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I think vehicles should be found along the whole scale – cheap, easily destroyed Technicals to expensive, hard to kill heavy tanks.

Hoping to avoid tags entirely – let all equipment tracking be done electronically.

Tweaked the rules. Added a few things including sections on Safety and Veteran Abilities. Veteran Abilities are one-shots primarily intended for players who can buy no further skills. Reprinted here for review:

Veteran Abilities

If no skills are purchased between events, then a Veteran Ability may be taken, instead. These abilities represent the character’s growing influence, reputation, and personal contacts in the region. Veteran Abilities are one-shot abilities – expended upon use and do not come back until repurchased.

Favor: This is a solid “You owe me one” with an NPC. A faction must be specified for each favor gained. Favors may be had with any faction, hostile or not. A favor may be spent to get passed an otherwise hostile roadblock or patrol, convince an unfriendly support unit to lend a hand, temporarily increase reputation with the faction for the purpose of mission selection, temporarily decrease the cost of supplies, etc.

Duck n’ Cover: You know just what to do when you hear “INCOMING!” While everyone else is reduced to charred husks by a napalm bomb, you emerge from under a log unscathed. When a UAV flies overhead, you’re the one it doesn’t see. Expend Duck ‘n Cover to ignore an area effect.

Dodgey: Use this to gain five Luck for an event. This extra Luck cannot be regained once expended and goes away at the end of the event.

No Time to Bleed: May be used for a one-time extension of your bleed-out time by five minutes.

Out of Action: Prevents additional damage from being externally inflicted while in negative health. Normal bleed-out times still apply. Effect lasts until character dies or is healed into positive life.

War Mule: May make one run carrying two unresisting people.

What’s at Hand: Removes the resource requirement from one use of the First Aid, Triage, Field Life Support, or Miracle Worker skills.

Jack Rabbit: Remove yourself from a scene. You are lucky enough and fast enough to avoid being hit by any fire and soon lose any pursuit. If in a vehicle, you dive out, roll, and disappear into the wilderness. Must be fully mobile and unrestrained to use this ability.

Bond, Neo Bond: You have the luck of an action movie hero, with bullets exploding all around you and none hitting their mark. Five seconds immunity to pellet damage.

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

Benifits of cripling a limb
1. Adds a fun RPing element
2. Adds soak to the game with out increasing the actual soak of game
3. Adds another thing the medic can repair
4. easy to RP - Same as king rules

Negatives
1. People will forget they can't run. But we already have this mechanic for zero life. It will happen, but it is not a big deal

Interesting concept Doug. I just think they need to be balanced and we are good to go. I see these as possible plot rewards, maybe can purchase through money, and or earn them through down time. I like.

Suggested skills system

Players and NPC's will recieve X Character points per session if they pay for event. I want to keep it simple so this is the only way to get CP's. Pay for an event, show up or not, and you get them.

Skills
Most skills will have 4 levels. Each level of skill will give a person an ability. Some abilities will require equipment to use. There will be some one shot skills that are powerful and give just one ability. You spend CP's to purchase a skill

Character Stats
There are 3 stats which will give the player access to certian skills, exta soak, and perks. Perks are minor abilities you get at certian level of stats. Stat range 0-4. Must spend CP's to increase a stat

Growth
A player contunialy grows but the cost of skills go up as the player learns more skills. The target is 8 full (level 4) skills in 10 years. One shots will count as a skill.

Eric has all the number worked out and the cost scaling for skills

For mercenaries, it’ll be easier and cheaper to simply replace damaged weapons with new ones. So when a weapon is hit and not saved by an expenditure of a Luck point, it, and everything on it, is destroyed.

I’m still devotedly against Kings Rules. Soak is high enough without it. The problem is we’re talking two completely different systems here.

