[Recruitment] Cthulhutech: The Borderlines of the World

[Marcao]

I am working on the background now, I should have it up later tonight.

Edit: Background added.

[Cynical Cat]

Give Marcao some time. Stating out his immediate family, including pets, in a new system can be tricky.

[frigidmagi]

We're allowed pets? Huh, maybe I should get a pet rat or something?

And posted at last! Boot=newbie. FNG will work to but is more of a Vietnam slang. Civie is a civilian.

[Marcao]

Give Marcao some time. Stating out his immediate family, including pets, in a new system can be tricky.

Its actually a lot of fun! But I don't feel comfortable enough to stat out anyone aside from Dovara in this setting. I know that I can come up with just about anything when I work with certain game masters, others are less keen to some of my more...interesting backgrounds.

"what do you mean that your father is the equivalent of michael andretti and your mother is the jenna jameson of the setting?!"

[EarthScorpion]

Nice concept, Marcao. That's approved as a character.

And with that, I'm closing the recruitment. 6 players is the maximum I'm willing to deal with.

About the changes to the damage system proposed by Hotfoot, I'm not so sure. With regards to the dice-rolling, the pbp games I've been in have had most of that handled on the GM's side, with rolls requested in the OOC thread, which removes the delay caused by the extra rolling because it's all done by one person.

Hybrid weapons: I have actually been thinking about it myself, but I have an alternative method for making them do more damage against Vitality targets. I'd prefer to say that the Hybrid weapon does the marked damage against Integrity targets, but (Damage +1) *2 against Vitality targets. So, for example, a Hybrid +2 Weapon would roll two extra dice when they hit an Integrity target, but 6 extra dice when they hit a vitality target. Yes, that does mean that those anti-mech guns are rolling 7 dice as a base when they hit a person, prior to adjustments. They are an anti-material rifle, after all.

General lethality: Framewerk is actually a pretty lethal system, all things considered. I don't want to push lethality too high, or there will be too many character deaths (which isn't much fun for anyone). When the lack of healing available to you is also taken into account, I think it's about right, with the exclusion of Hybrid weapons (see above). Now, if this were a Tager game, I'd consider it (as increased damage benefits them, as they have the regeneration while all their non-Dhohanoid foes do not.

The Katana issue: I feel that the example of the katana in the core is just a sample of any double handed weapon, and the officer's sword is a shorter, single handed one. (I also feel that, in Cthulhutech, anyone who's stupid enough to close to close combat while not being a) a monster, b) in powered armour against infantry, or c) a Close-combat focussed mecha/Engel in close quarters, deserves to be shot repeatedly, but that's neither here nor there.)

More generally, this is my first time running Cthulhutech, and I'd like to get a feel for how the rules play out in... uh, play before I start tinkering with them in any great way.

[Angelod]

Crap. Too slow. :( this setting looks pretty freakin sweet though.

[Hotfoot]

Nice concept, Marcao. That's approved as a character.

And with that, I'm closing the recruitment. 6 players is the maximum I'm willing to deal with.

About the changes to the damage system proposed by Hotfoot, I'm not so sure. With regards to the dice-rolling, the pbp games I've been in have had most of that handled on the GM's side, with rolls requested in the OOC thread, which removes the delay caused by the extra rolling because it's all done by one person.

I'll admit that part of it is from a very utilitarian "less is more" standpoint when it comes to rolling in RPGs. I've always been of the design philosophy that states that the less you have to roll for things, the better, as too much rolling ends up just being unnecessary complication. The problem I see here is as such: too little variation between weapons, thus little reason to choose some of the more expensive weapons. Case in point, why would I ever use a Heavy Pistol? I get the same damage out of a machine pistol, without the strength restrictions, and I get autofire damage bonuses on top of that.

When you use d10s for everything, it's hard to scale weapons appropriately, since adding a die means a potentially massive increase in damage. We could have d10 + number to help differentiate things further, but that adds in more math to the situation.

