I'm designing a small project mostly for me and my friends, it's a sci-fi RPG and I already have the lore and some of the mechanics down (I'll post the lore) a lot of the mechanics I've based off the Dark Heresy d10/d% mechanics; Especially, and I'm worried about how much I've taken from this, the combat, which is all the turn based, 1d10+X schtick, I'm wondering, in that regard if there are any similar mechanics I should be looking into to differ it from its protogene, especially with them being so litigation-happy.
Lore time!
Humans built machines to fight their wars for them, sparking an arms race between rival nations. These machines were programmed with the primary function of 'Victory over the enemy.' and eventually let loose with major tactical decisions.
This conflict expanded, the machines realising that it'd be a tactical advantage to secure resources off world, and eventually extra-solar, different factions of robots moving further and further afield, ensuring their tactical advantage was always one step higher than their rivals.
As time passed these original factions lost the reasons behind their hostilities, began to provoke new hostilities and new factions as they spread, alien races found themselves unwillingly sucked into this war as prime tactical advantage, whilst all this continued the older machines began to succumb to the horrors and wonders of program decay.
As they aged, the original machines found their core programming decay, adding elements as the circumstances came to necessitate them, removing those that lacked functionality. From these flaws and quirks these machines developed cultural consciousness, abstract ideas and morality, or worse, loss of restraint, logic and understanding, a total collapse of sanity in place of utter nihilistic hostility.
It is now a robot galaxy, a collection of distant worlds with each a different experience of the machines, some who have been ruled over with an iron fist for centuries by a single, merciless unit, others yet freely ruled by a native population, merely defended by a small cadre of warriors and then there are those with a burning resentment for the machines, who will hunt them down wherever they make home.
The players take the roles of a machine within a group, an assortment of differing minds and experiences, charged with either defending the moral connections they have developed over time, or securing the one nebulous desire: 'Victory over the enemy.'.
I'm looking to give the feeling of stranger in a strange land/wandering heroes (not Murderhobos!) in a universe doomed by the actions of the players own race[?] Inspired by the ABC Warriors and Samurai Jack, primarily. Tell me what ye think.
