Burn Up Basics

The best way to think of these rules, as well as any set of pen and paper role play game rules, is that they are just there to aid the Game Master in presenting his adventure. The rules, regardless of however they are written, say exactly what the GM needs them to say to tell his story. This is why Burn Up makes no attempt to come up with rules for every possible situation. It just covers the most common situations and tries to give the GM something to work off of when making up new rules. Of course, GMs generally do use the rules as written. Players will expect a certain amount of consistency in the game and I have done my best to make these rules, as written, realistic and balanced.

Core Concept:

In Burn Up characters, as well as other creautes, are described with a series of numerical scores representing a character's strengths and weaknesses. These are used to determine if a character can succeed at a given task. Each task has a difficulty score which a character must beat with her appropriate score to succeed at the task. As in most RPGs, this is called "making a check." Scores can be temporarily increased for the purposes of completing a single check by spending energy.

Scores

There are three types of scores in Burn Up: Ability Scores (see Burn Up Ability Scores) that show a character's raw talent, Skills (see Burn Up Skills) which show things that a character has learned through practice and Secondary Scores (See Burn Up Secondary Scores) which represent aspects of a character needed to run the game but not covered in the above two categories.

Energy

Each character has a reservoir of energy, the size of which is represented by the Energy Score. When a character makes a check, any X amount of energy can be spent to temporarily increase any Ability or Skill Score, as well as Avoid, Fortitude, Will and Sequence, by X.

Rounds, Turns and Actions

In some situations, such as combat, how fast and in what order characters do things is very important. In these situations, each character involved in the action gets one turn each round, and one action (for free) on that turn. An action can be any one thing that takes time equal to swinging a sword or moving a distance equal to the character's speed in lurks. Each turn a character can buy a second action for 5 energy. After that she can buy a third action by spending 10 more energy and then a fourth by spending 15 more energy and so on. The character with the highest sequence score takes her turn first.

Attacking and Dodging

When a character attacks she adds the skill associated with the weapon she is using (Melee, Shooting, Throwing, Unarmed or Mounted Weapons) with the weapon's accuracy modifier. The total of which is refered to as the weapon's accuracy. If the total of that (which can be increased by using energy) is equal to or higher then the target's avoid score then the attack hits. Animate targets can also spend energy to increase their avoid score to dodge attacks. When an attack hits, the amount of damage dealt is equal to the weapons damage score + any amount that the attack's accuracy exceeded the target's avoid score.

Hit Points and Effective Hit Points

Hit points and Effective Hit Points show how much damage a creature can take before being incapacitated. The difference between Hit Points and Effective Hit Points is that Hit Points shows a creature's natural ability to cope with damage and Effective Hit Points takes into account armor or other protections. An unarmored character has Effective Hit Points equal to its Hit Points.

Each point of damage a creature takes, takes away one Effective Hit Point. Once a creature's hit point total is 0 or less she is unconscious and unable to take any actions. Once a character's hit point total reaches an amount equal her TOUGHNESS score below zero she is dead.

Armor

Each piece of armor has a Threshold, an Armor Factor and a Restriction score in addition to weight and price. If a character wearing armor is dealt damage, which is less than or equal to the threshold of the armor, the damage is ignored. Armor Factor increases a character’s Effective Hit Points. Armor factor is recorded as the percent increase of hit points. This effectively takes a percentage off damage. Restriction is a penalty for wearing heavy armor. It is added on to the energy price of each extra action a character takes during a turn.

Fortitude and Will

In addition to Avoid, Fortitude and Will make up a character's defensive scores. In some situations characters will be able to make a Fortitude or Will check to fend off harm. Basicly, Avoid shows a character's ability to get out of the way of harm Fortitude, on the other hand, shows a character's to resists physical harm which can't be dodged such as poisons. Finally, Will shows a character's ability to resist metal dangers such as emotional trama and mind control attemps.

Healing and Recovering Energy

Characters heal an amount of damage equal to their healing rate and recover full energy once a day when they sleep. They can also gain half this by taking a two hour nap once a day. Additionally, taking a few minute sit down can, at the GMs discretion, restore around 10% of the characters energy points.

Speed

Burn Up measures speed and distance in 5ft units called lurks. A character that has a speed of 1 lurk (which would be really really slow) could move 5ft per action or one mega lurk an hour (somewhere between a mile and a kilometer).

Carrying Items

A character can carry up to her carrying weight in items without problems. A character can not pick up items that would put the weight carried above her carrying weight. It's as simple as that.

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