The system I'm proposing actually just boosts the individual damage from the weapons, while decreasing the damage from margin of success and autofire, the end result for most combat is actually going to be remarkably similar to the probability scales for combat now, but with a more sensible curve.

Hybrid weapons: I have actually been thinking about it myself, but I have an alternative method for making them do more damage against Vitality targets. I'd prefer to say that the Hybrid weapon does the marked damage against Integrity targets, but (Damage +1) *2 against Vitality targets. So, for example, a Hybrid +2 Weapon would roll two extra dice when they hit an Integrity target, but 6 extra dice when they hit a vitality target. Yes, that does mean that those anti-mech guns are rolling 7 dice as a base when they hit a person, prior to adjustments. They are an anti-material rifle, after all.

That could work as well. My personal preference has always been give the anti-tank weapons a negative to hit vitality scale targets, but make it so that if they do it, death is almost certain. A -5 to -10 to hit a vitality scale target with an integrity scale weapon should help even the playing field nicely.

General lethality: Framewerk is actually a pretty lethal system, all things considered. I don't want to push lethality too high, or there will be too many character deaths (which isn't much fun for anyone). When the lack of healing available to you is also taken into account, I think it's about right, with the exclusion of Hybrid weapons (see above). Now, if this were a Tager game, I'd consider it (as increased damage benefits them, as they have the regeneration while all their non-Dhohanoid foes do not.

More lethal than D&D, true, but I'm coming from systems like Silhouette, INTERLOCK/FUZION, and Dark Heresy, where combat is nasty, brutish, and short. You're right that it shouldn't be too high, and really I wasn't going for that much of a difference in general lethality, but rather in making sure that weapons that should dang well be lethal are. The measure I use is fairly simple, a grazing 9mm shot should be painful enough to distract you. A good 9mm shot should seriously hurt you, and so on. As it stands, most of the damage coming from Vitality Scale weapons seems to come from the margin of success bonus and autofire, while the power of the specific weapon seems largely glossed over.

Also, since I normalize both damage and armor, the outcomes of combat are a little more predictable, and that heavy sprectrashield armor won't crap out on you and give you three ones when you really need it. On the other hand, if your enemy gets a crit, you're still in trouble, so that's not an issue.

The Katana issue: I feel that the example of the katana in the core is just a sample of any double handed weapon, and the officer's sword is a shorter, single handed one. (I also feel that, in Cthulhutech, anyone who's stupid enough to close to close combat while not being a) a monster, b) in powered armour against infantry, or c) a Close-combat focussed mecha/Engel in close quarters, deserves to be shot repeatedly, but that's neither here nor there.)

True, melee is mince to proper weapons, the Katana thing is really just an annoying brainbug that keeps cropping up.

More generally, this is my first time running Cthulhutech, and I'd like to get a feel for how the rules play out in... uh, play before I start tinkering with them in any great way.

Understandable, but I actually think that group survivability will be helped with this project, as well as helping you create appropriately scaled nasties at us. It would also stop Marcao from becoming the horrifying ginsu of doom with four separate 6D attacks each round with a range up to 100 yards.

[EarthScorpion]

Hmm... looking at the damage, there are a few oddities. I do agree that there are certain things that need increased realism, but I'm not willing to rewrite the combat system in order to do so, as a) as previously mentioned, I want to actually get used to the system, and b) it could really knock out the balance (especially when Framewerk's odd dice mechanics are taken into account).

However, I will implement some house rules, to address some of your concerns:


The MP-6A1 does +1 Damage, not + 2. I think that's an error, and have raised it in the errata thread in the Ctech forums, as it's a 10mm weapon and all the other 10mm weapons do +1 damage. Also, it's (as you noted) quite unbalanced.

Autofire follows the same rules as Large Pistols, with the Strength limit or the limited rate of fire. That is, to use autofire, you need to either have Strength 7, or fire the gun in both hands; otherwise, you can only fire every other round.

