Introducing the B+ System

A while ago Stock & Bull was featured in this article about tabletop and board game designers. The writer, Kyle of 21stcenturycardboard, was looking to interview people who developed their own original systems. We happily agreed and our own Sam Carter interviewed with Kyle to discuss Project: Powerpunk and why we created our game. The reason I bring up this old news is because we realized we were doing something not a lot of game developers apparently do; Instead of making a homebrew system based on a currently established one, like Dungeons and Dragons’ D20 System or White Wolf’s Storytelling System, we here at Stock & Bull set out to make our own original system for Project: Powerpunk. We made the B+ System. Why “B+”? Well, because it’s a passing grade.

The B+ System has been—and continues to be—meticulously designed to be modular so that players can play however they like at any level. There are some games that are simple from start to end, where you simply quest, loot, and move on and the difficulty only ramps up based on the stats of the NPCs and monsters that are faced. Other games offer a multitude of features that end up becoming ignored once players find “the right way to play” and stock up certain stats that guarantee victory in almost all situations. B+ aims to keep things engaging at any stage of play with versatility and scalability.

So what are the features of the B+ System? Well superpowers are certainly a major part of the system, especially Project: Powerpunk, but there is so much more. We wanted just about anything to be possible in our game so we put in the groundwork for and developed a number of different features and aspects to achieve that goal. We’ve worked on ways to create your own fighting style, made the professions you choose affect your character’s capabilities, built a fluid social combat system (which has been touched on here), and are trying to make sure players have the ability to craft almost anything. We want to do all these things and more so that players will always be able to look back at our game and find something new to enjoy. So keep tuning back here to learn more about B+ and please feel free to comment with any thoughts you have. We always want to know what the public is thinking because Project: Powerpunk is meant to be shared with everyone. Otherwise we’d have just kept it as our own private homebrew!

Chris
High Eldritch Scribe | Stock & Bull Entertainment