less, everything (ie. combat or non-combat). In one step problems (a), (b), and (c) were minimized. In order to attack (d) I threw out and generalised as many rules as I COUld, and attempted to put every possible piece of information on the character sheet that I could, in as convenient a form as I could manage. Since then, the rules have been ironed out by fairly rigorous play-testing.

Finally, I have attempted to make the rules as terse as possible: I seldom elaborate on special cases, although I am willing to reply to questions so long as no expense, or great trouble, on my part is involved; -Designer's Notes· were kept to a minimum, and the descriptions of many game objects were minimized if analogues are familiar to most people, or information on them is available in other places (eg. a good encyclopadia). Tonio Loewald (Canberra. 1987)

[1.1] Definitions

Definitions: The following are commonly used game terms and concepts, and are for convenience defined here in alphabetical order.

Ability: an ability in ForeSight is usually a skill or an attribute (if you think of knowledge as a sort of possession), and reflects some sort of capability (as one would expect).

Attributes: a character or creature in ForeSight (FS) has values for various things called attributes. These are quantifications of native, untrained abilities he/she/it possesses. References to a specific attribute possessed by a character are to his/her value for that attribute; to be specific, to his/her trained value in the attribute (which by default is set at the inherent value until improved or perhaps worsened). This value is a number, for humans it varies between five and sixteen.

The Attributes in ForeSight are:

ST (Strength): a character's ability to apply force with his/her body.

EN (Endurance): a character's ability to continue expending energy without rest.

DX (Dexterity): a character's manual dexterity. AG (Agility): a character's balance, and bodily coordin-ation.

IN (Intelligence): a character's ability to reason.

PC (Perception): the ability of a character to note changes and incongruities in his/her environment.

WP (Willpower): a character's strength of Will, resist-ance to despair, ability to resist temptation, deter-mination, etc..

EM (Empathy): a character's ability to relate to and understand others of his/her (and possibly another) species.

AP (Appearance): a measure of the character's (sexual) attractiveness to others of his/her species.

Character Sheet: a player character's physical, mental, and emotional makeup, and his or her knowledge and capabilities, are recorded in game-terms on the Character Sheet, which is recognisable by having Character Name· written in its top left corner.

Character Worksheet: the more transient aspects of a character's existence are recorded on the Char-acter Worksheet. A character's credit, possessions, fatigue, transit status, experience points, fields he/she is currently studying, weapons, armour, and so on, and so forth, should be recorded on this sheet. This sheet is separate since it will require more frequent replace-ment than the Character Sheet proper. This sheet is labelled Character Worksheet for ... •

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010.0100.06.05: represent dice. A 010 involves a ten-sided die. usually numbered 0.1 •..• 9; in FS read 0 as 10. so rolling a D10 yields a number from 1 to 10. A 0100 involves two ten-sided dice. differently co-loured. which are called the tens and units die; one rolls them and reads them tens die first. but reading 00 as 100. so rolling a D100 yields a numberfrom 1 to 100. A 06 is a standard cube-shaped die. usually decorated with dots. and is used normally. A 05. used mostly in Star System Generation [7.0]. is obtained by rolling D10. halving the result. and rounding up any fractions.

Fields of Familiarity: these are more implicit than explicit in the game system. and are a quantHication of a character's general familiarity with some subset of the situations a skill might be applied in: ego A char-acter with Ground Vehicles skill is assumed to be familiar with any vehicles in his/her possession at the start of an "adventure". but may not be familiar with some strange vehicle that he/she comes across in the course of his/her exploits. Most fields of familiarity are set at zero. and have no game effect; H negative. they reflect unfamiliarity. and have a detrimental effect; H positive (rare) they reflect long experience with the situation. and even a preference for it. Rules section [2.4] deals with Fields of Familiarity.

Fields of Knowledge: in FS [character] capabilities are divided. roughly. into two sorts: skills and know-ledge. Knowledge is something one has. or has not. whereas a skill is a continuously honed ability. Acquir-ing a Field of Knowledge requires a certain amount of time. which may be modified by previous attempts. and/or the character's inherent abilities (eg. an except-ional memory). In some sense knowledge in FS is not only possessed. but must to some extent be under-stood. by the character. When a character has completed his/her studies of a field. he/she rolls against a multiple of his/her IN (intelligence) attribute. In character generation this will either give or not give the character the field; in experience the character will gain the field of knowledge at some degree of familiarity. ie. the character will have the knowledge. but will not have it entirely clear in his/her mind how it all hangs together. See sections [2.3] Fields of Know-ledge. and [2.5] Experience.