Each of the different rounds has a static bonus, which the dice roll is added to. Someone with some kind of real experience with weapons might like to comment on this; the closest I've got to a real gun has been walking past a police officer with an MP-5 near Parliament. These bonuses only apply once; you don't add again from autofire.

• 5mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
  10mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
  15mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
  5mm Assault Rifle rounds = (+6)
  9mm Assault Rifle rounds = (+6)
  Slugs (Shotgun) = (+3)
  Shot (Shotgun) = (+0)
  9mm SMG = (+4)
  10mm SMG = (+4)
  5mm MG = (+5)
  10mm HMG = (+7)
  9mm Sniper = (+8)

As for the whole autofire thing, I will point out that it burns through ammo really, really quickly, and people will be carrying realistic amounts of ammo in my games. Basically, at least NPCs won't just waste it, as they're aware that a gun with ammo is, to put it bluntly, pretty damn useless. Also, reloading is a full turn, not just an action.

Also, just to remind you again, I'm playing with the hit location rules from Vade Mecum. That means that, for example, any shot has a 1 in 10 chance of doing double damage, and at least half a chance of the shot having some special effect, whether knockdown, losing your next two actions, or losing an extra 3 health a turn for 1d5 turns, as you bleed.

[Marcao]

I think its a cool idea to try and normalize the damage, but the autofire rules are overly harsh in my opinion. I am already avoiding big handguns for that ruling where you need strength 7 to fire it one handed. Applying that to machine pistols is bad, applying it to SMG's makes SMG gunplay even more of a pain in the ass. SMG Gunplay uses dual wielding SMG's, you already need a high agility to do this without a penalty (or the ambidextrous perk) and now a high strength is necessary as well?

Adding to it all the changes to the damages as listed below:

5mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
10mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
15mm Pistol rounds = (+2)
5mm Assault Rifle rounds = (+6)
9mm Assault Rifle rounds = (+6)
Slugs (Shotgun) = (+3)
Shot (Shotgun) = (+0)
9mm SMG = (+4)
10mm SMG = (+4)
5mm MG = (+5)
10mm HMG = (+7)
9mm Sniper = (+8)

And I see absolutely no reason to even -consider- SMG specialization and would jump into Assault Rifle specialization in a New York minute. Its more bang per buck.

my two cents.

[Academia Nut]

Well, I'm sure we can work out an adequate set of rules, although I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do with the weapons damage tables there. However, perhaps if we were to adance the game and get to the running and screaming we would have enough time to get things sorted out while getting to that point rather than trying to sort everything out now and letting the game languish on the vine.

[frigidmagi]

Look ES from what I can tell, it takes half a magazine to kill an unarmored human with an M16 in Cthulhutech. That's so wildly off base that it boggles the mind. Also Hotfoot's system would be simpler, faster and cleaner.

Speaking solely for myself I would prefer we use something fast as opposed to slow and clunky. Rolling dice is fun on the table, online it's kinda of a drag.

Oh and AN if you don't want the game to languish make a post, say something snarky to Yu or continue the blatter with Hotfoot. There's no reason why discussing the rules here means everything grinds to a halt, expect the fact y'all ain't posting.

[EarthScorpion]

Yeah, sorry. I meant to post yesterday, but I ended up completely bogged down in an Assessed Problem Sheet (which, incidentally, I finally managed to kludge together. It's not going to be a good mark). I'll hopefully have the next post up early tomorrow, or even today (I have 50 minutes for the latter deadline).

And the damage tables, incidentally, is why I shouldn't try to house-rule a system I haven't seen in play, yet. I withdraw the modified damage tables, and the autofire rules, but I'm keeping the modified machine pistol damage. Academia Nut is right; we'll just use the normal rules for now, and change if changes are needed after a combat or so.

[Cynical Cat]

Well, you only have yourself to blame when you see how much ammo the PCs are carrying. And don't try to argue with frigid about how feasible his ammo loadout is. Once a Marine . . .

[frigidmagi]

Besides most of it I'll only have to carry one way.

