Mil-Sim LARP

[Dallid]

Looking over the ideas and rewriting the rules. Should have the first post updated by the end of the week.

[Dallid]

Updated, though still in development, of course.

[General Maximus]

Another idea I had was creation skills. Each level would give you more production points you can use to build items. You get X production points per event.

Example
Level 1 - 6pp total
Level 2 - 12pp total
Level 3 - 20 pp total
Level 4 - 25 pp total

Creation skills
Enhancers
Explosives
Medical supplies
etc...

[General Maximus]

After long talks, limited ammo carrying capacity will add emersion to the game and prevent Rambo from happening.

Basic carrying capacity. You can have you clip full of ammo/BB's in your gub and upto 50 BB's on you person (aka a 1/2 speed loader full). All ammo needs to be physrep with clips/speed loaders. A speed loader can hold a max of 100 bb's

Carying Capacity
Level 1 - 100 BB's
Level 2 - 150 bb's
Level 3 - 200 bb's
Level 4 - 350 bb's

you can reload your ammo at your vechile or home base. It is wise to shoot well.

[General Maximus]

Another Idea for Damage

Attributes:
Body – The aggregate strength and toughness of a character.
Brains – The intelligence of the character.
Reflexes- The responsiveness and precision of a character.

Life – The amount of damage a person main body/head can take.
Luck – Represents your ability to dodge out of the way of danger. You can spend a luck point to counter 1 damaging effect.

Hot to take a hit – King Rules
There are 2 basic locations on a person body that react in different ways when hit
1. The head and main trunk/Torso – When hit in these location you take 2 life damage. See below when you run out of life. Can wear armor to increase the number of hits.
2. Arms and leg - The part of the body that gets hit can’t be used. You take no body or armor damage when hit in these locations. You can choose to take 2 damage instead of 1 damage and having the limb cripeled. You take 1 damage when getting hit in a wounded limb. Limb must be healed before it can be used.
3. If your weapon gets hit by a BB, it is broken and must be repaired before it can be used again.

Example – If you get shot in you right leg you must limp around and can not run. If get hit in an arm, you can not hold anything it the arm, but you can use a wounded arm to cock a spring air soft weapon. If you get hit in the head, you take life damage

Soak
Start the game with 1life
At every even level of Body you get an extra life (level 2 & 4)
At every even level of Reflexes you get an extra luck (level 2 & 4)
Armor grant you 1 extra soak for you head/main truck

Max soak
Life – 3
Luck – 2
Armor – 1

Starting Soak
Life – 1
Luck – 0
Armor – 0 to 1

A person will have to get hit 10 times in the head/main trunk to kill them. 6 times to stop them from running

Explosives
They would do 2-4 damage. They do direct damage to the head/main trunk. A person can opt to have the explosive damage a limb to reduce the damage to the head/main trunk. A limb can absorb 1 damage. You have a max of 4 limbs.

Example – A grenade drops in front of you and goes off dealing 4 damage to you. You are at zero life but all your limbs are fine. You decide you don’t want to go into negative life and have all 4 limbs take the damage. You can walk or use a weapon, but you are still at zero life.

Damage
Unless otherwise stated, damage is first applied to Luck (PC can decided when to use there luck), then Armor, then life. All lost Luck points return after the character spends 30 minutes out of combat. Destroyed armor must be replaced, and Body points return at a rate of 1 per 15 minutes while the character is in a Medical Facility.

Health Levels:
1 or higher – Soldier is fully active and capable.
0 – Person can not run
-1 – Person can not stand and must crawl to move. Can use all other skills/actions
-2 – Person is conscious and can talk. Can do nothing else.
-3 – Person is bleeding to death and will die in 1 minute unless they receive medical help. Person is unconscious, can not talk or use any skill or do any action. Taking additional damage will do nothing to the person.

Wounded soldiers in Base Camp are considered to be at the Medical Facility where they regain one body every 15 minutes. Arrival at a Medical Facility stops any death count and healing begins immediately. The doctors there will not allow a combat medic to simply dress some wounds to get a soldier out earlier, nor will they allow a soldier to be discharged before full recovery without the express permission of the Company Commander. Medical Facilities will also detoxify patients and clean out radiation.