A Field of Knowledge represents a broad grounding in the field named; some familiarity with all major concepts. and sufficient knowledge to know what detailed information to look uP. and where to find it

GameMaster (GM): the gamemaster in FS is responsible for designing the imaginary setting for the game to take place in: the Game World (or Universe. in this case) as it were. He/she is also responsible for determining how the player characters and the setting interact (by setting I refer not only to geographical locale. but also to inhabitants. and whatever). In FS it is necessary for the GM to have a reasonable grasp of the rules. while the players need no such knowledge; she/he must also do a fair amount of work, or spend a fair amount of money, or both. On the other hand, GMs have more fun.

Gravity, Temperature, Environment Familiarity: FS. as a Science Fiction based Role-playing Game, deals not only with characters in a nice environment in which they have always lived, and which they intend to continue living in, but with a widely varying set of environments, most of them at least potentially hostile.

The gravity modifier G appears in in the BEFs (base ease factors) of skills (or attributes, like Speed) dependent upon agility. an attribute representing balance, and accuracy of movement. In any given circumstance where a value for G is needed, the ambient gravity determines which modifier is used: in l T (light) gravity one uses the value under l T, ego 2. so a BEF might equal G+2. or 4. The gravity slots are NW (Near Weightless: 0 to 0.40 earth gravities), l T (light: 0.41 to 1.00), HY (Heavy: 1.01 to 1.60). and EX (Extreme: 1.61 to 2.50). Beyond that, no-one is really in any shape to argue (for E. E. "Doc" Smith based campaigns, multiply gravity values by ten).

The temperature modifier T appears in BEFs of skills dependent on Willpower, since a person who is enduring a climate twenty degrees hotter than he/she is used to is hardly likely to be fit to resist physical pain on top of it. concentrate on a game of cards, or appear suave and charming. Whenever a value of T is required, use that appropriate to the character's ambient temp-erature. These modifiers assume adequate apparel. but not air conditioned space suits. The temperature slots are VC (Very Cold: -90 to -51 degrees Celsius), CO (Cold: -50 to -11 degrees Celsius), NL (Normal: -10 to 39 degrees Celsius), HO (Hot: 40 to 69 degrees Celsius), and VH (Very Hot: 70 to 89 degrees Celsius). In each slot is also a small number, this is the number of hours between a character's mandatory Fatigue checks.

The Environment modifier E appears in BEFs of skills dependent on perception. since a good idea of what to expect in a place allows a person to concentrate on worthwhile subjects for his/her attention. Environment familiarities are expressed on a table to allow the great variety of possible environments to be compactly expressed. In general the environment is expressed as a contour (BR: broken, UN: uneven, FL: flat) and a surface feature (BN: barren, LV: light vegetation, MV: medium vegetation, HV: heavy vegetation. MA: marsh, IC: ice); there are also miscellaneous environ-ments tacked onto the (in my opinion on the day) most appropriate places (S F: surface of water, S B: submerged in water. SU: suburban, ie. scattered build-ings, UR: urban, ie. built up). Wherever a value for E is called for, the most appropriate is chosen.

Final Note: the GM determines which slots are most appropriate in all cases (the players, of course, can argue); If none seems appropriate, G, E, and/or T, have a default value of 2 (this fact is noted on the Character Sheet).

Inclination: while what a character can do is determined by his/her abilities, what he/she chooses to do is governed by his/her inclinations. A player character's inclinations are described under Person-ality Traits, on the bottom right of the character sheet

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NPC: a Non-Player Character is a game persona not controlled by any player, and hence usually controlled by the GM.

Permanent: some characters will have "permanent" backgrounds, meaning that their parents' occupations did not call for frequent changes of address. Examples of such occupations include teachers, GPs, and shop-keepers.

PC: a Player Character is a character whose actions are governed by one of the players in a game of ForeSight. While the player determines what the character wants to do, the GM often determines whether or not he/she successfully does it.

