G.I. Joe Game Records

Game Records

E20 Core games will have several different kinds of player records to make use of during your gameplay. Records like “Benefits”, “Hang-Ups”, and “Influence” are records that help define your character’s traits and social behaviors.

Records like “Origins”, “Roles” / ”Role Focus”, “Skills”, are actively deciding your character’s essence bonus, movement modes, basic altmode details, and actions your character can take to interact with the world.

Records like “Perks” are unique abilities your character and NPCs will have to make them excel at what they do in the game. Some NPCs come with an additional record known as “Powers”. Be careful around these NPCs as they can do things most other NPCs cannot do.

Benefits

Everyone brings something unique to a team. Your Origin Benefit gives a Perk that represents an advantage inherent to your background. You may be able to take more than one benefit for your character, but doing say may also incur a “Hang-Up” that hinders your character in some way.

Hang-Ups

Just as Influences enrich the character’s backstory, so do Hang-Ups. Hang-Ups are flaws your character develops as part of their backstory, such as missed opportunities, known weaknesses, and areas your character struggles in. 

Influences

Each Influence gives your character an Influence Perk that benefits you when your Influences come into play. Each Influence also suggests personal characteristics that you can use as a basis of creating your character’s story and personality. A character can have up to three Influences at character creation and gets the benefits from the Influence Perks as well as the roleplay suggestions from these Influences. For every Influence after the first, the character must choose a Hang-Up.

Origin

Each character only benefits from a single Origin, chosen at character creation. Your character’s Origin benefits and Perks remain with them forever; they’re never replaced or changed like Influences can be. While it’s not unusual for Joes to have experience with multiple Origins, only one of those truly defines what shaped the character into being worthy of joining the G.I. Joes. 

Roles

A Joe’s role on the team defines how best they serve the team and the world in the fight against Cobra, and keeps them from getting in the way of the experts in the other fields

Skills

While a character’s Essence Abilities set potential power, their Skills and Specializations show the character’s ability to use that potential. In the Essence20 Roleplaying Game System, skills represent everything a character can do proficiently, as well as a few additional aspects of a character’s life.

Perks

At 4th, 8th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level, you get to choose a new General Perk. In order to gain and use a General Perk, you must meet all prerequisites. If at any point you no longer meet the prerequisites for one of your General Perks, you lose access to its benefits. You regain access as soon as you meet the prerequisites again. For example, Dodgy has Speed Essence 3 as a prerequisite. If your Speed is 3, and then you take 1 point of Speed Essence damage, you lose the benefits of Dodgy until you heal that Essence damage.

Powers

High level NPCs will have Powers that will amplify how they can fight and what they can do while in the field. But are considered separate from feats and have a limit to how many times they can be used within a scene.

Pets

Pets are like NPC records that can be added to the Combat Tracker and played the same way.

However, a Pet can have an “Owner” set to it. Once an owner is set to a pet, the pet’s stats will update to use the best possible stat between the owner or the pet.

For example, the Cobra pet R.A.W has a skill that uses Finesse and has a d2 rank. But the GI JOE set to its owner doesn’t have any Finesse score. Instead of getting a lower score, it’ll keep the d2 rank because it has a higher value than its owner. But if its owner had a higher value (let’s say a d8 rank), then the pet would also benefit from the d8 rank by working together with their owner.

Vehicles

Vehicles are like NPC records that can be added to the Combat Tracker and played in the same way.

However, a vehicle can have a “Pilot” set to it. Once a pilot is set to a vehicle, the stats will update with the Driver’s Stats if they have matching skills in that stat.

For example, the Armored Tank vehicle in the image shows the 90mm Twin Cannons (Targeting) have no die-roll associated with them without a pilot.

But when a Player (or NPC) is added to the “Pilot” section, the vehicle automatically updates to match that player’s/npc’s Targeting skill value.