Welcome to the home of Goblin Base Entertainment LLC! We're currently working on several projects that we plan to publish on this site in the future. You can see some basic information about each of them by clicking on their names on the Projects page. Updates are posted every other Sunday.

Posts:

• Tablespess Spotlight #28: Ammo - 9/24/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #27: Item Types - 9/10/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #26: Everything Wound Damage - 8/27/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #25: Resting, Recovering Wounds, and Fatigue - 8/13/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #24: End of Turn Options - 7/30/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #23: Throwing - 7/16/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #22: Immobilized Targets - 7/2/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #21: Grappling - 6/18/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #20: Damage Types - 6/4/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #19: Distracting - 5/21/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #18: Minion Units - 5/7/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #17: Tag Team Actions - 4/23/23
• Tablespess Spotlight #16: Vehicles Pt. 3 - Spaceships - 4/9/23
• 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: Impact 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

Previous Spotlight Changelog:

• Spotlight #9: Adjusted the sizes of glass containers you use with the Spellbook Glass 'Em to be in line with the size chart in Spotlight #12.
• Spotlight #27: Now references this Spotlight for Ammo.

Today we’ll be going over how ammo works in Tablespess. As can be seen in Spotlight #27, items can use a number of things for ammunition, including HP, SP, and various specific ammo items. Items will tell you what kind of ammo they need to attack or to activate their special effects. This includes things like energy cells, arrows, and shotgun shells as well as more outlandish things like potatoes or baseballs. Some weapons require multiple kinds of ammo per use.

Unless stated otherwise, weapons can only use the ammo noted under their Ammo Rates. You can use Weapon Attachments to change the kind of ammo a Weapon can accept. We may change this later, but don’t expect it to happen until after the full game is released. Ammo is stored in a specific spot on your character sheet (Spotlight #1). We’ll have a list of all the ammo types used in the game and their prices in the Player and GM handbooks later.

-Goblin Commander

In today’s Tablespess Spotlight we’ll be taking an overview of all the different kinds of items you can find in the game and what those items are supposed to do. There are two major categories of item, Loadout Items and Misc. Items, that can be further broken down into various subcategories.

Loadout Items

Your Loadout Items include your character’s weapons, pieces of armor, accessories, and weapon attachments. You’re only able to equip a few of your Loadout Items at a time, but you are able to freely swap what you have out during your Turn (Spotlight #4).

Weapons

Weapons are your main damage dealing tools and are the only items you can Defend or Parry with (Spotlight #24). Healing items such as healguns, healing staffs, etc. are counted as Weapons. Healing items have their damage dice formatted with an HP after their die rolls, i.e. 2d4 HP, to show that they heal instead of deal damage to targets. Weapons are further differentiated in your inventory into Primary and Secondary weapons. You can have one Primary and two Secondary weapons equipped in your Loadout at once. Primary weapons are generally more powerful than Secondaries, both in terms of raw damage as well as effects/abilities.

You can Attack or Heal using a weapon as an Action. Some weapons have effects you can activate that will indicate what part of a turn its activation counts as. Some weapons have alternate attack methods you use as an Action (such as the pommel strike on shortswords and longswords) while others have you spend SP as a Bonus Action to put the weapon into a different state (such as revving a chainsaw). Other weapon effects are applied when they’re used to attack (flare gun, healgun), parry (buckler), etc. Some weapons let you use them as Bonus Actions if you spend SP or meet some criteria (Pistol, Fightan Sphere). See Spotlight #28 for more info on Ammo.

Slot	Item Name	Range	Damage	Element	Ammo Rate	Durability	Special Effects	Weapon Type	Rarity
Primary	Longsword	Close	1d10	Precision	1 SP	35	Spend SP to make a pommel strike as an Action. This deals 1d6 Force damage, dealing 2x damage against targets that aren't Defending or Parrying.	Longsword	Common
Primary	Chainsaw	Close	1d8	Metal	1 Fuel	23	Consumes Ammo to rev up. Deals an additional 1d3W damage on Wound attacks.	Saw	Common
Secondary	Pistol	Far	1d8	Precision	1 Bullet	12	Spend 2 SP to attack with ths weapon as a Bonus Action.	Pistol	Common
Secondary	Flare Gun	Far	1d4	Light	1 Flare	12	Targets you hit glow for 1 Turn, giving your allies Advantage on Attack Rolls against them for that duration.	Pyrotechnics	Common
Secondary	Fightan Sphere	Medium	1d8	Force	3 HP	6	Can be used as a Bonus Action against a target you just hit with an Unarmed Attack.	Spellbook	Uncommon
Primary	Healgun	Far	3d4 HP	Neutral	3 Cells	50	Overheal from this healgun lasts for 2 turns.	Healgun	Uncommon
Secondary	Buckler	Close	1d4	Neutral	0	40	On a successful Parry with this weapon, you can make an attack (with any weapon) against the enemy you just Parried. This attack will deal halved damage.	Buckler	Common

Armor

Armor’s main purpose is to increase your Armor stat, which in turn increases your HP (Spotlight #1). All Armor pieces also offer additional effects. Armor is broken up into three major categories based on weight: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Heavier armors generally have higher Armor Bonuses and are more expensive than their lighter counterparts. Some armor effects may provide you with bonuses at the cost of some kind of penalty (lowering a stat, making you take damage, etc.). When making a new character, you aren’t allowed to start with Heavy armor. Some armor abilities require fuel to be used. You can only have one piece of Armor equipped at a time. See some examples below.

