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Posts:

• Tablespess Spotlight #15: Vehicles Pt. 2 - 3/26/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #14: Vehicles Pt. 1 - 3/12/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #13: Inventory Slot Capacity & Item Storage - 2/26/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #12: Fall Damage - 2/12/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #11: Movement - 1/29/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #10: Overkill - 1/15/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #9: Magic Items - 1/1/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #8: Summoning - 12/18/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #7: Intended Play - 12/4/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #6: Turn Order - 11/20/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #5: Healing & Durability - 11/6/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #4: The Reference Card - 10/23/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #3: Character Sheets Pt. 3 - 10/2/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #2: Character Sheets Pt. 2 - 9/18/22
• Tablespess Spotlight #1: Character Sheets Pt. 1 - 9/4/22
• What Are We Working On? - 8/21/22

We’ll be getting more specific about vehicle rules in this edition of the Tablespess Spotlight. Let’s start with how you start a vehicle. It takes a Bonus Action to enter/exit a vehicle. Some larger vehicles will require you to use Movement to get to the controls. Starting up a vehicle requires an Action if it has an engine. If it’s a manual vehicle like a bicycle you don’t need to do that. Regardless, all vehicles have their Max Speed halved on the first turn you start using them. Driving a vehicle counts as a Passive, just like moving your character. Refueling takes an Action or more depending on the vehicle. This is noted in the keywords.

Attacking with a Vehicle Attachment counts as an Action. Unlike a character’s Loadout items, Vehicle Attachments can only be swapped outside of combat with the proper tools and skills. Decide with your GM how in the weeds you want to get with that. Some Vehicle Attachments may be stuck to your vehicle after they’ve been attached, so be sure to read the fine print in the special effects. Some Vehicle Attachments require their own operators and can’t be used by the driver. This will also be denoted in an Attachment’s special effects. Other characters can use these Attachments as Actions on their turns so long as they’re in the vehicle, of course.

The Reference Card shown in Spotlight #4 will be updated with the next Spotlight post to reflect this information.

-Goblin Commander

Before we start this Tablespess Spotlight I want to mention that I’ve changed/added some stuff in the previous Spotlight. I may also go back and edit some stuff in Spotlight #12 to make it a more general collision damage thing instead of just fall damage. With that out of the way, let’s talk vehicles. There’s a good deal to cover here so this topic is gonna be broken up into several parts. We’ll start with a general overview of things today.

In Tablespess you can encounter all kinds of vehicles ranging from unicycles to massive starships. Vehicles have their own sheets that outline their stats and the conditions of their sides/attachments. Below you can see an example sheet for an armored van.

Like characters, vehicles can be targeted in combat and have an Armor stat you have to roll against to hit. However, vehicles have different health pools for their different sides. Players can choose the side they want to hit when targeting a vehicle provided it makes sense to do so. You wouldn’t be able to (easily) hit the back of a car if it’s driving at you head-on. You can’t target things in vehicles until you destroy one or more sides (or if vehicles don’t have some sides). When a side goes below half its Durability you roll on a damage table to see if anything else happens to your vehicle. These effects depend on the type (land, sea, air, space) and size of the vehicle. These include minor things like your paint getting scratched to more fatal things like your power source exploding.

The Max Speed is the maximum amount of spaces the vehicle can move per turn. You might have to use differently scaled tiles for larger vehicles, especially in space combat. Some vehicles might even be large enough to have their own maps, but that’s a topic for later. The Fuel Rate is the amount of fuel a vehicle consumes per turn while active. For non-combat situations, fuel consumption is up to the GM’s discretion. We plan to have a table of example non-combat fuel rates in the GM’s handbook. Fuel should be pretty self-explanatory. Vehicle sizes are different from the Thing Sizes described in Spotlight #12’s table. We might change vehicle sizes to match this later. Directions should also be pretty self explanatory. The Armored Van can only really go forwards and backwards. You’d have to do some serious modifications to have it move directly left/right or up/down. A vehicle’s Keywords are used to describe features that aren’t shown in other parts of the sheet.

Speaking of modifications, every vehicle has a certain number of Attachment slots per side. This number is fixed per vehicle, but the Pilot skill branch lets you add more slots. Attachments function like weapons and other Loadout items that characters use and can be specifically targeted to damage their Durabilities. If a side breaks, all the Attachments on it also break. Attachments generally have lower Durability than vehicle sides so you might want to focus on damaging different things depending on the situation.

-Goblin Commander

Today we’ll be covering a couple of topics related to inventory/item management. The first, Slot Capacity, is a new feature that applies to misc. items. Before there wasn’t a limit to the quantity of misc. items you could have in a single inventory slot. You could theoretically have 300 thermoses in a single slot and it’d be totally okay mechanics-wise. While it might be kinda funny it could also be kinda broken. All misc. items now have a slot capacity, which is the maximum quantity of that item you can have in each inventory slot. If you wanted to hold onto more of an item over its slot capacity you’d simply use up more slots in your inventory. Let’s say you found 5 Luck Inversion Scrolls. Scrolls all have a slot capacity of 3 so you’d put 3 of those Scrolls in one inventory slot and the remaining 2 in another.

