As you attempting to survive your life in Avoss and its surrounds you will come across numerous aspects of the world that require some sort of game mechanic involvement. Their functions are listed here.
Travel
While Avoss is the story of the town of the same name, its people will wander far and be threatened by dangers that are not always next door. It is in search of these dangers and in search of new riches that your characters may travel overland to new regions. Surrounding Avoss are numerous locations such as Courtyards, Upper Station and Gorsky. As the winds blow, shifting radioactive winds and dangers block off certain routes, locations that may have been accessible will be impossible to reach and new places will be accessible.
Certain areas of the game will be ‘gated’ and only accessible using overland travel. These gates enable the Avoss team to represent the larger world in a smaller space.
Near these gates will be travel hubs, out-of-character marquees where a storyteller can detail your journey and allows you to wait out of character during your travel time.
Travel time varies on the circumstance and the distance your characters will be travelling but storytellers will take certain items (such as anti-radiation suits or vehicles), skills (such as traveller or golden child) or circumstances (running for your life) into account when calculating your travel. But other factors such as group size or poor terrain may extend this time.
Finding out what areas are accessible is a useful skill and there are numerous methods to predict and explore the wasteland present in the world. But be careful being trapped behind when the winds shift could be a death sentence.
Environmental Dangers
Environmental Dangers reflect extreme radiation, spilled chemicals or other dangers present in an area. These will be marked with tape either around the dangerous object or with signs and strung out tape or string to represent where and how bad the danger is. Danger is present in three severities;
- Level 1 – Green. This danger is more unsettling than actually dangerous. But it’s still pretty dangerous. For every ten seconds in this space your character loses one cool. Every minute they lose one hitpoint.
- Level 2 – Yellow. Ok this is getting messed up. Your character loses one cool and one hitpoint every ten seconds in this space or touching this object.
- Level 3 – Orange. This is deadly. If your character spends more than 30 seconds in this space they are reduced to 0 Hitpoints and are considered bleeding out.
It is important to reiterate that all characters with the ‘Golden Child’ skill are immune to level 1 and 2 environmental dangers.
Colours may change depending on practicality.
Eating and Drinking
Food is supplied for players in Avoss. This represents various meals which have gone through the required decontamination of the Tankers industrial kitchen. Meal times are early in the morning and early in the night, Between these times the characters making use of cooking skills will place certain supplies in the cooking pot to create meals to feed the whole colony.
Depending on what is placed in the pot and how many people have worked on it the meal will affect how many meals are created at each meal time. Also if certain meals are unsafe for consumption.
If your character does not eat it is likely they will lose some cool. Missing more than one meal proceeds as follows; (these effects are accumulative).
| Meals Missed | Effect |
| 1 | Lose 1 Cool |
| 2 | Lose access to specialist skills |
| 3 | Lose 1 cool every hour. |
| 4 | Lose 1 hitpoint every hour. |
| 5 | Expire. |
These effects dissipate upon eating a meal. However damage sustained remains until treated.
It is important to note that meals will be supplied to everyone out-of-character. However if your character is not given an in character meal you will be asked to eat it in an out-of-character meal.
While drinking water is always assumed to be safe and will not include game effects, drinking alcohol is not the same. Alcohol will be present in game and has the effect of either giving or taking cool from your character.
Alcohol
containers will have a deck of cards with them which is tailored for the
quality of the alcohol. After drinking your drink draw a random card. 2 Cool is lost if the card is a 2, 1 Cool
lost if it is a 3-6, no effect for 7-9, 1 Cool gain 10-King and 2 Cool gained
with an Ace. In general low quality alcohol
will have a roughly 33% chance of loss, no effect and gain and the very best
alcohols will have up to 75% chance of Cool gain.
A character will generally begin to become drunk if they drink as many drinks
as half their maximum hitpoints and become increasingly intoxicated until they
pass out at double that level.
The Barfly skill treats and 2-6 cards as 7-9 and don’t lose cool. They can also drink twice as many drinks before becoming drunk or passing out.
Out-of-character Alcohol is permitted at game (within reason), however in-character alcoholic drinks are not required to be out-of-character alcoholic.
Supplies
Throughout AVOSS your character will come across supplies available to be scavenged and utilised in your attempts to survive. Any game items that may be moved and used will be marked obviously with red paint. When in doubt, ask a storyteller.
Pat Down
For
a cost of 1 Cool a character may declare ‘pat down’ to another character. The
victim now has two choices;
-Spend 2 cool and announce ‘clean’
or
-Declare all their inventory.
If the character has the pat down skill, the victim may only declare their inventory. They should decalre “pat down with skill.”
Weapons ,Armour and gear Maintenance
The world after the apocalypse is a dirty one. Weapons, armour and firearms are likely to break down and jam even without use.
To replicate this, all weapons and armour in Avoss must be repaired or cleaned at least once per day. If they are not, the next day they will cease to function. If they are not repaired that day, they will be destroyed the day after.
In addition armour must be repaired after every combat in which it is used, in essence resetting the clock after each combat.
It
takes at least 15 minutes to maintain or repair a firearm or a set of
armour. If the character has a skill
appropriate to the task it takes 5 minutes less. If using a cleaning kit for a gun or other
appropriate specialised tools it takes 5 minutes less again, for a minimum time
of 5 minutes.
High tech equipment, which is beyond the basic construction
techniques still available also needs to be maintained and repaired. Electrical components, large machines,
computers, and other such things require Engineering to maintain. Maintenance is not regular but should be
employed intermittently to encourage role play interaction and storytellers may
enforce it intermittently at times to represent random dysfunctions.
Maintenance and repair of major infrastructure may require access to detailed
manuals, spare parts or special tools.
They always require either 2 people with the General Engineering skill
(working either together or in sequence) or a single Specialist Engineer.
If it is noticed that someone is regularly maintaining their equipment it is
generally less likely that it will break down and require major parts or other
difficult to correct issues.