Environment
The Environment plays a huge impact on everything in the game, the temperature of an area, what you’re able to see, what you’re able to find, where you’re able to go and how long it will take, to even what you’re fighting. GM’s should take very important care to focus on the environment of a situation to make sure the experience is the best, while the players should focus on the environment to become more resourceful and use everything to their advantage.
Urban
Urban environments such as cities and towns are fairly commonplace, and can be used as a way to rest between adventures, or places where the adventure takes place. It is good to balance downtime and uptime while in urban environments, as lore can be heavily taking place in such regions, and many events can happen in such dense environments can provide heavy impacts to the world and locations around it.
Biomes, Temperature, Atmosphere and Terrain
Biomes and Terrain are extremely important in all environments, determining how you travel in an environment, as well as the kinds of encounters found in the environments. Biomes determine the temperature of locations and what kind of gear is typically needed in those environment, certain items cannot survive in different types of Temperature, or maybe in a swamp you’d want something more waterproof to compensate for the murky waters.
Reputation and Contacts
Within the universe, you’re bound to communicate with those around you to get what you want and gain reputation through performing certain actions and quests. You may get access to people that you may contact that have a large amount of power and control, performing enough actions to gain favours of some kind.
Wilderness
The wilderness is a vast and large location on every planet, they’re large, uninhabited places of land, where various creatures live and perform their duties, such as hunting or searching. The Wilderness is a very common place that many people will encounter in their day to day life.
The wilderness is filled with adventure and unpredictability, while not the best place to rest, those who are keen to conquer and thrive in the wilderness are rewarded heavily for their efforts from the natural ecosystem.
Building
Building in the wilderness requires a long period of time and resources. While building in the wilderness, the amount of time it takes to build something is equal to 1 hour per 5kg of material used. It takes a minimum of 1 hour to build or set up something small.
While building, you must build on stable terrain, building ontop of difficult or other terrain is possible, however, it reduces the health of your building by half. Building ontop of fragile terrain is impossible.
You cannot build directly on top of liquids, and must build on a stable surface that can support the buildings weight.
Building Health
Building Health is calculated based on the amount of materials used on the building. For 5kg used on the building, it gains 100 + Builders Intellect modifier, each 5kg added onto the building’s construction increases it’s max health by +50
Resting in Open Areas
Resting in open areas, such as the wilderness, unsafe dungeons, or other places which wouldn’t be deemed too safe is possible, however, poses a risk for those resting there. When players choose to do a short rest in an open area with no buildings, they do not gain the benefits of the rest. Additionally, the GM may roll for an encounter. Instead
When full resting in an open area with no equipment or preparations made, they only gain half of the benefits of rest, and are always considered tired. To be a successful adventurer is to prepare homes and places to rest. To receive the full benefits of resting, all someone needs is a soft place to sleep or rest and keep warm, to protect them from the elements of the world.
Outer Space
Outer Space is space where there is nothing, no gravity, no air, nothing. Nothing exists in outer space, sound does not travel, and it is usually barren, with planets, rocks, or something else in between. Outer Space is common in Space Travel as ships and other vehicles are used to travel through it, without the use of teleportation or other methods.
Outer Space is a hostile environment with absolutely nothing to survive on. It is recommended to avoid being in Outer Space or environments similar at all costs, as the lack of anything can cause a creature or object to easily become stranded.
Surviving in a Vacuum
Surviving in a vacuum normally requires two main things, a breathable source inside of a sealed, pressurised room. Without these two factors, it is impossible to survive, and the creature will begin suffocating as per suffocation rules (if there is no air), or immediately go to death’s door (if the room is not sealed and pressurised).
If the creature is able to specifically exist in space or has access to spaceflight, they can breathe in space and can always survive in a vacuum with no troubles. Creatures that do not need to breathe still need to have a pressurised environment, otherwise they still risk being imploded.
Orbits
Orbits of planets do not normally take account in any traditional gameplay, however, there is one circumstance where orbits may matter beyond Divine Intervention and story related events, this is specifically between interplanetary combat.
Should you have a weapon that has enough range, if a planet is within double it’s size range (this is doubled based on the gravity) within the shot, the shot curves towards the planet with more gravitational pull or mass. This also occurs when any masses or payloads pass through these regions in space.
Orbits typically function by lighter objects circling around the densest objects. Stars are, most of the time, much more dense then planets, and will cause planets to orbit around them. Should there be a planet within the range of another planet with a stronger gravity and density then itself, then the lighter planet will instead orbit the denser one. This can create irregular orbits that can cause planets to jump from system to system, known as rogue planets.
Galaxies
Galaxies are usually hundreds and thousands of kilometres apart, the closer a galaxy is, the more likely other galaxies are going to crowd toward it.
In the instance you need to calculate whether galaxies move towards one another, the galaxy with more of a denser and larger mass always attracts the lighter galaxies towards it, galaxies that are much heavier then lighter galaxies tend to have those galaxies collide towards them.
[INCOMPLETE] The math normally used to calculate this is really complicated, but for this version of the rulebook, I am not a mathematician or an astrologist, so until I have access to either, this section won’t be expanded upon in this version.