Now onto crates. Crates serve as additional inventories. There are three standard sizes of crate, each with different numbers of inventory slots detailed in the table below. Crate sizes roughly line up with the sizes described in the last Spotlight’s table. You can store items on vehicles using crates. One Cargo slot on a vehicle corresponds to a Small Crate while Medium and Large crates take up 2 and 4 Cargo slots respectively. Crates have their own inventory sheets, which can be useful if you’re going to be swapping items to/from them often. Otherwise if you’re, say, freighting loads of items in your spaceship it’d be easier to just keep a generic list of things.

Crate Size	Misc. Items	Primary Weapons	Secondary Weapons	Armor	Accessories	Weapon Attachments	Ammo	Currencies
Small	10	1	2	1	1	6	3	3
Medium	20	2	4	2	3	12	7	7
Large	50	6	10	6	8	25	15	15

-Goblin Commander

In this edition of the Tablespess Spotlight we’ll be talking about fall damage. Fall damage applies to any collision caused by gravitational forces and is determined by the size and distance a thing falls. For every 10 ft something falls, add another die to its fall damage roll. Fall damage is usually dealt elementally as Force, but that might change depending on what you’re colliding with. Additional modifiers, Wound damage, etc. would be up to the GM’s discretion.

The below table shows various sizes of things, their fall damage dice, and examples of things at those sizes. If Mr. Example fell 30 ft, he would take 3d6 Force damage. If he fell 20 ft onto a pile of pointy scrap metal, he could take 2d6 Metal damage and an additional 1d3 Wound damage.

Size	Fall Damage Die	Example
Miniscule	1d2	Poison Dart Frog
Tiny	1d3	Rat
Small	1d4	Dog
Medium	1d6	Player Character
Large	1d8	Brown Bear
Huge	1d10	African Elephant
Massive	1d12	Paraceratherium
Gigantic	2d8	Titanosaur
Colossal	3d12	Blue Whale

-Goblin Commander

Welcome back to another Tablespess Spotlight! Today we’ll be covering Movement. By default, a character’s Movement is 6, which can be changed by changing your AGL, putting points directly into Movement from your Stat Pool, or by using items for temporary changes. A character’s Movement tells you how far it can go on its turn. Normally each Hex only takes 1 Movement to enter. Difficult terrain like flowing water, unstable ground, etc. may take more Movement to enter. Maneuvers like wallrunning, long jumping, etc. may also consume more Movement.

In the above example the gray circle is our character and the white tiles are normal terrain. The blue tiles are part of a river and have a Movement Penalty of 2. This means it takes 3 (2 plus the default cost of 1) Movement to go onto each river hex. When you leave the river you’re moving onto normal terrain, so that only costs 1 Movement. Let’s say the character has 6 Movement and wants to take the path shown by the red arrow. The character would spend 1 Movement to go to the next white tile, then another 3 to move onto the first blue tile, but would not be able to move further along this path. The character now only has 2 Movement left this turn. Moving onto that next river hex requires 3 Movement. If the character had at least 8 Movement it would be able to cross the river in a single turn.

By using Proficiencies you might be able to decrease Movement Penalties. You can subtract a single, relevant (GM’s discretion) Proficiency from any Movement Penalty. Let’s say our character has a Proficiency of 2 for Swimming. Now the Movement Penalty for each blue tile is only 1 (just for this character) and it can cross the river in a single turn. Movement Penalties can’t go below 0. If the character had a 4 or 5 for Swimming, the Penalty would be 0 instead of -1 or -2, respectively. If the character had a -1 in Swimming, the Penalty would increase from 3 to 4. As mentioned before, some maneuvers may also incur Penalties. More difficult terrain/maneuvers will have higher Movement Penalties. We’ll have a list of example Movement Penalties in the GM’s handbook.

-Goblin Commander

Today we’ll be covering Overkill. It’s kinda like the opposite of Overheal (Spotlight #5). Overkill concerns any damage you take beyond 0 HP. You add your Overkill Penalty to this damage. When you first drop to 0 HP, your Overkill Penalty is -3. Say you just hit 0 HP and you take 5 damage afterwards. You would take 5 + -3 = 2 Wound damage. You always take a minimum of 1 Wound damage if you’re hit while downed. Negative HP isn’t a thing in this system and it isn’t applied to your Wounds. If you’re at 5 HP and take 10 damage, you just drop to 0 and the excess damage doesn’t go anywhere.

On your turn you’re able to perform a Revive Check. The DC for this check is 5 plus the Wounds you currently have. You don’t add anything to your roll. If you had 2 Wound damage from a burn and 3 from a broken arm, you’d have 5 total Wounds and a DC 10 for your Revive Check.

If you succeed on the check, subtract 1 from your Overkill Penalty. If you make it below -5, your character is brought to 1 HP. You can move after this, but can’t make any Actions or Bonus Actions until your next turn. If you fail the check, add 1 to your Overkill Penalty. Downed characters are considered immobilized so enemies won’t have to roll to hit them. This combined with the snowballing effects of Overkill can make things very dangerous for a lone character.

Cooperating with your allies is the best way to mitigate Overkill. You can take a Bonus Action to attempt to stabilize another character. When you stabilize another character, that player makes a Revive Check with a DC just equal to the character’s Wounds. This lower DC check can only be made when an ally spends a Bonus Action to stabilize you. If you get healed while downed you can simply get up on your next turn and won’t have to worry about Revive Checks.