Armor Weight	Item Name	Fuel Rate	Armor Bonus	Element	Special Effects	Armor Type	Rarity
Light	Synthetic Fiber Armor	0	3	Neutral	Resist Force damage.	Body Armor	Common
Light	Hi-Vis Vest	0	1	Light	Nobody will question your presence in most places.	Clothing	Uncommon
Medium	Magnetized Armor	3 Cells	3	Electric	Consume Cells to activate for 5 Turns as a Bonus Action. While active, lets you stick your hands and feet to ferromagnetic surfaces. Can be deactivated for no cost as a Passive.	Body Armor	Rare
Heavy	Plate Armor	0	7	Metal	-1 AGL. Take halved damage from the first three melee attacks you are hit by.	Body Armor	Rare

Accessories

Accessories are like additional abilities for your character in item form. They can range from passive boosts like the gas mask or power gauntlets, or abilities you need to activate manually (as a Bonus Action by default) such as the boots of buoyancy or the jetpack. Accessories are sorted by how you wear them (Headgear, Boots/Shoes, Gloves/Wristbands, Backwear). You can only equip one Accessory at a time. See some examples below.

Category	Item Name	Fuel Rate	Element	Special Effects	Armor Type	Rarity
Headgear	Gas Mask	0	Air	Lets you breath normally in most gasses.	Mask	Unommon
Boots/Shoes	Boots of Buoyancy	4 SP	Air	Spend SP to activate for 5 Turns. Lets you stay at whatever elevation you're currently at in any fluid while active. Can be deactivated for no SP cost as a Passive.	Boots	Rare
Gloves/Wristbands	Power Gauntlets	0	Electric	Restore 5 SP whenever you Stun an enemy with a punch.	Gauntlets	Unommon
Backwear	Jetpack	2 Fuel	Heat	Consume fuel to ascend or slow your descent by up to your 2x your Movement.	Jump Pack	Unommon

Weapon Attachments

Weapon Attachments let you replace a weapon’s Special Effects with new ones. Elemental Gems are the sole exception to this rule, as they simply alter the Element of the items they are equipped to. Other Weapon Attachments may change the kind of Ammo the weapon uses, such as turkey arrows for bows or the tree launcher for ranged weapons. Others may give you new ways to deal damage or give different bonuses to your items like the skewer for melee weapons or the non-stick coating for cooking tools. Some Attachments may fundamentally change how a weapon is used like the airgun for firearms or the unhealer for healguns.

Attachment	Element	Attaches To	Rarity
Elemental Gem: Weapon element changes to match this gem's. This Attachment does NOT override the base Weapon's Effects.	[Can be any]	Any	Rare
Turkey Arrows: This weapon now uses Turkey Arrows for Ammo and deals an additional 1d3 damage on Wound attacks.	Precision	Bows	Uncommon
Tree Launcher: This weapon now uses Tree Saplings for ammo. When fired the trees rapidly grow to the size of a regular tree.	Plantlife	Ranged	Ultra Rare
Skewer: Attacks can hit through defending items.	Precision	Melee	Uncommon
Non-Stick Coating: This item takes 2x Durability damage but causes attackers to drop the weapon used to hit.	Neutral	Cooking Tools	Common
Airgun: Fires non-damaging wind instead of bullets, etc. The force of the air is relative to damage rolled for an attack.	Air	Firearms	Rare
Unhealer: Item deals damage instead of healing, but consumes 2x Ammo. You must make attack rolls with this weapon now.	Dark	Healguns	Contraband

Misc. Items

Anything consumable or anything that doesn’t fit as a Loadout Item is counted as a Misc. Item. You can use a Bonus Action to use or throw a Misc. Item, which is why they have damage rolls/values associated with them. Misc. Items can be further categorized into Tools, Consumables, Crafting, Scrolls, and Throwables. The amount of Misc. Items you can have in each of your inventory slots depends on the item’s Slot Capacity (Spotlight #13)

Tools

Tools include tools like flashlights and fishing rods, but they also include adventuring gear like extendo-sticks or filtered bottles. These items either have indefinite uses (barring their destruction, of course) or need to be refilled, refueled, or recharged in some way.

Item Name	Quantity	Damage	Element	Uses Per Item	Slot Capacity	Special Effects	Item Type	Rarity
Flashlight	1	1d2	Light	12 Hrs	1	A rechargable flashlight. Fully charged can produce light for about 12 hours continuously.	Tool	Common
Fishing Rod	1	1d2	Water	Infinite	1	It's a fishing rod. Needs line/tackle/etc.	Tool	Common
Extendo-Stick	1	1d2	Neutral	Infinite	1	A 1/2 Hex plastic rod that can extend out to a length of 2 Hexes. It's kinda flimsy but should be sturdy enough to whack things like pressure plates and stay intact.	Adventuring	Common
Filtered Bottle	1	1d3	Water	Infinite	1	A reusable metal water bottle with a built-in filter. Filters particulates and harmful chemicals from water you pour into it.	Tool	Common

Consumables

Anything with finite uses that can’t be recharged and isn’t a crafting material/kit, scroll, or throwable counts as a Consumable. These include a whole variety of things including machine lubricant, rations, hullseal, compressed air, and medicines like MiracleCure.

