Tinkering (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

In pulp adventures, gadgets are built with frenzied effort and leaps of genius in very short time. The GM should keep this in mind, then let the players describe what they do and make a Create roll. GMs are encouraged to be lenient towards creative tinkers and thinkers. The following table gives benchmarks for calculating the difficulty of tinkering tasks. Sum the difficulty modifiers from each column to get the final difficulty.

In general, you can choose to keep one of the factors open and dependent upon your outcome. So, for example, you can decide upon what you want to do, and then see how long it takes (keeping Time open) or you can decide how long you want to spend and make it as well-designed as you can (keeping Construction open).

There are also many schticks and powers that use or modify the tinkering rules.

Tinkering Table

Difficulty Modifier	Time	Size	Construction	Complexity	Power	Resources	Difficulty Modifier
+0	Month	Personal	Haphazard	Established	None	Factory	+0
+3	Day	Portable	Functional	Cutting Edge	One	Lab	+3
+6	Hour	Car	Artwork	New Design	Two	Field kit	+6
+9	Minute (Limit Break)	Bus	Benchmark	Conceivable	Three	Basic tools	+9
+12	Round	Building	Slick	Inconceivable	Four	Scrounge	+12
+15	Basic Action	Town	Miniaturized	Reality-defying	Five	Improvise	+15

Time

This is how long you spend on the project. Tinkering is possible in combat; the inspiration of stress allows you to treat a Limit Break as a full minute of normal work.

Size

Larger installations take longer to build. This is the size of a normal, functional item of its kind, not including miniaturization.

Construction

How well-made and well-designed the item to be.

Haphazard: The device is frail, with exposed wiring and mechanics. It cannot stand normal wear and tear, and looks most unstylish. Most gadgets that techies make during scenarios will be of this category, if nothing else so as to avoid the hassle of the item hanging around and costing xp in the future.

Functional: The gizmo looks like what it is, revealing its function in its design. It is not pretty, but neither is it frail. In some cases, functionality can have its own aesthetics, tough it usually takes a while for this to become generally acknowledged.

Artwork: Going beyond the basic design, the item now attracts positive attention and can be considered a fashion accessory. It is still quite obvious what it does.

Benchmark: At this level, the item becomes normative, it shapes what people perceive as normal. It is suitable for mass production, the basic principles can be imitated and nudges the technological envelope. The GM is the final arbiter on whether this is possible.

Slick: The device looks harmless and conceals its main function. It can be aesthetically pleasing or simply unobtrusive.

Miniaturized: The item is made smaller than such an item could normally be, which will mislead even those who know what they are looking for. It is simply not conceivable that an item this size could do what this one does, which makes it almost impossible to recognize for what it is.

Complexity

A measure of how much the device twists technological sensibilities.

Established: Run-of-the-mill technology of the day. Why don’t you simply go to the store and bye one?

Cutting Edge: This is everyday technology that is fine-tuned and adapted with great skill and care, pushing the envelope slightly. An expensive racing car.

New Design: A brand new item, possible under the tech level but not yet invented. Functional holography today.

Conceivable: This is something that people of the day can conceive how it would work, but which has never been done and is not normally possible under the local tech level. It may push the technology level by one step, or it might be something people in the past believed to be right around the corner, but we today know that it was not. Allowing this into a campaign gives it a distinct pulp feeling. Clockwork automatons.

Inconceivable: This is something that would cause the everyday observer to be flabbergasted, and which pushes the local technological level more than one step. The GM should only allow this in weird science campaigns. Aircraft in blacksmith technology.

Reality-Defying: This is for the truly weird inventions, and is reserved for the cases that simply won’t fit in any of the previous categories. It is generally of Hyperspace technology level.

Power

This is the number of experience points the item would have cost if paid for as a power, and thus a measure of its utility. If you have actually paid the xp, ignore this category.

Resources

This is what you have to work with. It is harder to improvise something out of rubber bands in the field than it is to order your ten thousand mooks to build it using state-of-the-art tools.

Factory: A full set of equipment, plentiful supplies, and a willing and able workforce.

Lab: Plentiful equipment and more supplies than you can carry. A truck full of gear or access to a trash heap qualifies.

Field kit A man-portable tinkering kit, plus access to suitable pieces of larger gear.

Basic tools: A small toolkit and some junk. A Swiss army knife and what you can loot from a car wreck.

Scrounge: What you can find in a typical home.

Improvise: Something to work with, but none of it suitable.

Repairs & Tuning

Tuning or rebuilding an item takes less time, because you don’t have to work from the ground up. The difficulty is the same as for building it, only you get to ignore the Construction column. Making an improved model of one of your own inventions allows you to ignore the Complexity column; to you it is now established tech.