[dier_cire]

Talked to Nelkie on the King's Rules idea and it's got some merit that needs to be tested.

head/body would be 2 damage.
arms/legs would be 1 damage and loss of use.
In addition, if you are hit in an arm or leg you can choose to take 2 damage and keep use of the limb.

Reasons for this is it avoids any issues with things like shoulder or hip hits being questionable. The only time this could be an issue is someone using a crippled limb as a shield but since they are still taking 1 anyway, it's not a very effective shield.

I'm still not terribly worried about ramboing. We should test it out, but since even hi-cap clips still need to be wound, I think you'll find that you just end up in short bursts to avoid getting caught with your pants down.

As for tracking ammo / clips, I still think it's a level not needed since it's not like carrying a bag of BBs in your pocket does you any good except between battles. Firefights don't last long enough to ever worry about going that far. For specific scenarios, you can disallow refilling clips between battles, but I wouldn't go as far as to delve into clips as actual items. It'll just end up a rule that gets broken all the time that you'll be forced to end up policing. If you keep costs to large scale things and not try to micro manage the economy, you'll be much happier.

[Dallid]

I get what you’re saying about ammo. It’s along the lines of a lump-sum salvage value awarded after mission completion that Nelkie had suggested when we talked at CARPS. Why put it on the players to act out plundering corpses and enemy storage, then track all the individual items they find? Just grant them a ‘salvage bonus’ after the mission.

Both ideas deserve careful consideration. But we need to avoid introducing so many mechanical conveniences that it turns into a video game and immersion in the gaming world is lost. Perhaps those acts of plunder are worth the item tracking for the immersion they provide. Perhaps tracking the purchase, storage, and expenditure of ammo clips also proves important to feel of the game

Unfortunately I don’t think such concepts can be quickly play tested. They’re the sort of thing you’d need to work with for awhile before you can judge if they’re more annoying than immersive or vise versa. Just need to keep them in mind as we work out the rest of the rules.

[General Maximus]

Clip change out, using up your ammo in battle would add to the emersion of the game. No questions about that. But we need to be careful of adding to much extra work on the NPC staff. Below are some ideas on how to handle ammo. Note: all guns will have a limit on the number of BB's they can have in the clips.

1. Ammo is free. You have a BB, you have ammo. We can say a person can only carry X extra BB's on them in Clips and speed loaders. You need to purchase a skill to increase the amount you can carry. You can only refill your ammo at a vechile or home base.

2. Ammo is free. You can carry as much as you want. But there might be times where you can not go back to home base or a vechile to refill.

3. You must pay for ammo and need to keep track of it. A lot of paper work and tracking by PC and NPC's

I personaly like the idea that ammo is free, but you must physrep all your extra clips. No carrying 4,000 rds in a bag. You need to use a spare clip or a speed loader that is only X full (this can be based on your weapons clip size). Clips are bulky and need to take up space on a person. You can only reload your clips at home base and a PC vechile (if they brought extra ammo with them). This puts ammo carrying on the PC's. You can have as much as you want, but it needs to be properly physrepped.

Extra Clips cost from $4.00-$25.000
Speed Loaders cost $3.00 or less

This should give a good realist feel to game but limit the paper work on both sides.

In airsoft battles, it takes about 10-30 bullets to hit a person from my experience. So ammo carrying capabilites need to be looked at based on the games soak.

[General Maximus]

I want to come up with some skill set ideas and would love input. Here are some general ideas

1. Medic. Possible 2 skill sets. One for in battle and one for after battle
2. Path Finder - the person who goes out and scouts out an enemy
3. Mover and Shaker - The person who can get equipment at a lower cost
4. Intell - Person who collects information on and for mission
5. Demolition - Person who can set and disarm explosives. Was thinking the disarm part will be time based. And when searching for explosives/mines can not be carrying any equipment
6. Linguist - can decphier other languages and speak them
7. Mecahnic - Fixes broken weapons and vechiles. Can also get certian items at a lower cost
8. Commander - give bonus to the people under his command and can get quick battle field intell
9. Driver - Can driver vechiles and use vechiles defensive systems.
10. Code breaker - knows how to pick locks, mechanical and electrical

What other ideas do people have?

