Of Mice & Metal Gears - Building BOX Engine P1

 Back in March of this year (2022) I was getting really into Mausritter (2019) and similar ruleslite games with a focus on inventory and exploration. The idea of making a game with only "STR/DEX/WIS" (or WIL, MAG, w/e) as its stats had also been living rent free in my brain, both from my love of similarly small scale OSRs and also because my formative years were intensely Fable-brained. This paired with the sudden death of my PS5 in the midst of playing (and not quite loving) Elden Ring meant I was also thinking a lot about open world games that I did love, namely Metal Gear Solid V. Then it hit me: TACTICAL. ESPIONAGE. OPERATIONS. Three Stats that fit like a glove and had been staring me in the face since 2015. And thus after about 10 minutes of thinking about it BOX Engine was born (and playtest ready within a week). With its two biggest inspirations being clear:

(Art Courtesy of Mausritter and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty cover arts respectively)

However life is hard and working full-time while trying to make a mecha heartbreaker is even harder, so I put the idea away for a little while, knowing I wanted to come back to it when the vibes felt right. But now I'm dipping my toes back in for a little while and wanted to catch you all up to speed! Unlike how I'm handling the development of Steel Hearts, I'd really like my process with BOX Engine to be publicly catalogued, both for my own sake and for anyone who might find it interesting. Thus begins Building BOX Engine, so let's jump in:

Why a New System?

Any time when making a Tabletop RPG, I always ask myself "Is someone doing this better?" / "Is someone doing this at all?" because if the answer is yes I should probably just play whatever is out there. However when it comes to Mausritter + Metal Gear Solid hybrids the world is tragically lacking. Moreover there's a lot about the OSR / Inventory genre that never hit perfectly with me. Not enough ammo, not enough stealth, too much tracking torches and not enough tracking batteries. Some of it is setting to be sure, since I've never been crazy about running fantasy. But something about Mausritter's cut and play inventory system felt revolutionary, but also like a first step. Like something more designers should take and run with (even if it's a bit labor intensive).

What are the System's Goals?

First and foremost the game is meant as a system that captures that PS1/PS2 3rd person game feel. Which can be tough to define because PSX is less of a genre and more of a texture. It's limited inventories and quirky easter eggs. It's the pitter patter of footsteps against metal and exquisite ambient music. It's kitchen-sink settings that are drenched in a layer of inexplicable melancholy and uncanny distance. It's bombastic (and bombastically VOed) villains and architects who create the most elaborate possible locking mechanism ((such that you really have to wonder how anyone actually gets around these places)). In short it is a love letter to some of my favorite games of all time, and a trilogy of systems (PS1-3) that holds a deep place in my heart:

(Suikoden II, Silent Hill, Monster Hunt, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve and countless others listed in the margins share a kind of texture that seems to bridge their differences.)

Two major components of these games is often Resource Management and Exploration, with the occasional side of base building. Sound familiar? While modern gaming often revolves around running errands to unlock cutscenes, games from this era tried to impart the sense of a living persistent world, nearly two decades before the words "Open World" became a ubiquitous. ((And a genre whose popularity is likely why Elden Ring was full open world, and something we may discuss later)). Similarly the OSR (as I vaguely understand it) attempts to revive an older era of TTRPG gaming that was less about getting through encounters to unlock interactable cutscenes, and more about being characters in a persistent open world. ((This isn't to knock story games BTW! I actually really love playing and running story games, but they're a LOT of prep to run if you want to run them well, and there's a certain texture and even gaminess that you sacrifice in running them.))

Thus enter BOX Engine. A lot of this also comes down to my own personal tastes as well. Taxing peasants isn't my speed. Managing my own Mother Base where I can deploy troops before going a deployment with my buddies into the heart of New York to extract a bioweapon? Groovy. I want a game where one minute we're in a parallel horror space desperately trying to escape (a la Silent Hill), all to recruit new members into our vastly expanding party (a la Suikoden) so we can be fully prepped before taking on a boss mission (a la Monster Hunter). I'm sure you're starting to see how this all fits together, yes? Again the main pillars are:

1) Inventory Management (Where am I going to fit this key? How prepared am I for this boss/area? Running low on ammo? Need to craft new gear?)

2) Exploration (How far can we push this mission? Is it time to call a tactical retreat? How do we expand our influence? What do we want to learn about this world?)