I haven’t seen Reid’s system, and while there was much about the older 4-teir system posted on page 2 that looked great and was incorporated into the current system, there were some things I didn’t like. Currently weapon skills are based as follows:
Spring Powered
Semi-Auto
Full-Auto
Sniper – higher FPS
Shotgun – multiple pellets per shot
SAW – high ammo capacity
Flamethrower – continuous stream
RPG – high damage and area effect

This collapses 19 skills into eight, and all of these skills take care of themselves. Have full-auto? Set your gun on full-auto and forget about it. It’s also less limiting to character concepts. See your character as toting an M-16 even though you’re investing all your points in non-weapon skills? Just get a spring powered M-16 or set your M-16 to semi-auto and do a 5 count between shots. Also the difference between SMG and Rifle was only the number of hands you have to keep on your weapon. No one is going to pay attention to how they’re holding their gun.

Doug,

How does one replace a gun if they are all free? Repairing is just time and maybe some money. Another skill for a mencahninc to have.

You are correct on the soak systems. We are talking 2 differnt systems. The end results are close, but come about it totaly differntly. We must talk pro's and con's for each and come to a agreement. Each have merit.
Both Eric and I love the king's rules because it can add a lot to the game. It is a fun RP element and I can see it getting people into the game more. And those who don't like, don't have to use it. It is optional.

Why are you so agianst King rules?

I don't like how Serneity does weapon skills. If you have money, you can get a big advantage over those who do not. To balance out the playing field a little, I want to force people to spend character points to be able to use there cool weapon at full capacity. It allows the other people to focus on non combat skills that can benifit the group besides being a gun monkey. This also makes have to spend most of your points in using mulitple weapons.

As for SMG's. I want to place a perk/skill into the game where you can use two if them at once. That why there is a different catergory for them. Duel wielding! You cannot duel wield rifles.

How is it less limiting. It will cost very littel CP to get the ability to use a spring powered weapon. It will cost many to do full auto.

Guns are not free – they must be purchased or, more likely, looted from an enemy corpse. So not only does a destroyed weapon rob the player of its use for the rest of that mission, it cuts into profits to replace it as the player must buy a new gun or have the looted gun deducted from the salvage bonus.

I once tried Kings Rules with some friends of mine when we played paintball. Properly RPing an injured limb requires constant concentration – which no one can afford to devote in any kind of conflict situation. The more intense the situation, the less the injury is RPed, to the point where the injury is completely forgotten. Kings Rules basically boiled down to free hits, so were soon abandoned.

Truth is, any damage taken directly to Health should be RPed. No hard and fast rules there, just strong encouragement. So when you’re thinking about it, you can ham up your injuries. As mentioned in the Serenity rulebook (and will be reprinted in MERCS), players should feel free to drop straight to unconscious or dead should they take a solid Health-effecting hit to the head.

The weapon capability rules are still there – only rather than listing them multiple times and applying them to different weapons, they’re just in there once. Pretty much everyone’s going to have only one primary weapon, anyway. If someone wants to deal with the awkwardness of carrying two large weapons into the field, go for it.

In addition, a player may only use a weapon for which he has the phys rep. If his assault rifle is destroyed, he has no backup weapon, and all the dead bad guys only had pistols and shotguns, he’s still unarmed (though hopefully an NPC can lend him a proper phys rep for the rest of the mission). Though perhaps he could be allowed to use his assault rifle on semi-auto only from then on.

The skill for dual wielding automatic weapons is still there. If they want to try that with two assault rifles, let them. Like the guy wielding a 15 lbs 8 foot long sword phys rep at CARPS, they’ll likely find the real-world banes outweigh the boons.

Carrying two (or three) weapons isn't really awkward. I used both the shotgun and P90 quite effectively when we played. I just propped one against a bunker so when I ran out of ammo or needed a slightly different style I could swap quickly. Very handy. I'd expect more of this.

As for gun hits, under the current system of like 5 luck or whatever, no one will ever lose a gun. I'm also thinking a big negative to grabbing someone else's weapon unless given specifc permission (in which case they'd need the correct skill).