-Goblin Commander

In this edition of The Tablespess Spotlight we’ll be covering how magic items work in terms of game mechanics and in the setting. Magic in general works by believing that it works while magic items work by converting your character’s life energy, called Rezver, into matter or other kinds of energy. So long as you and the people around you believe that the magic items you have should work a certain way, they will work that way. Conversely, if you encounter a group of people who are ignorant about magic or outright refuse to believe it works, your magic items might not be able to function depending on how powerful their ignorance is compared to your belief.

There are four major types of magic items: Spellbooks, Staffs, Summoning Tomes, and Scrolls. The first three kinds of items exist as Loadout items, and use HP as ammo. Spellbooks are used primarily for dealing damage. Spellbooks themselves are motivational books that convince your character that it can use the books to cast magic (but only if you’re holding them). Staffs are used for various support and utility effects that come with little motivational pamphlets. Summoning Tomes are also motivational books, but function differently. See Spotlight #8 for details. Scrolls are single-use consumable items that exist in your Misc. inventory that have descriptions of how they work written/printed onto them. Scrolls, Staffs, and Tomes don’t directly deal damage (discounting any HP cost to use them), but their effects might cause some to happen. Other kinds of items (Weapon Attachments, Melee Weapons, etc.) might also be magic, but the items in these categories will always be magical. Below are a few examples from the described magic item categories.

Slot	Item Name	Range	Damage	Element	Ammo Rate	Durability	Special Effects	Weapon Type	Rarity
Primary	Glass 'Em	Medium	1d12	Earth	4 HP	12	Conjures up a medium-sized glass container of your choice that is flung at your target.	Spellbook	Rare
Primary	Spook	Medium	1d8	Phantasmal	4 HP	6	Can hit targets through barriers and defending weapons.	Spellbook	Uncommon
Primary	Watch for Falling Rocks	Medium	1d12A	Earth	6 HP	6	Drops rocks onto targets within 3 adjacent Hexes. Can be used by the GM to instantly TPK.	Spellbook	Rare
Secondary	Counter Spell	Close	0	Neutral	5 HP	12	Touch the top of the staff on an inanimate object to turn it into a kitchen countertop made of the object. Touching a transformed countertop with the other end of the staff reverses the effects with no HP cost.	Staff	Rare
Secondary	Uberbrella	Close	0	Neutral	3 HP	12	Creates a magic, translucent umbrella head at the end of the staff. The umbrella head prevents any liquid from hitting whatever is under/behind it. Removing the umbrella head costs no HP.	Staff	Uncommon
Secondary	Vacuum Ball	Medium	0	Neutral	7 HP	12	Creates a spherical vacuum about the size of a basketball that you can control within this weapon's range. You can control the ball's movement or cause it to implode with a Bonus Action. If the ball moves outside of your range, it automatically implodes.	Staff	Rare
Secondary	Basic Summoning for the New and Experienced: 6th Edition	Close	0	Dark	3 HP	12	Summons a variety of classical demons.	Summoning Tome	Rare
Secondary	Book of Sayings	Close	0	Neutral	3 HP	12	Don't judge this book by its cover.	Summoning Tome	Rare
Secondary	Biofreaks	Close	0	Hazmat	3 HP	12	Summons strange bio-mechanical creatures.	Summoning Tome	Rare

Slot	Item Name	Element	Uses Per Item	Special Effects	Item Type	Rarity
Misc.	Power Bubble	Water	1	Creates a bubble around your character with 1 HP that takes damage for you. The bubble bursts upon hitting 0 HP but may be Overhealed.	Scroll	Uncommon
Misc.	Oil Spill	Hazmat	1	This scroll turns into a puddle of oil (of your choice) up to 3 times (larger or smaller) the size of this scroll.	Scroll	Uncommon
Misc.	Instant Replay	Neutral	1	This Scroll's Effects change to match those of the most recently used Scroll or Skill. Copied Skills retain their SP cost.	Scroll	Rare
Misc.	Quicksave	Phantasmal	1	This scroll sticks to the ground under you. If you snap your fingers at any point after placing this scroll, you will teleport back to to it with whatever HP, items, etc. you had when you first placed it. Teleporting to the scroll destroys it.	Scroll	Ultra Rare

-Goblin Commander

Welcome back to another Tablespess Spotlight. Today we’ll be covering a more niche mechanic: Summoning. Summoning in Tablespess is tied to Summoning Tomes, which go in your Weapon slots/Loadout. Each Summoning Tome has a set of twelve things (characters, creatures, objects, etc.) that you can get by using the Tome. As a character you’re not supposed to know what a Tome can summon unless you’ve seen it in action before.

You use a Summoning Tome as an Action. Roll a d12 and get a corresponding thing from the Tome’s Summon Table. Only the GM can see the Summon Table, but can’t modify it. The summoned thing appears near your character and you can use the other parts of your turn to try to communicate with it, command it, etc.

By default, you don’t even get to know the name of the thing you just summoned. You just get a physical description. Unless a Summon has a means of leaving by itself, it won’t leave until it’s defeated or gets overwritten by a new Summon. Using a Tome with a Summon active will cause it to vanish and be replaced by a new one. Whether this new Summon appears near you or where the old one was is up to you.

The Summoner branch lets you know your summon’s name, modify your Summon roll, and more (but we’ll explore branches later down the line). Summoning in Tablespess can get pretty chaotic pretty quickly. You could summon a demon that tries to steal all your money, or you could get the most stupid, powerful thing in the game. Roll with caution.

