Currently working on one

[Wannabe writer]

My first one..... I just hope I don't make the mistakes a guy from our group did .

Ok so no title yet, but an easy to use system to make firefights smoother and no need for maps. One that I hope makes the skill combat tactics worth taking.

I want combat to be fun and deadly yet no the whole point to the game.


Sorry I am rambling but I find that getting this out like this helps cement it in my brain.


Setting wise I was thinking futuristic (22nd century ) and ultra modern (10 to 20 years in our future).

Characters are part of a Special operations group, highly trained and high morale characters. The Task force is taken from Special operations group, formed for a specific mission ie. take down this cartel, terrorist or nut job. So character generation will first be forming the group, are the old vets or young bucks, are they well funded? Further more Do they have support of the ruling council. Each choice in this options gives the players points to spend in certain areas and bonuses to certain situations, this then gives the character a unique twist, and a "home base". Having a home base makes the characters try and work as a team, also having the base allows it to become part of the story imagine their operations group being directly targeted etc.

I want to avoid a NCIS debacle and also include some right and wrong choices, this is by having Moral and Morale. Moral is a scale on where you sit in relation to right and wrong actions, kill an unarmed foe would be bad, save a mother and baby is good. Depending on where you sit on the Moral table tells you how easy it is to get Morale. Morale is a way in which the character can influence a scene and influence side rolls.

Just need a name ..... Unless Black ops is on the nose

[Onix]

I think using morale as a pool for the group to draw from is a cool idea. Mechanically it makes sense, if someone needs to pull from the pool it means that they're not doing well and the group's confidence is reduced. Maybe the re-roll means that the group had to bail them out. It would reinforce that they were acting as a team and that without the team, you have no morale backup.

The other point of interest I take is the part about combat not being the whole point. If this is a special operations unit, are you referring to stealth also being a factor or are you going deeper and having the team having to deduce things about their stated quarry. Are they an investigative group in addition to a spec ops team?

If they are, it would be great to give some mechanical muscle to the investigative part of their mission. Give it some structure so that soft skills like surveillance and research have real muscle. Maybe knowing more about your target gives combat bonuses, reduces the chance of surprises (ambushes), or might improve morale. Give the players a good reason to really want to dig into the soft skills.

Mission Impossible and the A-Team come to mind from your description. I'm trying to think of a 22nd century spec ops team example. What kind of targets will I face in this game? Is it Judge Dread type stuff? Communicating the setting may hinge on keying into tropes of similar media so that players can more or less instantly pick up the game. Details of who the specific organizations are can come later.

Are you looking at being able to play a range of settings? Like the players could pick a year somewhere between 2030 and 2130? The equipment differences in those settings might be daunting to have to quantify. Unless you deal with equipment in a very story driven way.

Anyway, just some reaction and thoughts.

[Wannabe writer]

[Onix]

Morale

I was thinking of something simple for morale, just some number that the group pools. It's what each digit does that makes it significant. I'm just throwing out ideas here. Maybe a high morale number is only something like 5 but you get a bonus for your morale for all your rolls. That +5 helps out a lot. But with a very deadly setting, maybe a single roll can mean a character dies. Now you have to take that bail out. The morale drops to 4 and now everyone only gets a +4 to their rolls. The more bail outs the team has to make the harder things become for everyone. It's like you can't trust your team because they keep needing to be rescued.

What I'm thinking a bail out would be is say my PC flubs a roll and now I'm exposed. Bad guy no.6 takes aim and I'm a goner. I take a bail out and one of the other team mates, say the sniper, rolls and picks him off just before he pulls the trigger. It has to be a legal action, it doesn't just happen automatically.

Handling Damage

As regard to deadly damage, I've been thinking about this. There's a report by the government that studied combat wounds during the Korean war. The interesting thing they found was that there were basically only four effects of wounds. You were either unaffected and kept fighting (for the short term, yes they still needed medical attention). You went into shock (out of commission). Or you died. Caliber, range, number of times hit didn't seem to matter. As a hunter I see the same pattern when I hunt.

An accurate shot is more dangerous but a wild shot can still kill. So it would almost be a balancing act of how accurate the shot was, and the mentality/adrenalin level of the person shot. There is something to be said about stopping power. 5.56 mm rounds have been reported to go through a person so cleanly that the attackers just keep coming at you.

The thing that muddies this up a bit is things like body armor. Simulating the way people react to wounds and the way physical objects deal with impact is tricky. However, you could do things just the same way. Armor could have three states. Deflected, no damage. Damaged, the armor protects on this attack but is now useless. Penetrated, the bullet goes on to wound the character as normal.

Hacking

Especially if you're using hackers, you'll need plenty of soft skill power. Rob and I have talked about hacking on the forum here and how, if it's not done right, can really divide the play group.

I saw a great example of hacking in a cyberpunk 2020 game. The GM had his own system for hacking. It was pretty simple and these were collage students so they understood hacking. It was too technical for most players (as I've discovered). The thing he got right was that the hackers could look up information on who people were. They could monitor CCTV systems. They could lock and unlock doors. They were in constant communication with the other players. They had a real physical influence on the game.

So what I'm thinking in your situation is that the hackers might be able to look through purchases of the organizations the PCs are going against and find out what kind of weapons they have. They could look up building blueprints and guide the PCs to where they need to go. They could look up individual dossiers of people the PCs are talking to and feed them information. Example "This guy is a martial arts expert, don't let him get in too close to you." or "This guy loves explosives, he'll probably have the place wired up."

Mainly, the Hackers can collect information that will give clues as to what to expect. A successful roll means the GM gives hints as to where the PCs need to go.

I love playing with these ideas, I don't have all the time in the world to develop them because I've already got projects in the works. If you want, is a near future setting, I don't use grids or minis because when a laser gun can hit out to 10 kilometers it's hard to have a combat map that uses any kind of minis and grids are irrelevant when people move at 5 Km/h and some vehicles are moving at 1000 Km/h. It might give you some ideas.

[Wannabe writer]

I will definitely look into your RPG as its in my research area. I am just not keen on aliens, think aliens should be more than elves or dwarves with a futuristic flavour.

[Onix]

Ah, trust me m'lad, so do I.

[tygertyger]