[General Maximus]

Eric and I did some play testing and discussion on the rules and here are the ideas that came out of it. Eric add in anything that I might have missed.

Sniper
Description – A weapon that must be used in 2 hands. Can not shoot a person unless they are at least 100 feet away. Requires GM approval and weapon testing to use a sniper rifle.
Clip Size – 5-10 Shots
Max FPS – 400-450
Max rate of fire – Spring Powered Only/semi auto

Sniper skill
Level 1 - Can use a sniper weapon with GM approval and if the sniper weapons passes weapon testing. Can not shoot a person with a sniper rifle unless they are at least 100ft away. If a person charges you, you must drop (not use) the sniper rifle when they are closer than 100 ft.
Level 2 – Increased clip size to 30-40
Level 3 - Can use a gilly suit. While in the gilly suit you can not be detected by UAV’s (Aka, you do not need to stand up and call out when there is a UAV detection.
Level 4 – Can use a semi-Automatic sniper rifle

Rocket Launcher
Description – A weapon that can fire explosive rockets. Rockets can be used to damage buildings, vehicles, and troops. A person can not fall onto a rocket to save their squad do to safety concerns. There are certain rockets that will only poison knockout people, etc….
Physrep
– Nerf Long Bow or Nerf N Strike 3 in 1 Unity Power System
- Air soft Foam rocket. Uses gas to launch the foam rocket from a air soft shell system.
Damage Call
- Call is “Rocket 5 Lash” (Everything in a 10ft radius takes 5 damage). Damage occurs where the rocket lands.

Rocket Launcher Skill
Level 1 -knows how to handle, store, and use one shot rocket launchers. Must buy rockets in game. Once they are used, they are gone.
Level 2- Can use multi fire rocket launchers
Level 3 – Can shoot down air craft with RPG. Used to counter air strikes
Level 4 - Can use a gilly suit. While in the gilly suit you can not be detected by UAV’s (Aka, you do not need to stand up and call out when there is a UAV detection. ??


Switch increased clip size with automatic firing
Level 3 - Increased clip size, 300-330bb's max
Level 4 - can use automatic firing weapon


Life – The amount of damage a person main body/head can take.
Luck – Represents your ability to dodge out of the way of danger. You can spend a luck point to counter 1 damaging effect.

Hot to take a hit
1. You take 1 damage per bb hit no matter the location
2. If a limb is hit, you can choose to cripple the limb and take no damage. If the limb gets hits again, you will take 1 damage
a. Crippled arm – Can only use 1 arm to fire your weapon. Can use the cripple limb to cock a spring gun
b. 2 Crippled arms – can not use a weapon
c. Crippled leg – can not run, need to limp around
d. 2 crippled legs – can only crawl
3. A person can opt to have the explosive damage a limb to reduce the damage. A limb can absorb 1 damage. You have a max of 4 limbs.
4. If your weapon is hit, it become damaged. Must be repaired before it can be used again


Soak
Start the game with 2 life
At every even level of Body you get an extra life (level 2 & 4)
At every even level of Reflexes you get an extra luck (level 2 & 4)
Armor grant you 1 extra soak. There is quality armor that grants 2 armor

Max soak with no negatives – 8
Max soak with negatives (negatives and limb hits) - 15

There will be no skill to heal a person past zero life while in the field. You can only heal into postive life when at home base or in a special medical vechile.


Everyone can use a spring powered airsoft hand gun and knife

Economy
Most items will be one shot uses. Need to purchase the cards from NPC camp. The PC’s would use them during a combat and turn them in at the end. All the item cards would be laminated and provided by NPC camp

Can use a paper base money system with NPC camp provided laminated money or use a encrypted computer program system for money transfers. But how would you handle PC to PC transfers and giving out of cards with the computer system?


Other ideas
Global effects only damages enemy forces in the local area. This will keep things simple. Aka, all NPC take X damage.