-Goblin Commander

We’re taking a small detour from mechanics for this edition of The Tablespess Spotlight. Today we’ll be talking about what we intend Tablespess to be played like. The game’s mechanics are pretty loose and open-ended by design. We want players to have lots of freedom in this game, but some skills may make it seem like players could have more control over things than the GM. Take this extreme example, for instance.

This is the Mastery Skill from the Scam Artist branch.

The Skill makes it look like you can do anything. You probably could, but remember that the GM has final say over things. As a GM, you should never be afraid to put your foot down to prevent a player from going out of line. The GM’s word has more power than the rules as written in this game. At the same time as a GM you should still let your players try some weird and wacky things. In general, just don’t do anything that would drastically hamper the flow of the game or royally screw someone over. When I GM I tend to be very lenient with what players can do. I let my players try all kinds of stupid stuff, but I also have to reign them in at times.

Progression in Tablespess is tied to unlocking more Skills and finding new items. In Table Lite, your progression is almost entirely item-based as you have far fewer slots for Skills. I want Tablespess to play like a looter-shooter, where you’re constantly finding new items to play with. That’s part of the reason why item Durability is a thing. But even if you want to keep the same items you started out with, they’re very likely to change throughout your adventures as you find new Weapon Attachments or Reinforce your things with different materials. Players should be finding new toys to play with from defeated enemies, hidden away in dungeons, for sale in shops, or maybe even under the welcome mat. But you also don’t want to overwhelm players with new things all the time.

A lot of the Skills, items, and mechanics in this game are zany, so campaigns in this game tend to get zany. If you were looking for something more grounded, you could probably get away with it in Table Lite, but not so much in Tablespess. I’m not sure you could keep a dark, gritty tone if you had one player do pushups so he has enough MOOSKLES to use Counter Spell to turn an enemy’s weapon into a kitchen countertop, while none of the enemies pay attention to another player as he sneaks into the next room because he’s just the janitor.

The below Skills are from MOOSKLE WIZARD and Janitor.

-Goblin Commander

We’ve talked about all the different things you can do on your turn. Now it’s high time we talk about how those turns are ordered. In general, things are set so players and enemies have turns right after each other. If we have two players and two enemies the turn order would look something like this:

• Player 1
• Enemy 1
• Player 2
• Enemy 2

But what happens if there aren’t an equal number of players and enemies? That depends on how strong the enemies are. Weak enemies only have 1 turn per round and will simply drop out of the turn order when defeated. Let’s say both enemies are generic mooks, such as small drones or low-ranking henchmen, and Enemy 2 is defeated. The turn order would now look like this:

• Player 1
• Enemy 1
• Player 2

However, if Enemy 1 was a stronger enemy or a boss enemy, it would take over Enemy 2’s position in the turn order like so:

• Player 1
• Enemy 1
• Player 2
• Enemy 1

It’s up to the GM to determine how many turns an enemy should get. Players only get one turn per round. In other instances where players or enemies outnumber each other you’ll probably just have to have successive player/enemy turns.

But how do you decide the specific order? Who should go first? That depends on how the GM wants to run things. I personally declare the turns in the first round based on what I think would make sense. The people who instigated the fight go first, followed by those who were further out, etc. That turn order in the first round is then kept for the rest of the encounter. You’re free to run things differently, like rolling for turn order, etc.

Waiting, as can be seen in the Reference Card in Spotlight #4, lets you change your turn order in the next round. You can break the player -> enemy -> (repeat) turn setup using it. Let’s say the turn order start out like this:

• Player 1
• Enemy 1
• Player 2
• Enemy 2

At the end of his turn, Player 1 decides to Wait so that he goes after Player 2. After everyone else in the round goes, the new turn order becomes:

• Enemy 1
• Player 2
• Player 1
• Enemy 2

Now that both players are closer in the turn order, they could decide to perform some kind of combo move without having an enemy turn between theirs. Depending on how you want to rule things, you could also let characters combine their turns by Waiting.

-Goblin Commander

Welcome back to another Tablespess Spotlight! Today we’ll be talking about everything to do with healing and item durabilities. We’ll start with healing. The most common ways to restore your HP are via items (Loadout/Consumable Misc.) and via Resting. Healing items are used in combat the same way any other Loadout or Misc. items are (See previous post for more details). However, if the HP you are about to restore would bring you above your maximum HP, you get to keep that excess as Overheal. However, as soon as it’s your turn again Overheal vanishes. You may want to play with your turn order to buff someone who goes right after you. See the previous post about Waiting for more info on that. If Mr. Example is at 24/28 HP and is healed for 8 HP, he now has 32/28 HP, wth 4 hit points as Overheal. On his next turn, the Overheal goes away, so he’ll be left with 28/28 HP.

Restoring HP via resting is dependent on how many hours of rest your character is able to get. Getting a full 8 hours of rest restores you to 100% HP and SP. Getting less than 8 hours of rest restores you up to a fraction of that. Let’s say Mr. Example has 8/28 HP, 10/15 SP, and gets 4 hours of rest. His HP and SP will be restored up to 50% of their maximum values. Half of 28 is 14 and half of 15 is 7.5 (rounded up to 8). Mr. Example’s HP goes up to 14, but since he has more than 8 SP, it stays where it is.