Item Name	Quantity	Damage	Element	Uses Per Item	Slot Capacity	Special Effects	Item Type	Rarity
Machine Lubricant	1	1	Neutral	10	1	A spray bottle full of machine-grade lubricant. Useful for loosening bolts, etc.	Spray	Common
Rations	1	0	Neutral	1	7	A single day's worth of foodstuffs. Provides you with all the nutrients you need.	Food	Common
Hullseal	1	1	Hazmat	1	1	Space-grade expanding foam that can be used to temporarily patch holes in hulls to stop air leaks. Not a subsitute for proper repairs. Graded for up to 1 hexes worth of damage. Cured Foam has 10 Durability.	Spray	Common
Compressed Air	1	0	Air	5	1	A can of compressed air.	Spray	Common
MiracleCure	1	0	Hazmat	3	1	A bottle of general-use medication. Can cure a variety of common ailments.	Medicine	Common

Crafting

Crafting covers actual base materials, limited-use tools, and crafting kits. Materials can include Scrap/Reclaimed/Refined versions of just about anything, and are used to Reinforce your weapons (Spotlight #5). Limited-use tools include things like whetstones, where the tool itself wears down with every use. Crafting kits include a variety of materials that lets you create and/or repair items related to the kit’s purpose. Those include things such as cooking sets and wiring kits. These kits also have limited uses.

Item Name	Quantity	Damage	Element	Uses Per Item	Slot Capacity	Special Effects	Item Type	Rarity
Scrap Stone	1	1	Earth	1	5	Scrap pieces of stone.	Material	Common
Whetstone	1	1	Earth	10	1	For sharpening and maintaining blades. Grants Advantage on rolls on Reinforcing bladed weapons.	Tool	Common
Cooking Set	1	1	Neutral	20	1	Has enough ingredients to let you cook most things.	Crafting Kit	Common
Wiring Kit	1	1	Electric	20	1	Can be used to repair electronics and create small electronic devices. Includes various components and a disposable soldering iron.	Crafting Kit	Common

Scrolls

Scrolls are single-use magic items with a variety of effects. See Spotlight #9 for more details.

Throwables

Throwables are single-use weapons. These can range from things like frag grenades and smokebombs to slightly less conventional things like pocket sand or killer seamonkeys.

Item Name	Quantity	Damage	Element	Uses Per Item	Slot Capacity	Special Effects	Item Type	Rarity
Frag Grenade	1	2d12A	Explosive	1	3	Deals damage within a 3 Hex radius sphere.	Grenade	Uncommon
Smokebomb	1	1d4A	Air	1	3	Deals damage within a 3 Hex radius sphere. Creates a thick cloud of smoke within its AoE for a short period of time.	Grenade	Uncommon
Pocket Sand	1	1	Earth	1	3	Stuns the target if sand gets in its eyes, mouth, etc.	Sand	Common
Killer Seamonkeys	1	1d4A	Water	1	3	A small plastic sphere filled with small, aggressive aquatic creatures that shatters when it hits something. Deals damage within a 3 hex radius sphere and drenches the targets. Targets hit will continue to take damage for 3 Turns.	"Grenade"	Rare

-Goblin Commander

Previous Spotlight Changelog:

• Spotlight #1: Now links to this Spotlight for Wound Damage.
• Spotlight #10: Changed Overkill so all damage past 0 HP goes to Wounds. Previously, if you took more damage than you had HP left, the excess damage wouldn’t go anywhere. This could make some ridiculous stuff survivable according to the rules as written when it wouldn’t really make sense to (i.e. a player character shouldn’t be able to survive getting hit by a freight train at top speed that only deals normal damage from the collision).
• Spotlight #20: Now links to this Spotlight for more info on Wound Damage.

We’ve had a lot of stuff covering Wound Damage in different capacities scattered across several Spotlights. Today we’ll compile all of that together into a single Spotlight, and more. Let’s start with the basics:

What is Wound Damage?

Wound Damage exists as a mechanic for long-term, potentially lethal damage. A character’s Wound Threshold is how much Wound Damage a character can take before it dies. Wound Thresholds are always half of a character’s maximum HP.

How is Wound Damage Dealt & Kept Track of?

Wound Damage is dealt using d3s (roll a d6, halve the rolled number, and round up) and does not have Stats added to it, unlike Normal Damage. See Spotlight #20 for more information on Damage Types. When a character takes Wound Damage, it is added as a Wound Source on its character sheet (some simplified NPC sheets may just have a Wound Threshold without Wound Sources). The damage from each of these Sources is totaled for a character’s Wound Threshold. If a character was hit in the leg with a melee weapon that dealt Wound Damage, the player could add that as a broken leg as a Wound Source with the accompanying Wound Damage. It’s up to the GM to decide how Wound Damages correlate to Sources. If Wound Damage you are about to take would fit under existing Wound Sources (i.e. if you took Wound Damage from Fatigue (Spotlight #25) and kept going without Rest) you could add it to the existing Source.