The Planes of Reality
The Planes of Reality is likely something you’ll encounter while performing incredibly long distance travel, encountering powerful beings or simply making conversation with others obsessed with the topic. The universe is incredibly vast, and filled with adventure in these planes, while some may be chaotic, others are completely quiet. Each plane has it’s own unique traits that are identifiable.
To make up our reality, multiple different planes that perform different tasks intersect to create our existence, the easiest example of this would be how the Positive and Negative planes create the Ethereal plane, the one where spiritual forms reside, while the physical form exists in the Material plane. Despite intersecting with these planes, in most cases, one cannot interact with another on a different plane.
Time Travel & Dimension Hopping
For those who are inclined to perform something that can change the very fabric of reality, Time Travel is an alluring prospect, Travelling to the past can have huge implications for the future, likewise for travelling to the future. Time Travelling and Dimension Hopping is typically highly illegal as one can exploit the lives of many through this method and gain multiple of an event, which can break the very fabric of space and time itself.
Environmental Hazards
When Travel occurs, people are bound to encounter a Hazard caused by the environment, such as Fall damage due to maybe a tall cliff, or being crushed by a load of sand and suffocating to death due to it.
Environmental Hazards occur and are something that need to be taken into consideration while travelling.
Suffocation
Suffocation is a kind of damage that occurs when a character can no longer breathe. A character when suffocated by surprise takes 100 nonlethal suffocation damage every round until knocked unconscious, when they then take this damage as lethal instead. This damage goes through armour, and is reduced by the Vitality Modifier of the target.
A character that holds their breath or is suffocated while knowing may hold their breath up to 1 + 1 for every 5% Vitality modifier minutes, before they take 100 nonlethal suffocation damage every round until knocked unconscious, when they then take this damage as lethal instead. This damage goes through armour, and is reduced by the Vitality Modifier of the target.
Fall Damage
Fall Damage is taken when a character falls for 2m and every 2m after, they take 50 bludgeoning damage that is not negated by Damage Reduction, Block Damage Threshold or Dodging. The maximum damage one can take from a single fall is 2500. On the first round of falling, you move 10m in the direction of the fall, this is doubled every round until you reach 1 minute, where the maximum is 50m per round. If fall damage exceeds the amount of health the character has, the character is immediately dead, however, if the character is below 100 HP after falling 10m or more, they are put at death’s door and are unconscious. All characters no matter their height are knocked prone after receiving fall damage.
There are multiple factors that change this, for example, in low gravity environments, the distance for fall damage to occur is x2 (4m and every 4m after) and in high gravity environments, the distance for fall damage to occur is x0.5 (1m and every 1m after).
If a character is intentionally falling, take away 10m of fall damage from the calculation, if they land in a soft material or substance such as snow, hay or a trampoline, the amount of fall damage taken is reduced by 30m. Falling into liquids such as water halve the amount of fall damage taken, however, falling into Non-Newtonian fluids is treated as falling onto solid ground.
Exploration & Movement
When reaching new areas or environments, different circumstances tend to create radical changes or obstacles in your way, maybe even through the use of powers or planning, the environment can change wildly and you may be facing an entirely different surface.
Liquids
(not done)
Gravity
(not done)
Zero Gravity
In zero gravity, there is no direction of up or down, you do not go down by jumping, unless propelled with a large amount of force, and hitting into something e.g. being thrown, weapon knockback, you do not receive any fall damage and are not falling. All movement actions cost x3 the amount of TP to perform.
Low Gravity
In Low Gravity, everyone’s jump height is doubled, while it costs double the TP cost to perform any movement action. You receive fall damage every 4m instead of 2m, and the damage you receive from falling is always halved.
Normal Gravity
Gravity is relatively normal, and nothing is affected, this is the default state of gravity.
High Gravity
Gravity has much more of an effect on those in this state. In High Gravity, you cannot jump or sprint unless you have special means and are able to, and are treated as if you are carrying +50kg ontop of other items that you may be carrying. The range of weapons is halved
Extreme Gravity
In Extreme Gravity, it is near impossible to move. You are always treated as if moving through difficult terrain, all movement actions cost x2 the amount of TP then they normally would, you cannot sprint, jump, or perform any actions other then moving, crouching, or going prone, and getting up from these states. You are treated as if you are carrying an extra +100kg ontop of other items that you may be carrying.
Generating a Star System
Star Systems can be hard for GM’s to create on the fly with various important details for the players to explore. Metanoia Engine is a game about travel and exploration, and it is designed to make travelling easier for players, creating a universe entirely from scratch. GM’s do not need to use this system, and are encouraged to use their own methods to make star systems perfect for their campaigns and multiverses
List of Pre-Made Star Systems
A list of Pre-Made Star Systems is provided for all to use, should they want to use these Galaxies or make their own. It is recommended for a first time GM to use a pre-made Star System, as the environment doesn’t need to be thought of too hard, and your adventures and such can take place if you were to use a simple environment.
Weather
Weather is an important aspect, especially for stealth and infiltration, which can change whether one should travel or remain in a location for the time being. Weather changes environments and its conditions, for example, it could be more slippery due to it raining.