Every RPG is interesting, but some concepts are so interesting that I have to ask where they came from. DIESEL is a sci-fi RPG about humans modified to run on diesel fuel. With a Kickstarter running, I had to ask Steven Pankotai about his game and where this idea came from.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): Thank you for talking with me about this project, what is DIESEL?
STEVEN PANKOTAI (STEVEN): DIESEL is a new tabletop roleplaying game that combines cinematic action with an emotional core. It’s designed to provide short, custom, and impactful gameplay experiences.
EGG: I read the pitch and I gotta ask where the idea of humans modified to run on diesel fuel came from? And why diesel?
STEVEN: Ha, this is actually kind of a funny story. I was chatting with some other TTRPG creators on Discord and typo’d the 5e spell dispel magic as diesel magic. That idea stuck with me, this image of someone pouring fuel into themselves and using it to conjure magic. The idea gestated in several forms for months, including other games and short stories, before finally crystallizing as DIESEL today!
EGG: While the game focuses on Diesels, what kinds of special enemies, monsters, aliens, etc. do the PCs face off against?
STEVEN: What’s neat about DIESEL is it supports basically any kind of game you want to play. Instead of creating custom enemies, we provided basic stats that can be applied to anything. You have Minion, Lieutenant, and Boss stats and you can make whatever enemy you want out of those. The defined creatures in the world of DIESEL are all humans, but there is a lot of lore flexibility and possibilities to bring in monsters, aliens, giant mechas, whatever!
Overall, DIESEL is designed as ‘guiderails’ more than a detailed setting. What’s important is the story of the player characters: if they’re alien fighters, the story’s about aliens! If they’re down-on-their-luck criminals, it’s a One Big Heist story! The setting we’ve created includes locations, factions, and NPCs to create a grounded base for all the characters to share, but the world is intentionally designed to be flexible enough for your story to happen.
EGG: Would you describe this game as sci-fi? Cyberpunk? Something else?
STEVEN: It, annoyingly, defies a lot of genre descriptions! The closest I’ve landed on is ‘sci-fi western with cyberpunk themes.’ A lot of cyberpunk stuff is certainly in the game, like body modifications and oppressive corporate overlords, but it’s also about that Firefly feeling of eking out a living on the edges of society, and that Mad Max excitement of scrapping in a wasteland for rare resources.
EGG: When and where is this game set?
STEVEN: DIESEL’s setting is Edge, a region at the end of reality. In this universe, the dimensional wall doesn’t surround reality, but intersects it. From Edge you can simply walk out of reality into a region called the Frontier, the space between universes. This is how the game becomes so flexible—in the Frontier, crystals known as Possibility form. Literally crystallized reality, Possibility can be used to make impossible things real. Like Diesels! People go out into the Frontier to mine Possibility, all working for the evil Possibilitus Corporation. Since the Frontier is a place where anything can happen, the options are limitless.
A notable event was the Anything War, an interdimensional conflict around thirty years ago. Most Diesels were created during this event, but almost nobody remembers what actually happened. Was Edge invaded by aliens? Mirror universe doppelgangers? Was it all a smokescreen by the Possibilitus Corporation to gain control? The entire time period is a hazy, dimensionally-warped blur, which gives GMs the ultimate freedom to shape character histories.
EGG: Let’s jump over to the mechanics, what can you tell us about the game’s engine?
STEVEN: Simplicity is king. The DIESEL Engine is designed to be smooth, using a d6 pool system with very easy-to-understand rules. If you want to do something, roll dice equal to your relevant base stat (like Dexterity for lockpicking), then add any bonus dice granted by your mods. On every die, a 4, 5, or 6 is a success. If your number of successes meets or beats the difficulty of that task, you succeed! That simple mechanic is how everything works, including combat. More difficult things simply adjusts the DC, so if you want to, say, backflip off a wall, launch yourself across the room, and stab an enemy sixty feet away, we don’t need to check rules for flipping, jumping, launching, stabbing… we say “alright, that sounds dope as hell, let’s do it!”
EGG: The game goes with the “rule of cool”, how does the engine promote that style of play?
STEVEN: We created a mechanic called Overclocking. With it, you can push your mods—and therefore yourself—beyond normal limits. That’s how my previous example is possible: Overclock your legs to launch further off the wall, Overclock your arm blade to stab with more force, etc. This is balanced out by the Malfunction system, which can cause errors with your mechanical parts. Overclocking has a higher chance of Malfunction, but Malfunctions don’t necessarily stop what you’re trying to do. It’s a system built for you to be able to stand heroically in the road and punch an oncoming car if you want to—doing so might break your machinery, but for that one big shot you’d be so damn cool.
I made a video that describes the basic concept, and if you want to try it yourself we’re just launching our Quick Play rules!
EGG: It’s an RPG with “DIE” in the title, are you planning special dices with the Kickstarter?
STEVEN: No 🙁 It’s been discussed! Since this is the first Kickstarter I’ve run, I wanted to keep it simple. Several of my team are Kickstarter veterans and if there’s enough interest to warrant more work in this area, I’m not saying no! Just not yet.
EGG: Beyond DIESEL, what else are you working on?
STEVEN: Oh, geez, so much. I just released a new adventure on the Dungeon Masters Guild, The Master of Pages. I’m also releasing in March the next entry in my Player Primer series, Player Primer: Calimshan and its accompanying adventure. At the end of the month, I’ll be releasing the Glitter Grimoire, a collection of funny-but-useful spells. Think “an ancient, super-powerful codex of magic by way of Lisa Frank.”
EGG: Thanks for talking with me. Where can fans find out more about you and your RPG?
STEVEN: I’m on twitter a lot, @stevenpankotai. The best place for DIESEL news is our website. To sign up to back DIESEL, visit the Kickstarter pre-launch page!
DIESEL from Steven Pankotai
“A tabletop roleplaying game designed to bring cinematic action to life alongside an emotional core.”
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