When is Wound Damage Dealt?

Wound Damage is dealt if a character is hit with something it is weak to, if it is hit by a Critical Hit (natural 20 on an Attack Roll, and the attacker chose to deal Wound Damage instead of Stunning), or if it is Distracted (Spotlight #19).

How is Wound Damage Recovered?

Wound Damage is recovered when Resting (Spotlight #25). You always get a single d3 of Wound Damage recovery when you complete a Full Rest, but you can recover additional d3s by Mitigating Wounds. Mitigating Wounds is done using relevant items. For instance, you would use bandages to stop bleeding, splints/casts for broken bones, or limb glue for severed limbs. You need to roll a Medicine check (as a Proficiency, see Spotlight #2) when using these items. You get to recover a d3 specifically on a Mitigated Wound if you succeed on that roll. You can attempt to Mitigate a Wound as many times as you have items per day, but you can only gain the d3 of recovery once per day. You can, however, Mitigate multiple different Wound Sources a day. Remember that you can’t recover those d3s until you take a Full Rest.

How does Wound Damage Affect a Character?

There are both RP-related and mechanical effects Wound Damage can have on a character. Something like a broken leg would give you a penalty on Movement, or even disadvantage on Rolls related to moving. Meanwhile, Fatigue could have negative impacts on your STR and AGL while also making you play your character tired, irritable, etc. Mitigating your Wounds will make these negative effects less potent. We’ll have a list of example Wounds and effects in the Player and GM handbooks later on.

-Goblin Commander

Previous Spotlight Changelog:

• Spotlight #5: Now links to this Spotlight for Resting.

Resting was originally touched upon in Spotlight #5, but there’s more to it that we’ll cover for today’s Spotlight. Restoring HP via Resting is dependent on how many hours of Rest your character is able to get. Getting at least 8 hours of Rest restores you to 100% HP and SP. This is called a Full Rest. Getting less than 8 hours of rest restores you up to a fraction of that. This is just called a Rest. A 4 hour rest is called a Half Rest.

Let’s say Mr. Example has 8/28 HP, 10/15 SP, and takes a Half 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.

Usually you’d have your character go to sleep to Rest, but if it’s only for an hour or so you could have your character stay awake. You just couldn’t have your character do anything physically demanding. Unless you’re very low on HP or SP there isn’t much reason to take super short Rests.

Whenever you successfully complete an uninterrupted Full Rest you can remove 1d3 Wound Damage (Spotlight #20) from your character’s Wound Threshold. If you successfully Mitigate a Wound (Spotlight), you can recover 1d3 Wound Damage from that treated Wound on your next Rest, so long as it’s at least a Half Rest. You’ll have to re-apply the mitigation to get this extra recovery on later Rests.

What happens if you don’t Rest? If your character goes 3 consecutive days without Resting, you’ll start experiencing Fatigue as Wound Damage. Once you get past that threshold, you’ll take 1d3W damage from Fatigue every day. Some items may also apply Fatigue to your character.

-Goblin Commander

Edit 8/1/23: Added note about shields taking two hits before being Disabled when Defending & added missing note in Spotlight #6 on Tag-Team Actions.

Previous Spotlight Changelog:

• Spotlight #4: End of Turn options now link to this Spotlight.
• Spotlight #5: Now references this Spotlight when talking about Defending.
• Spotlight #6: Now references this Spotlight when talking about Waiting and Spotlight #17 when talking about Tag Team Actions.

At the end of your turn (See Spotlight #4 to see all the things you can do on your Turn) you have several options to attempt to protect yourself. You can Defend with something, attempt to Dodge incoming attacks, attempt to Parry incoming attacks, or Wait. Defending involves protecting yourself using something you can reasonably hold and turn around to block incoming attacks. This can include items in your Loadout, items in the environment (such as table, chairs, etc.) or even enemies you’re Grappling (Spotlight #21). Whatever you’re using to Defend with will take damage instead of you when you’re hit. Items will take damage to their Durabilities Spotlight #5.

If the thing you’re using to Defend with drops to 0 HP or Durability, you won’t take any excess damage. For instance, if you’re Defending with a Loadout item with 3 Durability left and it takes 10 damage, that 7 excess damage doesn’t go anywhere. Some things deal AoE damage and can hit you regardless of whether you’re defending with something (Spotlight #20). If an item you’re Defending with is hit, it gets Disabled for a Turn. This just means you can’t use it on your next Turn. You can still swap it out of your Loadout. This also means that if your Defending item gets hit once, you can’t Defend with it again from another attack. Shields can take two hits (they don’t have to be consecutive) before being Disabled. Some other items may also have this effect. Defending is a more reliable option to avoid damage, but it’s also more limited. Some characters (mostly NPCs) have things listed in their Loadouts with N/A for Durability. Those can’t be used to Defend or Parry.