[Academia Nut]

Well I was the last one to actually make a comment, as Yu didn't actually say anything to respond to, thus unless you want me to spontaneously erupt as a telepath, I can't exactly make any snarky comments. If other people pick up the blather again I'll happily go right back at it, its just, you know, I'm kind of waiting for responses to my last bit of blather.

[Hotfoot]

Given time, I'll throw together a proposed system that we can all look at if we feel the need. It won't be too much trouble, as tweaking is sort of a hobby of mine.

I'll be making some posts tonight. Tomorrow I'll likely be in the woods, however.

[frigidmagi]

I was thinking the fact he had gotten up and was walking around was something you could response off of.

[Academia Nut]

He's not the kind of asshole who would ask something like, "Taking a stroll?" He's a bit overbearing, but in his mind he was only counter-attacking against Bertram's verbal assaults. You now have conspiracy theory fodder to think about though, and what he says can be responded to. And yes, Alex is a wimp, so feel free to call him on it.

[Kurald Galain]

Sorry for being slow on the posting - I'm having a couple of days off work, but that just means all my times with family.

Sorry, not a good reason. I'll post tomarrow morning, evening at the latest.

:thewall:

[EarthScorpion]

So, to check, everyone feels that they have done enough pre-mission conversation, and had enough of a briefing from your supervisor? If so, I can start properly.

[Kurald Galain]

Sure, though I'm still not clear if we have a burnt earth policy in effect or if we're to leave thing intact even if we can't recover them.

[Marcao]

I am good to go if we are going to get the party started.

[Academia Nut]

Since we're there to recover data I assume we want to go in with a 'soft touch' as otherwise missile spam followed by incendiaries would be the way to go. For my part, I'm going to start with the AP cannon out seeing as while neither one of the guns on my PA is exactly 'friendly fire friendly' the AP cannon is less likely to punch through internal walls and fry something important.

But yes, I'm ready to go whenever everyone else is.

[EarthScorpion]

So, yeah. A crash. That's always been the way that I planned to start the game, BTW; it's not just a whim.

The crash does 4 dice of damage, but the seats if properly strapped in provide 3 dice of armour against that damage.

Moreover, Academia Nut was out of his seat when the crash happened. It's thus an Agility Feat roll, TN 19, to get back before the crash;

Get back to the Seat roll: Adept Agility (3 dice)
7, 7, 1 - Pair of sevens = 14
Agility = 7
Target = 19
Result = 21
Passed; he gets the "armour" provided by the crash seats

Damage:

Alex (AN)
Damage (4 dice) = 4, 8, 2, 4 = 18
Armour (3 +1 dice (Ward of Protection)) = 2, 8, 4, 6 = 20
Total Damage taken = 0 damage.
Notes: Sorcerers *grumble grumble grumble*

Tyche (Kurald Galain)
Damage (4 dice) = 7, 10, 6, 3 = 26
Armour (3 dice) = 8, 6, 4 = 18
Total Damage taken = 10

Erik (LT)
Damage (4 dice) = 5, 5, 2, 8 = 20
Armour (3 dice) = 15
Total Damage taken = 5

Bertram (Hotfoot)
Damage (4 dice) = 7, 7, 2, 5 = 21
Armour (3 dice) = 9, 8, 3 = 20
Total Damage taken = 1

Aiguo (frigidmagi)
Damage (4 dice) = 8, 8, 5, 5 = 26
Armour (3 dice) = 7, 9, 5 =21
Total Damage taken = 5

Dovara (Marcao)
Damage (4 dice) = 2, 8, 9, 2 = 21
Armour (3 dice) = 5, 5, 6 = 16
Total Damage taken = 5

Heh. This roll was engineered (4 dice vs 3 dice) to give you about 5 points of damage (enough to leave you bruised, but able to walk away). I didn't realise how close it would hew to the average. Sorry Kurald Galain, but it looks like Hotfoot stole your share of the luck

[Marcao]

We will call that luck, "the luck of the cripple" and its +1 asset. ^_~