3) Base Building (How are we going to build vehicles? How do we create positive feedback loops to help us steam roll the next mission? How much do we trust our staff? How are we going to fund and protect all of this?)

Paired with the following aesthetic additions:

4) Contemporary Setting (Mass communication accessible. Guns are a thing. Globalized economies. Proxy wars. Bioweapons. Corporations. Hearing the cry of the planet! All with a smattering of the uncanny: Psychics, Dinosaurs, Aliens, Cursed Castles, etx.)

5) Literal PSX Nostalgia (I'm not even going to hide this one. I want to hide in a cardboard box. I want to combine Herbs into healing spray. I want to find the token vampire in the basement of my old burnt out hometown and then watch him get a bombastic spinoff adventure.)

And my own personal design tenants:

6) Easy to Teach (Good layout, good character sheets, tight mechanics)

7) Meaningful Choices in Play (A lot of this comes as a result of resource management + pushing your luck. But a large thing I try to make happen in my games is that if the player fails they often feel at fault and like they could've done something different. They took too big a risk, they forgot an enemy resistance, they didn't bring enough ammo. Most importantly they learned something from their failure)

8) Easy to Hack (I want this game to be dirt simple to make new content for and hopefully provide plenty of blank tools to make stuff on the fly. It's something that Mausritter did and I'd like to improve upon in the form of things like Form Fillables and making the Affinity files for items publicly available and editable).

9) Financially Accessible Design (By accessibility I'm talking about asking for the absolute minimum from GMs and players for monetary investment. Print and play is already a cheap alternative to getting a big box experience, but often this spreads to things like not wanting grid combat and even picking what dice to use).

I also realized as a consequence of the GM never having to roll, there's very real Solo Game potential here! So that's something I want to consider going forward, as being able to play BOX Engine Solo could be incredibly helpful for playtesting and sounds pretty fun!

What's the meat of how this works?

There's a couple of tenants of how this works, some that Mausritter fans will be familiar with and some new. So let's give a quick rundown of the hows and whys of moment-to-moment play (since I haven't touched base building yet and mostly have been testing inventory and mission systems)

This is what the previous version's Character Sheet looked like for reference. I've already made some tweaks.

Mechanic 1 - Limited Inventory + Tetris + Tags

The most immediately recognizable Mausrittery part is how inventory works. Much like Mauritter you cut little boxes up that take up variable amounts of space. To use a piece of equipment you roll d6s as labeled by the equipment in conjunction with a Stat (For instance a piece of equipment that says 4(T) / 3(E) means you can either Roll 4 d6 and use Tactical as your Stat or 3d6 and use Espionage as your Stat - This way different Stats can excel more with different gear). Note that you can roll UP TO this amount of dice (for reasons you'll understand in a bit). Every d6 that is OVER your Stat's Rank is counted as a success! 1s cause Penalties, often incurring Stress and sometimes Alert (which we'll get to later). Meaning the more dice you roll the more risk you're taking. This was largely inspired by my work on Burnout Reaper.

Additionally these items have usage pips that tick down. Unlike Mausritter these pips tick down as a more direct result of usage (Namely any time you Roll a 6 on your Dice - Though I'm changing this a bit for guns, which we'll get to later). In this way with a lot of rolls you're looking to hit a sweet spot, not too high and not too low. That sweet spot also gets bigger the better your Stat Rank is. Why d6s you ask? Mostly because they're common, but I am considering moving to a d12 styled system so that there's more room for those Stats to progress. But also oof d12s are hard to come by.

Each action you take (ex; making a roll, using a healing item, reorganizing inventory) in a Zone may have a different consequence. Maybe it's a random chance of getting spotted and the Alert level going up. Maybe it's a boss fight, where every 3 Actions the boss will do a random Action (say between hitting all Players for 3 Stress with a flame Attack, hitting one player for 5 stress or trying to retreat). Meaning players are always up against the clock in some capacity. (And also that GMs generally don't have to roll - This may change eventually though).

When you get new items it's always a game of Tetris to see where you want to fit them in. In the next iteration a big component is where you store your gear, as the deeper down on the list a piece of gear is, the harder it will be to switch to mid-encounter without using a full action (my current thinking is you'll roll a d6 with an increasingly higher chance of taking stress when you switch to it without having to expend an action).