Dodging gives you the potential to completely avoid taking damage. In order to Dodge an attack you need to make Contested Rolls against incoming Attack Rolls using whatever stat you’re using to Dodge (usually AGL). If you roll higher you succeed on the Contested Roll, but you still need to move out of the way of the attack to avoid the damage. You get 1 free point of Movement to spend to get out of the way of the Attack, plus whatever remaining Movement you have from your Turn (Spotlight #11). You can use this additional Movement to reposition yourself after a successful Dodge or to get out of the way of an incoming AoE Attack. If you get out of the way of the Attack, you don’t take any damage. If you fail the Contested Roll or can’t move out of the way of the Attack for whatever reason, you’ll take damage. Make sure you have a place to move to if you’re going to Dodge. You can also use the knowledge to corner enemies to make it so they can’t Dodge any of your Attacks. You can attempt to Dodge multiple incoming Attacks per Round.

Parrying involves hitting an attacker’s weapon with one of your own. You can’t really do this against ranged attacks/weapons, but if your GM lets you, go wild. To Parry an Attack, you roll your own Attack Roll against your attacker’s. If you roll higher, you succeed on the Parry. You deal damage to your attacker’s weapon and your attack deals damage to your weapon. However, only your attacker’s weapon gets Disabled by this. If you fail the Parry, you take damage. You can attempt to Parry multiple incoming Attacks per Round.

Waiting lets you change your Turn order so you go later in the Round. See Spotlight #6 for more info.

-Goblin Commander

We’ve covered grabbing stuff (Spotlight #21), but what if you wanted to throw the guy you just Grappled? Or a Loadout item? Or even a Misc. Item? That’s what we’ll talk about today. Throwing things has to do with the Size Class Chart, found in Spotlight #12. If something is a smaller Size Class than your character (player characters are all Medium by default), you don’t have to do any extra rolls. If something is the same Size or larger than your character, you’ll have to roll STR on the Roll Chart (Spotlight #4). If you’re trying to throw something larger than your character, you have Disadvantage on that STR roll.

But what about your throw range? To determine that, just add your STR to the default Spear Range from the Reference Card (Spotlight #4). If you’re trying to throw something larger than your character, your GM might not let you throw it as far as you normally could, depending on your STR roll and the weight of the thing being thrown. Unless stated otherwise, treat all items as Small or Tiny.

-Goblin Commander

As mentioned in the previous Spotlight, this one is about Immobilized targets. If something can’t reasonably make sudden movements to avoid things, it’s considered Immobilized. This can be accomplished through physical means such as Grappling (Spotlight #21) or using elemental powers to freeze most of an enemy’s body to the ground, or even through psychological means like freezing an enemy in place with fear (Spotlight #19).

The Reference Card (Spotlight #4) shows that you don’t have to make Attack Rolls against Immobilized targets. An Attack made against an Immobilized target automatically succeeds, although you could choose to fail for whatever reason or try to roll anyways to see if you can land a Crit.

If an enemy just has its feet stuck to the ground, for instance, it might still be able to dodge out of the way of an incoming attack, so it wouldn’t be considered Immobilized. If a target can still move most of its body with how it’s stuck in place, it could still have a chance to move a little to make an attack miss. If you’re using a large AoE attack (Spotlight 20) you could definitely hit an enemy that isn’t totally Immobilized without needing an Attack Roll. It wouldn’t really make sense for an enemy with just its boots glued to the ground to move out of the way of an explosion versus a melee attack it could duck under. Even if your target isn’t completely Immobilized according to the rules as written, your GM could still give you some kind of bonus or Advantage if you’re not dealing AoE damage. Our suggestion would be to deal with it on a case-by-case basis.

-Goblin Commander

Previous Spotlight Changelog:

• Spotlight #4: Changed explanation for doing multiple Passives per Turn to use a different example. Previous one used Distracting, which was changed to be a Bonus Action. The section on Grappling was also changed to a reference link to this Spotlight.
• Spotlight #12: Updated name on spotlight to be Impact Damage, forgot to change it from Fall Damage last time.
• Spotlight #20: Added missing cross-reference links.

Grappling in Tablespess involves any way that you physically restrain an enemy’s mobility. This can be done with just your limbs, but can also be accomplished using items in your Loadout, such as a Claw Machine Whip, or using things in your environment, like pinning an enemy in place by closing a door on it while it’s halfway through it. If you want to psychologically grapple an enemy, see Spotlight #19. You can use a Grapple to pick up an inanimate object if you really wanted to. In that case your STR (or whatever stat) roll would be used to see if you can pick the object up. This should be reserved for heavier/larger objects. Picking up Misc. or Loadout items counts as swapping inventory items, which is a Passive.

Grappling is done as an Action (Spotlight #4) and involves a contested roll against your target for it to work. This is usually done with STR, but if you can figure out a way to justify using other stats, your GM might let you use them. Grappled targets are considered Immobilized (we’ll cover that in the next Spotlight) and can try to escape on their turns as a Passive. You only get one attempt to escape a Grapple per Turn. Attempting to escape involves another contested roll.