It also seems silly to me that a guy with a full auto m16 couldn't use a spring m16 if he didn't have the skill. Now I personally don't do well with semi auto pistols, but I can use a spring pistol quite well. However, the p90 (or most any rifle) in semi auto, I can slice bread with. So for me (in real life), our system matches much better.

We've played kings rules for like 5-6 years now between airsoft and paintball and never had an issue beyond perhaps 1 extra hit here and there. In addition, new people coming in have easily adapted to it. The difference between roleplaying injuries and higher soak and kings rules is effectively zero all said and done. Kings rules just gives you a much better idea of when someone is really low since they have to start acting it. Arguably, so could higher soak and roleplaying, but that's based on the person with no enforcable rule.

Roleplaying can never be enforced and soak is tough to enforce as well in a long range game. With kings rules, you have at least some idea of where one stands (as I'd say limb hits can only be taken at 1 soak left) so you gain a metric there and sure the roleplay is a bit forced, but it's better than nothing for those that don't want to roleplay hits.

I'd also keep the encouraging people to drop out of the book. They'll do that on their own if they are having fun.

We played again last night and the riot shield is very powerful with out gernades to counter it. But there was only 5 of us and it was hard to flank the shield. The only restriction I would put on the riot shield is you can only use up to a semi auto firing weapon. Full auto is broken.

After some talk and thought, I agree that you can use any 2 weapons you want if you have the 2 weapon carrying skill (kimbo). The larger the weapons yo have, the harder it will be to aim them. This can be a perk or a 1 shot skill. Not sure on that yet.

Eric and I talked and combining pistols with SMG's will work.
Skill one handed weapons
1 - can use a spring weapon (can use a pistol for free)
2 - semi auto
3 - increased clip size (upto 330)
4 - Full automatic

As for weapons, there is 2 ways to work them
Option 1
PC have to purchase them and replace them when they are damaged
Negative - need to make tags for weapons, add enough reward to cover the cost of replacing the weapon, create costs for all the weapons, people stock pielling weapons

Option 2
If the PC has the physrep they have the weapon. Can only have as many weapons as you have physreps. No stock pielling. When a weapon is hit, it becomes broken. Must find a person who can repair the weapon before it can be used again. It might cost some money to repair the weapon.

Benifits
No tags, no stock pieling, no coming up with weapon costs, creates a non combat skill or two, easy to understand, no need to increase cash coming into game to cover the cost to replace weapons. It still accomplish's the same effect as option 1 with much less work for the NPC's. aka, the person losses the use of a weapon during the battle.


I'm with Eric on letting PC's use NPC weapons. As NPC's we will need our weapons for the next conflict. And I will not share my weapons I have paid for with the PC's. I bought them so I can use them to shot the PC's

I also agree with Eric on the King's rules. You can run it 2 ways
option 1
Have a higher soak and have a suggest option of RPing your wounds. Can't be enforced

option 2
Have a lower soak with the option of using the king's rules. It is a semi enforceable way to RP wounds. If the PC want's they can increase there soak by using the king rule or they do not. But for the rules, the extra soak from the king rule is considered on the max amount of soak a person can have

In the end it is the same thing, max soak is X. It is just the symatic's on how you get there.

Carrying two (or three) weapons isn't really awkward. I used both the shotgun and P90 quite effectively when we played. I just propped one against a bunker so when I ran out of ammo or needed a slightly different style I could swap quickly. Very handy. I'd expect more of this.

Having multiple kinds of weapons handy in a defensive situation is nice, and players will have that option. But carrying multiple weapons while on the offensive or involved in a run-and-gun will be a lot less nice.

As for gun hits, under the current system of like 5 luck or whatever, no one will ever lose a gun. I'm also thinking a big negative to grabbing someone else's weapon unless given specifc permission (in which case they'd need the correct skill).

By that logic anyone who can survive five hits or two grenades is immortal, as they’ll never go through that much soak. I strongly disagree.

It also seems silly to me that a guy with a full auto m16 couldn't use a spring m16 if he didn't have the skill.

Spring weapon skill is free. The Full-auto skill does require the player to all ready have the semi-auto skill.