Now on to Durability. As described in the previous post, you can choose to defend with a Loadout item at the end of your turn. That item will take damage for you (in most cases). You’re also able to target any Loadout item an enemy has. Hitting a Loadout item will disable it (shields take two hits before being disabled) and deal damage to its Durability. When an item is disabled, you won’t be able to use it on your next turn to attack/defend. Of course, when an item’s Durability hits 0 it breaks. You can increase an item’s Durability by reinforcing it with materials. The item’s Element changes depending on what you used to reinforce it and the amount of Durability it gains depends on the quality of the materials used and how well you do on your reinforcing roll (described in the table below) which you do using the roll chart shown in previous posts. You can only reinforce items outside of combat. If you want to change an item’s Element during combat, you can use Weapon Attachments (as described before).

Roll	Result
Red	Restore minimum amount of Durability
Yellow	Disadvantage on Durability Roll
Green	Roll Durability normally
Blue	Advantage on Durability Roll

Material Quality	Durability Added
Scrap	1d4
Reclaimed	2d6
Refined	3d8

For example, Mr. Example wants to reinforce a Baton (Force) with some Reclaimed Wire (Electric) and he gets a Green on his roll to do so. The Baton now becomes Electric and gains 2d6 plus Mr. Example’s SPEC (remember, you can use any stat if you can justify it) Durability.

-Goblin Commander

This installment of Mr. Example’s Escapades is brought to you by Goblin Horde Keeper.

Mr. Fish holstered his fake-gun with a dramatic spin and sat down on a dilapidated chair. Even through the murk of his suit it was obvious his eyes were a bit baggier than usual.

“Smoothing out your activities took a bit longer than usual.” said Mr. Fish.

“I take it it went well?”

“Oh yes, went swimmingly.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Boss man told me to keep you out of trouble for a little while. Shame too, I would kill for some trouble right now.”

Mr. Example looked around, the laundromat still empty as a scuttled ship.

“So uh, where’d everyone go?”

“Since you were arriving we let out word that the laundromats were in for maintenance. Well, that and we faked an Anthrax attack,” said Mr. Fish, twirling a combat knife around absent-mindedly.

“What?!”

“FAKED, keyword,” said Mr. Fish, with an odd glint in his eye.

Mr. Example knew what that meant.

“So you’re telling me you faked a biohazard attack? You know how irresponsible that is? What if we get discovered?”

“Oh it was just a bit of fun! Relax. Besides, it was in a different part of the station entirely.”

Mr. Fish took out a flask of some orange colored liquid. He ejected a tray on his suit and poured it in.

“You know you really gotta lighten up man. I seem to be the only guy ever having fun with these jobs!”

Mr. Example facepalmed. The orange fluid spread throughout Mr. Fish’s suit. The bagginess of his eyes seemed to dissipate just a little.

“Well, I’m going to go take a nap Mr. Fish. I’ve had a long day,” said Mr. Example.

“Here take this.” Mr. Fished tossed Mr. Example his flask. “Should help you get some rest, or at the very least help the bruises hurt a bit less.”

“Thanks.” Mr. Example took a swig, turned towards one of the back doors, and opened it. A large alabaster mutant-tortoise-like creature was in the back, biting into what looked like a large vehicle battery. The battery in shambles, leaking a bit of acid around.

“Oh, and don’t worry about Derick! He’s tame. Bites though!” Mr. Fish shouted from a distance.

“Well, at least I’ll be able to salvage the battery for some scrap,” thought Mr. Example.

Welcome back to another Tablespess Spotlight! Sorry we skipped a week, got caught up with some other things over the past weekend and forgot to write up a post. In today’s spotlight we’ll be covering the Reference Card, which is like a cheat sheet for what you can do on your turn during combat. Some of these things either should be pretty self-explanatory or have been covered in previous posts, so we’ll only be focusing on a few mechanics mentioned here. We’re still playtesting a lot of this content so it may be subject to change later. If you’re interested in playtesting, let us know either via email or by leaving a comment on the website’s Neocities profile.

On the top of the Reference Card are all the different parts of a character’s turn. You’ve got an Action, a Bonus Action, Reactions, your End of Turn action, and Passives. On Skills these are shortened to A/B/P/E/R for Action/Bonus Action/Passive/End of Turn/Reaction, respectively. Everything but Reactions are done on your turn, while Reactions are done on other characters’ turns. You only get one Action/Bonus Action/End of Turn per turn, so use them wisely. You’re able to perform multiple unique Passives per turn. So for instance you could use a Passive skill and then try to distract an enemy, but you wouldn’t be able to use that skill or try to distract an enemy again until your next turn.

We’ll start by going over a few of the specific things you can do. Grapples in Tablespess are treated like another means of attacking an opponent. You roll a contested STR (or other stat if you can justify it to your GM) in order to grab your target in the first place. After that, you’re able to do one thing to your now-grabbed target. That could involve slamming it into the ground, putting it into a chokehold, etc. Of course, on the opponent’s turn, it can attempt to break free. You may have to perform additional contested checks if you try walking around while grappling something, etc. Depends on how your GM wants to rule it. At the end of your turn, you could even use a grappled enemy as a defending item, but more on that later.

Preparing an Action lets you set up a conditional statement that lets you perform an Action as soon as that condition is met. So for example let’s say you and your party are fighting some monsters in a dungeon and you’re standing in front of an unlocked door. You prepare to attack anything that might come through the door. So from now until your next turn you will automatically go for an attack against the first thing that enters through that door.