If you’ve successfully Grappled an enemy, you can further attack it on your next turn, or even use it to Defend with on the same turn you Grappled it. Since Grappled enemies are considered Immobilized, you won’t have to roll to hit them. However, you will need to justify how you’re able to make your attack if you’re the one grappling the enemy in question.

You can also suplex, throw, etc. enemies you are Grappling. Depending on how fast you fling your Grappled target, the more Impact Damage (Spotlight #12) it will take, or even deal to other enemies. Do keep in mind that your GM can also have you take some of that Impact Damage depending on what you’re doing. If you jump out of a 3rd story window while Grappling a water cooler, it wouldn’t make sense for only the water cooler to take Impact Damage.

-Goblin Commander

Several older Spotlights have been updated in addition to this new entry. The updated Spotlights are as follows:

• Spotlight #4: Reference Card image has been updated along with the paragraphs about Distracting (now just points to Spotlight #19), Defending, Dodging, and Parrying. New lines have been added pointing to other Spotlights for info on certain things listed on the Ref Card.
• Spotlight #5: Updated information on Defending/Durability.
• Spotlight #8: Added reference to Spotlight #18.
• Spotlight #12: Rewritten to cover Impact Damage instead of just fall damage. The Size Class table has also been rewritten.
• Spotlight #18: Added a sentence that explains what you can Command a Minion Unit to do.
• Spotlight #19: Added a reference to Spotlight #20 (this one).

There are four types of damage in Tablespess: Normal Damage, Wound Damage, Area of Effect Damage, and x10 Damage. Normal Damage is indicated by normal die rolls without any indicators. The other Damage Types each have a letter after die rolls that tell you what they are. The table below shows those.

Damage Type	Example Die Roll
Normal	1d6
Wound	1d3W
AoE	1d6A
x10	1d6X

Normal Damage should be pretty self-explanatory. If you hit something with Normal Damage its HP or Durability decreases by however much you rolled plus modifiers. If the thing you hit Resists whatever you hit it with, it takes halved damage.

If you hit something with a Crit or something it is Weak to, you can deal Wound Damage (long term lethal damage) to it in addition to whatever other damage you would deal. Dealing Wound Damage increases a target’s Wound Threshold. Normally you only deal 1d3W Wound Damage to something with a Crit or Weakness. Wound Damage always works with d3s. As discussed in Spotlight #19, you can deal additional Wound Damage to a target if it is Distracted. Whenever a character is about to deal Wound Damage it can instead choose to deal it as Normal Damage. This turns the Wound Damage d3s into Normal Damage d6s. For more information on Wound Damage, see Spotlight #26.

AoE Damage is like Normal Damage except it can go around most Defending or Parrying items and hit multiple targets at once. Things like flamethrowers and explosives deal AoE Damage. The particular areas of effect are described in the Effects of the items. If an enemy was Defending or Parrying with a sword it wouldn’t really make sense for it to be able to block a cone of fire or an explosion. Although you can’t Defend or Parry AoE Damage, you may be able to Dodge them.

x10 Damage does exactly what’s on the tin. It multiplies the resulting number rolled plus modifiers by 10. This is reserved for vehicles and Impact Damage (Spotlight #12) for larger size classes.

-Goblin Commander

Today we’ll be covering Distracting, which lets you bring more roleplaying into combat. Distracting can be done as a Bonus Action and involves any non-attacking actions done to make your target lose its focus or concentration. This includes things like tricking someone, annoying someone, or even intimidating someone. The exact way you attempt to Distract a character is up to you. However, you must describe what your character is doing for it. This isn’t something you just roll a die for, you’ll need to roleplay the scenario out.

Depending on how well your Distraction is, your target will gain Levels of Distraction. There are four Levels (0 - 3) that correspond to different reactions from your target. Your GM decides the appropriate Level of Distraction a target receives based on how your interaction played out. Each nonzero Level of Distraction will add an additional 1d3W (Wound Damage, see Spotlight #20) to the next Attack successfully landed on a Distracted target. Distracted targets will lose 1 Level of Distraction each time you end your turn (this doesn’t go below 0). You can always attempt to Distract the same target repeatedly, which may keep it at the same Level (or increase it) depending on what you do.

Level of Distraction	Effects
0	None
1	Additional flavor text.
2	Target will spend its Turn reacting to the Distraction.
3	Target is Stunned.

0 is the default Level. It doesn’t do anything special for Distraction.
At Level of 1, characters will have responses to the Distraction in a way that just adds more flavor text to what the characters are doing. This could include things like describing a missed Attack to be because you confused an enemy. This doesn’t change what an enemy might’ve done on its turn if it hadn’t been Distracted.
At a Level of 2, Distracted characters will spend their turns reacting to the Distraction. This could include singling you out because you’ve been annoying your target or running away because you’ve intimidated your target.
At a Level of 3, a Distracted characters are Stunned (Spotlight #4).
These effects stack with each additional Level.

-Goblin Commander

We’ve talked about Summons in a previous (Spotlight #8), but how do you actually control them? Summons count as Minion Units, so you control them on your turn. There are two classes of Minion Units: Major Minion Units and Minor Minion Units. Below are blank Minimalist and Ultra Minimalist NPC sheets, which are used by Major Minion Units and Minor Minion Units, respectively.

