Bismark
Mar 30th, '06, 06:34 PM
The UK National Student Roleplaying Championships are taking place in Sheffield on the 8th and 9th of April and I have been roped into GMing a Star HERO game (like I did at the same event 2 years ago).
I will be debuting yet another way of handing firearms damage, whereby weapons get points of Piercing against armour that in theory should not be able to stop the bullet inside its effective range (this includes archaic armours).
This allows me to have 3 DEF leather and 3 DEF ballistic cloth, but guess which one stops the 9mm bullet (which gets 3 points of Piercing against archaic non-rigid and/or non-metal armours within effective range)?
This should reduce the 'buckets o'dice' I was rolling last time where I used the 'lots of DEF and frightening weapon damage' trick instead (still only one PC got injured). Combined with the Impairing and Disabling rules, I should be abble to keep the players suitably respectful of nasty weapons while not going OTT. It also works better for fine weapon effect tweaking purposes, AP and Reduced Pen being rather blunt instruments for the job.
For anyone who's interested, this is the vague outline of the game setup so far:
<<
Sci-Fi Sub-genre: Cross between Babylon 5 and Cyberpunk
Game system: HERO 5th edn [tweaked, of course]
Types of characters available (all humans apart from the ship's engineer):
1. 'Corporate Samurai'-type [aka 'The Combat Monster'] - with mono-edged katana and a 2 metre-long railgun(!)
2. Ship's pilot [a fusion of Lord Flashheart (from 'Blackadder Goes Forth') and Ace Rimmer (from 'Red Dwarf')]
3. Xenoarchaeologist [complete with tanglewhip and wide-brimmed hat…]
4. Federal Agent/Cop [seriously badass]
5. Ship's engineer [an Uplifted dromaeosaur - i.e. 'raptor' - with nice blue and gold plumage (awww! cute!)]
6. Deacon of the Church of the Holy Electron [worships technology, cybered up to the gills, has alien artifact surgically implanted in his brain - the fact that no-one knows what it does is of course of no concern to him whatsoever…]
7-8. Scarily competent married couple [one engineer, one medic]
9. Ex-marine with an unhealthy interest in WMDs [and a biowar lab - in a suitcase…]
>>
Owing to the nature of lasers as weapons (promised 'real soon now' ever since I was a kid), the only lasers the PCs are using are laser sights, blinding lasers and lasers to ionise a path through the atmosphere so an electric shock can be sent down it(the 'wireless taser').
Most of the weapons will be slugthrowers and maybe the occasional 'screamer' (nasty sonic thingy).
There will be smuggling of highty dubious items/substances involved [I think], amongst other things (I am building in as many extra plot hooks and twists as possible so as to give the party plenty to do).
The 'pre-convention panic' I am having is getting all the NPCs, if not statted out, then at least named, with their purposes in the plot written up as well, plus getting the party's equipment written up in time (although the game is a week away, it needs to be playtested very soon, and Real Life [TM] is getting in the way very effectively at the moment :( ).
Once again I will have a gaming group whose average age is less than that of the DICE I use for all my 3D6 rolls… :eek:
Wish me luck!
I will be debuting yet another way of handing firearms damage, whereby weapons get points of Piercing against armour that in theory should not be able to stop the bullet inside its effective range (this includes archaic armours).
This allows me to have 3 DEF leather and 3 DEF ballistic cloth, but guess which one stops the 9mm bullet (which gets 3 points of Piercing against archaic non-rigid and/or non-metal armours within effective range)?
This should reduce the 'buckets o'dice' I was rolling last time where I used the 'lots of DEF and frightening weapon damage' trick instead (still only one PC got injured). Combined with the Impairing and Disabling rules, I should be abble to keep the players suitably respectful of nasty weapons while not going OTT. It also works better for fine weapon effect tweaking purposes, AP and Reduced Pen being rather blunt instruments for the job.
For anyone who's interested, this is the vague outline of the game setup so far:
<<
Sci-Fi Sub-genre: Cross between Babylon 5 and Cyberpunk
Game system: HERO 5th edn [tweaked, of course]
Types of characters available (all humans apart from the ship's engineer):
1. 'Corporate Samurai'-type [aka 'The Combat Monster'] - with mono-edged katana and a 2 metre-long railgun(!)
2. Ship's pilot [a fusion of Lord Flashheart (from 'Blackadder Goes Forth') and Ace Rimmer (from 'Red Dwarf')]
3. Xenoarchaeologist [complete with tanglewhip and wide-brimmed hat…]
4. Federal Agent/Cop [seriously badass]
5. Ship's engineer [an Uplifted dromaeosaur - i.e. 'raptor' - with nice blue and gold plumage (awww! cute!)]
6. Deacon of the Church of the Holy Electron [worships technology, cybered up to the gills, has alien artifact surgically implanted in his brain - the fact that no-one knows what it does is of course of no concern to him whatsoever…]
7-8. Scarily competent married couple [one engineer, one medic]
9. Ex-marine with an unhealthy interest in WMDs [and a biowar lab - in a suitcase…]
>>
Owing to the nature of lasers as weapons (promised 'real soon now' ever since I was a kid), the only lasers the PCs are using are laser sights, blinding lasers and lasers to ionise a path through the atmosphere so an electric shock can be sent down it(the 'wireless taser').
Most of the weapons will be slugthrowers and maybe the occasional 'screamer' (nasty sonic thingy).
There will be smuggling of highty dubious items/substances involved [I think], amongst other things (I am building in as many extra plot hooks and twists as possible so as to give the party plenty to do).
The 'pre-convention panic' I am having is getting all the NPCs, if not statted out, then at least named, with their purposes in the plot written up as well, plus getting the party's equipment written up in time (although the game is a week away, it needs to be playtested very soon, and Real Life [TM] is getting in the way very effectively at the moment :( ).
Once again I will have a gaming group whose average age is less than that of the DICE I use for all my 3D6 rolls… :eek:
Wish me luck!