Kings rules just gives you a much better idea of when someone is really low since they have to start acting it. Arguably, so could higher soak and roleplaying, but that's based on the person with no enforcable rule.

I’d rather keep it a suggestion rather than a rule as players are less likely to feel they have to sacrifice safety to adhere to the game. Also, as soon as you take a hit to your health you are *hurt* - your flesh torn open – and you should act like it; not wait until you’re down to your last point.

We played again last night and the riot shield is very powerful with out gernades to counter it. But there was only 5 of us and it was hard to flank the shield. The only restriction I would put on the riot shield is you can only use up to a semi auto firing weapon. Full auto is broken.

We knew full-auto couldn’t be allowed with riot shields in our first discussion concerning them. However, sounds like they can’t be allowed – my own experience against them supports this.
We’d be lucky to have 4 NPCs, and NPCs will almost always be outnumbered by PCs, so flanking will rarely be an option.

Skill one handed weapons
1 - can use a spring weapon (can use a pistol for free)
2 - semi auto
3 - increased clip size (upto 330)
4 - Full automatic

Shouldn’t the use of high-cap clips for standard firearms be discouraged? Lack of reload time is the only advantage the heavy and unwieldy SAW has.

PC have to purchase them and replace them when they are damaged
Negative - need to make tags for weapons, add enough reward to cover the cost of replacing the weapon, create costs for all the weapons, people stock pielling weapons

If tags are being made for everything else, anyway, I don’t see weapon tags as a negative. Losing a weapon is a bad thing. No need to compensate losses by modifying mission rewards. Costs all ready in place for all weapons. Don’t see a problem with stockpiled weapons. Players will keep a reasonable reserve and sell the rest. Seems realistic to me. In summary, I see no negatives here.
Option 2, on the other hand, seems very unrealistic. Merc companies should have weapon stockpiles, and will have continuous access to ‘new’ weapons. No one is going to attempt to repair a damaged weapon unless they absolutely have no other choice – and the mercenaries will have plenty of other choices. Who wants to risk a weapon blowing up in their face?

I'm with Eric on letting PC's use NPC weapons. As NPC's we will need our weapons for the next conflict. And I will not share my weapons I have paid for with the PC's. I bought them so I can use them to shot the PC's

Agreed, which is why I said ‘hopefully’. Normally I’d expect NPCs will be unable to even temporarily hand out phys-reps. Fortunately, I expect in most cases a character who’s had his weapon destroyed will easily find another weapon of the same category on the field. Remember, the only categories are spring, semi-, full-, shotgun, and the heavy weapons. If a dead bad guy has an uzi on him, the merc who’s M-16 was destroyed can now continue to use it.
Keep in mind NPCs will rarely be able to accurately reflect the kinds of weapons various factions have access to (though this is why I’m focusing my collection on AK-47s). We can’t be sticklers on gun models. That poorly trained and equipped rebel isn’t using a P-90, he’s using an ‘automatic weapon’.

Doug,

We need to get on a conference call and talk this stuff out. The more we get into this, the more we are going into two different directions.

I would like to setup a skype call for a certian night every week so we can hammer thsi stuff out. We are just spinning our wheels.

I suggest we have a setup call on Tuesday at 8:00pm. We can start next week. Eric will setup the call. He just needs you skype account name.

Response
Umm, I'm epxecting the PC's to have at least 2-3 weapons on them at one time. You can easly setup with a shotgun on your back, rifle in your hands, and pistol on the belt. What is the big deal with carrying so many weapons?

Doug, you are missing the point of having the different weapon skills. It is to balance out people's weapon's with in game character point costs. I want to level out the playing field some what with the type of guns people are bring in. I don't a rich player bringing a $1,000 gun and rule over everyone with out having to invest many of there character points to do this. It is not fair to the other players.
As for the 330 clips. The saw is still better becasue you don't have to stop of wiond your clip. SAWs hold 3,000-5,000 bullets and have a continious firing rate. 330 clips must wind after 20 bullets. And a person can go through 300 bullets quickly if they are not careful. It was happening alot last night battle.

