Megacorps

Megacorps? Yeah. Zone 17 is replete with megacorps. And as you expect, they run the walled cities throughout the Zone. As a great power collapsed, modern princes leveraged unconscionable wealth to fill the power vacuum and build a new society. Of course, international corporations devoted to making numbers go up don’t make for a very stable basis for society.

A Dark Future

The world currently faces a clutch of serious challenges. Megacorporations. Climate change. The Singularity. Demographic collapse. Half of Zone 17’s background is extrapolated from current events. The remaining half comprises nudges made to bring everything into a cohesive narrative. Zone 17 is a TTRPG that has all the action and adventure to be a light ‘Beer & Pretzels’ game, but also includes the tools to explore some heavier narratives. Some of this exploration can take players to places some might find a bit dark. You don’t have to play using any scary stuff if you don’t want to. But let’s be real. You probably want to.

Cyberpunk...but not Cyberpunk

What does Cyberpunk but not Cyberpunk mean? Cyberpunk has several foundations: Dystopia. Cybernetics. High tech. Societal collapse. Zone 17 dabbles in a lot of these themes. But cybernetics? Not really. In the game, body mods are possible…but not recommended. Cybernetics are done for purely medical reasons, outside certain fringe subcultures. But modding carries extraordinary costs and risks (e.g., surgery, hacking). As such, only a small fraction of people get cybered-up without extraordinary medical reasons. Every street punk or mercenary being wired up with implants is something that just doesn’t happen in this world.

What is Zone 17?

So…this Zone 17 game? It’s kind of everything. It’s mostly its own thing. Cyberpunk…but not Cyberpunk. Mecha. Bands of bandits fighting over wasteland ruins. Mutated horrors. Genetically engineered meta humans. Synthetic intelligence-driven androids. Basically, a world where all the bad things you see on the news happened 50 years ago. We cram all sorts of cool ingredients into the soup. Mmm. Tasty. Zone 17 is, at it’s core, a dystopian sandbox for players to explore and fight in.

Art Styles 2

While most of the original artists and art pieces were very good, we were never satisfied with the results. Oh, the quality was usually fine, but there were challenges making all the pieces look as if they came from the same hand. The homogeneity of design was very important to us, and we just couldn’t reach it. One of the styles we tried was silhouettes.

Love ‘em, but they were tough to replicate with vehicles and gear.

Art Styles

We’ve tried out a variety of art styles for interior art. Over time, we hired six different artists. We tried out many different art styles. One of the styles I really liked was Rage Mode from the computer game Wet. It’s hyper simple combination of black, white, and red.

Thing is, while it’s simple and cool, our book interiors are strictly black and white. When we tried swapping the red tones with grey tones. The images became muddled. Scowl Owl judged the results…disappointing. That said, buy the Wet game. It’s discounted these days and its fun.

New Old School

The original Traveller form factor was amazing, but the typesetting and layout were, well, products of their time.

Forty-five years have passed. We sorted that out too, to ensure we’re providing a modern, perhaps a bit futuristic, product. We’re bringing the interior page count to a total of 80, almost doubling the original page count. We cleaned up the typesetting and layout. We’re adding interior art and amazing color covers. Our target for the individual printed booklet price is $14.95.

Character Sheet Changes

We are editing the Zone 17 Character Sheet…again. See? This is why military programs cost a bazillion dollars each. Every couple of months, some ridiculous playtester makes some preposterous suggestions about how to improve organization or ergonomics. Ergonomics? Is that even a word? The current Character Sheet is available on our website (Resources — OSS) for you to download. We’ll get the new one posted when I’m finished with it. What? When will that be? WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH IT.

Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Over the next few months we’ll share with you design concepts, play examples, and way-cool game elements. We think we have a great product and want to share with you what we’re doing so that you and your group can make the best purchasing decision. 

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Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

We ran a Zone 17 crowdfunding campaign a year ago. We pulled the plug on it a few days in when appeared that we were going to fall a bit short of our goal. We’re reworking the funding campaign to create one that is better, stronger, and faster. We also took the time to update the books, improve the art, and integrate some of the amazing ideas that we left on the cutting room floor. Our next campaign will attach “Version 1.1” to the material. We think you’re worth it. 

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Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Zone 17 play has two scales — Agent Scale, to manage personal role-playing and gun-fu combat and Battle Scale, to manage combat between vehicles, such as tanks and mecha. Mmmm. Mecha. Players can design their own vehicles, to specialize in cargo hauling, racing, or combat as desired. 

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Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Zone 17 uses puzzles to resolve role-playing efforts and other challenging tasks. Combat resolution uses Evade, Dodge, and Juke values to avoid hostile fire and Resilience values to mitigate effects. Armor works like real armor. Trauma and Havoc are products of hit severity and weapon class. Real physics. Who’d have thought?  

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Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Zone 17’s game system is novel. No hit points. No armor classes. It’s a whole new game system. If you’re up to learning it, great! On the other hand, some people don’t like to learn new things. That’s cool. There are plenty of other games whose settings and game engines haven’t changed much since the 1970s. Your fun is valid. You play any way you want. 

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Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Characters have roles. Scavengers battle with other scavengers and mutants over wasteland resources. Suits navigate the labyrinthian mega-corp political maneuvers. Soldiers drive high-tech armored vehicles across contested landscapes. Solos traverse back alleys to complete underworld gigs for which others haven’t the stomach. 

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Zone 17 One Small Step Game’s New Role-Playing Game

Zone 17 is One Small Step Game’s new role-playing game. The game takes place 60 years in the future amidst the ruins of a failed superpower. Some of the places that characters find themselves are dystopian. Other places are horrifying wastelands. The game even has some cyberpunk game elements. You can drive technicals (DIY combat vehicles) and do battle with scavengers amidst city ruins. You can hunt genetically engineered super humans or humanoid robots inside of high-tech cities of steel and glass. You can design and field a combat mecha to escort goods across hostile territory.  

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