Extension Summary:

• Depends On: none
• Problem Solved–adds realism by defining how far apart things are in the game
• Mechanics Added–adds Scale and Increment tags
• What Changes–instead of distance, range, and scale being just vague descriptions the GM uses, there are exact numeric values for how far apart things are in the game, how far a sword can reach, a gun can fire, or a spaceship can fly.
• Complementary Extensions– Range Ability

The Distance Extension defines new tags for Scale and Increments that are used by dependent Extensions like Range Abilities. Think of Scale as categories of how far things are apart, from very close to very far. Increments are smaller subdivisions within each Scale. Distance is also used to define the size of squares or hexes on maps.

Nomenclature: Distances are written in the format of (Scale)-(Increment), like Short-1 meaning the first increment of the Short Scale, or Long-3 meaning the third increment of Long range.

A Distance Scale is like a range band in other game systems. They define the unit of measure, like meters, tens of meters, kilometers, astronomical units, etc.

The following Scales exist:

• Adjacent - half meter scale. The normal scale for melee and tactical combat maps.
• Short - meter scale. The normal scale for maps of locations or thrown weapons.
• Medium - tens of meters scale. The scale normally used for projectile weapons.
• Long - hundreds of meters scale. Normally used for ballistic weapons like rifles.
• Very Long - kilometers scale. Sometimes used for sniper rifles and artillery weapons.
• Geographical - tens of kilometers scale. Can be used for the sizes of terrain features.
• Regional - hundreds of kilometers scale. Can be used for national locations.
• Continental - thousands of kilometers scale. Can be used for large areas of a planet.
• Planetary - tens of thousands of kilometers scale. Can be used to circumnavigate a planet.
• Orbital - hundreds of thousands of kilometers scale. Similar to the scale of light seconds.
• Astronomical - hundreds of millions of kilometers scale, or Astronomical Units (AU).
• Interstellar - light year scale. For example, the nearest start to the sun is about 4 light years away.
• Galactic - one hundred thousand light year scale. For example the size of a galaxy.
• Intergalactic - million light year scale. For example the distance between galaxies.
• Planar - a fantasy scale of the distance between two dimensions or infinite planes of existence.

Range Increments multiply the Scales above into actual distances. The first increment in all other scales is always 0, and represents the scale distance itself, for example, Short Scale is measured in meters, so Short-0 is one meter, and Long-0 is a hundred meters. Increments use a geometric scale, meaning that each increment after 1 doubles the distance of the increment before it. So if Medium-2 is 20 meters, then Medium-3 is 40 meters, Medium -4 is 80 meters and so on. Adjacent Scale, which is used for melee combat, is an exception with nonstandard Increments for added realism. Increments are designed to be in the range of 0-5 usually, to lend themselves to other Extensions that use Build Points to buy Distance Increments, but it is possible to have Increments greater than 5 and Scales can overlap for this reason. Because this is a universal system meant to accommodate all game settings, some amount of realism has been sacrificed to develop an intuitive and playable game mechanic.