Grumps totally original game system.

Every player species is built on 12 RP. Advantages cost points; drawbacks refund them.

• Reading the numbers: values assume a flat-modifier system (each point = +1, like your stats) and a 30 ft base move. Speeds and sense ranges are in ft, armor is flat damage reduction, and damage handling is ×½ (Resist) / ×0 (Immune) / ×2 (Vulnerable). Retune freely for your table.
• Refunds are unlimited. There's no cap — the more you give up, the more exotic power you can afford. Aspect count is uncapped too; only net RP is limited.
• Resilience escalates. One resistance costs 2 and one immunity costs 4, but they get dearer the more you own. Order everything you have taken from dearest to cheapest: the first costs face value, the second double, the third triple, and so on. One resistance and one immunity together is 4 + (2×2) = 8. Three immunities is 24. A body that shrugs off everything is not something you can buy at any price worth paying. Conditions are narrower and join the same ladder at 1 and 3, and anything your temperature band grants is free and sits outside the reckoning entirely. Vulnerabilities are refunds: they pay flat, always, and never escalate.
• Size multiplies health. Each size above Medium adds another half of normal — Large ×1.5, Huge ×2, Gargantuan ×2.5, Colossal ×3. Below Medium each step keeps three quarters of the one above: Small ×0.75, Tiny ×0.56, Minuscule ×0.42. It multiplies whatever your health rules produce rather than replacing them.
• Size sets a free floor for Strength and Constitution. Each size starts those two at a value that costs nothing — 10 and 10 for Medium, 15 and 14 for Colossal, 2 and 6 for Minuscule. You pay only for what you buy above the floor and are refunded only for dropping below it, so a small body no longer gets paid twice for a weakness its own size already imposed. Both are capped by size as well.
• Stats below 5 hit diminishing returns. Those points refund only 2, then 1 RP each — dumping a stat to the floor stops paying.
• Heat & Cold lock to your Temperature band. Pick a band and the matching resistance and opposite vulnerability fill in automatically — no double-paying.
• Every weakness pays its full value, however many you take. There is no sliding scale and no cap — if it says −3, you get 3, and the sixteenth drawback pays exactly like the first. Lowering a stat is a separate matter with its own diminishing returns built into the attribute costs, and the two are never stacked on top of each other. A sheet piled high with misery is a conversation to have with your GM, not something the ledger quietly taxes.
• Production is priced per product. A body that makes something useful is an asset and a target. Yield scales the way glands do — letting it run to a trace refunds 1 RP per product, industrial output costs 6 each — and what the substance actually is lives in the free descriptors, where nothing stops it being a sweet carbonated fluid.
• Gland development is priced per utility. Letting your biological utilities wither refunds 1 RP each; doubling them costs 2 RP each; running them at ×4 costs 5 RP each. The more utilities you carry, the more each of those decisions is worth.
• Environmental comfort escalates. Your first comfortable biome is free — that’s home. Each one after costs more (+1, +2, +3, then +4 each), because being at ease everywhere is its own kind of power.
• Decline is priced by when it lands. A condition that arrives at 60 refunds a quarter of its value; one you already have refunds all of it. A minor late-onset condition can round to 0 — that’s the system telling you it won’t come up in play.
• Triggered aspects cost less than always-on ones. A form you can only wear sometimes is priced below the permanent version, and an unreliable trigger refunds points on top of that. Duration scales it further — a one-round change costs half, one that holds indefinitely costs half again as much.
• These numbers are a first draft. They’re deliberately generous — if a value feels strong at your table, change it. Healing rate, damage threshold, and the Exotic tier are the fastest dials to turn.
• GM-gated aspects are flagged in the summary. Clear them with your table before play. Temperatures are in °F.

• Seeded. The same seed always produces the same world. Share the number and everyone at the table gets an identical survey.
• Species fit their world. Natives inherit the world's temperature band, breathe its atmosphere, and are comfortable in its actual biomes — all using the same aspect vocabulary as the xenotype compiler.
• Hostility drives temperament, territoriality, natural weapons and how the locals receive outsiders. Technology drives what they have built, whether they are spacefaring, and what they can offer or refuse.
• Relations are derived, not rolled — shared biomes and food sources push species into conflict, complementary niches and shared senses pull them together.
• Export to xenotype copies the natives in the species compiler's library format. Paste into its Library tab to open, cost and edit them. They are NPC species, so some will exceed the 12 RP player budget — the compiler will tell you by how much.

There is no single point budget. A vehicle is limited by physics and space instead, and four things have to balance:

• Scale. The catalogue is written for a human-sized crew. Pick a different scale and mass, hold and cost all move with it — steeply, because volume follows the cube of length. Speed does not change: thrust scales with the mass it is pushing.
• Space. Every part has a footprint in grid cells and must fit on a deck without overlapping. That is the real constraint — you run out of room long before you run out of ideas.
• Power. Generators supply it, everything else draws it. Finish in deficit and the systems you fitted do not run.
• Endurance. Supply is not the same as reserve. A generator runs while it has fuel; a battery or capacitor runs until it is flat and then needs hours to refill. Anything burning fuel needs a bunker to burn it from, and the sheet reports how long you last and how far that gets you. Solar, geothermal, muscle and beast power run indefinitely, which is why they never quite go out of fashion.
• Thrust against mass. Speed is 20 × thrust ÷ mass in each medium. Bolt on more armour and you slow down; that trade is the whole game.
• Crew. Some parts need an operator. If required crew exceeds the berths and seats aboard, something goes unmanned.