A suggestion noever works. It has to be a mechanic when RPing wounds. The only time you have to RP a wound now is at zero and below and if you use the king rules. Besides that, it won't happen.

Riot shields will bring another element to the game that will be fun and challenging. The NPC will have no issue getting around them becasue we will have more soak than the PC's which we can take some hits to get into the correct angle. And you have explosives that works great against them!

What are you bring to the game with having to keep track of weapons and creating tags? As a person who does this at every larp I play, it is just a pain and add's nothing to the game. The reason I sugget option 2 is strict mechanics and load of work the NPC's have to worry about. I'm following KISS. Some realism will have to be lost for sake of easy of game play and work load managment. Not to mention people will not be changing out there weapons. Cool, i found a different type of weapon. They will not be going out and spending money on a new wepaon if they already have a good one.

remeber the weapon categories we are looking at are. And each have 4 levels skills which lets the person do better things the gun.

Pistol - one handed weapons
shotguns
rifles
sniper
RPG's
SAW

Note: I do not see how we can do flamethrowers?

I’ll let you know my skype account name should I ever decide to get a skype account.

PCs can carry as many weapons as they want. There’s no ‘big deal’ there.

Doug, you are missing the point of having the different weapon skills. It is to balance out people's weapon's with in game character point costs. I want to level out the playing field some what with the type of guns people are bring in. I don't a rich player bringing a $1,000 gun and rule over everyone with out having to invest many of there character points to do this. It is not fair to the other players.

I don’t see how your system is any different from mine in this regard.
As for high-cap clips, yeah, the difference between 300 and 3000 is still pretty significant. As winding clips go, I’d rather have multiple low-cap clips, anyway – I can swap out clips faster than I can wind a high-cap - so those give no real advantage in my opinion. But wasn’t it you who told me they found non-winding high-cap clips? Someone did. Non-winding high-caps is something of an advantage, and I agree may need special consideration.

A suggestion noever works.

We’ll just have to disagree there. Role-playing is always a suggestion, and I don’t think having a rule stating you MUST RP at a certain point will make much of a difference.

NPCs will normally have less soak than PCs. While riot shields don’t protect against explosives, I’m not sure how prevalent grenades will be among NPCs. Will have to consider riot shields further. While often used when dealing with civilian mobs, you don’t see military forces employing them against each other. Need to learn why. Is it just because they’re cumbersome or is there something more?

I like the idea of weapons being destroyed. It gives the PCs a reason to carry a backup weapon other than running out of ammo, and adds something of a wild card to missions.

What Aaron means is I need a phone #. Skype is just how I do conference calls since I can call phones and skype numbers. Skype is nice since I can also share documents and such. Could even use gotomeeting but the call quality is less.

Doug,

I totaly agree with the clips. Only saws can have above 300 non wind clips. Everyone else needs to use mid cap (100-170) no wind clips or 330 max wind clips.

We can talk more about the weapon categories and how skills should work on the call.

I agree with you on something bad should happen if a gun is hit with a bullet. I'm just trying to create a mechanic that limits the work for NPC's but still creates the same effect. The best I have come up with is a hit breaks a weapon and it take X skill, time, money to repair it. This keeps this aspect on the PC side instead of the NPC side.

I was thinking we can do the same for armor. Instead of having PC's lining up to buy new armor after every battle, we can create a skill and have the PC's buy replacemenet plates. This puts it back onto the PC's agian. If the PC run out of replacement plates, they have to wait until the store is open again (aka, a NPC is available).

Both suggestions are not realistic, but they do limit NPC work and give the PC's freedom to take care of themselves. Now we can even say they can't do any of the repair work until they get back to home base or if they have a specialy outfitted vechiles.

As NPC hits, it is going to be detemined on how many NPC's we have vrs the number of PC's. Less NPC's and more PC's means the NPC's have to be beefy to give the PC's a challenge.It's going to be trial and error until we get the mix down.