Role-Playing Game: a role-playing game involves players and a gamemaster. In a role-playing game the gamemaster (GM) creates an imaginary setting, and the players create (player) characters (PCs) who live in it. Play is generally fairly unstructured with the basic idea being that the GameMaster describes the current situation, and the players describe their character's actions within it; these are resolved, and then the GameMaster describes the new situation, and so forth. The role-playing comes into it when players try to have their characters perform actions which agree with their character's imaginary psyche, rather than with their own. A great deal more is said on the nature of role-playing in the Designer's Commentary (at the back of the book).

Roll, Task, Resolve: When some character in ForeSight attempts to do something, this thing is referred to as a task, often associated with some capability: ego climbing a mountain is a Climbing (skill) task, while figuring out what's wrong with a computer is a Diagnose (skill) / Computer/Robot Tech (Field of Knowledge) task. A Roll in ForeSight is the procedure by which the success of a task is evaluated, or, in other words, the method by which the GM may Resolve a task. Most rolls are performed at some modifier (eg. a lightly wounded character makes Pain Resistance rolls at -1). This modifier affects the Ease Factor (EF) of the roll. Positive modifiers make rolls more likely to succeed, while negative modifiers have the reverse effect. All of this is more fully explained in the Resolution rules (section [3.0]).

Skill: as opposed to a Field of Knowledge, a skill is a procedure with which a character has some degree of familiarity. A character in FS can learn the basics of a skill, reflected by gaining that skill at level one, and then proceed to hone it, with use or training, so that he/she gradually improves it. Some skills in FS function independently of any other capabilities possessed by the character, while others work in concert. Quite a lot of skills in FS involve the use of Fields of Knowledge in some way, and perhaps can handle seemingly incom-patible Fields. The rules governing skills are covered in the skill rules ([2.2] Skills), and also sections [2.3] Fields of Knowledge; [2.4] Fields of Familiarity, and [3.0] Resolution (which covers the resolution of tasks in FS).

SVU: the Standard Value Unit, abbreviated "svu" and pronounced "svoo", represents a measure of value and not currency, approximately equivalent to US$2.50 as of 1985 (about enough to buy a reasonable meal at McDonalds, if such a thing is possible). The svu is divided into one hundred centisvu (or "cents").

Transient: some characters will have "transient" backgrounds, meaning that their parents' occupations (or, perhaps, inclinations) called for frequent changes of address. Examples of such occupations include: fruitpickers, circuit court judges, and engineers.

Transit Status: I'll bet you're cussing me for not listing this under Current -. Tough. Transit status has no place in the Core Rules, since it is an aspect of my Science Fiction campaign, rather than a part of the essential rules, but it does illustrate how crime can be considerably reduced by simple mechanisms. Simply put: a character's transit status represents the Elec-tronic Funds Transfer system to which his/her ID/credit account is attached, generally expressed as a planet, or nation. A character who is discovered outside the bounds of the system to which his/her account is attached is obviously there illegally (and he/she should expect at least some inconvenience - how much de-pending on how well he/she can convince the auth-orities). A character leaving one system for another has his/her account placed in transit, annotated with the prospective destination upon departure. If he/she reaches his/her stated destination, then his/her account is attached to the destination system. The master of a starship which habitually plies a route between two systems may apply for a dual attachment, allowing transaction in both systems. Finally, note that I am referring to EFT systems, not star systems here.

[1.2] Conventions

Designer's Notes: There are a few important convent-ions in ForeSight which will be stated below, as ever, for your convenience.

Rounding: unless otherwise stated, any decimal or fractional value which has to be converted into an integer for some game purpose (eg. PCSs can be fractional as calculated) is rounded off, ie.: to the nearest integer. Rounding up means treating any number between n-1 and n (n an integer) as n. Rounding down means treating any number between n-1 and n (n an integer) as n-1.

Page Numbering: the nth page of rules section m is numbered m hundred and n (so, for example, this is the third page of section 1.0 and is thus page 103).

Lack of Explanation: if I have decided (by some arbitrary and probably inaccurate process) that some-thing is too obvious to warrant special explanation, or is something about which better information is available elsewhere, then there may be no explanation of it anywhere, and you'll have to use your common sense.