Some weapons have extra abilities you can activate by spending Ammo or SP. This includes things like spending fuel to rev up a chainsaw, or spending SP to attempt to wrench an item out of an enemy’s Loadout using a crowbar.

Distracting lets you bring a little bit more roleplaying into combat. You can do whatever you’d like to try and mess with your target. This could involve simply talking to your target, or even doing something funny with your items. Of course, if you’ve already performed an Action you wouldn’t be able to, for instance, shoot a lamp to try and distract someone. There are different levels an enemy can be distracted at, which are listed on the Reference Card.

When you choose something to defend with, you can use things in the environment like tables and chairs. Of course, you might not be able to defend with some things perfectly depending on where an attack is coming from.

Dodging lets you perform a contested roll (of your choice, but usually AGL) against enemies’ attack rolls. If you get a larger number, you’re able to avoid the attack.

Parrying is similar to Dodging, except you perform your own attack roll against the enemy that’s trying to hit you. If you manage to hit, you deal Durability damage to your opponent’s weapon. Of course, your weapon still takes Durability damage. If you miss, you take damage yourself, instead of your weapon. Parrying only really works/makes sense with melee combat but if your GM allows it, you could do whatever.

When an opponent is Stunned, any ally can use it as an opportunity to do something to that opponent. Even if you’re the one who Stunned an enemy, you could have an ally perform a follow-up attack instead.

Distances are all approximate as a GM may want to rule slightly different distances for different items/characters. Even if melee range is technically around 1 - 2 Hexes, you might not want to let daggers reach 2 Hexes.

-Goblin Commander

This installment of Mr. Example’s Escapades is brought to you by Goblin Horde Keeper & Goblin Commander.

The skin of the laundromat of BVC-015-02 was a pristine thing. Shining walls, spotless machines, odorless water and rustless piping. Yet in the gristle and sinew there was something even more special. Computers, Communication arrays, and a veritable rat's nest of wires tapping every communication line in the station.

Nothing went into or out of the station without being recorded. Mr. Example walked into the apparatus, it was empty. Too empty. Example looked around, the chrome hallways were empty too. What was this? A hit? Mr. Example stood vigilant and ducked behind a washing machine, watching for any movement.

Suddenly Mr. Example felt something cold and metallic press up against the back of his head. A familiar, fishy voice chimed in.

"Losing your edge eh?"

Mr. Example snorted and turned around. A small creature in a water filled suit pointed a pistol at Mr. Example's face. A click. Mr. Example tensed. A tiny pole with a flag with *BANG* on it emerged. Mr. Example smiled. There was Mr. Fish at it again.

Welcome back to the Tablespess Spotlight! Today we’ll be finishing up our overview of the character sheet with Mr. Example. Below you can see his Skill Tree. In Tablespess, each character has a Skill Tree made of various Skill Branches that you choose during character creation. You get four Main Branches and two Extra Branches. As you can see from Mr. Example’s Skill Tree, Skill Branches can cover all manner of different powers, occupations, etc. We’ll have a full list of all the currently planned Branches after the story part of this post.

Main Branches each have eleven Skill Boxes while Extra Branches only have six. Each Skill Box costs 1 XP to buy, which you can do so by clicking on the checkbox in the upper-left corner of each Box. You can’t buy a Skill Box that’s grayed out, but buying one will unlock the one directly below it for purchase. With Mr. Example, we’ve given him seven XP to spend on Skills, which you can see below. These Skills may be subject to change later.

The letters and numbers on the left side of a Skill Box indicate when/how you can use a Skill and how many SP it costs to use. A indicates an Action, B a Bonus Action, R a Reaction, and P a Passive. We’ll go over what those mean in further detail in a future post. A ∅ means it doesn’t cost anything to use that Skill.

Some Skill Branches use a Meter. Meters are extra pools of points that you can build up and then spend to use Skills (sometimes in addition to SP). Branches with a Meter each have a unique way to build their respective Meters. Below we have a snippet from the Movie Monster Branch. As you can see in Scare Tactics, you’ll earn points for your Screams Meter by scaring people. You can then use these Screams to use Skills like Environmental Storytelling.

If you have over 25 points in a Meter, you’ll take Overflow damage equal to the number that appears above it at the start of every turn in combat. Overflow damage doesn’t get applied outside of combat. Meter Overflow’s damage element is specified in the same Skill Box that describes how you build Meter. Movie Monster’s Meter Overflow deals Sonic damage, for example. You do have the option to perform a Meter Burn on your turn to get rid of all your Meter points as a Passive. Crypto Trader is an exception to this and doesn’t deal Overflow damage with its Meter and doesn’t let you Meter Burn.

-Goblin Commander

This installment of Mr. Example’s Escapades is brought to you by Goblin Horde Keeper & Goblin Commander.

“Why did I get up this morning?” Mr. Example thought. Then he remembered. His supervisor had told him there was going to be a mission about getting pastries. Something about illegal genetic experimentation as well. He didn’t pay attention to that part. This mission was top-secret, and required Mr. Example use one of his aliases, Dr. Presentation. Of course, Mr. Example didn’t have a doctorate yet. He was waiting for it to arrive in the mail. And of course, Dr. Presentation’s identity got mixed up with a local mob boss’s, which sent him on this wild goose chase across several stolen space ships. He had to shake the fuzz off his tail somehow, but he couldn’t risk letting anyone else know about his status as an agent, and more importantly, the mission.