On top of this, each inventory item comes with "Tags" - These are universal symbols that help keep some consistency between the items and allow designing encounters to be a bit more intuitive. Maybe you're fighting a plant monster that takes double damage from Volatile Tagged items. Or maybe you're in fighting a powerful Psychic who can repress all Psychic Tagged items. Presently the main tags are as follows and they're incredibly subject to change and expansion:

• Lethal: These items do lethal damage per success rolled. Because the Lethal vs Non-Lethal struggle is something I'd really like to play with here.
• Heal Stress: These items allow you to Heal Stress per usage you consume. Pretty simple. Herbs, Rations, First Aid Spray, Health Potions, etx.
• Doesn't Alert: These are silent weapons that won't cause Alert when you roll 1s. Silencers and swords are good examples.
• Ignore Armor: Some enemies can soak damage via Armor and these items are built to ignore that! Frag Grenades, Rocket Launchers and even some Melee Weapons get this Tag.
• Non-Lethal: Yeah this one is self explanatory, like lethal but non-lethal. Sleep gas, sleep darts, clubs. Also leaves some fun possibility space for guards get back up if the players are taking too many actions.
• Absorb Stress: These are items that can absorb Stress per usage you consume. Pretty handy to not have to spend a whole action... If you're willing to wear the heavy armor or carry around a riot shield. 
• Volatile: Anything that blows up or sets fires. Flamethrowers, fire ball spells, grenades launchers, gas tanks, etx.
• Electric: The zippy zappies. Stun guns, rail guns, power fists, even some sensitive electronics that might get fried by anything that attacks Electric Tagged items.
• Psychic: The uncanny, even the magical. Psionic headbands, haunted puppets, ghost warding candles, ancient spell books and blessed cameras.
• Biologic: All that good good RE Stuff. From bioweapons to plant matter, pets to symbiotes.

Things that aren't currently covered under items include things like descriptions or ranges. I'm not sure how or if I'm going to implement either of these features but they're definitely on my mind. Similarly I might expand the list of "Elements" from 4 to 6, but we'll take that one step at a time.

Mechanic 2 - Zones and Alert

Instead of Grid Paper, BOX Engine divides dungeons, missions and areas of interest into Zones. (For anyone who read my Monster Hunter blog post this'll sound very familiar). I'm not going to reiterate to much of how that works here, but yeah I'm essentially codifying Zones, Zone rules and Zone Procedures. However there's one big twist: Alert.

Let's take Shadow Moses. Our version of Shadow Moses is broken up into a handful of zones (The Helipad, The Garage, The Training Grounds, The Offices, The Library, The Boiler Room etx). Each Zone has its own unique challenges, and of course our base is full of a colorful cast of villains who will be roaming between these areas. Where things get Spicy is what a Alert level each Zone is in.

Every time a Player Rolls a 1 they'll up the Alert of that Zone by 1 (marked by a d6 next to the Zone). This represents the Guards slowly realizing the Players are there and their stealth slipping away. Footprints in the snow, a shot that hit a wall, must've been rats... unless? Hit 6 Alert in a Zone and you guessed it, the Encounter music starts playing and Players will have to solve things the loud way or retreat (causing the Zone's alert to reduce to 3). But there's an even bigger consequence to hitting 6 Alert - Now the base as a whole, Shadow Moses, gets its Alert raised by 1. All of a sudden the whole base knows something is up, and things may get trickier as a result. Maybe Ocelot is even looking for you now.

Mechanic 3 - Skill Checks (or Training Checks really)

Out of ammo? Guns not helping you search the library? Need to talk another operative into helping you? It's time to do some Training Checks. This is the "Everything Else" resolution system that works a bit like inventory. First off when making a Training Check (currently) you pay one Stress. No matter what. This makes Checks a bit riskier and hopefully will make players use them more sparingly when they could otherwise talk or roleplay the situation out without the need for dice. Next pick a training, and then roll that many d6s. Much like with inventory compare it to the Stat you chose to use and figure out your successes, failures and how many Alerts / Stresses you caused.

This system is in no small part inspired by Harmony Drive, which has you building a dice pool between Stats and Skills and holy shit, still probably my favorite SRD out there right now and I highly recommend. This works differently, but that game is still big brained and worth a peak (especially scatter because holy shit - Not really the mechanic for this kind of system, but it's great).