Shell strike – must use the card before the battle (aka get them in place). Than can call the strike during the battle

Enhancers duration might be time based or by a full combat.
Some enhancers will grant a bonus for a combat and than the next combat you will have opposite effect as a negative. Aka. You get +2 life for a combat, and than the next combat you get -2 life. The third combat you are fine

Any bonuses you get from equipment/ skills can not go over the following max’s
Life – Max is 6
Luck – Max is 2

[dier_cire]

on the max #s, I'm not thinking about hard caps but have the caps designed into the skills. aka:
Commander level X: Give allied players with less than 2 luck a +1 to luck for the combat.

As long as we don't have creation skills, the hard cap exists anyway without there being a rule for it.

Crippled limbs can be healed via a medic skill and/or an item. Combo'ing these will halve the time. Base time might be like 30-40 secs...

(can use spring powered pistol and knife) This would actually be level 1 free in those two skills. However, if someone buys level 2 or higher, these skills would then appear in the skill list / tree and count towards your total # of trees. More on this later.

and yes auto fire is more powerful than large clip size.

Base starting stats will be 4 points, placed as the player wishes. Can have zero in a stat.

Money is paper based. Can add electronic funds at a later date. To do electronic right will take a long dev time (as it'll all have to be MD5 encrypted as have the bugs beaten out.)

Two types of airstrikes. Fast movers (jets) and slow movers (helicopters). 2 levels of each (1 and 2 damage respectively). A one shot SAM system will take out either, but someone with the RPG skill and a Stinger one shot item can take out a Chopper.

Multiple shot shotguns are equivilant to full auto. (seriously, $45 for one of these and they are sweet!)

Akimbo will be two one shots. One for handguns and one for SMGs.

weapon shrouds (one shot item) will allow for gun to take two hits before being damaged.

Grenades, Explosive Arrorws and RPGs... Gernades will be the most expensive, arrows just slightly below and RPGs the cheapest. All Blast type damage is line of sight (ie if I'm behind a wall and your gernade lands in front, I'm not hit).

Walls. Some walls and such will be destructable. These will be noted in some manner (ala a red towel drapped over it) and the players will be informed ahead of time what that means. Destructable objects need to be damaged by a Blast type hit.

Mines. Mines can be disarmed by a player but they must focus to do so, ie not using weapons while looking for them. Also a mine or mines can be set off by Blast damage (ie you know there is a mine field so you toss grenades to blow a hole through).

Skillsets. Basically, something like x1, x1, x2, x2, x3... you see the pattern. This would be the cost multiplier for a new skillset (it's harder to cram more things in your brain). This includes one shot skills. Now, those two free skills make sense as they don't count towards this list till you put points into them.

After first event, someone _could_ have level 4 in a single skill. (probably 3 skill levels to start, divided as the player sees fit). After 2 years looking at probably 4 skills maxed. 6 would be 5.5, 8 years 6.5, and 10 would be 7. Something like that for a slow down.

Oh yeah, and all cost multipliers are multiplicitive not additive. Ie if you have a skill that reduces cost by 20% and one that reduces it by 50%, the total reduction is 60% not 70%. This is harder to do in your head but that's what phones/calculators are for. This allows for more freedom when creating skills as you don't have to worry about looking for if something can be reduced to 0%. It can't.

[Dallid]

I’m really against giving the option to RP injuries rather than deducting points from health or luck. People RP differently and to different degrees. Also, in the heat of battle, injuries will surely be temporarily forgotten in intense moments. Basically this offers a way to cheat and ignore hits. Need to keep things simple and treat every hit the same – deduct points.

Based on the above ideas – I’ll work the following changes into the rules.