A sudden ringing burst through his helmet.

"Agent EX do you read?"

Mr. Example haphazardly punched in a PIN on the side of his helmet.

"Loud and clear, Mr. Control! All pastries are accounted for, save for Man-Munching Mint."

Mr. Control sighed.

"Mr. EX what is the status of the compromised item and what is your status?"

"Half past BVC-015. Had a run in with the local enforcers. Unfortunately it resulted in several fatalities. I still have some ships on my six."

"Was the mission discovered?"

"No sir."

"...and Man-Munching Mint?"

"It, uh, acquired a taste for the other muffins so… I had to put it down."

"That’s just great. Are its requisite materials still in your possession, Mr. EX?”

"Yes sir. Frosting and all."

Mr. Example could hear Mr. Control scribble something onto paper.

"We will send Mr. Fish, to smooth out your… transgressions. For better or worse Mr. EX, please refrain from causing such… incidents in the future. Continue to the rendezvous point. Over and ou-"

“Wait! Before you go Mr. Control, you were gonna pay me in crypto for his mission, right?”

“Oh, yes, I did say that, didn't I. Yes, you will receive compensation for this job through… what did you want it in again?”

“Darksun! Mr. Fish bet I couldn’t double my paycheck on it.”

“Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“Three hundred percent!”

“...if you say so. I should mention, we may have to dock your pay based on the damages you caused. I hope for your sake that your… investment pays off. Over and out.”

Here's the list of all the currently planned Skill Branches:

Welcome back to another Tablespess spotlight! Today we’ll continue our overview of character sheets with our good friend Mr. Example. Below we’ve got a screenshot of Mr. Example’s Info tab from his character sheet. The Info page has basic background info for your character, your character’s Proficiencies, and the languages your character knows. The first and last things should be pretty self-explanatory so we’re just going to focus on Proficiencies.

In Tablespess, Proficiencies are stats you use for various skills, knowledge, etc. Proficiencies do not have to relate to your character’s stats. You simply pick a value from -1 to 5 depending on how well you think your character should perform at that skill. You’re able to freely add Proficiencies to your sheet as you need them.

When you roll for a Proficiency, you roll a d20, take that number, and reference it on the roll chart based on the stat you have for that Proficiency. The color you get determines how well you did at that thing, generally. Red is a failure, Yellow is barely making it, Green is a success, and Blue is a great success.

For example, let’s say Mr. Example needs to see where some tax collectors have gone while he’s hiding from them. Mr. Example has to roll for Perception, and we’ll say he got a 10. On the roll chart, getting a 10 with a 2 in Perception gets him a Yellow. With this result, Mr. Example is barely able to recognize the uniform of a tax man from the corner of his eye.

-Goblin Commander

As an added bonus, we've got some story content written by our Goblin Horde Keeper for Mr. Example:

The evil pastries Mr. Example had locked up in his cargo bay were beginning to become a problem. Not because they were hazardous to eat, oh no. Mr. Example had a gut tougher than steel. Rivaled only by his mettle. No, the real issue was that stupid cop had a Tax Collector with him for SOME reason. Unpaid unrealized pastry gains tax was going to ruin him, after all, Tax Collectors can smell unpaid taxes from miles away. Like roaches they were. Cropping up the second you look away, only to ruin everything you own once they infest them.

There were worse places to be compared to orbiting the star BVC-015. The radiation was nasty, but hey, at least it was warm. Mr. Example popped open a hidden compartment in the cockpit of his ship. Inside was a shotgun, a shield, and a spare space helmet. Digging through, Mr. Example found the real treasure. An unused water bottle.

The carnivorous pastries were a wild bunch. This was what, the fourth cop they had eaten? It was hard to tell anymore. Mr. Example definitely thought they were a lot less appetizing since the first time he laid eyes upon them. Better to take one's chances on another ship than risk imminent death from pastries that ate sentients and were perpetually on fire. That "Made in hell" packaging desperately needed some warnings. Still, finding another ship was going to be difficult on account of this one being stolen. Who's going to want to trade for a ship with hostile cargo? Not to mention the system wide manhunt making legal passage a difficult prospect. Should've just stayed asleep today. Then none of this would've happened!

Welcome to the first Tablespess Spotlight! In this edition of our biweekly Goblin Base update post we’ll start going over the character sheet, with the help of Mr. Example, an example character we’ve made. You can see a screenshot of Mr. Example’s character sheet below. Click on it to get a closer view. There are a lot more lines of inventory space for Misc. Items not visible in this image along with additional pages we’ll discuss later.

By default, Tablespess is built to work with the Spess setting. We may mention campaigns being run in other settings, using modified versions of Tablespess’s sheets, etc. We plan on releasing additional content later down the line for the game to work better in other settings, but we’ll get into that later on. With all of these posts we’ll be assuming you have at least some basic TTRPG knowledge. The game comes packaged with a whole bunch of mechanics and rules, but you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to. Conversely, you could add more rules/mechanics depending on what you’re trying to do. Of course this is something you would decide as the GM with your players’ input.

Getting back on track here, we’ll start at the top of the sheet with Mr. Example’s stats and basic character info. All stats have Modifiers that you use to change their values. There are different Modifiers for different use cases as can be seen in the screencap. Depending on how you’re running your game you may wish to change the names of the Modifiers. In one campaign, a GM replaced Temporary Modifiers with Species Modifiers for his setting.

