Small Change, Big Improvement

Version 1.0! 

After a lot of fun play testing and discussion about damage and healing, I'm happy to announce version 1.0 of Galactic Ops.

The big change between the last version and this version is how damage and healing works. Here's the updated rules.

Strain & Damage

Characters may take up to 3 Strain before reducing 1 attribute die 1 level and resetting Strain to 0. When any attribute die would be reduced below d4, the character is KO’d and is either dead or needs to be revived.

That small change of reducing the attribute die one level when taking max Strain had a big impact on combat. Player agency is much higher now as they get to decide which attribute to reduce. Also, when combined with the Karma system, the player has more choices around when to take Strain, when to change the difficulty, or when they should recover their attribute die level.

Combat is fun and fast. 

Enemies

When play testing the game, I realized the rules didn't include much guidance on how to handle enemies. That's been addressed now with a simple Enemies section. Enemies are just a difficulty and they take hits instead of using Strain. Each attack on an enemy results in them taking a hit, even for a partial success. Tough enemies will take many hits to KO. Also, the enemies section provides guidance on how to handle enemies attacking, forcing the characters to defend against the attack. 

I'm really happy with how this game has come together. It's a fun system and great for a quick pickup game, or even a shorter campaign.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did when play testing!