Sniper Rifle – Clip size – 5 shots, FPS – 400-450. Phys-rep must represent a real-world sniper rifle and be GM approved. May not fire in Full Auto mode, nor fire upon a target less than 100 feet away.
RPG – Fires single rocket with 1 minute reload time. Reload time may be reduced to 20 seconds if a separate character acts as a designated loader (neither player may perform any other action while loading). Firer (and loader) must be stationary while loading. RPG Phys-rep must resemble a real-world RPG or bazooka. Rocket phys-rep may be fired by a bow or other GM-approved launching device.
SAM – self-guided surface-to-air missile. May be used to counter one enemy air support action. Destroyed on use. Phys-rep must be a tube at least 2” diameter and 4’ long. May be fired from RPG. $2500
Gilli Suit – Provides immunity to “Reveal” calls. Must be adequately phys-repped.
Flare – Use to make a “Reveal All” call. Everyone who can hear the call must yell “Here I am”. May only be used after sunset and before sunrise. Destroyed on use. $500
Rocket – Unguided propelled explosive. Fired from RPGs. Phys-rep must be a tube at least 1” in diameter and 2’ long. A LARP-safe arrow may be stored in the tube and taken out to be launched when the rocket is fired.
AAA – Anti-Air Artillery. This may be a SAM launcher, flak cannon, or similar anti-air fixed emplacement. Counters all enemy air-support actions at the scene. Destroyed at the end of the event. $20,000
Anti-Tank Gun – A fixed emplacement cannon that will destroy any enemy vehicle entering the scene unless the vehicle can counter a cannon hit. Additional Anti-Tank Guns at the scene will cause additional cannon hits. Destroyed at the end of the event. $10,000

Sniper Skill – May use Sniper Rifle and Gilli Suit.
UAV Hack – The Slicer has the tools and talent to hack into feeds from overhead satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. After remaining stationary for 5 uninterrupted minutes, the player may yell “Reveal Enemy”. All opposition who can hear the call must yell “Here I am”. If properly equipped, the opposition may be alerted that they have been monitored by an unauthorized entity. Some NPC factions are using their own satellites and UAVs to monitor the area, and may make “Reveal PC” calls periodically. Requires Slicer Skill, data pad phys-rep.

Global – Everyone who can hear a Global call takes the effect.
Reveal – Everyone who is affected by and can hear the Reveal call must yell “Here I am”.

Considering buff skills and enhancers. Probably could use more of those.

[Dallid]

PC to PC transfers will be handled by the computers – transferring items or money from one flashdrive to another. I’d also like to include a printer in the network that can print paper cards as they are purchased (no lamination). Cards can be dynamically created to list both item and owner – which will help should multiple players be purchasing items at once.

[Dallid]

Yeah, may make a separate one-point SAM skill that requires the RPG skill. Should probably also require a separate SAM launcher phys-rep. Large and unwieldy. Probably don’t want to take it along unless you have information that that air threat for a mission is high.
I’d like to set the starting build points such that any skill, with its prereqs, could be had at game start. But if going for one of the most expensive skills, it’ll cost ALL your start points.
Good idea with the reduction percentages.

[dier_cire]

Doug, making time based skills is probably a bad idea in combat. Especially anything over 45 seconds or so. They will *never* get used.

No one would be crippling a limb early (these would be last stand type things which the players shouldn't be near if they play smart). If people ignore hits, then they get booted. There's a difference between the occasional lapse and out right cheating. People get a warning, and it's something you'd have to enforce. It does add a lot of fun though and lets grenades and such be reasonably high damage. Otherwise, you must reduce the Blast damage.

The reason for lamination is to keep the economy reasonable for start and its too easy to copy regular sheets of paper. Also by having a rotating stock of laminates you'd know exactly how much is in game at all times. A virtual economy is great but banks and such pay people millions of dollars to do that stuff right. We don't have those resources or time.

A UAV shouldn't require someone to really be using anything or take time. This is something that is pre setup before the combat starts. Using the card would be literally just hitting a button to launch the vehicle (from somewhere out of game range) and then having the data fed to all your allies (thus the reveal call).

Also, on ammo / reload. Extra clips take about 3-5 seconds to reload. speed loaders take probably 30 seconds. And a bag of BBs is retardly slow. Anything over 5-10 seconds in a game as fast paced as this is forever.

And on the SAM systems, there'd be two types. A stinger (which is part of the RPG skill requiring effectively a special one shot card) and the one shot card that would be for an offsite system. The offsite system would handle fast moving objects while the rpg/stinger would handle slower moving helicopters and such.