For example: Many skills are not explained, since explaining them would simply involve copying tracts from a dictionary or encyclopaedia.

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Most fields are unexplained. Unlike FASA, I do not pretend to be able to define an entire field of human knowledge in a few lines, and do not want to leave myself open to criticism by specialists.

Some procedures call for a random QR (quality rating) to be used to determine some effect; in such a case roll D10 and consult the table below:

I Random OR Table I 010 Roll OR 1 1 2 2 3-5 3 6-10 4

Some procedures can result in a tie, and do not explain how such an eventuality is dealt with: each of the tied results has an equal chance of prevailing. Eg. if in a three sided combat all three leaders obtained equal QRs and furthermore had equal Initiative PCSs (ie. they were tied), each would have an equal chance of obtaining the best initiative, and each of the two remaining would have an equal chance of coming second. Such events are rare.

In general if people have found some concept difficult, or some rule poorly phrased, I have endeavoured to explain it in depth, or rephrase it, respectively.

[1.3] Technological Levels Each technological level (TL) represents a level of technological (and, to a lesser extent, social) achieve-ment. (Later on, you will find a distinction between "soft" and "hard" technology. The human race is assumed to, in general, have progressed evenly in these areas, the former representing the biological and medical sciences, the latter representing the physical and metallurgical sciences.)

TLO: Stone Age; hunter-gatherers, familyltribal groups, some speech

TL 1: Agriculture; decent huts, organised religion, boats, government; Sumeria

TL2: Metals; cities, armies, philosophy; Greece or Rome

TL3: Gunpowder; experimental science, art for art's sake; Renaissance

TL4: Industrial Revolution; steam engine, assembly line, machineguns, electricity, telephones; Victorian England

TL5: Nuclear energy, computers, satellite commun-ications; 1985 U.S.A.

TL6: Fusion energy, fibre-optic circuitry, interplanetary travel, STL interstellar travel, AI computers, robots; 2050

TL7: FTL travel via Mass Shunt/Anomaly Pump (requiring cooperation at the destination point), miniature laser weapons, computerised tridi, first psionic shields (coincides with emergence of real psionic talents), android design starts; 2250

TL8: Vast improvements in capacitor design, physicists [properly] explain the Mass Shunt/Anomaly Pump, genetic engineers reveal first successful scratch-built AI projects (to great public distaste), biomechanical modifications of humans become common, workable anti-matter power storage; 2400

TL9: Vast improvements in reactor design, and further development of the Intersplit (improved Mass Shunt/-Anomaly Pump), which does not need a prepared destination point, lead to possibility of space warfare. The Federation forms navy, android 'superhumans' (Nexus 6, complete with errata) appear; 2600

TL 10: This, and higher TLs, really do not have a place in ForeSight as it currently stands. Simply treat these TLs as labels representing TLs higher than 9. (If there is sufficient demand, information on these TLs shall be published also.)

[1.4] Design Credits The following people were involved in the production of this set of rules (whether they knew it, or not), in the roles stipulated, and probably others. I hope I have not left anyone out.

Research, Design, Layout, and Artwork: Tonia Loewald

Fuall (asp. Star Systems & Spacecraft): Nick Doulgerls, Ralph Sutherland (and others)

Additional Typing: Sean Case

Proofreading and Play-testing: those mentioned cilove, and Kenneth Beaton, Brett Evlll, Michael "Pappy" Padreny, David Baldwin, Julie Gibbs, Richard Moore, Peter Johnston, Chris Gentle, David Boflnger, Mark Bolinger, Mark Birnie, Nisi Sutherland, Phil Warner, Pamlna Loewald, Tony Purcell, Ian Burrows, Stewart Bray, Michael Case, Frank Hampshire, the people who attended the Science Fiction section of the Fourth Armidale Role-playing Toumament (acronym undisdosed), and others too numerous to remember ...

Advice on Format: Greg Preston (his advice largely determined the text bmat throughout)

ToIeranoo: The A.N.U. Malhematk:s Department, in particular: Neville Smythe, and Martin Ward

And finally, fa LaMa:Me The peq:>le who designed the Macintosh

FORESIGHT © Tonio Loewald, 198511986

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