Three more dials sit on top of that:

• Material multiplies the whole frame. Hull, structure and armour all scale with what they're made of — salvage plate is a quarter heavier and half the price, metamaterial weave is under half the mass at seven and a half times the cost. Lighter material buys speed from the engine you already have.
• Prices are in credits, with upkeep per month. A wheel is a few thousand; a fusion torch is thirty; a fold drive is close to three hundred thousand. Upkeep is what it costs to keep running, and it adds up faster than crews expect.
• Availability is its own constraint. Parts are tagged common, restricted, military, black market or experimental. The grid will let you fit anything — whether your character can get one is between you and the GM.

Placement rules the grid enforces for you: parts marked edge must touch the outer hull, running gear must sit on the lowest deck, masts and sails on the top deck, and a multi-deck vehicle needs a stairwell or elevator at the same cell on both decks to connect them.

Numbers are a first draft, deliberately generous, and meant to be retuned at your table.

• Frame sets the pattern — how big it is, how many hands, where it is worn, and the baseline numbers everything else scales.
• Mechanism is how it works, and it decides the damage type. A rifle frame with a laser emitter deals Heat; with a gauss coil it deals Piercing with far more penetration. Mechanisms also set the minimum tech level.
• Material multiplies weight and cost across the whole item, and some materials carry their own bonuses — ceramic resists Heat, crystalline matrix cuts deeper, void alloy turns aside Cosmic damage.
• Components are the fine tuning: barrel, feed, furniture, optics and finish on a gun; head, grip, balance and coating on a blade; coverage, liner, sealing, assist and surface on armour.
• Craftsmanship runs from improvised to prototype, shifting every number by −2 to +3 and the price by ×0.3 to ×9.
• Anything above your campaign tech level is locked out, and the highest tech level among your choices is what the finished item requires.

Designed items go to the locker, then into a loadout, where carry capacity comes from your species' Strength × 10 lb × its size multiplier — and the defence table folds in your species' own resistances.

• Difficulty buys a budget. Threat = the difficulty's value × your party size. The generator spends that budget on enemies, so a Deadly encounter for two is a very different shape from a Deadly encounter for six.
• Each enemy has a threat cost drawn from what it actually is: a species' Race Point total, the damage and armour of the gear it carries, and whether it has a vehicle. Expensive enemies come in ones and twos; cheap ones come in swarms.
• It uses what you have built. Species come from your library, weapons and armour from your equipment locker, vehicles from the foundry, terrain and hazards from the current world. Anything missing gets generated to match.
• Rewards scale with what you beat — credits, salvageable gear, raw material by weight, research credit toward an undeveloped aspect, and, if the opposition produces something, doses of it.
• Seeded. The same seed gives the same encounter, so you can prep one and hand the number to whoever is running it.

• The map is real distance. Systems sit at coordinates and routes have length in light years. Every FTL method crosses that distance differently — a jump drive hops 8 ly at a time and needs a day to recover, a fold drive arrives instantly and then recalibrates for a week, and a relativistic torch gets there eventually while everyone you left gets older.
• Settlements have prices. What a place produces is cheap there and what it lacks is dear. A cargo run is the difference between two settlements, minus what the crossing costs you.
• Factions hold systems. Each has a goal, a method and an attitude to outsiders, and their relations with each other are derived from overlapping holdings and opposed methods rather than rolled.
• The ledger is monthly. Vehicle upkeep, crew wages and berths on one side; runs, contracts and holdings on the other. It is the number that decides whether the campaign has a clock.

• Specimens have layered properties. Each finding sits at a depth (0 surface to 5 fundamental) and in a domain — physical, chemical, biological, technological or exotic. Nothing is revealed until a method reaches both.
• Methods reach differently. Naked-eye inspection reads depth 0 in any domain. An optical microscope reaches depth 2, but only physical and biological. Spectroscopy reaches depth 3 chemically and tells you nothing about structure. Which is why the same stone gives different answers to different labs.
• Methods are gated by tech level, and several destroy part of the sample. As the campaign tech level rises, new ways of looking become available — and old specimens are worth revisiting.
• The check is Intelligence plus skill. Your modifier is (INT − 10) + twice your rank in the relevant skill + the method's own bonus, against a target set by the depth you are reaching for. The roll here is a placeholder d20 — swap in your own core and the numbers carry straight over.
• Findings become insight toward research topics, and a completed topic unlocks real mechanisms, materials and components in the equipment designer. Research is how you stop paying credits to know things.