Mechanic 4 - ??? + Profit

Currently those are the majority of the game's completed and tested mechanics. Serviceable for a mission, but maybe not a campaign. I really want to make sure these core turn-by-turn systems sing as strongly as possible before moving forward though, that way whether you're running a oneshot or a long term campaign, BOX Engine is still satisfying.

Some big things I'm looking to do next are: Operative Instincts / Backgrounds. Hit Locations (maybe). Economy (Intel is the currency of this land, but money might also be a thing). Operative Unique Skills. Tons of other stuff I'm probably forgetting.

What's been made so far?

Currently there's Character Sheets, what you've read above and about four pages worth of items. However there's some catches; Firstly I'm definitely revamping all of this, and also all those rules are super subject to change. When I last left the project we were two Play Tests in (I'd essentially run half-remembered versions of Spencer Mansion and the Shadow Moses mission to great success! ... Kind of. The game felt a little too easy and resources a little too plentiful. Another big issue is that character progression felt like it'd already capped out at Character Creation which is kinda lame).

Firstly to address resources being to plentiful, I think I'm going to add a symbol for resources that mark usage for every action you roll with them, regardless of result (they won't suffer the 6 penalty though). This way firing guns (which are very effective) will constantly drain ammo, no rolls to save you there. This also adds the opportunity to make ammunition a more prevalent part of the game, as carrying ammo and reloading (eg erasing usages) now become far more tactile. ((As an aside I've been running a Cyberpunk 2020 and let me tell you, ammo in that game feels like a chore to track, so I want to avoid that at all costs and make ammo satisfying if stressful)). However I'd still like some degree of Gun Jam / Weapon Degradation... Things to note for later. 

Next is character sheets: Initially character sheets were going to be half-sheets for a few reasons; One it keeps design minimalist, which I suspect is why Mausritter did it. It also saves on how much printing the GM needs to do (because hot dang they already need to do an awful lot of printing). But more than that the core concept with the half sheets (originally) was so that these half sheets themselves could work like movable item cards. This way characters could "Slot" onto vehicles, power armor frames, etc.

 An early concept of character sheets "slotting" onto vehicles (and yes that's what most of my concepts look like before they get into Affinity Publisher)

However it quickly became apparent that there wasn't quite enough there there for just a mission. I want to add a little more spice to these characters. Backgrounds, struggles, fears, weaknesses, backgrounds, illness, etx. A big one that I'm really considering is limb based damage (probably due to the Cyberpunk brain), which is certainly more Never Dead (2012) than Devil May Cry, but could be interesting nonetheless. Something about being able to take aimed shots at your opponents feels... right. Especially when you're dealing with undead or guards with helmets Also room for Perks, unique Trainings, more to make characters feel distinct.

Speaking of distinct, I feel like I'll close this out with my current design quandry, and maybe some of you have some ideas:

To d6 or d12

This one's a heartbreaker. d6s are SO ubiquitous and they're SO nice to roll. There's a reason I have a lot of games that exclusively use d6. But it's got its issues. Namely when it comes to character progression. Currently in Box Engine a Character can be Ranks 1-5, with 1 being a Solid Snake and a 5 being a Johnny in MGS1. Assuming Characters start at a 2 or 3, there's not a whole lot of room for progression. Alternatively assuming characters start at a 4 or 5, oof you should probably use another Stat. Part of that is the System's design for sure, it's punishing. And the d6 is great for punishing because there's a juicy 1 in 6 chance to cause Alert/Stress and a 1 in 6 chance to break your items.

But the d12, that glorious, chonky beautiful math rock the d12. It has solid merit because 1s and 2s could cause stress, while 11s and 12s cause usage without changing the math. Meanwhile you'd really get some variance in characters with ranks varying from 1-11. So actually maybe that's what I'm leaning towards? But they're very hard to get in large quantitates. But hey the PS1 had a lifespan of 12 years so yknow... maybe...

d8s and d10s are also options but neither of those feel right. So I'm curious as to all of your thoughts on this! 

Anyways that's the gist of where BOX Engine is today, and I'm really really excited to share more when it's ready. If you're interested in seeing everything that was available for BOX Engine's early Alpha you can find it all right here! Feel free to reach out, leave a comment or shoot me a DM with any questions or ideas~