HP in Tablespess is based on your character’s Armor. Some items have the ability to temporarily reduce your target’s Armor (and by extension HP). Reach 0 HP and you’ll be knocked out. You can be given Overheal in Tablespess, but we’ll cover that alongside healing items in a future post. We have a different system in place that handles fatal damage (Wound Damage) that we’ll go over later in this post. Moving on, we have SP (Skill Points), a resource you can spend to use Skills/Abilities and certain items. Your SP will increase as you gain XP and as your Special stat increases.

The rest of the stats listed here should be familiar to anyone who’s played some kind of RPG before. Special we use as a catch-all for things not covered by the other stats. Movement is in Hexes (each Hex is ~5 ft) and increases with your AGL (Agility).

Mr. Example is a Guyanite (elemental bio-mechanical aliens that look like action figures) with three elements. He’s a Demonstration Man by trade, but has been swept up into an adventure by circumstances beyond his control. The various playable species in Tablespess each get four Character Abilities. The sheet has support for up to 6 abilities, which is there for use in Table Lite, a version of Tablespess without Skill Trees. Be on the lookout for Table Knight, a wacky fantasy ruleset for Table Lite, in the future. In Table Knight, each Knight starts with one Character Ability and can gain more over the course of an adventure.

These Character Abilities give Mr. Example three integrated tools, an action feature (that makes him better at something related to what it is), the ability to harmlessly attach/detach his limbs, and an action figure gimmick. The Tools/Action Feature/Gimmick are marked in the unused ability space. We’ll go over what the numbers/symbols next to the abilities mean in a later post.

Mr. Example has some Effectivenesses. This is an optional feature you can add to your character. For every Immunity you get, you must add two Weaknesses and for every Resistance you add you must add one Weakness. Even if you’re immune to something, you can still be hurt by that thing through Wound Damage. Effectivenesses can be Elemental or more abstract. You can use them to turn character traits into more codified parts of the game’s mechanics. Mr. Example has a Weakness to Pastries, for instance. He’s got a bit of a sweet tooth, so he might be distracted if someone has a slice of cake out in the battlefield.

His Stat Pool and XP are currently at 0, which is what it should be at for a newly made character. We’ll cover what these do when we talk about character progression in the future. Mr. Example currently has 2 Wound Damage, which he got when he tripped and fell into the cargo hold of a Divespace Freighter and broke his leg. Wound damage is the threshold of fatal damage your character can take before it dies. Your Wound threshold is half of your max HP. You can get Wounds from various sources, which you mark down in the corresponding spot on the character sheet.

Depending on how much Wound damage you’ve taken from a source, you will have to play your character differently. Since Mr. Example’s leg is broken, he’ll have to limp around on crutches for a while. You can mitigate how much your Wounds are affecting your character by Patching them up, but this does not reduce the Wound Damage you’ve taken. You’ll need to receive proper medical attention, a lot of rest, etc. in order to properly recover. The way your Wounds affect your character are created by the GM. We’ll have a list of example Wounds/Effects in the GM’s Handbook.

Mr. Example has some cash on him, but his bank account got frozen so he isn’t able to access the ATM right now. Dosh is the main currency of Spess, but you can change the currencies used there depending on your setting. He’s also got several different types of Ammo. The various items in Tablespess specify what kind of ammunition they take, but you may wish to ignore that and use a simpler, universal ammo system so you don’t have to keep track of as many things.

Next we move onto the Loadout and Inventory. In Tablespess, your Loadout has the Weapons, Armor, and Accessory you currently have equipped. You’re able to swap items from your Inventory and Loadout freely during combat on your turn. You have limited dedicated Inventory slots for your Loadout items and can use the checkboxes to the left to equip/unequip them. Accessories serve as additional abilities in item form and include things like watches, masks, and boots. Weapons have Durability and can be targeted by Enemies so pay attention to what you have out. We’ll explain more about Durability when we talk about combat in a future post.

Many Loadout items have Special Effects, and those effects can be further modified using Weapon Attachments. Weapon Attachments replace the Element and Special Effects of the items they’re equipped to. Elemental Gems are the exception to that rule in that they only modify the equipped weapon’s Element. Much like with Loadout items, you use the checkboxes to the right of the Weapon Attachments to equip them.

Lastly, we get to Mr. Example’s Misc. Items. Currently he only has a water bottle and a couple of Scrolls. Scrolls are single-use magic items that have a wide variety of effects. Other limited-use items like Grenades and any other random junk you might find on your adventures are also housed in this part of your Inventory. Join us again in another couple weeks for the next Tablespess Spotlight!

-Goblin Commander

It's been quite some time since the last update to the Goblin website. We've been largely busy with real-world things as Goblin Base is a side gig for all of us. We have been making some progress on the projects listed on the site, albeit slowly. We have organized our progress better, with proper checklists and orders of operations. Currently, we plan on completing and releasing a public version of the Spess World Bibble before we finish/release our other major projects. We won't have any concrete release dates, but stay tuned for more progress highlights.

The old Tablespess progress highlight we had here before was pretty outdated so it's been removed. We will be reposting all the information it had and more, but in smaller, bite-sized posts every other week. If there is any particular project you would like to see more of, feel free to send us an email. Contact information is in About. We've also published our current list of Members/Associates as well as some of our company policies on the About page.

-Goblin Commander