Minimalist Sheet

Ultra Minimalist Sheet

Major Minion Units can be commanded on your turn as an Action while Minor Minion Units can be commanded as a Bonus Action. This effectively lets you command up to two Minions per turn. But what if you have more than two Minions on the field at once? You can either have inactive Minions stay put if they haven’t been commanded or have the GM control them on your turn, depending on what your group agrees on. When you command a Minion Unit, you can have it perform anything a character can normally do on a turn, minus commanding other Minion Units.

You can also give control of your Minions to other players by Delegating your command. You can Delegate command of multiple Minions with a single Delegation. You can only Delegate command of Major Minion Units with a Bonus Action while you can do the same with Minor Minion Units as a Passive. Players you’ve Delegated minion command to can’t subcontract their Delegation to other players without your approval. You can also revert any Delegations you’ve given or approved on your turn as a Passive.

There are several branches that feature Minion Units. These include:

• Summoner - Commands things from Summoning Tomes.
• Beastmaster - Commands individual animals.
• Swarm Keeper - Commands a swarm of small animals that act as a single Minion Unit.
• Circus Trainer - Commands animals to do circus tricks.
• Ratomancer - Commands rats, which can either act as a single-unit swarm or as individuals.
• Puppeteer - Controls mechanical/animatronic puppets of animals.
• Mad Scientist - Commands monsters you create.
• Reverie User - Controls a physical manifestation of the character’s Rezver (life energy).
• Drone Keeper - Controls drones.
• Tinkerer - Controls automatons you create.
• Beast (Element) - Control familiars of animals made out of Rezver.

Things that you control can’t disobey you while things you command can. You’ll either have to RP something out or attempt a roll of some sort if your Minion isn’t listening.

-Goblin Commander

In this edition of The Tablespess Spotlight we’ll be talking about Tag Team Actions. As we covered in Spotlight #6, you can choose to Delay your Turn so it lines up with an ally’s. If you want to act together to do something you can perform a Tag Team Action. Tag Team Actions cover any cooperative combination of Actions, Bonus Actions, or Passives you perform with an ally on the same Turn. When performing a Tag Team Action, the players involved add the stats they’re using together for the roll bonuses (for things like attacks, grapples, etc.) or use this combined number on the Roll Chart (Spotlight #2) (for non-combat and non-contested rolls). However, both players must roll separately for their respective parts of the Tag Team Action. Depending on who succeeds/fails there may be different outcomes to the Tag Team Action. I’ll describe a couple examples below so this makes more sense.

Let’s say we have two players, A and B, who both move on the same Turn. A is up on a high ledge and B wants to get up there too. A and B decide to do a Tag Team Action to help B up onto the ledge. B decides it will jump up from a running start and A will grab B to help it up. B decides to use its AGL (we’ll say 4 here) and A uses its STR (we’ll say 3 here). A and B then roll for their respective parts of this Tag Team Action on the Roll Chart (since this isn’t a combat or contested roll) using a combined 4 + 3 = 7 on the Roll Chart. This is higher than the maximum Roll Chart level of 5 so the excess, 7 - 5 = 2, is added to the die roll. Say A rolls a 14 + 2 = 16 and B rolls a 1 + 2 = 3. Looking on the Roll Chart, A rolled a Blue and B rolled a Yellow. While B might be barely making the jump, A can make up for that with its great success and can grab B to lift it up onto the ledge. The outcome could be ruled differently depending on the combination of rolls A and B got. If the players both got Red or Yellow they would both fail. If one player got a Green/Blue the GM could rule to have the Tag Team Action succeed. If both players got Green/Blue then the Tag Team Action would succeed.

As another example, let’s say A and B want to perform a Tag Team Action in combat where A punches an enemy and B grapples that same enemy. We’ll have them both use their STR for this where A has 3 and B has 2. The Attack Roll A makes would be a d20 plus the combined stat bonus of 3 + 2 = 5. B’s Grapple roll against that enemy would be the same. In this case, a GM could rule that even if one of the players misses its Attack or Grapple, simply doing both to an enemy at the same time could be distracting it enough to grant both players the extra bonus to their Rolls. This extra bonus is also used during damage rolls, so A would deal 1d4+5 Force damage with its punch instead of 1d4+3 without the Tag Team bonus. However, if A somehow missed its Attack Roll without the enemy noticing, a GM could rule that B wouldn’t get A’s STR added to its Grapple Roll.

-Goblin Commander

Today we’ll be covering Spaceships. There are three kinds of spaceships in the game: Carriers, Shuttles, and Cruisers. Carriers are massive ships that stay in space and can, as their name would imply, hold more ships in them. A Tablespess party might have one as a mobile base that travels between planets and solar systems. Shuttles and Cruisers are generally smaller and more maneuverable. Shuttles are used to travel from Carriers to Planets and vice versa. They usually have very little in the way of weaponry but make up for it in the armor department. Cruisers, however, can be armed to the teeth but are designed to only be able to survive a single planetfall safely. Damage rolls for all Spaceship weapons have an X after the dice, meaning you multiply the number you get by 10 after modifiers. Spaceship speeds also have an X, which indicates how many space-scaled spaces (exact unit conversion/scale TBD) they can move.

