Universe

designed by John H. Butterfield

1981, Simulations Publications, Inc.

In the RPG Universe by the sadly defunct SPI company, there was a unique feature on a character's record sheet, the Environ Skill Display.

When a character has to perform a skill related to the great outdoors (e.g., trailing a desperado) the roll is modifed by the appropriate value from the Environ Skill Display. For example, if one's hero was attempting to trail somebody through Mountains with Light Vegetation, the table says there is a roll modifier of -1.

But the game design gem is in how the display is filled out. When a character is designed, his home environ is selected. In the display above, the character's home environ is Flat Jungle.

The character's environ skill (4) is placed in the home environ box. It is reduced by one, and placed in the boxes adjacent to their home environ box. It is reduced by one again and placed in the boxes adjacent to those boxes. The process is repeated until all the boxes are filled.

To make this work, the arrangement of environs on the grid is critical. SPI is to be congratuated for developing this.

Of course, this is not the only possible arrangement. And this can be adapted to other uses beside enviromental skills.