Cruisers, Shuttles, and some Carriers use the same vehicle sheets shown in the previous Vehicle spotlights. Some Carriers, however, use Shells. Shelled Carriers are built from things like hollowed-out asteroids, advanced plating, etc. Shelled Carriers give your spaceship much more armor than typical Carriers at the cost of limiting its size, shape, and Modules. A Shelled Carrier only has one Durability pool for its entire Shell. If the Shell is destroyed, then all the internal Modules will start taking damage and/or failing. Modules start taking damage/failing in non-shelled Carriers when their sides are destroyed. Damage to Modules can either be done more abstractly by your GM or you could give each internal Module its own Durability, depending on how granular you want to get.

All Carriers have a blueprint sheet which lets you customize the general layout/function of your ship using Modules. Modules include all kinds of things such as weapons, living quarters, workshops, and more. A red outline on a Blueprint indicates a Carrier’s shell if it has one. An Orange section shows where a hangar door is. Some Modules can only be placed inside of a Shell (again, if your ship has one), usually things like rooms. Other Modules need to be placed on the exterior of a ship like weapons or communications devices. These exterior Modules function the same as Vehicle Attachments described in the previous Vehicle spotlights. Below are example sheets for an Asteroid Shelled Carrier. Although the below example only shows the main thrusters as a Module, the Carrier still has smaller thrusters on all sides of the ship to allow it to maneuver in any direction, albeit more slowly than going forward. Moving with these thrusters can only net you half your ship’s Max Speed.

In spaceship combat, you could have everyone in the party man different weapons in your Carrier or you could take the more fun approach and have one person stay on the Carrier and have the rest of the Party get into their own Cruisers. You can also try to board enemy Carriers either by breaking into their hangars or by using special boarding Modules from your own Carrier.

-Goblin Commander

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 impact damage. Impact damage concerns the damage things should take when they collide with each other at high speeds. This also includes damage you might take from falling. The damage things take from impact damage depends on how far they’ve accelerated and the sizes of the things involved. The table below shows the various size classes of things as well as their impact damage dice. Like the table says, the dice used for impact damage increases for every 10 feet (two hexes/spaces) the colliding object accelerates. If you’re going over slopes, or any terrain that would invoke a Movement Penalty (Spotlight #11) you may deal/take less Impact Damage, per the GM’s discretion.

For fall damage you only need to worry about your own size class’s impact dice. If a player character were to fall 30 feet, it would take 3d6 Force damage from the fall. Falling onto different things might change the Element of the fall damage or even inflict Wound Damage depending on what it is. This would be up to your GM’s discretion.

When two objects collide, they take damage based on each other’s impact dice. Say a Large thing accelerates 40 feet and hits a Medium thing. The Medium thing would take 4d8 Force damage while the Large thing would take 4d6 Force damage. Certain pieces of Armor or Vehicle Attachments may reduce the impact damage something takes, letting you be more reckless with running into things.

Size Class	Impact Damage Dice Per 10ft Accelerated	Example
Tiny	1d3	Rat
Small	1d4	Dog
Medium	1d6	Player Character, Bicycle
Large	1d8	Bear, Car
Huge	1d4X	Elephant, 18 Wheeler
Massive	2d6X	Yacht
Gigantic	2d8X	Space Cruisers/Shuttles
Colossal	4d8X	Divespace Freighter
Celestial	Most likely instant death.	Space Stations, Moons, Planets, Stars, etc.

-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. If you take damage beyond the HP you have left, that extra damage is applied to your Wounds, with the default Wound Penalty added to it. If you’re at 5 HP and take 12 damage, you would take an extra 7 + -3 = 4 Wound damage.

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 Tiny or Small 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.

To see how you can Command your Summons, check out Spotlight #18.

-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.

At the end of your turn (Spotlight #24), you can choose to Wait to change your Turn order in the Round. You can break the successive 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 a Tag Team Action (Spotlight #17). 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 (Spotlight #25). 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.

Now on to Durability. As described in the Spotlight #24, 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, see AoE Damage in Spotlight #20). You’re also able to target any Loadout item an enemy has. Hitting a Loadout item or Defending 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. You are, however, able to holster a disabled item. You can only Defend with an item once per round (twice for shields). Additional attacks made against a target whose Defending item has been disabled will deal damage to the target itself.

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 pilot a vehicle, but you wouldn’t be able to use that skill or pilot a vehicle again until your next turn.

We’ll start by going over a few of the specific things you can do.

See Spotlight #21 for info on Grappling.

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. See Spotlight #19 for more info.

For all End of Turn options (Defending, Dodging, Parrying, Waiting) see Spotlight #24.

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.

For all the vehicle-related things listed on the Reference Card, see Spotlight #14 and Spotlight #15 for more info.

For the Minion-related things listed on the Reference Card, see Spotlight #18 for more info.

For Revive Checks and Stabilizing see Spotlight #10 for more info.

-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, see Spotlight #5 for more info. We have a different system in place that handles fatal damage called Wound Damage. See Spotlight #26 for further details. 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